The Anna Maria Horner voile quilt is done. The fabric is super soft. I love that.
The pattern is another disappearing 9 patch quilt for a friend's new niece. (So many baby quilts this year.) But it's a more sophisticated take on a baby quilt, something she can use as she gets older.
For some reason I could not get a good photo of the whole quilt. The pictures below are much better. It's been hot as hell for weeks, but as soon as I need to take a picture it starts storming.
Hi, I'm Kim. I suffer from selective perfectionism.
Normally I go about life and don't care if things are perfect, but when it comes to bowling or figuring out which fabric block should sit next to each other, then it's a real problem.
I'm working on another disappearing 9 patch quilt using Anna Maria Horner's voile fabrics. They are very pretty, but hard to keep track of which side is correct once they are cut into squares.
Figuring out the layout, though, has been the hardest part. I thought after the last quilt that I would have worked out the kinks regarding the number of fabrics and colors to buy. I have nine fabrics in pink, yellow, and white/light colors. It's a bit of a puzzle to make sure everything is evenly spaced out so, I made a chart to make sure everything was even.
My selective perfectionism pairs well with my love of systems.
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If anyone is interested, I have four yards of Abstract Garden Charmeuse fabric that I don't want. It's brand new, unwashed, and 58'' wide 100% Polyester.
I added it to the shop and will ship free to anyone in the U.S. via priority mail. If you are outside of the U.S. and want it, please email me for shipping prices.
Hope we can find this guy a new home.
For shirt #2 I decided to switch patterns. It's hot and short sleeves are in order. Well... sort of. Because it's cold as hell in the office and you know I'll end up wearing a sweater every day of the year.
I went with simplicity 4589 and used the ocean blue shot cotton that I was going to use for the other pattern.
It turned out okay. The boobage area is a bit too tight. It was only last week that I realized what FBA means, but I still don't know how to actually make a full bust adjustment. I made this shirt off of my high bust measurement instead of the last shirt which was made from my real bust measurement. No wonder it was so huge. I actually have tiny shoulders.
And I used a smaller seam allowance by mistake, a 3/8 instead of a 5/8 inch seam. That may account for the neckline gaping out. I'm actually wearing the shirt backwards because it looks better this way!
I'm wondering now if I should be taking some sort of clothes sewing class. I just want everything to be perfect immediately and not have to alter patterns every single time. That's not the way it works, though, and maybe a class would help me learn how to do those alterations. I've looked up a couple of classes and some of them want to teach you how to sew before you learn to make clothes. I'm sure there are lots of other quilters out there who branch out into clothes much later. There has got to be a class that fits my skill level.
For now, I'll continue to teach myself and read up online. I think my next pattern will be a summer dress with different cup sizes already built into the pattern.
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All ready to go to its new owner, a tiny baby girl. I hope she likes it.
I used an Anna Maria Horner flannel for the back and it's amazingly soft. I'll definitely use it again. And I machine stitched the binding this time for durability.
And it's about 40x60 inches.
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I'm in the process of making a disappearing 9 patch baby quilt for my friend's little niece or nephew - another mystery baby. The room will be light blue, but my friend really loved the frogs and snails from Heather Ross' Far Far Away fabric, so I found a bunch of fabrics that would incorporate the blue, but also the yellow and green from the frog fabric.
Everything was going very quickly and I started laying out the squares on the futon so I could see what fabrics I had already used. Then the cats (Franny & Zooey, by the way) came in to keep me company. That's fine. They were behaving and staying away from the squares.
Of course, not for long.
After I put the futon down to layout the squares, I left the room. Big mistake! I come back to this scene and you can tell that Zooey kind of took a running start and slid his little paws under the squares. But he is cute, so I can't stay mad for long.
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I never told you guys about this, but last year I switched over from paper tissues at home to a more eco-friendly and reusable version made out t-shirt fabric. These things generally get a bad rep, so I was reluctant to share. I've had a couple of people say, "Eww, you're going to carry that around with you? Gross!", but overall it's been fine.
The blue set is from some t-shirt/stretch knit fabric I bought a long time ago. I don't even know how to sew with this material, so might as well use it for something. And then E had an old t-shirt from college that he gave me.
For the tissues, I just cut out 6 inch squares. You don't have to do anything else since the fabric edge doesn't roll. I remember seeing this tutorial somewhere out there in the internets, but I can't remember exactly where.
Allergy season is upon us and I can't tell you how much better it is with these. 1) They are super soft and therefore great on my nose. 2) I've saved some money and trees. Normally I would go through about one box a week. So ridiculous! And 3) It's so easy. I just wash them - about once a week during allergy season and way less often the rest of the year.
Thank you, internets!
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Here it is.
Okay. It's a little big. I think I picked the wrong size... even though I went by the measurements and not the "size". I was trying to do the right thing.
And it is a little stiff, but what can you expect from a quilter's muslin? Still wearable, I think. It looks less prego in person than in photos.
Lots of lessons learned:
1. Always keep your Singer: The Complete Photo Guide to Sewing at the ready. You never know when a term like "ease" will show up and you have no idea what that means. You know that sleeves are a bitch from reading several other clothing blogs, but still.
2. Don't sew your collar on backward. It just doesn't work that way.
3. Allow 12 hours or so for sewing and trying on and eating pizza and questioning the whole endeavor.
]]>I AM going to make a shirt. I've been thinking and talking about it for too long.
What pushed me over the edge? Well, Etienne was talking about his decision to book a trip to climb Kilimanjaro and he said he kept thinking about this Buddhist saying, “There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting.” It really got to me. Making a shirt is certainly not "truth", but I do have to actually start something in order to make something.
I picked Simplicity 2696, view F to start out with - a pattern that seems fairly simply and a shape that I already wear. I bought this ocean blue shot cotton, but then thought I should maybe try it out (make a wearable muslin?) with some white fabric first. Or if that goes well, then I can use the blue for another style in this set.
I think that the sleeve and shirt lengths on view F are going to be too long, so I'm going to make 3/4 sleeves. Not sure if I should take off inches on the shirt length before or after. It comes all the way down to the crotch and I prefer it to hit at the hip.
Been reading a lot of clothing sewing blogs lately and decided that I would follow their leads and trace out my pattern size instead of cutting it directly from the pattern itself. That way, if I need a different size in the future then it will still be available on the pattern. And this style is pretty loose, so I might need a smaller size anyway.
I've never traced anything before. Kind of winged it with some giant white paper that I bought at the Pratt store, carbon tracing paper, and a chopstick. (This chopstick is officially part of my sewing kit. It's also perfect for poking out corners in fabric because of the rounded edge.)
And since I was on a roll, I went ahead and traced the pattern pieces for the Color Wheel Quilt. I used plastic for the main template since it was small enough to fit on the sheet and I would be cutting out so many more of those pieces than the rest.
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I made this velcro bag today to house my wet clothes for the gym. I've been using those disposible plastic baggies from NYSC and realized how wasteful I've been. This bag is just the right size to fit everything, yet will not take up too much room in my gym bag.
For the inside, I used a french seam to help stop any leakage on the sides and the tabs at the top help open it more easily.
Then I moved on to the resuable sandwich wrap based off of this tutorial. The only thing I did differently was to sew around all of the edges instead of fusing them all.
I've seen different versions of the resuable sandwich wrap all over the place, but this one seemed like it really kept the whole sandwich in place without any leaks. We'll see once I try it out on a real sandwich.
