Sewing

This Week’s Progress

sarah • August 9, 2014

There's been a lot of progress this week, but not so much in the finishes department.

I designed my quilt for the American Made Brand Farm to Fabric Challenge due at the end of this month. I'm looking forward to getting to work on that and hope it comes together in time to submit it.

mini bolts of fabric

As I've quilted and sewn more over the last few months I have been inspired to get my stash under control. It's been a process, but I'm slowly chipping away at it. I made my own mini bolts using foam board ($1 each at the Dollar Tree which made four 9 1/2" by 13 1/2" bolts).

folded fabric

Inspired by Jeni Baker, I've been folding and folding and folding. Yesterday I got all those lovely fabrics up onto the shelf. You also get a glimpse of the rest of my shelving area... to the left of the fabric are photo boxes being used to collect selvages, hold leftover binding pieces, and keep my snap pliers. At the upper left are the boxes holding my pre-cut scraps. And the upper right bins hold my cookie decorating supplies. I've creatively cropped out the less organized part of the shelves. :-)

scraps for memory houses

Inspired by Jo and her Memory Cats, I've decided to make Memory houses. I'll use the scraps from each of the quilts I've made to make a block representing that quilt. My plan is to make improv houses. I am just looking for some fabric from a quilt I don't seem to have scraps from, and making a plan for how I'll represent my t-shirt quilt. Other than that I think I have all my scraps bagged and labeled from my 13 completed quilts. I hope to have some more finishes soon to add to the pile.

quiet book progress

I'm making great progress on the quiet book pages for round two of our page swap. You can check out this previous post to see the results of round one.

wonky star borders

Some of that fabric I bought last week got cut into strips for the borders on the Giant Wonky Star quilt.

painting plans And in the non-quilting arena, I'm trying to decide on paint colors for The Girl's room. One wall will be painted like the background pattern found on this puzzle, with four shades of blue. I'm not sure any of these palettes are working for me, but the reminder of this pile sitting on her dresser will hopefully expedite the process.

dance floor

Oh, and I never get tired of seeing the kids enjoy the quilts. Here you can see it being used as a dance floor.

Linking up to Fabric Frenzy Friday.

The Boy’s Party Shirt • 12 Comments

sarah • July 23, 2014

I made The Boy a bowling shirt to wear to his sister's party. When I asked him what he wanted me to make for his party he chose another bowling shirt. The Scientific Seamstress has a lot of options in her pattern, so it was fun to make another shirt using the same pattern that was totally different. After choosing my collection of coordinating blender fabrics I had him chose which three he liked best. We like wild, but while I knew I'd use all seven fabric's for The Girl's dress, I thought that might be a little over the top for the bowling shirt. I made this one a little longer than his ladybug shirt, and I opted to make the middle stripe of fabric longer than the pattern suggested, since it was my feature fabric. I love it!

Thanks for taking a look at one of my 2014 Q3 Finish Along Goals. Check out The Girl's party dress from yesterday's post.

I'm linking up on Let's Bee Social and Show and Tell Tuesday.

I'm linking up to Finish Along Quarter 3 Finish Party. Here is my full list of Q3 Finish Along Goals.

The Girl’s Stripwork Peasant Dress • 5 Comments

sarah • July 22, 2014

For The Boy's 4th birthday party the theme was Airplanes and Helicopters. I had nearly two fat quarters of this cute juvenile print:

After a trip to The Intrepid Thread, I had a half dozen lovely blender fabrics to go with it.

For The Girl, I had decided to make CKC's Jewel's Stripwork Dress. It's less detailed than some of the dresses I've made, so I thought it would go together quickly and I was right. It's also neat that there are a lot of options, three sleeve lengths, bottom ruffle, sash, not to mention I could make this exact style but just use a different number of fabrics. Since I had 6 fabrics I wanted to use for the skirt portion this time I just did 12 panels (instead of 14) for a slightly less full skirt. I'll definitely be making this dress again!