Craft Fair

I have just booked myself in for a table at my first Artists/Craftspersons/Small Business Expo... and it's next Saturday! Yikes! I had been planning on doing one, but thought it would be later in the month. I am going to be busy!

Almost Over

Summer is almost over, only a week and one day left of camp. Then I'll be able to sleep in my own bed every night, instead of just Friday and Saturday nights, hurrah!

I finally bought one of those clear plastic see-through rulers for cutting out quilt blocks. It goes with the rotary cutter and cutting mat I got from my parents for Christmas. So far I've just been making do with my metal ruler from a college art class, and cardboard templates I made out of a pizza box. Can't wait to try the real one out this weekend.

Once camp is over, I'm hoping to get a whole lot more sewing done.

And some more sleeping.

And maybe taking a few days off to rest and relax.

:)

Striving Higher

For this past Christmas, I finished two quilts to give as presents. The first one ended up being a pinwheel design I blogged here, here, and finished here. The other one I talked about here, but never put up any photos of when it was finished.

My original idea for both of these quilts was from the little zig zag quilt in this post from the blog a Stitch in Dye. But, as you can see, neither of the two quilts I made ended up looking anything like it.

The second quilt I originally planned to craft from white and orange and brown patterns and solids in cotton. However, I found that it was nearly impossible to find a variety of prints that matched in those colours, in fact, it was very near impossible to find any prints in those colours. I had a few in my stash, but not nearly enough to make a whole quilt out of.

One day whilst I was at Fabricland on another mission, I stumbled across two matching shiny home decor fabrics in different shades of orange. And, they were on sale. I wasn't too sure about the content of the fibre (and still am not sure exactly what it is... satin, nylon? Something a little plastic-y, but not scratchy). They were stiffer than what I was hoping for, but I figured they'd make an okay quilt, seeing how they were home decor fabrics to begin with.
The shiny orange fabric was quite nice on both sides, reversing to an opposite design on their reverse sides, so I knew I would be able to use the two fabrics as if they were four.

I can't remember how much fabric I bought, but it ended up being just a little short of what I needed, so I had to go back and get more fabric to cut a few more blocks from.

For the backing, I used some chocolate brown broadcloth. The broadcloth dictated how big the quilt ended up being, as they only had three metres of it. I had to piece it together to make it wide enough, I ended up putting a wide section in the middle and two smaller side sections, rather than having a seam down the centre back.

The quilt block pattern I stumbled upon on the internet when looking for a quilt idea using squares (rather than triangles, I was triangled out after the first quilt!). The pattern is called "Bento Box." The fact that the Bento Box pattern is actually squares and rectangles meant that it would take even less sewing time than squares. I can't find the original picture now that I had used for an idea, but Google of course has a whole wealth of other Bento Box quilts.

Although, this quilt ended up being very labour intensive. I was able to finish it in a couple of weeks, but it did take a lot of non-stop work. I decided on sewing all of the seams flat because a) I liked the way it looked, and b) the nature of the fabric meant it unraveled very easily (and there are still orange threads all over the house). Sewing the seams flat made a nice look and gave the quilt a better durability. In the end I used a little over 3 spools of orange thread to finish the project.

I planned the quilt out by using Microsoft Excel. I played around with a few different designs of block placement before I decided on this stair-type option. Unfortunately the height of the blocks meant I ended with the bottom section not being complete boxes, but in the end I don't think it hurt the design at all. This is a "tv watching sized" quilt, and was a little too short without those additional two rows of blocks on the bottom.

The centre of this quilt is two layers of a polyester batting. I wanted a puffy sort of look with the chocolate brown cotton ties, and found that I needed two layers of the batting to get that effect.

Unfortunately these aren't the best photos, but I don't have a great digital camera at the moment. You can click on any of the photos to make them bigger and get a closer look.

Overall, I quite love this quilt. And it's very warm and comfy.

Reagan

Cleaning up my photo folders, I found photos of this baby dress I made earlier this year but neglected to post. I bought the floral fabric a couple of years ago on sale for a couple of dollars a metre, the orange is just regular broadcloth, and the rick rack is from my thrift store stash. The buttons are two from a bag my Gramma gave me. The little green one has an off-white centre, and the dark orange one has a lovely carved design.

Juliet

I originally bought this orange cotton print with the idea of using it in a quilt, but had a lot of trouble finding any other suitable prints to match it. Some websurfing has led me to the fact that is is part of the Marie Osmond - Blanc et Noir Companions collection from Quilting Treasures, fabric "20468-O".

For this version of my favourite baby dress pattern, I lengthened the dress overall, and added a bird motif. Originally I was going to applique a brown calico print, however, I was advised by a housemate that white would look better... and I quite like the way it turned out. It took me a few sample tries to get the zigzag stitching to work satisfactorily, luckily I tried it out on some extra fabric before attacking the actual dress.

The buttons on the back are some from my Gramma's attic. The orange one was just perfect, however, I only had one of them. Wonderful that I found two similar-sized pearly numbers to go with it!

Pink and Brown

When I was housemates with my friend Rachel in college, she invented a wardrobe concept, that, if I recall correctly, went something to the effect of each year (or perhaps each season) was going to have an overriding colour palette that she would name. So she called the first one "Neopolitan Thrift," which consisted of a heavily brown/tan/pink palette. Not too long after she decided though that she liked the colour scheme too much to change it so kept it for the next year at least (or is it still going strong Rachel?).

Last fall when Rachel was expecting, I made her a dress for the wee one, and I quite liked the way it turned out. This year, with the thousand million bajillion babies expected, I've been plugging away at various projects. So far, Juliet and Reagan have started things off right and are both little girls. Which is good, because I like making dresses. I'm not sure who'll get the one above yet, but I think it turned out lovely. I love the pink piping, slightly different than the lace I used for Rachel's dress for wee Nora.

I've continued to tweak the pattern as time goes on... I've made I think 10 from the same pattern base, no two the same. Yesterday I drafted a new neckline and sleeves. Only problem is, I don't have any babies around here to try it on and make sure it fits!

Pinwheel Joy

Back in September I started this quilt, with a few layout ideas. I didn't actually end up going with any of my ideas from that post, and by Thanksgiving had decided on a pinwheel pattern.

This quilt took a whole lot more time than I was expecting, but I was so glad to have it done in time for Christmas, finishing the binding on December 17th.

The coloured fabrics I purchased back in I believe it was spring 2007 from Fabricland (some of the fabrics they still carry, some have been discontinued). I'm generally not too great at matching fabrics so well, but I took the cues from the multi-coloured green fabric and tried to find ones that matched it, and was quite please with how it turned out. The white is a recycled cotton sheet... they don't make them like they used to, so good for quilting.

The quilt is a lap / tv watching size. I made it as big as I could, I didn't have enough fabric left for any more rows.

If I was to redo the quilt, I definitely would have bought a rotary cutter, ruler, and matt beforehand. Some of my blocks, especially the first ones, were not quite so square, or triangularly perfect, which led to some puckering and mismatched edges. And the white cotton wasn't the same thickness as the coloured cottons, which made it somewhat difficult to match the corners perfectly in all cases... I ended up ripping out a lot of stitches and redoing many.

The quilt batting was a thin polyester, the only previous quilt I had ever made (in 1996/97) had led me to believe that only fluffy batts existed. I quilted in straight lines lengthwise as I was pressed for time, otherwise I would have liked to have quilted diagonally. I had a lot of problems with the thread breaking, which was eventually solved by using a lesser tension setting.

Overall, I loved the way it turned out, but I don't think I would make another quilt in this pattern... unless I was wanting a project that would take forever!

First Baby Quilt

I have a file on my computer desktop entitled "People Who Are Pregnant". There are currently 17 people listed (well, one gave birth today, so I suppose I can take her off the list!). Those remaining include good friends, college friends, and church friends. I won't be giving all of them gifts, but I have decided to make a few things to give as gifts over the next few months.

This is a baby quilt I designed, did the sewing of, and quilted in an evening (minus the binding I did on a second day because I did it by hand). The fabrics were all ones that I already had on hand, and the batting was some I had leftover from a Christmas project I had made late last year.

I designed the quilt in Microsoft Excel... good for more than just spreadsheets! I quite like it for designing layouts, especially since I don't really have any good graphics programs. Originally I was planning to do a log cabin type of design, but eventually settled on straight rows, and I really like how it turned out.

The fabrics I used were as follows:

- old white sheet
- the brown with white floral was a vintage duvet cover I purchased a few years ago, it has made a few appearances in other crafts of mine in the past including a few purse linings and a shirt
- the white with brown and blue floral was also a vintage duvet cover purchased at the same time as the brown one. It's been repurposed into a purse, some purse linings, and a skirt.
- plain brown broadcloth
- blue with brown print is actually a home decor print I bought originally to make this baby dress a couple of summers ago.



You can click on any of the photos for a closer look.

Crafty Blogs

The following is a short list of some of the crafty blogs I happen to frequent on a regular basis, in no particular order:

Ysolda: A young knitter somewhere in the UK, have been reading this one for awhile but am not sure how I stumbled across it. Hers was the first knitting blog I can remember reading.

Princess Lasertron: A blog I ran across last year sometime from a link off of a design blog talking about the Princess' wedding dress. Her blog is an interesting look at a new business getting it's feet firmly planted.

wikstenmade: An independent clothing designer.

wise craft: The crafting pursuits of a mother and her family.

sugar city journal: Two sisters share childrens' clothing designs.

Philigry: Just discovered this one the other day, this woman is an intense sweater knitter.

pretty sketchy: I pretty much check Natty's blog every day. We went to college together.

soulemama: Another blog about the crafting exploits of a mother and her family.

Inside a Black Apple: Found this one off of Etsy. I like to follow Emily's crafting pursuits (over her painting ones), and it's been neat to see her business flourish on Etsy and beyond.

whipup.net: Whipup offers a great review of the crafting going on out there, mostly tutorials.

Life and Other Things

Back in July I went back to school full-time (probably because I said I'd never go back to school and things we say come back to haunt us) and today finished my first placement for teacher's college. The past five weeks I spent Monday to Friday teaching grade 7 and 8 students art, geography, literacy (English), and math. Now I'm on Christmas holidays, but will be spending most of it working... catching up on things at camp and still somehow managing to spend a few evenings a week and Saturdays working in computer service.

Wednesday night marked the completion of the pinwheel quilt I started back in October... I thought for awhile that it would be the quilt that never ended! I'll post some pictures when I can, at the moment my camera is on the fritz. I machine pieced and quilted it with a thin batting.

A little while ago on a break from the aforementioned quilt, I started another one. Tonight I'm working at getting the final rows sewn together before I begin to sew them to each other. The pattern is apparently called "Bento Box".

Meadow Fieldbag

This is a new design I came up with for my first day of teaching... I needed a bag I could carry the essentials in, as well as my lunch. And it has three pockets, all big enough and versatile for all kinds of stuff... wallet, etc.

Finally!

This is a purse I started making about a year ago, and finally finished this past week. You can see more photos here. It's nice to finally have a bit more free time!

Layout

I started making a small quilt today... and am playing around with a few layout ideas. What do you think? Click on any for a closer look.


Squares

Arrow Down
Zig Zag

Target

Multi Zag

Left and Right (Not Connected)

Left and Right (Connected)

Multicoloured Lines

Flying Geese

Variated Flying Geese

Duck Dress

Back to School Bag

I'd take a better picture but I'm too tired.