Adelaide Lemonade

A Quilt Finally

I've had a bunch of quilt tops ready to be quilted for quite some time.  Most of them have been sitting around for almost a year, and one is almost two years old.  I like the actual quilting - well mostly - and don't really mind the binding, but I hate crawling around on the floor and basting.  

Except for a few pillows, I've always used safety pins, but a friend finally convinced me to try out the basting spray.  I had visions of the quilt, batting, and back bunching up and sticking together all over the place.  I could just imagine all the layers being stuck to me with me going in circles to try to detach it like a dog chasing it's tail.  I even had visions of myself and/or the quilt being hopelessly stuck to the floor.

But I took it easy with the spray, and it actually went pretty well.  I laid everything out on the floor, so there was still a fair bit of crawling around.  My friend recommended laying everything out on a table, but I was too worried about getting sticky stuff all over my table.  I have one of those plastic-y Home Depot ones in my basement.  Maybe I'll dig that out and try it next time.

It wasn't a very fancy quilt or even a very big quilt, but I wanted to make it simple to show off the cute little Aneela Hooey designs.  I had managed to snag a charm pack before the yardage came out of her first collection.

I ended up quilting it simply, too.  I just machine-stitched my sewing machine foot width away from each seam.  I ended up going back and forth between my walking foot and my regular foot.  I've used my walking foot in the past, and it really hasn't done anything for me.  There are a few places where I ended up with a pucker in the fabric (frustration!), and I almost think the walking foot made that worse.  I plan to use the same quilting for my Heather Ross quilt, so I hope I can figure this out before then.

In hindsight, the solid blue binding wasn't the best idea.  There are some squares of the same blue in the quilt which, afterwards, I remembered placing strategically next to the non-blue squares, so it wouldn't clash with the other blues that weren't similar enough or contrast-y enough.  Oh well, it's such a light blue that I think you don't really notice the binding that much and can just focus on the quilt.

This time I did try machine binding.  I used this tutorial from Red Pepper Quilts, and it worked out great.  It takes me forever to hand bind a quilt - even a small one.  This was so much faster and still looks very nice.

I don't know if it was the simple quilting or the all-cotton batting that I used, but I love the softness and drapy-ness of this quilt.  The other ones that I've made and quilted with all-over stippling have seemed much more stiff.

I ended up giving this quilt to my mother for her birthday.  I know the Aneela Hooey fabric is probably considered a juvenile print, and the colors in the quilt are kind of baby-ish, but my mom had said she liked the colors when she saw the quilt top months ago.  She seemed to like it.

Anyway, it was a good quilting experience.  I might just get inspired enough, brave enough to do another one.

Happy 2012!

Many of the blogs I follow have a year-end post with a mosiac of all their creations throughout the year or reflections on 2011 (like these) or resolutions for 2012.  I like (or would like) doing all of those things except that it's been such a wonderful low-key weekend that I haven't even spent any energy on reflecting or planning.

All of us except my oldest went to a nice New Year's Eve party last night.  It was in the neighborhood - sort of - so we walked there and back which was nice, since we didn't have to worry about who was going to drive or about the slippery roads.

This morning, I stayed in bed later than I ever do.  It's torture for me to not get up before everyone else and get some quiet crafting time in, but I thought it would be nice to lollygag around a bit on this committment-free day.  I made popovers and fresh-squeezed o.j. for breakfast (I swear those oranges are reproducing in my kitchen) while my husband sat at our kitchen island and planned out a few mini family trips for the first three months of the year.  By the time we were done with that, it was 11:00 a.m. which I couldn't believe.

After we finally got going on the day, we went to pick up a 2012 date book.  We've tried palm pilots and Google Calendar but decided that what works best for our busy family is simple old pen and paper.  En route to buy the date book, we got a bit distracted at the movie theater.  We saw "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" which I'd been dying to see.  I loved the book, and I like Daniel Craig.  The movie was really good and true to the book for the most part, but I'm not sure I would have understood it if I hadn't read the book.

Needless to say, we got back much later than intended.  My husband turned on the game while I dragged my sewing sidekick to the fabric store.  I wandered around aimlessly for some time then finally settled on four different garmet fabrics that I've already prewashed and hope to cut into tomorrow.

When we got back with some New Year's Day munchies, the kerosene heater was going in the living room and the wine was flowing.  I decided to NOT hideaway in my craft room for a change and dug through my yarn, knitting needles, and Ravelry to relax in the living room with a project.  I haven't had much luck finishing knitting projects since I started sewing, so I won't go into any details yet.

It would have been nice to spend December finishing some of my 2011 starts (I have at least 5 quilt tops), but with the busy-ness of Christmas that didn't really occur to me until about the 30th.  I decided to spend the 31st doing something that's been hanging over my head for over a year.

I finished the last four quilt blocks for the virtual bees that I joined/started at the beginning of 2009.  Yeah, I don't really expect many kudos for that, since I'm so ridiculously late.  Who knows if the recipients even live at the same address, are still working on the same quilt, even like quilting anymore, but it feels great to have those blocks done.  I'm sure they'll be shocked to receive them in the mail.  It occurred to me that they may not even open them if they don't recognize the return address.  I can't believe these lovely ladies have been so patient with me!

Here are the blocks.

Log cabins for Heather.

I love the colors she picked out.

And I spy blocks for Balinda.

I loved the dark pink solid and getting to work with a little scrap of Heather Ross goldfish which came and went before I got addicted to fabric.

Hope you have a wonderful start to the new year.  Thanks for reading my blog!

Finished Pillows

So, as I mentioned in my last post, I decided to do up a pillow to test some different thread choices for quilting my City Park quilt.

I used this technique recommended by Elizabeth from Oh, Fransson via Sew Mama Sew.  I had so much fun with it that I decided to make a second pillow.  I'm so happy with how they came out.

My husband said they look "digital".  Not really the look I was going for.  He tries hard to pretend he's interested in my crafting, but often picks the wrong word when trying to be complimentary.  I'm way past being insulted by it.  I'm pretty sure my mom would say they look "Amish".  Either way, I really like them.  I've got to get some more solids, so I can make some more.

For the pillow on the left, I used 2" squares and followed Elizabeth's instructions exactly.  For the second pillow, I wanted slightly smaller squares, but instead of cutting them smaller, I used the same 2" squares and a 3/8" seam.  This way, I was able to cut my seam down to 1/4" which was easier to press open than the 1/8" or so that I had left with the first method.  (Sorry, this will really only make sense if you read the tutorial.)

For the left pillow, I tried some variegated thread which I liked.  I almost did the second pillow with the same thread but then thought to myself, "what is the point of experimenting if you don't try different things", so then I grabbed a bunch of thread that I already had - navy, slate blue, royal blue, cornflower blue, gray, black, dark green and held them each up to the pillow to try to figure out what wouldn't look too dark on the lightest color and what wouldn't look to light on the darkest color.  I ended up with the cornflower blue (which is Coats & Clark All Purpose 4120 if anyone cares), and I actually like it better than the variegated.  I'm not sure you can really tell from the above photo or even the close-ups below.

Variegated:

Cornflower: (sorry about the blurriness)

And I almost forgot, another part of my experiment was to try basting spray which I had never done before.  It was WAY easier than the safety pin method I'd been using - much faster to make the quilt sandwich and much faster to quilt without having to stop, take off my gloves, remove a pin, break a fingernail, put back on gloves, remember which direction I was going, etc.  The only thing I don't like is that I'm pretty sure this stuff can't be good for me to breathe and can't be good for the environment.  Hmm, a dilemma.

Decided I may as well enter these in the Blogger's Pillow Party here:

City Park Pillow

Thanks everyone for your advice on what color thread to use for quilting my City Park quilt.  I like the idea of using the darkest blue, but I also like the idea of using variegated thread.  That never would have occurred to me, so I'm glad I asked and glad you answered.  I'm going to check out what they have at JoAnn on my way home today.

It occurred to me yesterday while I was supposed to be paying attention in a meeting that I could experiment first before I committed to (and possibly ruined) the whole quilt.  Duuh!  So I decided to make a pillow.  I'm going to use this tutorial from Oh, Fransson! via Sew Mama Sew and a bunch of squares from my leftover fabric from the quilt.  Now, hopefully I don't ruin the pillow, but how bad could it be with all these great colors?  I cut out the squares this morning.  Now I better start getting ready for work, but I can't wait to get home and get started.

Happy Friday!  Don't you just love the possibility that the weekend brings?

Need Your Quilting Advice

I finished this quilt top back in August.  

I had originally purchased the pattern from Cherry House Quilts because I just loved it.  Then my mom was looking for a quilt to give as a gift.  I was done with all the blocks, so I figured this would be the quickest way to get one done for her.  Enter my new kids clothes sewing addiction and my poor mom has been stuck waiting for over six months.  Ouch.  She's been very patient, but I swear I'm going to at least get this puppy basted over the weekend.

What I'm really hung up on though is what color thread to use for the quilting.  There's a lot of black in the quilt, and I'll probably use mostly black for the back, but I'm afraid if I use black, it will show up way too much on the other colors.  Then I'm worried if I use on of the other colors, it will show up way too much on the black.  What do you guys think?  Gray?  I've tried the transparent thread, and I didn't like it. 

Tree Pillow Tutorial - Finally!

I finally finished the tutorial for this pillow.  The tutorial is here.  I hope you'll give it a try.

Here's the original tree pillow that I made.  More about that in this post.

Getting Stuff Done

I had an extra day off on Monday and a clean craft room on top of that.  I actually had a hard time deciding what to do with such a bounty of good things, but the spirit of being a more disciplined person in the new year won out, and I worked on completing some little tasks.

Speaking of a bounty of good things, check out this awesome loot I got from my mother for Christmas:

A yard of Heather Ross's Macaroni Love Story from Spoonflower, a yard of Eleanor Grosch's Zoo Menagerie, 2 yards of adorable ribbon, and a gorgeous Japanese pattern book.  It's going to be really hard to decide what to make with all this.  I already know it's going to be a struggle to cut into the Heather Ross, since I don't think you can buy it any more.  What would you make with this?  I'm thinking maybe a little spring dress for Addie.

The tasks I completed all had to do with quilt blocks.  For my Fresh Comfort Two bee, Anita requested spider web blocks.  I'd never made one, so I wanted to make one for myself first both to make sure I could do and to also because I liked it.  I used this tutorial from Sew Mama Sew that Anita had pointed us to.

Here's mine:

I did mess up a bit at first on Anita's block, since she's going to have two different sizes of spider webs, but here's hers:

Then I had four little sections of a string block to tear the paper off and sew together to make this:

I added a border to that one and also added a border to two other blocks that I had laying around that will eventually look like this:

Finally, here's one last quilt block that goes with the other two gray and raspberry ones above.  All five will eventually become pillows for my shop (or for me to gift away).

I didn't work on anything crafty at all yesterday, but I did finish up my 365 project which was a HUGE accomplishment.  Now that I think about it, I should have celebrated or something.  It ended up being a 358 project which actually isn't too bad.  (I have to confess that I missed more days than 7, but about halfway through I became totally comfortable with substituting photos from other days for the days I missed.  It was a good chance to use both photos when there were two on a given day that I loved.  And I didn't start until the 5th last year.  I'm happy to be able to start on the first day of the year this year.)

Coaster Tutorial

You know - the things you put your drinks on to protect your furniture.  Funny story about coasters . . .

But before I launch into that, don't forget about my little giveaway here.  Comments close tonight at 8:00 PM EST

A couple of years ago my sister and I (along with my mom and assorted children) were visiting my grandparents in Florida.  Since I like to try to go to a quilt shop or yarn shop everywhere I go, everyone obliged me and we piled into my mom's big rental van and checked out Magrieta's Quilt Shop.  Great selection - I'll have to do a review of that shop another day - if I can remember enough about it.

So my sister's not really as into crafting as I am, but I'm constantly trying to persuade her to do projects with me.  I'm sure I'm actually kind of a pain in the butt about it.  This time she actually caved and we bought the fabric to make this quilt.  It didn't take us too long to make the top and we finally did get it sandwiched.  

We live about two hours apart but try to get together every few months (which often turns into 6 months or more) to sew together along with my mom, so it took us a couple of these sewing weekends to get to this point.  On our third weekend we finally got to the quilting part.  I was very excited about showing my sister how to do free motion quilting.

She struggled with it a bit as you might imagine someone would on their first time.  I had practiced a lot before I did my first quilt, so I suggested she do the same.   I told her she could try making some coasters or a pillow or something.  She just very calmly said, "no, I'm not ready to give up yet, I think I'll try a little more."  Something in the way she said it made me realize that she thought I was suggesting she cut up her quilt and make coasters or pillows out of it.

I think you had to be there, but for some reason that totally cracks me up even now when I think about it.  First of all that she just didn't say, "What the *&^#$ are you talking about?!  I worked hard on this, I'm not about to chop it up." or something like that.  Second of all that the concept of starting another project in the middle of one would be so foreign to her as to not even cross her mind and so second nature to me that I wouldn't have imagined being misunderstood.

Anyway, so for Christmas, I just had to make her some coasters.  Here's the cute little set that I made for her.

I used my own fabric covered box tutorial to make the box.  It ended up being just about the perfect size.  If you want to try this yourself, the only thing you need to modify following my box tutorial is to use a 7 1/2" x 7 1/2" piece of chipboard (instead of the 11 1/2" x 11 1/2" one in the tutorial) and an 11" x 11" piece of fabric (instead of the 19" x 19" one in the tutorial).  Your sides will end up being 1 1/4" high instead of the 3 1/4" in the tutorial, so just modify where you draw your lines accordingly.  (Just leave a comment if you have any questions about this.)

I'm sure you can all figure out how to make your own coasters, but here's a little tutorial on how I did it, just in case.  I didn't want to go to the effort of doing a binding on them, so this is the shortcut method I used.  I ended up making three sets (well I'm almost done - you can see I haven't done the edge stitching and quilting yet), since I think they'd be nice hostess gifts for holiday parties.

Quilted Coaster Tutorial

1.  Make 6 little 5" x 5" quilt blocks.  I just grabbed some coordinating scraps and tried not to think about it much.  You could even just use one piece of 5" x 5" fabric and not do any piecing.

2.  Cut 6 - 5" x 5" pieces of coordinating fabric for the backs of the coasters.

(Just pretend there are 6 in most of these pictures.  I had already made my first experimental coaster - that I didn't take pictures of.)

3.  Cut 12 - 4 1/2" x 4 1/2" squares of fusible fleece.

4.  Fuse the fleece to the back of both your backing squares and your pieced front squares.  The fleece is a bit smaller, so make sure you center it.  Just eye-ball it - no need to be fussy and measure it exactly.  If you've never used fusible fleece before, the bumpy side goes face down on the wrong side of your fabric.  Don't try to iron the back of the fleece though, flip the whole thing over and iron on the front side of the fabric.

(Here they are flipped back over.)

5.  Pin the back and the front of each coaster together - right sides together.  Make sure you leave a gap for turning.  I put in some extra pins to help remind myself to stop sewing to leave the gap.

6.  Stitch (almost) all the way around leaving a gap of about 2 inches for turning.  Use a 1/4" seam and backtrack over your stitches at the beginning and end to keep them from unraveling.

7.  Clip the corners.

8.  Turn right side out.

9.  Poke out the corners with a knitting needle or some such tool.

10.  Press and try to neaten up the raw edges of the gap as much as possible - tuck them in before you press and they should not even be noticeable.

11.  Pin the gap closed.  (I was trying to be really fussy and get this nice and neat, but I think you could probably skip this step.)

12.  Edge stitch about 1/8" in all the way around.  That way you'll sew the gap shut in the process.

13.  Then quilt as desired!  To prove my point that coasters were a good way to practice quilting, I quilted each one differently.  I did three with my walking foot and more or less straight lines; concentric squares, diagonal lines (to make diamond shapes), and curvy parallel lines.  I did the other three with free motion quilting and my darning foot; classic stippling, pebbles, and a wavy-kind of shape.

Have fun!

Zig Zag

I'm dutifully working on my quilt blocks, even though Christmas crafts, my Tina Givens owl fabric, and more kids' clothes are nagging me hard.  See?

Aren't these zig zags cool?  They're for Joanna who is in two of my Virtual Quilting Bees, Fresh Comfort and Beatnik Bee.  I actually met her in person over a bolt of this fabric

at the first New England Modern Quilt Guild meeting.  She is such a nice person and from New Zealand which I thought was so cool, since I seem to run into a lot of New Zealand bloggers and flickr posters.  She was doing the same block for both of these bees, so she sent me enough fabric to do four blocks.  It was nice for me to kill two birds with one stone.  She even precut all the fabric AND sent some beautiful vintage trim.  How sweet is that?  I can't wait to make something with that trim.

Anyway, when I make quilt blocks for a bee, I like to make one for myself at the same time in the same pattern.  I have some aqua, red, and white fabric set aside for when I want to do this, so eventually I'll have enough for a sampler type quilt.  I started out by making mine first as a practice block.  Then I got behind.  And a little bit cocky.  So sometimes I made my block at the same time but then I didn't even end up making one at all.  This time I thought the zig zag was cool enough to reintroduce that procedure.

But like I said, my bee friend, Joanna, was nice enough to have already cut all her fabric, so making my own would have slowed me down (and remember I have all those other projects calling me?).  After sewing about 31 of the zigs and zags, I decided I just had to do it.  I was using brown thread, so I decided to veer away from my aqua, red, and blue theme and make a block for a brown/blue pillow.  Because that whole economies of scale thing wouldn't really work if I had to keep changing thread.  Right about the same time I figured out that there's actually a difference between a zig and a zag.  Sounds like a Seinfeld episode doesn't it?  I can just hear Jerry saying, "What's up with the zigzag anyway?  First you have the zig then you have the zag.  I mean who decided which would be the zig and which would be the zag?"  Can't you?  By day, I'm a computer geek, and I still don't know the difference between a forward slash and a backward slash, so who knew the zig would be different from the zag.

Joanna knew, but did I read the directions thoroughly?  Of course not.  I read the part that said it's really just a modification of a flying goose, and I was like, "Oh yeah, I get it".  I was happily sewing zigs and zags like crazy.  After I had a few done, I started laying them out because that's the fun part, right?  I got kind of a funny feeling when I couldn't just rotate a piece around and have it line up the right way, but I thought to myself, "it will work out somehow" and just kept on going.  I did some more and laid out some more.  In the meantime, I started my own little block cutting into my precious Heather Ross blue mermaids.  I got up to 32 zigs and zags when I finally admitted to myself that something was wrong.

I wanted to go to bed, but I knew it would bug me all night if I didn't take care of it.  Luckily, my piecing was somewhat random, so I ended up with 9 zigs and 23 zags.  I guess I'm zaggier than ziggier.  Did you know that once you cut off your excess little half square triangle, you can't convert a zig to a zag or a zag to a zig.  Arghh!  Fortunately, I had 4 zags that I hadn't cut yet, so I got out my handy little stitch ripper and took those apart.  Then I was able to find 3 more fabrics in my stash that seemed to match with Joanna's theme.  Thank goodness, she sent plenty of extra brown squares.

At that point, I completely gave up on making my own block.  I think this is a cool pattern, but like many patterns, it will work best in a whole quilt.  The overall look will be awesome, but in a pillow, I think it would just look like a couple of "M"'s.

Phew.  I've never had quite such an adventure with my quilt blocks. 

Thanks for reading.

p.s.  Don't forget that you have one more day to comment for a chance to win a free "Jeggings" pattern.

Study Hall Skirt

Here's the skirt I just finished for my older daughter.  She's 12.

I'm really happy with how it came out.  This Amy Butler print is one of the first fabrics that got me excited about sewing.  (That was before I knew anything about fabric designers.  Who knew there were so many beautiful options?!)

Now, I just have to find (or make) a shirt to go with it.  Obviously this one won't do.

And some shoes.  She's wearing mine.  Can you tell?  They're about 4 sizes too big, but I bet we'll be sharing before I know it.

If you're not already familiar with this pattern, it's Anna Maria Horner's Study Hall skirt pattern.  I bought it at my local Sew Portland quilt shop (I'll do a review of this shop one of these days).  It's not actually a kids' pattern, so if you're wishing it came in women's sizes, indeed it does.

Not that I want to dis (is that even how you spell that?  it must be short for something, disrespect maybe?) one of the goddesses of fabric design or anything, but I wasn't crazy about this pattern.  Don't get me wrong, I love the results, and that's what really matters, but I didn't love the process.

Before I launch into what I didn't like, I will completely confess that it might have just been my attitude.  There were a couple of things going against it:

1. I had just finished my 3rd Oliver & S Jump Rope Dress View B.  I was starting to get a little spoiled with not having to read directions (or at least only having to glance at them every now and then.
2. My long weekend was almost over, so I was low on patience.

Okay, so here's what bugged me:

1. I hate tissue paper patterns and the newspaper-y stuff that the pattern instructions are printed on.  (Didn't we have the same kind of paper in math class?)  I really have no rationale for this whatsoever.  I just don't like it.  It's like fingernails on a blackboard for me.  Yep, I know I'll have to get over that if I want to keep sewing, but I'm just being open here.
2. I wanted to shorten it by two inches, and the pattern had a nice line telling me where to do the shortening except then of course the lines on the outside edges of the pattern pieces didn't quite match up.  I know I should be creative enough to just redraw the line, but what if I don't match the curve exactly?  Or what if that ended up making the skirt not wide enough in places?  And what do I do about the little notchy thingies that got shortened away?  When I first learned to sew, I thought the notchy things were stupid as were pins and basting and ironing for that matter, and shockingly my stuff looked terrible.  It was a big waste of time and fabric, so now I really like the exacting process of matching up the pattern pieces exactly and following the directions exactly.  Not very creative, I know, but it makes me happy.
3. The instructions were too complicated.  I've taught myself how to do a lot of stuff, so I kind of pride myself on figuring out how to follow directions.  There were a couple of steps where I could not figure out what the pattern was trying to say.   I think there were just too many instructions in each step, and like I said, I guess I wasn't in an instruction-following mood (oh, and I might have had a glass or two of red wine by then).
4. I like finishing my seams as I go.  This pattern instructed me to finish them all up front.  When I sew, I like to start seeing results right away, so I didn't like this idea one bit.  I ended up finishing the seams with my pinking shears which, totally illogically, feels like a cop-out to me.  I suppose because it just seems too easy.  It hardly mattered, since most of the seams are covered up by the pleat.  I think next time I would do French seams when sewing the final back and front together and when sewing on the bottom border.  I'd also like to find a better way to finish the facing at the waist.  Maybe some seam binding.
5. Something funky happened with the zipper.  I'd never done an invisible zipper before, but the pattern suggested unrolling and pressing the edges right next to the teeth.  I must have stretched or pulled too much because the zipper ended up morphing into a "C" shape.  I could not get it to go back.  Luckily, it's not too noticeable in the finished product.
6. Oh, I almost forgot about this.  I think it was the most frustrating part.  The pattern piece that becomes the bottom border of the skirt was wider than my fabric.  I thought I bought 44" fabric.  Either I didn't, or it shrunk by 4" in the wash.  It was a bummer to have issues even before I started sewing.  I ended up having to piece them together.  Luckily that doesn't show up too much now, either.

I always have so many doubts as I'm sewing along, but I'm usually happy with the finished product, so I should probably stop worrying so much.  And you can see that most of the issues really had nothing to do with the pattern, so if you love the skirt, definitely buy the pattern.  And if you're Anna Maria Horner, and reading this, I still love you.

So now my little dose of clothing sewing is over for awhile so that I can catch up on my quilt blocks.  I actually finished some up this morning before work and dropped them in the mail on my way in.  Phew, it feels good to get that done.  I still have a lot more catching up to do.

These were for Jaclyn who was very patient with me.  She recommended that we use this tutorial which suggests you can make one in about six minutes.  I don't know about 6 minutes, but they were actually pretty fast (which makes me feel even worse for taking so long to get these done).

I hope to have some more finished blocks to show you tomorrow, but I better stop typing and start sewing.