Entries in Sewing (54)

Tuesday
Jul272010

Pink & Yellow Quilt

Pink & Yellow Voile Quilt

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. 

Girly Voile Quilt

Girly Voile Quilt - Tag

Tuesday
Jul062010

Selective Perfectionism

planning the next baby quilt

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.

Next baby quilt in the line-up

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.

planning the next baby quilt

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. 

Monday
Jun142010

Shirt #2. Better than shirt #1.

simplicity 4589

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.

 

my new shirt #2

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!

 

my new shirt #2

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.

Monday
May312010

Done: Disappearing 9 Patch

Disappearing 9 Patch

All ready to go to its new owner, a tiny baby girl. I hope she likes it.

 

Disappearing 9 Patch

Disappearing 9 Patch

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.

Sunday
May162010

Disappearing 9 Patch

"disappearing 9 patch" baby quilt in progress

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.

Zooey destroys the layout

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.