M's quilt - double hourglass

Back in time to last winter. This is my niece M's quilt (my brother's 4th). Her oldest sibling insisted all along that the baby was a girl, so in August 2010 when I found and fell in love with 'Frolic' by Sandy Gervais, I bought it. (He was six at the time, but he hasn't been wrong yet!)

I wanted some type of hourglass pattern - similar to 'cluck cluck sews' double hourglass, but I only had two charm packs. 'Schnibbles Times Two' to the rescue.

October came and came and came and finally she was here. A girl! Yea! (She was late and came on her time table which is pretty much indicative of her personality.) Work could begin on the quilt.

Cutting was simple ... and luckily I had 'un-finished project night' with friends to pin all of the squares together before sewing.

The trimming wasn't bad - thanks to a triangle ruler and DVD of Bones. But sorting and matching the fabric back together drove me nuts. It's amazing how 2.5" squares of a fabric can look so different.

I got this far and started laying them out. I love the double hourglasses ... but I thought the quilt looked really busy. Enter sashing!

I bought this turquoise swirly fabric for the back ... but thought I could use it as sashing to break it up.
It's okay. But nothing great.

At this point it was Christmas 2010. I had a gazillion sewing projects and had to narrow it down to what was necessary and what could wait. Christmas gift pj's - necessary. Quilt for niece K born in July 2010 - necessary. Tote bags as gifts - maybe necessary. Quilt for M - bottom of the 'must be done by christmas' list.

I took the fabric home with me - just in case - and finished piecing the double hourglass blocks over the break. After finishing and quilting the dragon fly quilt, my sister and I would lay these out on the floor in different configurations and try to like it. We grouped them by 4's, we grouped them alone, we grouped by 2's, we tried different fabrics for sashing, we tried tilting them on point, we tried and tried and tried. We went through dozens of rejections before Mom tossed us a piece of light turquoise fabric from her stash and told us to try it. I liked it. I liked it a lot. Grouped by 9's, I loved it. But the fabric was really thin. The color was great, but the fabric wrong.

I wanted Kona cotton and visited every fabric store in northern Colorado - and none of them had what I wanted. Next option, maybe one of them had a Kona cotton color card I could look at to determine what color 'a light blue-y turqoise' was and then I'd order the fabric on line. Nope. No one had it. (One shop even informed me that "serious quilters did not use solids". Uh, I don't think so ... but if that's what you think, okay.)

On-line guess work shopping it was. I went to all sorts of fabric sites and looked at every Kona cotton 'turquoise blue-y/light blue' Kona cotton I could find. And 'mint'. Because I had 'mint' fabric. I held up the mint fabric to the monitor, tried to judge how they looked different and then apply it to the blue-y. Not real scientific, but it was the best I could do. I finally just took a gamble and ordered 'aqua'. (It was a tough choice between aqua and robin blue, but I finally choose aqua.) It came and was perfect. Yea for guessing!

I laid them out, double and triple checked rotations, added the aqua sashing and put it on the frames on February 6, 2010. (uh, the photo was date stamped.)

I just quilted the 'squares' and I looked great. It was finished, bound, and gifted by the middle of March. M was almost 6 months old, which to me is the perfect time to be given a quilt. (And I was thrilled I got it done less than a year after she was born.)



Two weeks later a very helpful 5 year old niece pointed out two blocks that are not rotated correctly. Look at the top. There are two that are not rotated correctly.

Here they are pointed out in case you can't find them:
Ugh. And once it was pointed out, that's what I noticed ... so it had to be fixed. I made a goof on A's quilt (her older brother) and to this day it bugs me when I see it. (yes, I am an engineer.) This mistake had to be fixed.

I took the quilt back, ripped out the hand quilting, opened the binding, fixed those two blocks, re-stretched it out on the quilt frames, quilt, and finish it while listening to April General Conference.

Finished size: ~45"x45".

Seeing Squares - C's quilt

In August my 5 year old nephew informed me (very sadly) that he did not have a quilt on his bed like his sister. I tried to palm it off to Grandma, who made his sister's, and got the response "but she's on a mission". What my adorable nephew didn't know is that I had already been looking on-line for a pattern and had found one that I liked and thought would work. Seeing Squares by Empty Bobbin. C's favorite color is orange, I thought that the quilt looked 'boyish', and I thought the pattern would 'grow with him'. Win!

Fabric was ordered in May - Kona Cotton in lagoon, bahama blue, cyan, caribbean, orange, papaya, cactus, chartreuse, lime, and ash. (Just like the picture except for the ash substituted for white.)



I finally started working on it in November. The cutting, sewing, iron, trimming cycle just about drove me nuts ... but I love the results.

Here's the first layout I did (the top row of squares are for the back).

I changed a few things and added one more 6.5" column after this picture was taken.

It was finished in time to take home at Christmas to get Mom and my sister to help with the hand quilting. There was some debate as to what to quilt - but after doing a couple of squares, we realized we needed to quilt around every single square.

The quilt was put on Saturday afternoon and that night, one long side was rolled. It was moved out of the way for Christmas and brought back Monday morning. Tuesday afternoon it was done. (2 1/2 days!) There were lots of sore fingers (thank goodness for liquid band-aid!).

Binding was sewed on the back and hand sewed to the front. We were all tired of being stabbed by pins when Dad remembered a 'cup of clamps' he bought. 5/8" in size and _perfect_ for holding on binding while being hand sewed. (They really should market these to quilters!)

front

back

Quilting through the squares on the pieced back was miserable - but it looks wonderful ... and I might even do it again.

Finished size: 66" x 90", quilted with grey thread.

And for those who need to know how many squares it contains (like my nephew) - 1080.

opps!

This was supposed to be a record of what I'm working on. But it's a new year and I've got a back log of projects I'd like to remember. Now to just start posting again.

dragonflies

I'm a bit behind (understatement) on updating the blog with my projects. I'm aiming for a post a week until I'm caught up.

I make a quilt for every new niece or nephew after they arrive. Currently there are 9 ... so it's not that many quilts.

K was born the end of July and I tried to have her quilt finished by Christmas. (I bought this fabric and started working on it for her older brother - who the ultrasound claimed was a girl. He got a yellow duck quilt and the first dragonfly quilt went to another niece. My sister loved this pattern and the fabric, so I knew if she ever had another girl, I would be making a second dragonfly quilt.)

The pattern comes from thimble-art;. I've made several of these patterns (bear and bunny, ducks, and the dragonfly) and have a couple more in the 'to-be-done' pile (airplanes, dinosaurs). They involve paper piecing. I like paper piecing because of how accurate they turn out. I'm not fond of the time spent tearing off the paper (and using tweezers to pull off all of the little pieces). These patterns also involve 'little' pieces with picky placement (lots of basting) to have them look right. They are easy, but they do take some time to get them right.

I had all of the 'pieces' sewn and spent the Christmas break sewing them together, sewing the heads down by hand, and embroidering the antennae.

My sister and I had an adventure at the fabric store looking for fabric to go between the dragonflies. After looking at what seemed to be hundreds of prints - and entertaining the clerks at Hancock Fabrics one evening - we picked a Kona cotton solid in mint. (We really do love prints ... but none of them worked.)

The quilt was put on the frames around noon on one day and finished by noon the next day. We quilted around the dragonfly squares, a heart in the solid squares, around the boarder stripes, and outlined the dragonfly head and bodies. The head and body stitching resulted in many bent needles and muttered words. In fact I think there was a bit of a discussion on who had to quilt them. It looks great from the back, but they were not easy to quilt.

K. had a great time sitting up to the quilt while it was on the frames and patting it with her hands. I think she liked the batting. :)


The quilt was finished a week after Christmas ... but I don't think K. minded.

Ocean Fairy petti-skirt

Halloween of 2010 found my sister with a new baby, Halloween costumes to sew, and a kitchen demolition/remodel in progress. I offered to help with the Halloween costumes - and made a petti-skirt for an 'ocean fairy', inspired by 'Shannon the Ocean Fairy' book.

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History: A few years ago, my sister and I started searching for instructions on how to make petti-skirts because they were cute and her daughter (3-ish at the time) needed one.

We found a video on Martha Stewart's web site that gave what I think are pretty bad instructions - but we were inspired and kept looking. I found yet another blog - Grosgrain that listed 3 very important things to know:
1. Use nylon chiffon. It's soft, doesn't fray ... and seems to be only sold on-line. (The best place: AFC Express. 27 different colors, very inexpensive, and fast shipping.)
2. Build from the bottom up.
3. Know how to 'shirr'. (Wind elastic thread in the bobbin, thread on the top, set the stitch to the longest setting, and sew = gathers)

With that information, my sister ordered fabric and sewed 2 incredibly cute petti-skirts for her daughter.

I was a little slower - and intimidated by the instructions - so I kept looking and pondering.

Then I found the mecca of all instructions on of a blog called 'Creative Chaos'. I wasn't even looking for petti-skirts when I found her stuff. She has long, meticulous, detailed instructions and even hand dyed fabric to make them. Wow!. (Instructions found here and here and here.) I jumped on the petti-skirt making wagon and made 3 skirts for nieces that Christmas. (without any pictures to show for it. bummer.)
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Having made three petti-skirts, I understood what was involved ... and knew I had time to do it. Just in case I need to make them again, here's what I did:

1. Read the instructions from 'Creative Chaos' - at least twice. :)

2. Calculate fabric needed:
My niece is 6 years old with 16" waist to knee = 5.5" + seam allowance = 6.5" strips
middle tier - 4 strips x 6.5" x 2 layers
bottom tier - 8 strips x 6.5" x 2 layers
total: 24 strips @6.5" = 4.333 yds
fluff: 8 strips x 3 x 3" width x 2 layers = 4 yds
(I used some shiny polyester-satin like fabric I found at JoAnn's for the top tier.)

My niece picked out the colors herself and here's what it looked like when it arrived:
Aqua for the body of the skirt and pink for the bottom ruffle.

3. Cut it out. To do this you either need a long counter, several really long tables, or lay it out on the floor.
4. Sew
a. Use a ruffler to 'gather' the fluff'

Just to confirm, 48 WOF strips takes a long time to gather. :)

b. sew the bottom tier strips together .
c. sew the fluff onto the bottom tier.
d. 'shirr' the top of the bottom tier.
e. sew the middle tier strips together .
f. zigzag over the elastic bobbin thread to attach bottom tier to middle tier. (and if you're really picky like me, pull out the elastic thread because 'it gathers the fabric more that I like' and 'you can see it'.)

Remember you've got 2 layers to this skirt, so go back and do all of the above for the second layer.
g. sew the top tier - the satin - into a circle, remembering to leave a 1.5" gap to thread the elastic into. Fold in half long ways. Sew 1.5" down from the top to make the elastic casing. Sew down one more inch to keep the skirt looking pretty.
h. sew gathering thread into the top of the middle tier. I like 2 gathering threads.
i. pin to the satin and sew. Repeat for 2nd layer, but sew to the inside edge of the satin. (ie, make it a reversible skirt ... because what 4-6 year old actually looks at the seams to see if it is inside out.)
j. put the elastic in. Put a bow or flower in the front.

Stand back and be proud. And watch the recipient twirl.

The skirt was delivered in time for Halloween ... and the recipient was quite happy with it - and the 'twirly-ness'. Yea!

Dragons have wings.

C wanted to be a dragon for halloween. An orange dragon with purple spikes. (He's 4 and very specific.) Luckily when my sister told me about this I had just read a blog that had instructions on how to make a dragon tail. (no link because I can't find it now.) Mom was able to find an orange hooded sweatshirt at DI and my sister was able to find purple fabric at JoAnn's that looked really cool and had these shiny purple pieces on it. Mom looked at the dragon tail tutorial and decided the tail needed to 'curve' - so she took a sheet and made a 'dragon tail'. Costumes were a group project this year.

The costume turned out great. My sister did an awesome job on the tail and the dragon 'spikes' - layering the fabric with interfacing, sewing triangles, cutting them out with pinking shears, and sewing them on the sweatshirt. Unfortunately, C was quite upset when people called him a dinosaur - informing his mother, "Dragons have wings. If I had wings they wouldn't call me a dinosaur."

At Christmas, my job was to sew dragon wings for C's costume. I had bought a really cool stuffed dragon pattern on etsy - "Yoki the Dragon" and thought the wings had a great shape. My sister was able to find more of the purple shiny fabric at Jo-Ann's, so I enlarged the pattern, layered the fabric between interfacing, and sewed some wings. My sister sacrificed her hand and cut them out with the pinking shears. The next day, C and I sewed the wings onto his dragon costume - with him standing next to me the entire time so he could push the 'cutting' button.

I think they turned out great. Hopefully he'll have lots of fun wearing his 'dragon' shirt.

quick trip diaper bag

My sister found the pattern for the quick trip diaper bag. She was having a baby in July and I thought a new diaper bag would make for a cool present. (I had already decided to make the 'Amy Butler modern diaper bag' for her .. but you can never have too many bags.)

I found a really groovy dot fabric at JoAnn's and paired it with green duck cloth fabric. I thought the duck cloth would hold up to the daily wear & tear for a diaperbag. Finding PUL fabric was a bit more difficult. JoAnn's does carry what they classify as PUL and oil cloth ... but only in some really strange colors and patterns. I wanted it in white, green, or a turquoise to match the dots ... but no such luck. But, I found a 'mystery fabric' in the clearance section. It looked like a laminate of some sort - smooth plastic-y on one side and cotton on the other. The bold only said it was suitable for rainwear, but not rainproof. I have no idea what this fabric is, but I thought it would work.


I didn't follow the directions (uh, no surprise there) and used my favorite thick pellon interfacing (stiff enough to make any fabric stand up straight) ... and the bag was _horrible_. The shape was really bad ... and it just didn't work. I took it all apart, and used the called for fleece interfacing.

This bag doesn't have separate 'end' pieces ... the side and end is all one piece. I think that's why the thick interfacing just didn't work.

I also didn't keep track of the left and right lining pieces - sewed everything wrong - and figured out I had a problem after I sewed the bag and lining together. (The joy of the side and end being just one piece of fabric.) I took it all apart, cut new 'white unknown fabric lining' pieces, and was very careful putting it back together again.

I like the elastic at the top of the inner pockets - but it took a lot of work to thread the elastic in.

This pattern claims to be a 'quick trip bag' for when you don't want to carry your 'full size work horse bag'. I have no idea what most people carry for diaper bags - but this bag is BIG. You can put everything you need for a baby plus stuff for an older sibling, wallet, keys, water bottles - and more. I can't imagine carrying a bigger bag around - along with a baby.

My sister has gotten a few complements on this bag - and several asking where they can get one too, so I consider this project a success.

Amy Butler's modern diaper bag

I read about Amy Butler's book 'Little Stitches for Little Ones' and immediately put it on hold at the library. In it, is a pattern for a 'modern diaper bag'. I really liked the shape, so I made a copy of the pattern ... and thought I'd make it for my sister. (Before she found this pattern.)

I found some really cool oil cloth fabric at JoAnn's and knew it would be perfect for this bag. (Then I had to wait until I had a coupon because there was no way I was paying $14.99 a yard for fabric.) I found some 'celery' duck cloth fabric for the lining. It's not a perfect match, but I thought it would work.

I sewed the outside of the bag ... and realized this bag is ENORMOUS. I couldn't imagine anyone carrying this bag, so I looked on-line to see what others had said. I found this page and used her dimensions to cut this bag down. I didn't even take apart the seams, I just started cutting. I looked some more and found this page. Once I got over being envious of her really cool fabric (oh when will Ikea come to Denver???) I noticed she shrunk the entire pattern 85%. I did that, but I liked just cutting it down better, so that's what I stuck with.

The instructions were just okay. I got a bit confused on the inner pockets and just did what I thought was best. (The book could definitely do with a lot more pictures.) I did my own thing on the handles ... but still had to hand sew most of the inside edges.

I didn't even try to substitute the interfacing and just used what it called for. (I know, shocking for me to actually follow a pattern.)


The front flap has a magnetic snap I _love_ them ... and I know this won't be my last time using them.
Sewing on oil cloth was surprisingly easy. I bought a 'teflon' foot for my machine and I didn't have any problems with the fabric sticking to the foot or plate.


I do like this bag ... but it is still big. I love the shape, so I think I'd like to make it again, using the shrunk 85% or 75% pattern.

Update: I gave this bag (along with the other) to my sister. While visiting, I used this bag as 'project central' to keep track of everything and it worked great for that. However, she's used it a little and noticed that while it seems _huge_ ... it won't even fit a 3 ring binder. I've got bags that look much smaller that fit 3 ring binders ... so I'm a bit disappointed in this bag. Time to figure out what I can do to make this bag more usable.

buttercup bag

I found the buttercup bag by 'Made By Rae' a few months ago. I like the shape, the curves, the pleats - it just looks like a fun bag. So it was put on the never ending project-to-do list.

But it looked small. I wanted it bigger (so it would actually be able to hold a knitting/crochet project), but with the same shape. Then I found her post on the buttercup bag remix. I could do that.

I enlarged the pattern 129%. Then cut it in half horizontally and added 2 inches. Then put the top band back to the original size (and modified the lining to fit to that). I _love_ a box pleat, so I changed it to one large, oversize box pleat with two smaller pleats on the side. I lengthened the strap and placed it between the outside and lining instead of on top of the bag.

I found some great corduroy fabric ... but it was thin and I wanted to make sure this bag would be able to keep its shape. I decided to try Pellon craft fuse. It worked great. The corduroy suddenly held a shape and kept it's form without adding thickness. The lining is duck cloth. Then to give it just a bit of softness - and some thickness, I added a layer of fleece interfacing.


This was my first time using a magnetic snap as the closure for a bag ... but it won't be my last.



I love this bag. It holds a paper back book, cell phone, keys, mp3 player, and crocheting perfectly - the perfect 'portable project bag'. I love it so much I'm making 7 more for Christmas presents this year. (gift recipients: uh, act surprised.)

Note to self: think about putting little "corners" on the bag ... and maybe a recessed zipper like Rae did.

Got labels?

For the last labels I made, I used fabric, freezer paper, and my laser printer. They worked. They worked really great. But I wanted something with finished edges. Edges that I didn't need to keep folding to hide ... or hem.

I started searching for tutorials again. I found many that use iron-on transfer paper that you can run through your ink jet and then iron onto ribbon or fabric tape. But I don't have an ink jet. And I'm not wild about iron-on transfer paper ... you can see the iron on!

So I wondered if I could run the ribbon right through my laser jet.

I bought ribbon at Wal-mart. White ribbon. 5/8" wide.



I made a page with columns of my label with MS Publisher. I mirrored a few across the x-axis. I printed a page, grabbed the double sided tape and stuck down the ribbon in 3 places.



Put it into the tray for my laser jet ... and hoped I didn't just ruin my printer.



And ....



it worked!!!! It actually worked. I printed the entire roll of ribbon. 4 sheets of paper, 7 columns = gobs of labels. A quick heat set with the iron and I have more labels that I know what to do with.

They're not perfect. I'd like to try writing on the ribbon with permanent marker ... but they will work for now.