The Next Generation

Things I should have sewn during free time last week:

A Tiramisu (I did finally trace the pattern pieces, at least.)
A quilted bag for a class sample (I’m teaching(!) in May, but need to have the sample on display at the next quilt guild meeting.)
A stuffed animal for a co-worker’s baby (I had the other two done by the time the dads came back to work. This one has been back for two weeks now…)
Take down Christmas decorations (We haven’t even managed to bring the boxes back up from the basement.)

Things I actually did with my free time last week:

Watched a lot of Doctor Who (couch lounging at its finest.)
Scraped a lot of wallpaper from the walls of our spare bedroom (and filled up a huge box, plus a 30 gal. trash bag of scrapings—with plenty more still on the ground.)
Messed around with free Embroidery software packages (rather unsuccessfully.)
Taught my friend’s teenage daughter how to use her Christmas present (a.k.a. a sewing machine.)

The day was supposed to involve making PJ pants, but someone didn’t buy the right amount of fabric for the pattern when a gift of pattern, fabric, and notions was given (that would be me. doh.), so we cut out one leg, and realized we were short.

Never one to be stopped by so small a roadblock, Adele decided she wanted a stuffed elephant. We had plenty of fabric, but no pattern and limited notions. A bag was deemed “too simple.” I’m starting to think you shouldn’t put two of us “think outside the box despite little experience” people in the sewing room together (or dining room, as it were). Grand plans of indeterminable possibility may be hatched.

Undeterred, she drew an elephant outline, we played with various bits of paper to figure out floppy ears, and a stuffed elephant was made!

The eyes have yet to be sewn on—it’s not actually a voodoo doll, she just thought the pins were a good way of saving her place when stopping for dinner. Smart, if you ask me.

With the exception of one really problematic bit you can’t see because of the ear, caused by the ears and trying to sew a ¼″ seam with a lot of bulk right next to it, she did all the sewing. Not bad for the first time on her machine!

See, I’m now inspiring a new generation of sewists to come up with an off-the-cuff plan and find a way to make it work by some sort of fiddly magic as you go.

I don’t know if that is a good thing or bad. It seemed to work pretty well this time around.

When Inspiration Strikes

Posted in Quilting

Last week was a bit hectic (our Christmas decorations are still up!), so I didn’t yet start work on my own Tiramisu for the 30 Minutes a Day Sew Along. My plan was to work on it yesterday.

But a color scheme has been stuck in my head in anticipation of the Amish quilt project with SYWTQ. I bought the fabrics for it, or at least as close as I could get to them when shopping online. They came on Friday.

Kona Coral, Konal Regal, Kona Hibiscus, Kona Moss, and Free Spirit Citrine.

It’s not quite right. I think Kona Berry would be better than Hibiscus. Instead of Moss, I need something a smidgen brighter. The Coral could be a just a little lighter.

But they are close.

While I was waiting for my fabric to come, I spent time looking through the IQSCM Quilt Center for quilts with the keyword Amish.

I kept getting stuck on the quilts made of bars.

And when the fabric came, the image in my mind wouldn’t go away.

I spent time in my sewing room yesterday, trying to get started on Tiramisu, but decided I needed to get the new fabric put away. Then I thought I should cut it out. Then I decided I should piece it. The inspiration, it just wouldn’t stop talking to me.

So yesterday, instead of starting on work for the Tiramisu sew along, I pieced a quilt top.

Shakespearian Bars, an English Interpretation. 52″×58″

Now I just need to find more fabric for the SYWTQ project. And get started on that Tiramisu.

Foto Freitag

Posted in Crafting

Three presents down (including this one from last week), a handful more to go. I am making three of the cosmetics bags total—the finished one here, the one cut out and half quilted that is also shown, and one other.

Also, one more of the little zipper bags, and one or two other small things. By next Friday. Yikes! It has been fun working out the kinks in construction process for the big bags. I am not sure how to translate my finagling into a tutorial yet, though.

I haven’t been quilting lately, but I have been coming up with great ideas for the new year!

From around the web this week:
The Oldest UFO from the Quilter’s Newsletter Blog. Unlike the author, all of my unfinished latchhook projects are lost to the sands of time (I can think of at least three, one might have been finished). Did you do latchhook as a child (or adult, for that matter)?

Modern Mirage from Freshly Pieced. This is my favorite quilt I saw online this week.

Foto Freitag

Posted in Crafting

One Christmas present down, quite a few more to go. The journal is store bought, but I whipped up the zippered pen bag. Quick, mostly pain free, and I only had to steal one thing from another project instead of running to the store (the zipper, but I have one in another color that will work for the other project anyhow).

The rest of my planned projects aren’t quite so simple.

Forget About Vera B., This is Rachael A.

Posted in Crafting

My youngest sister Kaite loves Vera Bradley. She not-so-subtly hinted on Facebook to our other sister that said sister should buy her a laptop backpack for her birthday last week. Sane (also broke college) person that she is, other sister said no way, and so Kaite changed tack by claiming that she loves “Rachael Arnold” more than Vera. That little equivoque earned her a cosmetic bag in addition to the rest of her combined Christmas/Birthday/Finals Week present (I’d neither the time nor inclination to try making a laptop bag).

It’s quite a nice sized bag for toiletries or sundries. It’s around 11″×7″×4″. The outer fabric is quilted to cotton batting, and the zipper spans the entire top section, curving over about an inch on either side.

One side has a small handle with her initials, and a carrying strap attached via a clasp and D-ring.

I didn’t get a good photo, but I’m rather proud of how I managed to center the design on the hand strap.

The lining material is interfaced and has a label. All in all, the bag has a lot of body and was completely empty in the photos, so you can see that it stands fine on its own.

I believe I’m going to make another one or two of these in the next month or so. After I iron out the issues I had with this one, I’ll turn it into a tutorial if anyone is interested. The problem with making up a pattern like this as you go along means I forgot things like the lining when initially constructing it, and I still don’t know the exact length of the side piece, since I just sewed it onto the front and cut off the extra.

Foto Freitag

Posted in Crafting

These are my youngest sister’s presents for her birthday/college finals week/Christmas (she get to go on a cruise over Christmas with her boyfriend and his family, so I won’t see her this year). I’ll post more about the bag soon. The other is a hot iron sleeve for hair straighteners/curlers. I posted about it back in July.

The bag didn’t turn out half bad for something I made up as I went along. I never thought I’d use more than a 100m spool to quilt something so small though. I hate last minute runs to the store to buy thread for those last four inches of quilting. Happens to me all. the. time.

Now I need to remember to put them and the rest of the care package in the mail tomorrow…

…and then maybe get a gallon of paint for our window seat 😉

Already A Bit Less of a Mess

Posted in News

At least from this angle (although I still need to build my new sewing machine desk, but don’t know what to do with the old one until I can get rid of it)…

One of the major problems with the old setup was that I didn’t have any good organization for my works in progress—they’d get tucked away into boxes and what was out of sight was out of mind. Also, while I liked the idea of beautifully organized fabric in little cubbies, in practice, the shape of those cubbies just doesn’t work for me. So now, the old fabric shelves are going to be used for WIPs so they are in sight and easy to access (you can see my sticky note labels on them in the foreground). Meanwhile the old bookcase that had bins for some WIPs, supplies, books, and some fabric is now going to be all fabric, books, and supplies, as will the second one once I build it.

Just don’t look at the other half of the room…

All of that needs to be sorted, filtered, and put in a new home on the bookshelves (or in the trash, as is the case of the giant box on the right). I plan on tackling all that organization after I finish up this time-sensitive project this week (since at least I have a nice workspace again):

Also, is this a good time to mention that since I’ve only gotten as far as partially finishing the divided skirt and that half of a corset pinned to the dress form that I may not complete the Steampunk costume in time for my sister to model it at Christmas? Well, that’s what it looks like. But, maybe some organization will get me interested in working on it again.

Messy Unproductiveness

Posted in Crafting

I’ve been unproductive and messy and it has all culminated in my sewing room looking like this last night:

To be fair, it’s because I’m trying to reorganize everything and had just removed the desk that served as my cutting table to make way for a new cutting table with storage (also known as a dresser), a new bookshelf, and a new desk for my sewing machine (anyone want a Singer Touch and Sew c. 1976? It needs service, but it comes built into a desk and has all its parts to the best of my knowledge. Free to anyone willing to cart it away from my house in Utica, NY. Ferris? Bueller?).

But, it was quite a mess to begin with and really has been for about 9 months since I originally set it all up. In that time, I’ve found some things that work, and some that don’t, so this week seems like a good time to start over, particularly because I’m sort of in-between projects and bouts of creativity (I do have projects that my brain wants me to be working on, but artistic me just isn’t feeling them).

In the past few weeks of non-posting, I’ve only made a couple of things. One was a present for my friend’s son, which in now late and still not mailed. I decided to pull the embroidery unit out for it.

I downloaded this free (at the time) Pirate Octopus from Daily Embroidery a while back, and thought it was perfect. Because I don’t entirely trust designs I find on the internet, I stitched out a sample on a scrap.

Awesome (ignoring the jump stitches I didn’t snip cleanly). The final one is in different colors (but same thread types). It is stitched directly onto the bag. It isn’t nearly as awesome, because when my bobbin ran out halfway through, I grabbed a normal-weight white bobbin, not the spare bobbin-weight one I thought I had. Using bobbin thread really does make a difference—with normal-weight thread, the bobbin threads pulled up in certain areas.

Bummer. But, it is ok. I just need to remember to mail it.

The last thing I finished is a bag that will be filled with craft supplies for my quilt club’s service project. I made a pattern for them, which I hope to turn into a blog post later this week (I finished the pattern for the club about 30 min. before the meeting yesterday).

Now, I need to get everything back in order post haste, because I promised my sister a “Rachael Arnold” zippered bag in lieu of the “Vera Bradley” one she keeps asking our other sister for. Her birthday is tomorrow… I’m a bit behind these days.

Impressions Baby Quilt

Posted in Quilting

Baby quilt two of the fall rush is complete and delivered.

I was inspired by all the diamond HST quilts in blogland, and decided to throw in a heart just for good measure. It finished at around 41″×45″.

It’s backed with a solid piece of Minky fabric. It’s wonderfully soft and cozy.

Because of the Minky backing, I didn’t want to quilt it too closely. So, I just echoed the diamond inside the middle of the HSTs, and made a couple of echo lines inside the heart. Her initials are also in the middle of the heart. The density (or lack thereof) is pushing the limits of the 80/20 batting I used, but I think it will be ok.

Because of the lack of pieced backing, I didn’t make a custom label. I just used one I had printed from Spoonflower, and added a few details in handwriting.

To complete the set, I made another modified Simplicity 2613 dog out of the leftover Minky, along with a small scarf of leftover top pieces and some other fuzzy purple fabric I had in my stash. I like how the pattern goes together with the Minky… it will be used again, I’m sure.

Now it’s on to new projects…

Foto Freitag

Posted in Crafting

I haven’t sewn much in last couple of weeks. My motivation is about as deflated and floppy as this not-yet-stuffed dog I made to go with the baby quilt I have yet to photograph for you. Time got away from me—I need to get it in the mail, ASAP!