New look

While I have tweaked the appearance of my blog oh-so-slightly, I am actually referring to the new look in our bedroom. Seeing as, of course, none of you have seen it, here is a picture:

This, at long last, is the quilt that I pieced in summer of 2010. That I bought the fabric in. . .oh, do we really want to know? (fabric.com says April 2008) Anyhow. . .after I pieced the top, the quilt sat for a few months waiting for batting and backing. I bought those and. . .it still sat. Finally last fall, when Dad and Mom were here, I asked Mom if she would quilt it. She said yes, so she took it home, quilted it, bound it, and last week mailed it back to me. Hooray!

Due to the large blocks in this quilt, it worked best to make it a square. That meant there wasn’t enough quilt to cover the pillows, and I wasn’t about to mess with pillow shams (been there & done that). Instead I decided to put decorative pillows in front of the pillows we use, and that gave me the perfect opportunity to use a pair of pillowcases that I believe were trimmed by my great-grandmother.

It still startles me every time I walk in the room. We used our old quilt for sixteen years, and being blue it had faded quite a bit over those years. I am sure I will get used to it, but for the moment I am rather wishing I had chosen more subtle colors and fabrics.

August sewing

Once again, I find that having a quilt in progress makes me run away from the sewing room. I would say “there’s always next month!” but now that it’s time for a new school year, I know I won’t have as much sewing time. Such is life.

• Two knit tops for me, Ottobre 2/2007 #2 (with short sleeves) in print cotton jersey and #4 in peach cotton-lycra. Both are size 38 with the alterations I made to the pattern in 2007, except this time I left off the nursing access. Bit of deja vu though as I had nursing tops from both of these fabrics! I didn’t take deliberate pictures, but just realized that I am wearing the peach top under my apron in the picture below.
• Retro Apron for me; if the fabric looks somewhat familiar, it’s because the wrap skirt I made in May never fit quite right so I chopped it up, added rick rack, and made an apron. I have more of the fabric left so I may make a second attempt at a wrap skirt. . .or it may end up being an apron for a friend.

• The quilt top is assembled–blocks constructed, sewn together, borders added! Now it sits and waits until I have money for batting and backing. Pbbbbt! I should price those, but I’m a little afraid to find out how much because I know I’ll need extra wide batting and fabric. I am eager to get it on my bed, although after Baby Boy doused my quilt with Brasso earlier this week I’m kind of content to leave the old one there a little longer.

Not particularly impressive except that I again met my (puny) goals for the month: two new knit shirts for me, and a quilt top–with a bonus apron, because you know I really needed another apron. I don’t really have any sewing goals in mind for September; I have plenty of sewing ideas racing through my head, but no realistic goals. I’ll probably end up making a couple autumn items for myself or Twirly Girl as needs arise, and I should start on any Christmas gifts I plan to sew.

Summer projects

We usually wait until Labor Day to start our new school year, but once August arrives and the paper publishes back to school info, summer days are numbered. This in turn makes me look back at my list of summer projects and–usually–panic. This year is no different, even though my list is short.

1. Plan 2010-2011 school year.
2. Quilt for our bed.
3. Red wool coat.

Don’t even ask about the coat; I have spent plenty of time in the sewing room this summer but I’m not even sure where my red wool is at the moment. Let’s also not think about how long I have had this project on my list, okay?

I am, finally, making some progress on my quilt. I have pieced the 100 rectangles and started on the 25 squares. Four rectangles and one square make a block; I think I can still get the blocks assembled and joined as well as borders added before we start school. I think.

That leaves planning the coming school year and no, I have not done any more than think about that. No, that is not entirely true: I have our letter of intent ready to turn in to the superintendent’s office tomorrow, and I have been working my way through IEW’s Teaching Writing with Structure and Style. For the most part, however, our school plans will largely involve continuing in the books and curriculum we have been using all along. I still want to put pen to paper–or rather fingers to keyboard–to make sure we have the books we need, to come up with a general weekly schedule for school, and in general to force my brain to start thinking about school again. The older kids are at camp this week, so I would like to accomplish my “planning” while the house is as quiet as it ever gets. Wish me luck!

July sewing

• I finished my 1912 Kimono Dress–and I love it even more than my first one! With hindsight, kimono sleeves were probably not the best choice for semi sheer fabric, since they ended up being lined along with the rest of the dress. However, the sleeves are still cooler since I shortened them (the pattern has 3/4 sleeves). I also had to cut very carefully to make the dress as long as I wanted and ended up adding a seam to the center back of the bodice (and was not able to avoid fabric flaws on the skirt). The fashion fabric is a lightweight embroidered cotton; I believe fabric.com called the color latte or mocha. . .which is kind of funny because I used tea to dye my cotton lining to match, thus making this the “coffee, tea, or me” dress! The embroidery is in a vertical stripe pattern, but I cut the front inset and the belt with horizontal stripes for visual interest. The pattern is very easy to assemble and the bodice seams are all neatly concealed; my only issue was with the sparse directions for the front inset. I’ve worn the dress several times this month but kept forgetting to take pictures. So if you look at my dead grass, you will understand why I am squinting instead of smiling today–that Wyoming sun is hot! Which makes it the perfect day for a cool and comfortable dress.
• Self drafted eight gore linen skirt for me, which I already shared.
• Started on the quilt for our bed–I think I’ve sewn 50 out of 125 partial blocks. Or something like that–the end result should have 25 blocks, and each block has 5 sections. You do the math.
• Two pairs of shorts for Baby Boy, both from Ottobre 3/2008 #7, size 92. He always seemed to be out of shorts so I went stash diving and pulled up a couple remnants. One pair is twill printed with kangaroos playing soccer; the other is striped denim. I think both came from Wazoodle years ago, but I’m not sure! I was able to sew them assembly line style and used the same red topstitching thread on both pairs. I did leave the back pockets off the twill shorts since he only uses the front pockets–and they would be lost in the print anyhow. I cut both front and back denim pockets on the diagonal for added interest.

I’ve now found a sure way to keep myself out of the sewing room: start a quilting project. I like cutting out all the pieces (thank you Mr. Rotary Cutter Inventor!) and I like making the sandwich, quilting (or tying), and binding it. Piecing bores me to tears. All those short straight identical seams. . .no gathers, no darts, no zippers. Yawn. Nonetheless, I like the idea of making the quilt myself that goes on the bed that I share with my beloved, so onward I sew! I did more or less accomplish my goals for the month: finish kimono dress, perhaps make a skirt, and start on our quilt. I wish I had gotten more accomplished on the quilt, but most of my sewing time this month was combined with supervising kid sewing. I also wish I could finish the quilt in August (it’s on my list of “summer projects”) but that’s not likely at this point! Instead I’ll aim for having the quilt top assembled before we start school in September. I also cut out a pair of knit not-nursing tops for myself (Ottobre 2/2007, of course) that will sew up quickly once I find time to spend in the sewing room.

Structure and chaos

First the structure. . .meet my new favorite summer skirt:

Using these directions, I drafted an eight gore skirt with a lapped zipper in the side seam and 1″ waistband. The fabric is a khaki linen and is very comfortable to wear. Even if it wrinkles when you look at it. I used a slightly darker shade of regular sewing thread to topstitch each gore.

And now for the chaos–or rather randomness:

A couple years ago I bought enough fabric for a new quilt for our bed. . .I really liked the Moda Flirtations line, even though I knew it would be awhile before I found time to actually make the quilt! Well, now I have time to at least start–cutting strips for quilts is a good thing to do while supervising kids sewing. And because I bought “jelly rolls” of fabric, the cutting is going quickly. As for the random part, I initially spent quite a bit of time trying to plan which fabrics to use for which parts of the block. I finally gave up and threw the strips into a jumbled mess in a bin so that I could grab a random strip when I was ready to cut. This really goes against my grain, but I think it will work better in the long run.

Ta-da!!

I bet you all thought I forgot to finish my mystery quilt! I actually finished the top before leaving on vacation in June, but it’s just taken me that long to quilt it. Or rather, it’s spent that much time gathering dust in between quilting sessions. I finally finished quilting it while watching the Olympics last week, and while I was using my fancy dual feed foot to stitch on the binding it occured to me that this would have been a good time to attempt machine quilting. Oh well. Anyhow, it’s done, and Silly Boy wants to be sure that you notice the bead whinkles on the ice cream sundae.

Are you wondering what happened to block #1? Well, nowhere in the directions did it suggest making 2 of block #4 (the applique), but all the suggested arrangements in the finishing directions showed two. Ahem. I wouldn’t have minded making 2 applique blocks at the same time, but I really didn’t want to go back and make another one. In the interest of symmetry, I decided not to use block #1. It’s just as well because with this arrangement I had barely enough of the tan fabric (also used for the ice cream applique) for my sashing strips!

Now. . .to host an ice cream PARTY!

Two weeks in the life. . .

Yeah, so the title isn’t as catchy as ‘a week in the life’, but I’m just that far behind! This is mostly going to be a photos-with-captions sort of entry, so if you don’t think my kids are the cutest thing you’ve ever seen, you may want to move on to the next blog on your reading list right now. My apologies for the lack of photo editing; but if I didn’t post these as is they were never going to get posted.

And in case anyone reads my blog just for the sewing, I actually have sewn quite a few things (mostly Ottobre of course) in May. I just haven’t taken pictures. Among other things, I’m up to three needed new short sleeve tops for me; but I’m usually on the back side of the camera. Yesterday I made lost boy #2 some desperately needed pj’s, but nine is getting a little old to be posing in jammies, especially since I used the long john patterns from Ottobre 4/2004 (shortened for summer). I used some well-aged dino PRR from my stash; I personally don’t think the PRR jersey is very soft, but he’s happy and he’s the one sleeping in them. . .

Alright, on to the pictures! Two weeks ago, Dad & Mom came for the week. We took in soccer games:

And took them to Yellowstone. Actually, first we stopped at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody.

Then to Yellowstone. . .I love the drive through Shoshone National Forest. We stopped more than once to take pictures of the bighorn sheep and the buffalo.

We stayed at Pahaska, right outside the east entrance (thanks Aunt Janet!).

We’re going on a bear hunt. . .! We saw 4 bears during our day at Yellowstone, a young male in the morning and then a mama with twin toddler-cubs in the afternoon.

I enjoyed the West Thumb geyser basin.

Naturally, we watched for Old Faithful to erupt.

And then it was time to head back home. We spent the rest of Dad & Mom’s visit doing normal stuff around the house and around town, the kind of stuff that doesn’t always get photographed.

After they went home, I stitched up Mystery Quilt block #4; yum!

And I put the kids back to work on their school; here’s lost boy #3 deep in mathematical thought:

After several days of warm, even hot, weather, last Thursday brought an all day snow that made me feel as down as my lilacs looked.

Any guesses what book I’m introducing to our littlest lost boy? It’s definitely a family favorite; boy #4 is acting it out for him!

Yesterday I enjoyed a visit from my friend JoAnn and her daughter Karen, who will be moving to Wyoming later this summer for her first teaching job. I hadn’t seen JoAnn since lost boy #3 was a couple months old, so that was a pleasant if brief treat!

And finally, today my baby is 8 months old (sniff). I don’t know that I got his 7 month picture posted even though I did take one; having a baby isn’t nearly as much fun when you have big kids keeping you on your toes all day long! The days slip by much faster than they should. . .

Block #3 (and Block #1, take 2)

I suppose I broke some cardinal rule of mystery quilts, but I redid block #1 this week because I found a brown print (hidden with my Christmas fabrics) that I like better than the solid brown. It was left from a gingerbread dress I made for the twirly girl a couple years ago.

And here is block design #3, combining the brown print with the lighter of the blues. So much for easy. . .the photo is hiding the near-matches and the rippled bias seams. Triangles are my arch-nemesis and one of the reasons I am primarily a seamstress, not a quilter.

The idea of a mystery project is foreign to this perfectionist, but I’m trying to keep plugging along, sewing the blocks as they are posted and resisting the urge to wait until I see the whole design so that I can make my quilt be ’perfect.’

As before, the directions are a free download from You Can Make This. If anyone else is working on this project, I would love to see your version too!

Block #2

The pink is the same as in the first block; the blues are from two of this year’s Easter vests. So far. . .this is a very easy project.

Block #1

For some reason I get a lot of sewing-related newsletters in my inbox and one of them is from You Can Make This. I haven’t bought much from this site, since most of their patterns tend towards the ’boutique’ style that is very much not me. However, right now you can download free directions for a mystery quilt; only the first two blocks have been posted so far. As you may know, I’m not much of a quilter. . .but this sounded like an easy project and a fun way to use some of the scraps I’ve saved.

Here is my first block:

I wish I had had a print to use for the brown, but I’m determined to do this project entirely from stash if possible!! The solid quilter’s cotton is left from some long-forgotten applique design, I’m sure. The pink print is from a jumper I made for the twirly girl a couple years ago.

Stay tuned for more mystery block posts as I get them pieced (and photographed. . .). . .