9.8.09

On vacation!

I'm off to Iowa with my family for a week. Check back for an update in a week or so.

5.8.09

Monkeys, Hexes and more!

I've finally found my sewing groove and have been madly stitching away since Sunday. First up, was a simple tote bag I slap dashed together for my daughter. By "slap-dashed" I mean I was in a hurry to do some quilting, so the bag was about a 2 hour project.

ticky tacky tote for Elizabeth

She choose the fabrics, which put to use some rather tacky prints for which I had stashed away to make my son a quilt but had ended up using Bali Pops instead. I foundation pieced roughly cut strips onto my lining fabric (flannel) and sewed a separate lining as well. I experimented with external handles for the first time, which I think turned out well as they're sturdy and can take a moderate amount of weight.

She promptly stuck a Princess button on the front and hauled it off to day camp. It coordinated perfectly with her socks!

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About the time I was finishing the handles on the tote bag, my friend arrived to work on her monkey baby quilt. This is what we got done by the end of the day:

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My friend is new to quilting and sewing, and she struggled with stitching an accurate 1/4" seam, even with the 1/4" seam foot on my machine and her pinning of pieces was all wonky. I found I had to suppress all of my "perfectionist" tendencies and let her work it out. How else can you learn? Fortunately, the simple block pattern is a forgiving one and I'll show her how to trim down the finished blocks to consistent sizes once we get to that point.

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Aren't they cute?

Lastly, the hexagon quilt. It's been sitting around waiting for me to decide what to do with the back. I totally screwed up and not only bought insufficient fabric, but then proceeded to cut it up the wrong way. Eventually, I was able to re-piece, running a line of leftover hexes down the middle and it still was too small! Then I cut some borders out of the leftover front border print fabric. I literally had only tiny scraps left but it worked!

back, pinned basted

I pinned it together last night.

hexes, pinned

quilt top, pinned basted

Usually, I use baste spray, but I'm still hanging onto the notion that I'm going to hand quilt with perle cotton embroidery floss. I'm waffling though, as I hadn't intended to have a pieced back and am not sure how my pattern will look going across the hexes on the back.

Any ideas/opinions on what I should do?

2.8.09

New beginnings

I haven't done a lick of sewing since returning from Long Beach. I have been admiring my new stash additions and hoping the fog would clear so I could share these with you. The fog has yet to lift, so this is the best I could do.

chicken fabrics

On my list of fabrics to be on the look out for at the quilt show, were fruit and veggie prints with the idea I'd make a small wall quilt for the kitchen. Instead I came up with this.


new fabric

The chicken fabric is actually much more colorful than the photo suggests.



New fabric

Two bundles of what I think are fat eighths - Jane Sassaman and Anna Marie Horner await a quilt for my daughter, Elizabeth. I have a rough idea (although I'm sure to change my mind a few dozen times before I start on this) to make a triangle quilt interspersing the prints with solids.



fabric

I'm going to use these in my color block quilt (in process).



I bought some hand dyes and batiks ... but those will have to wait for another day.