Fair Trade Sewing

I haven't linked with Lily's Quilts Small Blog Meet in a long time, but this month I'm going to join in the fun.  So, if you've wandered here from Lily's place, "Welcome." and "Nice to meet you!"

I mentioned in a previous post about Son #1's new adventures in retail.  He has been working on the structure of his new booth at a local farmer's market.  He hopes to set it up on a fair trade model and have a variety of sewists contribute items for sale.

So far I've made him a sign:

 Some pot holders:

Some pillows:

Some placemats:

And a few zippered and drawstring bags:

This was the "new stock".  He sold out of some items in the first batch and had a few requests so that determined the items in this batch.  I'm anxious to see what sells the next time around.

It's been fun to have something to work on together.  It can be difficult to find things to enjoy together with grown male offspring so this has been a great activity in so many ways. And it's nice to have reasons to use other features on my machine like decorative stitches and the embroidery module.  My quilt output has suffered a bit but it has been a lot of fun to work on this stuff.
 

When Time Flies

The summer is drawing to a close and I've started to think about just what I've been doing with my time!

Much of my sewing has been occupied by a project of Son #1.  Ever since he was little he has had an entrepreneurial streak.  He would sit by the road and try to sell vegetables from our garden, jars of "hand made" sand (He would rub rocks together until they powdered into sand.), and anything else that he thought I wouldn't miss.  Now, although he has a real job, he wants to revisit the world of retail.  So, with me as his supplier he will be having a booth at a farmer's market in his area.  I've been producing a variety of small objects to compliment some quilts and larger pieces.  The shop will be set up as a fair trade store so that if there is more interest than I can supply he can draw in other crafters to work within the fair trade framework.

I also made a Dorothy costume (sorry, no picture yet) for our October trip to Autumn at Oz.   It has been a long time since I did any garment sewing and just like I remember...the hardest part is the fit.  At first I made this way too big and even now I think the skirt is too full, but I'm going with it as it is, because after all, I'm living in the "invisible years" so I don't think it will matter a whole lot.

Then....there have been many opportunities to hang with my best girl.  She is so much fun to have around and such a good, good baby.

In between all that there have been a few trips with the husband.  Recently we went to the beach to meet up with family.  It was my first trip back without Seamus and it felt a bit sad not to have him with me on the beach.  I was a little lost.  But with the passing of time we have been able to start to discuss filling our house again with furry little paws. 

Life's Buttons

Several years ago I wrote a post about buttons.  I have both my mother's and my mother-in-law's button collection along with my own.  Both reflect the woman who owned them - as I'm sure mine does.  And I have a deep inability to use some of the buttons in any project that will leave me and never come back again.  They are so much more than buttons to me.  Some of the ones in my mother's box have been there since I was a little girl.  I remember looking through them during the long lazy summer days.  I just can't seem to part with them.

Yesterday our quilt guild speaker, Deborah Schupp of Gumbo Design Studios shared several of her quilt designs.  This one caught my eye and a bit of my heart:

She made this wall hanging out of buttons from her mother and grandmothers...and maybe great grandmothers.

There is definitely one of these in my future!

Rag Quilt for My Winter

I'm not sure if this is "quilting" or "sewing" but I've always wanted to make one of these rag quilts and having a new little one (my little Winter) around gave me the perfect excuse.  I made it out of flannel without batting.  It also gave me an excuse to use my Accuquilt Go.  I feel a little guilty that I don't use this more often.  This seemed like a perfect project.  The die cuts both the square and the fringe so that once you sew the pieces together, you're done.  There was enough fabric left over to make a matching pillow.

Even with a project this simple there were a few lessons to learn.

• Using the die cutter didn't guarantee that each square was the same size.  The fabrics responded differently to the process of going through the press resulting in some small differences in size.  It didn't matter too much in this project though.
• Having the fringe precut was a time saver in the end but it did make it a bit more difficult to line up the pieces and sew the rows together.
• Between the larger seam allowances and the shrinkage my final piece was considerably smaller than it looked on the design wall.
• All pinks are not created equal.  I ended up buying several pieces of fabric that just plain didn't go with each other.

I'm hoping Winter finds this to be a snuggly little blankie and pillow to snuggle up with.  Her Nana would be glad to make some more.
 

The Pillow Puddle: Part One

Next month my local quilt guild will be having a quilt show.  Much of my sewing/quilting time lately has been directed at this.  I've put hanging sleeves and labels on quilts I'm entering, finished up my Whisper Quilt and Russian Quilt and, most recently I've been making pillows for the puddle.

The pillow puddle is a big child's swimming pool filled with pillows.  To win a pillow visitors will choose a ticket out of a jar for a given price (I'm not sure what the charge is) and if the pillow is marked as a winner they get to choose any pillow out of the puddle. 

So far I've made these:

It's sort of addicting.  As I'm making one, I come up with an idea for another one.  I've used mostly orphan blocks and scraps and stuffing from extra pillows around the house.  All but one of the orphans above came from some items I won at our winter quilt guild auction.  So, another member donated the blocks, I bought them and made them into pillows to donate back to the guild for the puddle!  I also got to use my Sashiko for some of the top stitching.

I thought I was finished, but I came up with another pillow design and have planned to make a few more.

My two favorites from this batch are:

Stay tuned for part two!

MY Whisper Blocks!

I've finished quilting and trimming the whisper blocks that were made from the picture I choose for our whisper block challenge at quilt guild.  For anyone new to this idea, we worked in groups of five.  Each person provided a picture which was passed to another member of the group.  That person interpreted the picture into a block which was then passed to a second person.  They in turn interpreted this block into another block.  This was repeated for a total of four blocks.  Just to be clear, the person organizing this made sure that the order of sewists for each picture varied.  In other words, the block that I made was passed to a different person each time so that we were not always interpreting the same person's block.  If you've read the other posts, particularly the most recent one you'll understand why I wanted to point that out once you see this group.

I provided this picture:

Person #1 made this:

Person #2 made this:

She told me that was a Frisbee and the blue on the left side is a splash where the dog has run out of the picture.

Now.....hold on to your hats because here comes the big transition...........

Person #3 made this:

She thought the Frisbee was a goldfish.

So, that resulted in person #4 making this:

I was supposed to sew these together into one composite quilt but I just couldn't.  So they are all sewn in such a way that with a very little alteration they can be made into separate pillows.  I intend to put a single hanging sleeve alone the back so that they can hang as one for our show and then latter I can make them into separate items.

I used to work for a large organization and we were always having in-services on communication.  This project would make a great illustration of one of the popular communication adages:  "Real communication is ALWAYS a miracle."

My Little Sashiko

This past Christmas my husband bought me a Baby Lock Sashiko machine.

 I've been sort of fascinated my this machine since I first became aware of it.  It's function is basically embellishment.  It's stitch is modeled after Japanese Sashiko embroidery.

Part of my fascination is due to the unusual way that it makes stitches.  It uses only a thread in the bobbin.  There is no top thread.  The thread somehow gets looped around itself to make the stitch.  On the front side there is actually two strands of thread in each stitch.  The back side of the stitch looks more like a standard machine stitch...no spaces between the stitches.  You can vary the size of the stitch and the size of the space between the stitches.  Both of these simple variations changes the visual impact of the finished stitching quite a lot. You can also vary the amount of pressure that the foot exerts on the fabric.  The looser hold is used to make the curved patterns.  You move the fabric during the time when the needle is up.  Traditionally a solid fabric is used with a thread that provides a big color contrast. 

Threading is...well, different than any machine I've ever used.  But it's not difficult, just different.  Finally after two projects, my Sashiko cover and my most recent quilt, I think I've got straight sewing under my belt.  That doesn't mean that I'm perfect.  I still break the thread more often than I'd like.  But I feel like I can make a nice finish with straight stitches.  Next I need to work on the curved patterns.  When I first tried this, right after getting the machine, I had a lot of trouble with thread jams and broken thread.  But now that I understand the machine better I think I should be able to make curved patterns work for me.  The curved patterns seem to deliver the most punch.

The machine is not computerized.  It comes with a bobbin winder and a compartment to hold some tools and extra needles and bobbins.  It uses a special needle to make the stitch work.  Baby Lock says that they make the only Sashiko machine in the industry.  The website has some great pictures of the features I've mentioned.

And, just to be clear.....I'm only sharing my experiences.  I'm not on the Baby Lock payroll in any way.  I am glad, though to answer any questions about my experience with the machine.

So, maybe I'll be able to create some items once my quilting backlog gets reduced.

Whisper Block #4

I guess I just have trouble thinking abstractly.  Because this month I received a block for our guild Whisper Challenge that looked like...well, like nothing.  I stared at it for a long time:

Then I turned it upside down (or maybe right side up?) and stared at it some more:

It looked like a rib cage with a lot of tumors and then it looked like an oak leaf with acorns, but mostly like those alien things from the TV show "Falling Skies" that were placed on the back of the kids to allow the aliens to control them.  But finally I saw a Christmas tree with candles and I just ran with that idea.  Here's the result:

I tried to keep the colors and the swirly nature of the design and the glitter.  I don't how the previous sewist accomplished the glitter but I went with metallic thread.  This was my first time using metallic thread and I was expecting it to be a bit of a challenge to sew with.  I was surprised at both how smoothly it sewed and how nice it looked!  I'm anxious to use it somewhere again.

Although it was never said, I sort of expected these blocks to become more abstract as the weeks went on.  But somehow I made this one less abstract I think.

So, next month we will get back the blocks created from the picture we provided and will have the challenge of combining them into one. 

The Quilts of 2013: A Tribute

For the past few  years I've made a small wall hanging to sort of commemorate the quilts that I made throughout the year using scraps from each of the projects.  I have the ones from 2012 and 2011 hanging in my sewing room.  This year I decided to go a slightly different route.  One of my Christmas presents was a Sashiko sewing machine.   The machine didn't come with a cover so using scraps from my projects in 2013 I created a cover and quilted it with the Sashiko itself:

 It was a great opportunity to practice using the machine.  It makes this great stitch that looks like hand sewing.  You can vary the length of the stitch and/or the spacing between the stitches.  Amazingly those two little changes really give a different look to the final piece.

 It uses only one thread - in the bobbin and the threading process is unlike any machine I've ever used. I will say, it can be a persnickety little thing.  It likes things to be the same, so the settings that worked on fabric and batting didn't like sewing on the bottom finished edge which required going through multiple layers. 

Next I'm going to try it on the border of the quilt I'm presently working on.  And I have a few decorative pillow ideas in mind, too, whenever I get through my backlog of projects.  I keep reminding myself that it's about the journey, not the destination.  It's important to enjoy the process, not just try to cross another thing off the list. 

Hmmm.....that would make a good wall hanging.  Oh, but that's another project, isn't it?

 

Old Business and New

This holiday season has really flown by.  Unlike past years it seemed like there was little time to reflect on last year or think about goals for the new year.  So, I'm going to keep it easy.  This year my quilting goal is, "Just say no."  I get seduced by the many, many wonderful ideas and opportunities online and the beautiful fabrics in the stores and I want to do them all and use them all.  So, consequently I have several projects mostly finished and that sort of frustrates me.  So this year my motto is to just say, "No."  I may "Pin" or download a pattern or idea but, at least for the next six months I should be able to keep busy with finishing up my "mostly finished" projects.  I'm allowing myself one exception (I know, that's a slippery slope!)  The gals at Fandom in Stitches will be having a monthly block around the theme of the movie The Princess Bride.

 This is an old romantic fantasy comedy from 1987.  It sort of has a cult following and the boys and I are part of that cult!  We've been known to quote lines from this movie in everyday conversation.  Last year I bought them each a DVD of the movie.  So, I'm going to take notice of the blocks (this is a paper pieced project) and may play along.

And that was actually my "new business".  So, in old news I want to share some of my Christmas presents from this year that I couldn't share before the holiday without ruining some surprises.  I made several pants bag ala Jennifer at Glinda Quilts.  I was gifted one of these by Jen and absolutely love it.  She shared a tutorial at the link above.  Here are my versions:

The one in the upper left was made with the circle attachment on my sewing machine.  Turns out that it is easy to work and really awesome!  I don't know why I waited so long to try it out.  The three on the bottom left were made for the sock monkey recipients from earlier last year. 

I also made a few potholders and two aprons (which I forgot to take pictures of).

So, I'm off to work on some blocks for my Country Threads BOM project.  I actually have the December blocks done but haven't had a chance to take pictures.  AND.....if anyone is keeping score, I've finished my step one of Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilt.  She had a surprise reveal on New Year's day and I'm slowly putting the blocks together....more about that later.
 

The Paper Pieced Beach House

A few months ago I mentioned in a previous post hat we often stop at a fabric store on our way to the beach.  I may have also mentioned that on our recent trip the husband added a kit for a paper pieced beach scene to my check out pile.  I'm not sure he really knew what it was - only that he liked the picture and thought our son would like to have it for Christmas.

I've done some paper piecing before but nothing this small.  But, I stuck with it, made my share of mistakes and I think the end result turned out well:

The house is a bit wonky....although it wasn't meant to be.  But I tell myself that once it's hanging on the wall who can tell if the house is off or the piece isn't hung straight?  And, besides, a lot of beach houses truly are wonky in real life!

Donuts Anyone?

I made this placemat for an uncle of mine.  He teases that when his wife needs to go somewhere for a few days and he is left along, he stocks up on donuts to last him until she returns:

I got to use my embroidery machine and do a bit of small scale free motion stippling.  I hope he gets as much fun out of it as I got out of making it!

Quilty Thanks

We will be having a houseful for this Thanksgiving which we will celebrate a day late to accommodate everyone's schedule.  I've been busy getting the house ready and the refrigerator filled.  Since much of the family lives a distance away, holidays are multiple day affairs with people coming and going according their available vacation days.  It can get rather confusing.  But I'm thankful to be seeing all of my grown men at some time during the weekend along with their partners and some additional family.

I also have some recent quilty things to be thankful for.  I was gifted some GREAT green scraps from a friend!  They will come in handy for the upcoming Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt as well as some other projects in the works.  Thanks, Friend!!

And...recently I've been a winner, twice!  First, from Heather at Quilts in the Queue I won a great book by Elizabeth Hartman. And then from Carol at Just Let Me Quilt I won a kit of some great boy fabric to make a pillowcase.

Thanks Friend, Heather and Carol for filling my mailbox and making me smile!
 

Busy Elfish Days

I've been busily sewing this last week, but  I'm not ready to share many of my projects since they will be Christmas gifts.  I did finish two service quilt tops for my local guild.  They will get passed on to another member (probably a long arm quilter) to be sandwiched and quilted.  Here's a picture of my contributions with some Christmas gifts peeking out underneath:

 

The Tinker Tote

This tote is the main project of a Craftsy Class called Quilt As You Go Patchwork Bags by Tara Rebman.   I learned a lot from this project.  I made some choices along the way that actually made things a bit more difficult.  Someday I'll learn to just follow the directions! 

The class starts out with a potholder project...great for using up scraps.  It's a good way to learn the quilt as you go technique and gave me a place to practice a few binding techniques before deciding which one to use on the bag.

 

I need to mention about the cat fabric.  I won this in a giveaway at Lilypad Quilts during the Pets on Quilts contest.  The contest sponsor was Fabrics 'n Quilts.  Thanks Snoodles and Shannon!!  So sorry for taking so long to mention that, but it all happened the day before we left for vacation!

 

The blue fabric and lining came from my stash and the bottom is made out of denim from an old pair of jeans.  There is a zippered pocket, a patch pocket and a key fob inside and a magnetic closure.

 

So, what would I change?  I would have used the more traditional QAYG as presented in the video.  But, my thinking took this track:  I want to use this cat fabric.  It's not scraps, why not use larger pieces?  I think even using the strips I might have been happier if I had put them directly vertical instead of on an angle.  Once you go through the project one you realize what parts could have used an extra measure of attention.  For example, I wish I had positioned the magnetic snap a bit better, but all in all it was a great class and I would definitely recommend not just for the quilt as you go technique but for general bag construction and zipper pocket installation.  All the techniques can be applied in a lot of other projects; and I'm sure I'll make good use of them!

Maybe My Fabric is Alive?!?

I guess I just need to accept the fact that things move.  Just when you thought you knew where the grocery store stocks toothpicks....they move them.  Just when you thought you knew where the remote to the TV was...it's not there anymore.  One day you take a good look in the mirror and realize that certain parts that used to be one place have, umm...shifted - usually south.  And just when I thought I had two pieces of fabric lined up exactly, well, I don't.  Somewhere along the line things move, fabric shifts, the sewing machine feeds a bit unevenly.  It just doesn't cooperate or behave.  So I've decided to try to compensate for my active fabric by measuring and remeasuring and trimming as needed.  It helped some on this last project, as did a new technique for making the quilt sandwich.  I can't show you the whole quilt yet, but here's a peek:

I may be late to the party on this one, but here's how I did the sandwich:  I took some kabob skewers, cut off the pointy ends and taped them to the center of my table making a cross.  Then I found the very center of my backing, lined it up with the cross and secured it tightly all around using binder clips and tape.  I did the same with the batting and the top, got it all smooth and pinned the layers together.  I found this suggestion online at several places.  My apologies for not remembering where so that I could give credit. The main difference from my previous sort of haphazard technique is that I started in the center.  Before this I would try to start from one corner working out in two directions.  It never seemed like I had everything square and even.  I like this a lot better.  There was still some fabric movement, but it was a lot less than my last few quilting attempts.  I also became very generous with the size of batting and backing taking advice from Elizabeth Hartman in her Craftsy class on quilt backs.  She recommends adding two inches to the size of the top all around for the batting and then another two inches on all sides for the back.  So the backing ends up being four inches larger than the top on all sides.  The nice thing about this is that you have a lot of coverage if the fabric shifts.

This was also my first experience working with precuts.  I used a charm pack and some 1 1/2 inch strips (honey bun, maybe....I mix up all those names).  In general I like the idea of pre-cuts since I'm a bit rotary cutter challenged. With precuts you know that everything is the same size.  The pinked edges took some getting used to.  And my take away is this:  Not every piece in the charm pack will work with your design so even if you only need one pack, you might want to get two since you might not be able to use the really low volume or high volume pieces.  I ended up utilizing the last few blocks on the back of my quilt for that very reason.

So this is my Iron Quilt for Jenny Doan's Iron Quilter II challenge at Missouri Star Quilting Company.  Once it gets closer and I've entered the photos I'll post it here and probably suggest that you consider voting, particularly if you like the quilt.  I was encouraged by the husband's reaction to this one.  I think he really likes this effort.   

A "Not Quite Finished "

I finished the top of the next project in my Craftsy class: Inspired Modern Quilts with Elizabeth Hartman.  These projects make me think about color, shape and design in new ways.  Since I certainly won't get this quilted until next month, I wanted to share the finished top.  The class project is actually the center part.  I wanted it to be slightly larger so I added the elephants on the top and bottom:

One of the concepts that isn't too well represented here is negative space.  It seems like a lot of modern compositions have a lot of negative space - often as much as the designed space.  But my log cabins grew a bit large.  The other challenge is taking a wonky block and making it fit into a non wonky finished quilt shape.  There ends up to be a lot of trimming involved and a fair amount of wasted fabric.  I would think that over time you get better at that. I found that I got a bit more relaxed and "wonkier" as I went on.  The block on the top left was my first and you can see that it's not as wonky as the rest.

My plan for the rest of this is to bind it in yellow or maybe bright green, use a flannel backing (I love the chevron prints in flannel that I've seen, but I also think that an animal print might carry the theme nicely) and do some free motion all over quilting.  This is going to be the "Nana's house baby blanket" for the grand baby arriving early next year.
 

Block of Valor Drive

I've been having fun making some blocks for the is  big block drive at Alycia Quilts for Quilts of Valor.  She is collecting two types of blocks this time. 

String blocks:

and these blocks:

You can see that I made twice as many of the strings.  They are seriously addictive and fun to make.  My supply of blue, however is really running low at the moment.  The drive is open through October so maybe I'll pick up some more blue on my next trip to the fabric store.  Postage for the blocks is also reasonable.  I fit 15 into a flat rate priority envelope for $5.05 (online rate) but I think you could even mail them for less using first class parcel rates. It's a great way to participate in a worthy organization.  Alycia takes these blocks and magically transforms them into some awesome quilts.  Hop over to her web site and see what I mean.

She also has some great sponsors offering prizes.  Every five blocks gives you an entry into the giveaways.  But, honestly, the real prize is being able to show thanks to those who have given us so very, very much.

 

More Fun in the Sun

In spite of all the problems I had finishing the Fun in the Sun quilt a few months ago, my niece absolutely loved it.  In fact she decided to use it as the inspiration piece to decorate her home office and asked me recently to create some pillows to accent it on the day bed.  Actually I made pillow shams and she will fill them when they arrive.

I had a few odds and ends of the fabric left, bought some white and a little yardage from the same collection (most of the fabrics were Ticklish by Moda with some add ins from my stash) to make pillowcases and here's what I came up with:

 

 

The square ones will hold 16 inch pillows and the larger ones will hold standard bed pillows.  They all have envelope backs and flange edges.

 

Then I decides to make two pillowcases, just because:

 



So, hopefully these will help accent the quilt.  The link to the "rest of the story" about the quilt is above, but here's a picture of it:

 

Curtains: A Walk on the Home Decor Side of Sewing

Son #1 and his partner recently bought a co-op apartment.  (Co-op apartment owning was a new concept for me to get my head around.  You basically own a share of the entire building with the right to live in a particular apartment in the building.  It's sort of like a condo except that the residents own the building, not the condo corporation.) The building is from the 1920's with old, large windows making them difficult to dress.  They asked me to make them some curtains for the bedroom and a French door.  So, another learning adventure began for me and has just concluded with this result.  These pictures are taken on my window which is narrower than their windows by a few inches and has a much lighter rod than theirs.

Lessons learned from this adventure in sewing:

• Curtains always take more fabric than you expect.  I bought an extra yard because it was the end of the bolt and I knew I wouldn't be able to go back and buy more if needed.  In the end I had about 1/2 yard left over.
• I still don't like making curtains very much.
• Buckram is a stiff interfacing type material used in the header to provide body.  Prior to this I had never heard of the stuff.
• Grommets are actually pretty easy to install.  The hardest part is getting them evenly spaced.
• Cotton is so much easier to work with than synthetics.  It's predictable, it tolerates ironing well, resists stretching and stays where you put it...unlike the fabric used for the curtains.  But I have to admit that this fabric hangs nicely without a wrinkle in sight.
• Curtains always take longer to sew than you expect.
• I still don't really like making curtains, but I'm always glad to be a part of my children's lives in whatever way I can.

  Here's hoping that the curtains fit as expected and are liked!