Some clothes

I entered the world of garment sewing in the past month.  Now that I have the Lynnebobsquarepants quilt finished, I can go ahead and sew some more clothes for the upcoming school year.  There's a blue seersucker dress using the Wonderland pattern and a hooded jacket of the Sprout pattern that were my practice pieces, but I can't seem to find pictures.  Clothes have been nice quick projects by comparison.  I think I would like to work on a quick quilt soon without the need to trim lots of HST.

Wonderland, by Make it Perfect
fabric is from Soul Garden by Carolyn Gavin

Popover Sundress, free tutorial by Oliver and S.
fabric: Nature Elements in Lemonade

Class Picnic Blouse, Oliver and S.

Fabric: from the Lisette line at Joann's

X and + blocks for Sue

Using this tutorial, I made Sue's X and + blocks for her month in Sew.Bee.Create.  

The more I stare at the picture, the more the green part of the x is bothering me.  But, they are sealed in an envelope so I will just stop looking at the picture.  I should now go back to trimming blocks and assemble a quilt top.  Argh.

Dresses and pouches

Since my daughter's birthday party was a sleepover with her cousin this year, my mom and I made complimentary dresses for them.  Both use dragonfly fabric from Kate Spain's Good Fortune line.  It's another Sweet Little Dress from Leila and Ben.  The blue flower yo-yo is removeable.

My niece also got a lovely pillow to take home that matches the quilt she doesn't know about yet. I didn't take a picture of the final assembled pillow but I backed it with a light purple Kona and the two girls had fun stuffing it full.

I made it with a slightly selfish purpose in mind, to practice some FMQ.  I bought Angela Walters' book, and decided to try out concentric circles with pebbles.  Perhaps I really should have done some swirls or some concentric circles to practice first, but these 5 year olds are really forgiving.  

The back of the pillow front.  I need to work on even spacing among other things.

 The quilt blocks are all assembled awaiting a final trim before sewing them together into the top.  This is the approximate layout.  A few people have helped move the stacks and I don't think they are in the right order anymore.  I was going to try orange peel quilting but I'm not sure.

We made ruffled pouches using Lee's tutorial.  Fabric choice by her took forever and she shortly lost interest in helping.  The blue one is hers and the purple is mine.  I've now sewn an item with a zipper.  I don't feel like an expert.  I took in her pouch to her as she was silently reading this evening and she was quite excited.  She tucked it under her pillow before going to sleep.





Next up I need to start and finish my bee blocks for the month.  That's my goal for tomorrow.

Pressing and social sewing

I finally have the rows together for MJ's Lynnebobsquarepants quilt, but I need to press them before putting together the squares.  A tremendous thank you to my mom who was nice enough to trim HST for me.  I probably will be helping her quilt a 35+ year WIP for her so she can give it to my sister and no longer feel guilty about it.

Then today, I spent a few hours with friends from work on a staff art project.  We're not yet half done but I think a few more people are comfortable with a sewing machine now.  And I think picking out fabrics was probably their favorite part.   Next time I need to bring another cutting surface as that seemed to be the bottleneck.

Another bag, a pillow and a small quilt

 My oldest got annoyed with having the youngest steal her pillows, so she helped me sew a new one.  She arranged the squares, helped pin and helped decide where the straight line quilting would go.  The bottom still needs to be stitched closed but it is supposed to rain tomorrow and I'm trying to improve the quality of my pictures by taking them in natural light.  Not a difficult design but a good project for a near 5 year old.

 After giving a drawstring bag to my nephew for his swimming stuff, my niece got jealous and wanted one of her own.  This time I used coated fabric instead of laminated cotton.  It is a bit sturdier, or better put, it holds the shape more.  I'm not sure if I like it better that way.  The outside is from Good Fortune and the coated is a print from Terrain, both by Kate Spain.  I used a leaf stitch around the top just for fun and hopefully to hide any unevenness on the seam around the top.

  For this one, I cut the outside 16" x WOF.  Next, I cut a 4 x 16" strip and sub cut those into four  4" squares for the tabs for the strings.  I added two tabs to the inside so she could clip her lock and goggles to them.  I boxed the bottom of the bag with a 4 inch hypotenuse for the triangle.  Not sure if any of these directions make sense to anyone else besides me, but it will help me remember the dimensions for this bag if it seems to work out well.

   And finally, a small quilt.  I took leftover charm squares from 12 Days of Christmas and made HST.  After trimming, here is the winning layout.  I used the lines from the chevrons to echo quilt it across the whole top at random intervals.  My angles are not perfect, but I'm ok with that.  The quilt is bound with the Flurry scraps from two skirts I made.  There is a whole lot of Kate Spain fabric in this post.

  And for fun, I decided to quilt swirls in the chevron as a filler.  It looks pretty neat on the back.  I now really want to read Angela Walters new book and do a bit more planning with my quilting.  

    Next time, I think I will flip over the quilt while quilting the swirls.  I wish I would have consistently filled in the whole space between the two lines of the chevrons and it would have been easier to tell from the back.

  And now back to the regularly scheduled programming...... trimming more HST so I can finish the Lynnebobsquarepants quilt.    

June bee block and some journal covers

 Two journal covers I made for my daughter and my niece.  The tutorial I used was here but I added a bookmark to each.  The first one was simply adding a ribbon after it was assembled.

 For the one using Verna, I sewed the bookmark to the wrong side of the inside cover before sewing the two together.  It might be a bit of overkill, but the Mother Goose book with the ribbon bookmark is currently getting carried around by the ribbon so I figured that sturdy was a good thing.

And here is my June bee block for Melissa.  It is based on her tutorial.   I wasn't intentional about getting the text to go in one direction until after all the component parts were assembled.  I was close.  It should hopefully make it to her on the first day of her month.  My other project, the Lynnebobsquarepants quilt, is currently waiting for me to trim too many HST.  One bee block was much faster.  I think I'll start to try to do about 25 a day to try to accomplish at least something on it every day.

Bloggers' Quilt Festival: Daisy Strings

My entry for the Bloggers' Quilt Festival is the string quilt I made for my mother using leftover scraps from my bee quilt.  I had a large bin of random strips that I knew I needed to clean up and organize but really didn't want to.  Instead I took some cheap 12x12" scrapbook paper and started a string quilt which left me with very little left to organize and sort. 

And facilitating the ripping of lots of little pieces of paper by a 4 year old and a 1 year old was an interesting part of the process.  The 1 year old kept grabbing the recycling bin and wanted to take it out any time there was any piece of paper in it.  It became a full time job but is a great memory for this quilt.

Pattern: slight variation on Valentine by Elizabeth Hartman
Fabrics: Daisy Chain by Amy Butler; Kona: Navy, Olive, Sour Apple, Pear, White, Robin's Egg, Azure, Peacock; Moda Light Jade, Free Spirit  Jade
Backed in Robert Kaufman Olive flannel
Bound with Kona Navy
Quilted by me in an all over stipple
Pre-washed size:  58x70"

Hope you enjoy the rest of the festival!