Nov
8
do. Good Stitches — November
Filed Under Giving, Quilting, Sewing | Leave a Comment
This is my first month of do. Good Stitches {a Charity Bee}. I signed up to be a sewer, but Rachel talked me into being a quilter. Our bee group is Dream and is working on quilts for Project Night Night. Project Night Night donates loveys to homeless kids who need a bit of security in their life. As such, they ask for only smallish blankets and quilts (around 30″ x 40″) so I expect many many of our months will produce two baby size quilts.
Our quilter (and host) for the month is Lindsey of LRstitched and she chose to do a squares pattern like this one. She asked for one girl block and one boy block of about 12″ square. Of course, I immediately made the whole thing harder than it needed to be by making a new block pattern with multiple squares. And then, I didn’t have ANY of the color suggestions for either gender. So, darn. I had to go fabric shopping.
I also should note that they are vastly different in size because I figured out after I finished the first one, that the quarter inch marker on my sewing machine is rather about 1/8″ off. Nice huh? So I guess it’s good that Lindsey said they didn’t have to be exactly 12 inches.
I don’t know why, but I’m really nervous about these blocks. I’m not sure about my squares pattern or the colors. I think I stayed in the guidelines, but I don’t know. That’s just me. I worry about everything.
But on the upside, I’m really excited about being part of such a great cause and getting to work with all these awesome ladies. Looking forward to a good year of good stitching!
Nov
4
Friday Fail — The travel sewing kit
Filed Under Failing, Laughing, Quilting, Sewing | Leave a Comment
It’s been a while, but I have another Friday Fail for you. Ok, actually I had one for last week, but didn’t get pictures of it before I was so disgusted that I had to trash the whole thing — it was a mummy costume that I was going to do a tutorial for — maybe someday I’ll tell the story. But back to this weeks massive failure.
I know, I know, you’re looking at it and saying to yourself “What a cute little selvege project. I sure wish I had a little travel sewing kit that looked like that!”. Well, maybe you aren’t saying that to yourself. But you should be, because it is cute, I don’t disagree with that. But wait!
Unfortunately I forgot to take into account that the cover would not be stiff enough to keep the pockets inside pulled tight. And so, if you just tip it ever so slightly…..
Every freaking thing inside falls out! Argh. Fail!
Nov
2
Tree Skirt Knock-off
Filed Under Quilting, Ranting, Sewing | 4 Comments
Now that Halloween is over, it’s time to start the Christmas posts, right? I mean, the stores have been putting Christmas stuff out since the beginning of October. And last week I saw egg nog – egg nog!!! – on the shelves at the store. Didn’t we used to have to wait until the day after Thanksgiving for egg nog? I mean, sheesh, why not just sell it year round… and while you’re at it, why not sell girl scout cookies year round. Or peeps or whatever your holiday treat of choice is. Isn’t the whole idea of only marketing those things at certain times of the year that people will find it special and therefore buy more???
But I digress… again.
I present (ha ha get it pre-sent/present – ok, I know that was awful) to you my very first entry into the bloggers quilt festival.
Years ago I saw a tree skirt at Pottery Barn that I fell in love with. Of course, I didn’t want to pay $95 for a tree skirt. I mean, when I was a kid, I think we used an old sheet or something. No way, no how I was paying more than $15 for a tree-skirt. But oh, I had to have that perfect tree skirt, and this was in the height of my Pottery Barn knock off days. (You should see the wine cabinet I made Chris build.)
I’ve had friends bugging me for years to blog about this particular project. I did want to do a post on it on several occasions, but could never drag myself up to the attic to dig it out of its storage box before we put the tree up, and by the time the tree was up, the living room would be such a mess that there was no way I wanted photos of that on my blog.
So here it is. Well loved and not washed until last year… I was so afraid to wash it despite all the dog hair and dust because the only machine sewn seam on the whole thing is between the white background and the red border. Everything else is hand sewn. These days, I wouldn’t worry about hand sewn goods being put through the wash, but this was one of my first projects, and knowing now what I didn’t then, I was terrified that the whole thing would turn into a frayed mess in the washing machine.
But last year, after all the presents were opened and the piles of trash in the living room were picked up, I noticed a big gray smudge on the once white background. From the dog lying on the skirt. So I had to suck it up and wash the thing. I figured if it fell apart I’d just make another one. Though, I must admit that I did consider reenforcing it before the washing. But when I pulled the tree skirt from the dryer last year, I saw that now my beloved skirt was not only in one unfrayed (and clean!) piece, but it was also all freshly-washed quilty crinkly. I was elated. (I was also glad that the red border didn’t bleed all over the white background.)
The quilting on this bad boy shows me that by the time I made it, I had come a long way from the first quilt, and had some idea of what good hand-quilting was supposed to look like. Or at least what traditional quilt-show worthy hand-quilting looks like. I only say that because these days big visible stitches in hand-quilting seem to be the cool thing to do. You can also see that I didn’t “properly” bind this quilt either. I merely rolled the backing fabric to the front and sewed it down. I’ve done that on a few quilts too, because sometimes it’s just the only thing that will work. I’m sure that quilt-show judges would ding me for that, too. (Yes, Amanda, I’m talking to you… wink wink).
And just because… a gratuitous kid photo. Apparently she likes lying on the quilt as much as the dog.
Oct
25
One of the classes I took at sewing summit (I swear, someday my posts will no long refer to the sewing summit) was Improv Piecing by Jess of Urban Patchwork. What a fun class! I was really bummed when the hour was up and it was time to move on, but I did manage to finish up this little block.
I hate the colors. And that is my own fault, because Jess did send us a note suggesting that we bring our own scraps as most of the available scrap packs were brown and pink. I was so stressed out though, that I decided I would just make do with whatever was available. Truthfully, there were a lot more pink scraps in the bag, but I ditched them and only let the solid salmon color in because I didn’t have enough color. Not that I hate pink, because I don’t. But I just am not crazy about pink and brown/tans together. I think I feel like it’s way over done or something.
See that green lattice print on the upper right side? That was a “gift” from Rachel of Red Bird Quilts on Saturday morning as we were all sitting around at 0-dark-thirty in the morning drinking coffee and mooning over her scraps. I admired that fabric and she just handed me a piece of it. I threw it into the mix because there was not enough green in my scrap pack. It’s not exactly the same shades of green, but it’s probably my favorite part of the whole block.
After class was over I almost dropped the remainder of my scraps back on the scraps table, but at the last second decided to shove my block in the baggie with the leftovers and put the whole thing in my bag. I’m really glad I did, because I decided to turn that block into a little pouch and it was nice to have some matching scraps for the back. The green on this side is a scrap left from the yo-yo quilt. I quite like it.
You can just barely see the inside which is a simple brown and white polka dot from my scraps. I can’t even remember what I used that fabric for.
I quilted each side with straight lines on either side of each seam, and the original block got trimmed a bit so that the big brown stripe crosses the whole front.
Like I said, I’m not crazy about the colors, but I like the pouch as a whole. What should I do with it? Does anyone want it? Ok, enough questions. Leave me a comment and tell me what you think.
Oct
24
Plenty of Pirate PJ Pants
Filed Under Sewing, Wearing | 4 Comments
When I first saw Sue Zipkin’s Gone Haunting fabric in green I knew I had to have a pair of pajama pants made from it. Then Alexis saw it, too, and wanted a pair. But she preferred the black and white version. Then Chris pouted because he wanted some new comfy pants. So, heck, while I was at it I whipped up a pair for the baby in orange. You don’t want to know how much I spent on fabric for pajamas.
They’re all made from different patterns or lack thereof — ahem, mine… I tried to use a pattern, but skin tight green cotton pants with skull & crossbones on them are rather, well…. deadly. You can’t really see in these pictures, but my pants are so hacked up. I had to add a strip of fabric down the outsides of both legs. I also had to figure out what the heck was wrong that was making the front waistband ride up a la Urkel, but the back side droop like a plumber’s pants. Obviously I had a near miss, but they did finally work out for me.
Making the pants themselves wasn’t such a chore (I actually had mine done in time for Sewing Summit). But getting the pictures taken took a good two weeks. Everyone enjoys their pants and because of that it was impossible to have them all clean at the same time. Actually, in this picture, Sean’s pants are rather covered in apple butter. But what are you gonna do? Toddlers. Humph.