I bought a layer cake earlier this year, for a project I no longer want to make. It was my first layer cake and I don't know why I waited this long, since it's nice to get such a well-coordinated set of fabrics.
It's the "For You" collection from Zen Chic. When I picked it out, blues were on the top. It's hard to flip through 42 pieces of fabric that like to stick together, especially when they have a big paper band around their middle.
It wasn't until yesterday that I laid them all out and was surprised to find orange in there. And I knew there was grey, but not that much.
Lucky for me, my next project needed blue and green, which are the most bountiful colors.
Cut into strips, this would make a pretty log cabin.
And it was only yesterday that I noticed they give you all kinds of other cutting ideas.
That's something I might try in the future, but for now I'm making a tablecloth and decided to leave the blocks uncut. Well not all of them. I picked 20 of the blue, green, and grey, plus 1 pink. The only block I cut was the pink one.
When I bought my three sewing baskets a few weeks ago, I also bought this chair pin cushion.
This is where I keep it.
I thought my Boutique Apron would be a quick sew, which I was in the mood for after spending two months (!!!!) on my last quilt. But once I got going, I realized it had lots of components. So I broke them down and made a list so I would feel productive as I finished each of the five components.
We already looked at Component One, the shoe fused to the bib.
Yesterday I sewed Component Two - the bottom. The pocket is fully lined. I left too small of a hole for turning, so that was just a little bit challenging.
This pattern is weird. For the black trim on the hem, it would have been nice and simple to line up its raw edges with the boutique fabric, then stitch and flip it down. But for some reason, the pattern wants ALL of the black fabric to be on top of the boutique fabric. Plus there are 3/8" seams everywhere. So there was some weird alignment going on before sewing the seam.
Luckily, the bottom hem (white fabric) was a normal seam with no overlap. Still a 3/8" seam, but I have a foot on my new sewing machine that is 3/8" from the needle to the right side of the foot, so that's easy.
Next step - sew bodice to bottom, and add straps. Then I have to LINE the darn thing! Well, I'm sure it will all be worth it in the end.
Over the years I've made several fused applique quilts.
I usually do a free-motion squiggle on the edges of the fused pieces. When there are lots of small pieces, like here, it's a good choice. Plus, you can take that opportunity to add a little extra decoration. This is a closeup of my Tulip Quilt, and the extra stitching is supposed to represent dimension on the tulip petals.
One time I did satin stitching. It reminds me of traditional machine embroidery and I don't like it.
Yesterday I did the shoe applique for my Boutique Apron. The pattern said to do a blanket stitch, so I dutifully did.
It was the first blanket stitch I've done on a machine. For the most part it turned out very good - except for the bottom of the heel when I hadn't quite mastered the art of when to pivot on a blanket stitch.
The gobby areas are where I started and stopped, but that doesn't show on the front.
I like this stitch a lot. It holds the edges securely and neatly, and depending on the thread color, it can be decorative or surreptitious.
Today I started a new project - an apron for my mannequin.
I bought this pattern a few years ago because it had four fun designs for the bodice. Clockwise from right: cat, chicken, cup of coffee, shoe.
I'm making the shoe apron.
The bottom will be this boutique fabric. Note the shoes in the window of one of the stores.
These are some of the coordinating fabrics.
Whew! I'm glad to be finished with my Elephant Pillow Quilt. It all started with a pillow I bought to put on the slipper chair in my sewing room. The pillow went great with the coral chair, but since it sits in a sunny window and I didn't want the chair to fade, I made a quilt to cover the upholstery. I'd rather sacrifice a quilt than the chair.
This is the elephant side of the quilt, with fused applique elephants.
Here is is, draped over the chair. The elephant says "Put the pillow right here!"
Like so.
The elephant side has the label.
This is the patchwork side, the first side I made. It's what I initially considered the front, until the elephant side came to be and then I stopped calling them front and back. I like both of them equally.
These are my three favorite fabrics. The upper left is flannel. The lower right is what the fused elephants are made from. The peacock fabric is my absolute favorite. I have another peacock fabric that I'll be using in a quilt after my next project, an apron.
Here's the patchwork side with the pillow, and a coordinating rug. This is the side I'm going with for now.
I went to Jo-Ann Fabrics last week looking for a sewing basket. I found three that I really liked and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't narrow it down to just one. I reasoned that I could always return any of them if they didn't work out for some unfathomable (decorating) reason.
We live in a dog household, but I sure like cat motifs. I think it's because cats look more homogeneous as a species than dogs do. Often when I see a dog motif, it might be of a breed I don't particularly like, so I won't buy it. But almost all of the cat designs I see are cute, in my opinion.
It was only this morning that I cut off the tag and decided to keep it. Part of me found it hard to justify so many sewing baskets in my life (I'm not even talking about the other four I already own). But once I removed the plastic trays inside and viewed them as regular, albeit extremely decorative, baskets - then I was sold.
This basket now contains all the fabric and pattern for my next project, a new apron for my mannequin. And that's the cat's meow.
I recently finished quilting my Elephant Pillow Quilt. It was the first quilting I've done on my new machine which has a very large armhole.
The quilt is a long rectangle (51" by 74") because it's going to drape over a chair, covering nearly to the floor in the front and back. On my old machine, I would have done the stitching parallel to the long side, because that would be less bulk in the armhole.
But with the new machine, I decided to do the stitching parallel to the short edge, just so I could glory in all the roominess I had. It was glorious all right. Lots and lots of room; no drag. Part of the reason for no drag is the 16" x 24" table that came with the machine.
While doing all the rows of stitching, I needed something to think about. I wondered how many inches of stitching I was doing, and how many it would have been had I gone in the other (portrait mode) direction. So when I got all done, I did some calculations. I did 1,989 inches of quilting, which equals 55.25 yards. Sewing on the long direction would have been 1,850" or 51.3 yards. So it took me a little longer than it could have. I wonder how I would have spent those extra minutes? Probably shopping.
This is the elephant side of the quilt, which I made much larger than the other side, so technically it's the back. But this side wasn't visible when I was quilting. The flip side is made up of nice regular rectangular blocks, just begging for parallel rows with the quilting bar.
I worried about how straight I made my sandwich. An off-kilter top would have been annoying because then the stitching lines wouldn't be parallel to the seams on the elephant side of the quilt. I was happy with the way it turned out.
I also wondered if the appliqued elephants would look bad with parallel lines of stitching running through them. They look fine - you can barely see the lines through the patterned fabric, yet they stand out nicely on the solids.
Look how nice and straight that line of stitching through the bottom of the feet came out. Good Janet. Now I'm wondering if when I made the sandwich, I measured to make sure the top was equidistant from the edges of the back. That makes more sense than serendipity. But since this quilt is taking FOREVER and I made the sandwich weeks ago, I really can't remember.
It's already bound, and all I have to do is finish sewing on the label. Surely I can finish that by the end of the weekend.
I blame the long time it took to make this quilt on my new machine. I was really nervous about using it, and I had to figure out how to do the simplest things once I got home and forgot what they showed me about threading, etc. Putting on the special dual-feed foot and then adding an adapter and a quilting bar was an adventure. I had to go back to the store for that one.
So far I only had one problem and that was when I was machine stitching the binding. I picked a stitch that did automatic locking when you first start sewing. Except that they give you two versions: one with the needle in the center position and one with it shifted to the left. Coming out of a night with short sleep, I naturally picked the left-justified one. Only problem was that my foot had a teeny hole for the needle to go through, and it only works when the needle is centered.
The bad news is I now have a dent in the foot. The good news is I learned how to put in a new needle. I worried that I might have hurt the motor or something because I didn't immediately realize what the problem was and I kept my foot on the pedal amidst a bunch of racket. But when I called the store, the woman that answered said she had done the same thing and it should be fine. Should be.
Our quilt guild held a Market Day earlier this month. Some members were selling things they no longer had a use for. And in many cases, there were members like me who DID have a use for those items.
I can never get enough of embroidery motifs, especially stylized modern ones. As soon as I saw the "Poodles Promenade" page in A Rainbow of Stitches, I was sold. I don't do cross stitch, but there are more than enough embroidery designs to make the purchase worthwhile.
I bought a new ironing board last week.
There was nothing wrong with my old one, aside from the legs being orange. I love orange, but that's not the current color scheme in my sewing room and I like everything to be just so.
I thought I'd have to make a new cover, but the board I chose has a really pretty cover already, so I saved some money and time.
My plan was to buy one with white legs, but the white ones at
Shopko and Target were really flimsy. This aluminum color is just as
nice, in my opinion. Aside from the color, the other things I like about it are the sturdiness and this release handle which the white ones lacked. Plus it doesn't have any plastic parts.
This is a Real Simple model from Bed, Bath, and Beyond. It cost twice as much as the flimsy ones, but still not too pricey when you factor in a 20% off coupon.
