Tuesday is Just For Me

Here is where this was a couple weeks ago...Four stars, painfully pieced. Four corners, even more painfully paper pieced. I hear about people that just love paper piecing, but I gotta say, it is my nemesis. I hate how wasteful it is, so I tru not to waste so much, but then I just end up picking out these teeny-tiny stitches and cursing profusely & in more color that this quilt has. I am most happy that thepaper piecing is done, and it is onto the hand applique.
As of today, two of the art nouveau-esc panels are done. The other two are started, but not put onto the background yet. I will probably add a swirling and colorful appliqued border to the quilt to help tie the vastly different styles together.

My other complete accomplishemt is the completion of my daughter's holiday dress. Albeit, it has been done for more than a week, just awaiting buttons. But now it has buttons and is finito. I guess colorful is an increasing trend in my sewing.

No annoying collars for 5-year olds to just stain. I love the simple red ruffle instead.

It is fancy enough for her, and for the holidays, without being covered with snowflakes or santas so that she won't wear it past January.

Rather than putting a tie in the back, which can be uncomfortable for sitting, we did 2 pretty flower buttons. I did this on dresses 2 years ago and it was a hit with the girls.

It is made to look like a pinafore and jumper, but it is all one dress, and it is edged with tea-dyed eyelet trim. Somehow, the eyelets I like best come in white, and cream is always prettier.

The rest of my week is all about catch up...getting some wool batting pieced in preparation to quilt one of my own pieces, and finishing something that is currently loaded. I have kids home too many days next week so the progress must come this week.

Tuesdays are Just For Me

Or they should be!

I thought I'd show this since I am slightly more than just a quilter (only slightly!). I on occasion make heirloom dresses too!

I was able to get more time this past weekend to work on a customer quilt, so I finished it a day earlier than scheduled. This allowed me time to get onto another "chore"...finishing (ahem, starting) my daughter's holiday dress. I completed the simple smocking last night, and how have parts of the outer dress assembled. It has a ruffled underskirt (lining) which hangs below this dress. The ruffles will waste (require) much time assembling! It also has sleeves since it's nearing winter, and this adds some complexity. It's a sweet modern spring-ish print, not so Christmassy. But who wants to wear red & green or Santas in February anyhow.
The smocking may eventually get some bullion knots or roses or beading eventually, but I really just needed to get moving so I did it simply. One thing I used for the 1st time is rayon thread. It has a lovely silky shine, but the threads were more of a nuisance to smock with, and I doubt I'll opt for them again. They give the bodice a shimmery, more formal look though.
I will waste plenty of time this week marking my next personal quilt (only after I go get a couple more blue marking pens). I have some designs that are easier to mark before loading the quilt, plus it is forcing me to think about how to fill the spaces. I am seriously contemplating about quilting it in gold thread. It's a gutsy move for me, considering I am most comfortable quilting in matching thread (to more easily disguize my goofs). But I have this most awesome cone of military gold Glide thread that I am dying to use on a quilt... Not metallic, but nearly as good as that.

A long weekend and a few finishes

The kids were home 4 days this past Columbus Day weekend. Just about all sewing came to a screaching halt, except that which I can do between 5:30 and 7am, and after bedtime. It does pay to be an early bird in my house! We spent Saturday doing the soccer and dance shuttles all morning, and a fair bit of puttering in the afternoon. The weather hit 80 or above all three days which is not common for Maine. I was able to get a good bit of my back garden replanted. It was pulled out completely this time last year in preparation for the house addition. Fortunately I was able to keep much of the plants in a holding bed that I have grown veggies in in past years.
On Sunday we made our annual trek out to the Lobster Shack. It's a local and kind of low end restaurant on the coast. You pay for the location not the fried seafood and burgers. It was a hot and gorgeous day. The kids usually cooperate for a few pictures that often go on the Christmas card, then we walk along the rocks. A nice outting. It's the kind of place that makes forgetting any issues and a strong desire to really want to sew easy.

Last weekend was the Quilting with Machines show in Ohio. I sent my Postcards from Venice to the show. Despite some reports that the show seemed small, the competition of quilts was of a high quality, as seen here. I am lucky to have received an honorable mention as well as a teachers ribbon. I'll find out when it arrives home which teacher gave it. This quilt is making its way to the Georgia Quilt Show now, with high hopes of doing well there in 2 weeks.

What else haveI been up to??? Still designing, still dreaming of a creative way to use red and orange hand-dyes. I actually like the design I am developing now. It's kind of art nouveou, but not really in those colors. Maybe I should just give up and go for the purples and make the design process simpler on my brain!

I finished a client's 2nd table runner in the wee hours of this weekend. The little red flower centers are not appliqued on. I prepared the circles for the client to enhance the look of the flowers.

...and a closeup look

And lastly, I have shirred some fabric that will become my daughter's newest dress. We picked it out for Christmas, despite it not being red or green. Those seem so cliched and not worn but a few times around the holidays. I just want to make her a pretty heirloom dress that can be worn year-round. I need to go buy yellow floss before I can go much further. It is a shade of green, and there is some red (only the piping details will be red), but it will have a yellow ruffled underskirt and sleeves to make it springlike. I should have bought the eyelet laces this weekend at Joann's on their sale...oh well!

A Birthday Dress

With 2 months to spare, her birthday dress is completed. She changed plans on me after I'd cut out the smocking section. Originally we were doing a ruffled skirt and shirt, but then she became very adamant about it being a dress, one-piece! SO...I had to get creative as how to put this thing together.
She's all about being fance (AKA Fancy Nancy), loving ruffles, trims, bows, etc. If it twirls out three feet, all the better. I am hoping to find or make her (or better, have someone else make her!) a play dress up wedding dress for her birthday! Initially I was going to do a peasant-style skirt out of 4 or 5 coordinating fabrics. When I got to putting this together, it seemed out of place. Consequently, I have several extra ruffles made! Luckily, we bought plenty of fabric to do this all in just one.

I kind of botched the smocked section. It was made a couple inches too narrow, so a patch was added at the ends. That is not too visible, but then I failed to gather it to the skirt so it didn't hang quite rigt. I added the ribbon ties in those area, and viola, it is not obvious (and it is more fancy!)

Very simple smocking since the fabric is busy.

And under the layers of ruffling is a ribbony fabric.

My happy model.

And she's twice as happy because I came home from Target with these new sandals for her - her first ever. They are still hard to walk in, but she loves them all the same. They'll be perfect on the beach.

Puttering Along with an Assortment of fun stitchings

On this dreary and rainy May morning, I'll start this post with a sneak peek of the back of my quilt. It has been hard to photograph accurately because of dim inside lighting and rain & clouds outside. The back is actually the same dark navy blue and plum that are on the front. I just took the picture looking into the light so as to capture the texture. I am still contemplating redoing a few things before I bind it, but as time goes by, I am becomming more and more accepting of how it looks. Last week, I ditch outline stitched every single applique. And there were A LOT!
And an easy afternoon sew for my daughter, who was destroying and soiling one of the more decorative pillows in her room - one that does not remove for washing. I actually quilted this on my Singer, and was painfully aware of how long it has been since I FMQ'd by moving the fabric! YEOW - it was hard. She's all about pink and princesses and fairies, so when I found this fabric for $3 at fabric.com, I could not resist.

And one very large queen quilt I did for a local lady. I'm not a huge fan of the CW fabrics (or maybe they are just overly traditional/Americana), plus they all had a pattern which made doing detailed quilting harder. For example, I started to feather the tan (tan print) setting triangles but couldn't for the life of me see where I was going. I picked it out and did something I hate to do - stipple! Stippling is hideous quilting. I really loathe it, but some places just are not worth the trouble or loss of eye sight to do something differently.

For whatever it is worth, she loved the quilt and left another for me to do. It's got about 1 row left on the panto and will come off the frame today. I had not done pantos in quite some time and felt like a little semi-mindless quilting. That sounds bad, but seriously, some quilts look just great quilted with a nice all-over. And the 2 that I just finished doing it fit the bill for perfectly. I need to knock off some of the smaller, easier tops I have right now because I have several larger and more detailed jobs coming. The business has been very active this month. A nice change of pace...just hope I can manage to keep up once the boys are out of school in 6 weeks.

Here's a little baby quilt that has been awaiting it's owner for a couple weeks now... (hint!)

And...remember these fabrics? Well, the dress is nearing completion. Thought I'd show a peek at the smocking first.

Have a good rest of the week, and pray for no rain this weekend. Not so for our Saturday forecast, and bad news since I am supposed to be doing a garage sale that day :-(( Bad garage sale translates to "no sewing $$"!

The "thread basket" part of my MQX prize arrived today! I've never used YLI thread before (being quite partial to Superior!) so this will be fun to test out. I'm not sure where that bright variagated orange will find a home, but the others are all very usable!

I'm not just a Quilter

Long before I ever quilted anything, my mother taught me to sew. And to embroider and eventually to cross stitch and do needle point. I remember learning basic sewing in about the 1st or 2nd grade. It was not until I was 21 that I ever attempted my first quilt. This may be surprising since much of what I post here is quilt related. Eight years ago when I was expecting my first (a son) and my sister-in-law was expecting my neice, I taught myself to smock. I shirred the fabric by hand. It took hours just to do that. I had to select checked fabrics because of the natural marking, which made the shirring by hand possible. Now I can say that with 10 more dresses under my belt, I am quite proficient at making smocked dresses.
This is my daughter on the day of her 3rd birthday party. She's the ultimate "frilly dress" girl if there ever was one. I made this dress from Michael Miller's petite Autumn Flower Fairies material. It's just gorgeous - much different than a picture can show, having a luscious gold veining throughout. I now have a friend of mine's smock pleater to do the shirring (it's on semi-permanent loan), so I am not limitted by striped or checked fabrics, which make the shirring much simpler if doing by hand. I can pleat the bodice in a matter of 20 minutes, not 6 hours!

I stumbled into the "Coin" colored Fairy Frost too, which is a lovely complement for the fairy fabric since it shimmers too.

("Mama, are you done yet or do I still have to smile???")

...pretending to be on the phone while she awaits the arrival of her party guests

As a surprise, I actually made three of these dresses. One is for Sophie, and the other two for her cousins, ages 5 and 7. They have birthdays this fall, and happened to be in the US for her birthday party (normally live in Italy). My oldest neice totally loves fairies so it was an instant hit. The other prefers animals so it may have missed the mark with her, but her mother likes it :-) Unfortunately I still have the dress because the nearly 8 year old is a tad larger than I was led to believe. I need to take the sleeve openings out a little. It's a much larger take out job than it is a "fix" job. Just so long as it fits her is all I care since I know she won't wear it otherwise.

Rather than doing a traditional collar, which requires pressing, and often gets stained, I chose a simple ruffle. I love the way this turned out up by the girls's faces.

The smocking is rather simple...just a waffle smocking all over in varying coordinating colors, and three bullion roses. It looked just right against the busyness of the fairy fabric.

And another twist, no bow in the back! I am learning that the older girls don't like to lean against the pretty bows. My Sophie does not care, but the older girls do. So I chose a very simple elegant look with two buttons. There are no button holes - it is just stitched down. The buttons are bronze shell, and have a nice irridescence like the coin fairy frost.

And as if a fancy dress wasn't enough, I also whipped up two little bags as well (with little coordinating change purses inside).

My younger neice was not so anxious to try her's on (which did actually fiv exceptionally), but the older one did happily. She's the one that loves pretty dresses and fairies. An instant hit. Now it's time to think ahead to Christmas (sigh!), and contemplate what I might do for the more animalistic of the two...Seems I owe her another outfit more to her personal liking.

Not Really Making Quilts

If you have been following Emma's blog lately, you'll notice that she has great blog titles, as well as fantastic quilts to see. There's been Inspiration, Speculation, Celebration, Obsession, Anticipation, just to name a few. In keeping with this simple thought, here's my take on why you haven't been seeing finished quilts here lately...

1. Loneliness - I had proposed to my mom to jointly make a donation quilt. I thought she'd love it. I had a bunch of fishy novelties I wanted used up too. I made my 6-12" blocks. Turns out she doesn't really want to make "fish", sigh. I think she just doesn't want to sew. Oh well, here's 3 of my 6 brightly colored fish blocks. I will gather the fabrics I gave her this week and make my other 6 blocks for this Linus quilt myself.
2. Meticulation (is this a word??)- I spent time last week doing bullion embroidery on the front of Sophie's birthday dress. Very time consuming, but well worth it! The roses blend a bit, but are quite pretty.

3. Perfection - A lovely bodice/neck is done. The "Coin" Fairy Frost is absolutely perfect with this fairy material. It shimmers perfectly. I also used it on some sleeve and bodice piping, and the bottom of the dress will have a band of it. She'll ring in her 3rd year next month in high toddler style.

4. Obligation - I'm working on blocks for the row robin I am doing. Diane has selected "Monochromatic, Big-Small" as her theme. We are making a one color row with a larger and smaller block. Here's a couple of my blocks. The blocks are now done and need assembling into a 60" row. I love the aquas, and my styles for blocks turned out nicely I think. Of course I did one of these blocks (like I haven't seen enough of them lately in the 4SQS summer block swap!). I did 4 different blocks - I'll post the finished row soon so you may see the others too.

5. Exhaustion - I am just tired of this quilt. It's Sophie's dress quilt and this Saturday is the day it's being turned in for the Maine Quilt Show. The longer it is around, the more I find to do on it. It needed a label, but I did more hand quilting too. It needs a cloth bag made and it is DONE. The picture on the label is hard to really see well, but it's a shot I took recently of her wearing a dress I started kindergarten in. It was a cute profile shot, or so I thought. The inscription reads:

"My sweetest little girl, My only little girl, and my favorite reason for making pretty dresses".

Seemed appropriate~

6. Pandemonium - As if sorting nearly 1100 blocks to over 50 recipients is not enough, the 1st mailing of the 4SQS summer block swap left me with other things to do/worry about. I discovered one person should have gotten 40 blocks not 20, but I discovered this after all the "choices" of blocks were expired. I had 4 different blocks left when I realized it! She'll get her blocks at the next mailing. I also discovered over a dozen blocks with errors when I was sorting the packages. I pulled these aside and used my personal blocks. I had no way of knowing who to send them back to at that point. Talk about more Frustration. So, yesterday I took each of these apart and resewed them so that they could eventually be used. Not fun, but productive.

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7. Procrastination - Procrastination sewing because our summer weather finally arrived. It rained much of June, sew or so I chose to sew at naptime. Last week the rain stopped. There are few things that I love as much as sewing/quilting - few places that I get absolute peace and serenity. My gardens are one of them. Here are a few pictures I added to my other blog last night of the glorious colors that surround my house. It's a magnificent spectacle of color!! As all of you Australians are suffering with the middle of your winter, let this bring you some warmth :-)

Last 2 Project Linus Finishes

I know this blog is mostly for sewing adventures, but it's hard to pass on a couple very cute pictures of my soon-to-be-not a two year old. I mostly put these in because she's wearing the prettiest smocked dress. In fact, this is the very dress I wore on my 1st day of kindergarten...38 years ago! Yes, I must have been something tiny. It fits her pretty well. The bullion embroidery around the dress is quite lovely & dainty, and well beyond my patience level.

I finished these 2 Linus quilts a couple weeks ago during a sewing lull. We finally had a break in the month-long rains, so I could get them outside with the camera. This one is all from my scrap strips box. Sadly, I don't think I even made a dent in the box. It does lay flat - the folds at the sashing are because it was folded up for a few weeks.

This one is kind of like "gramma's attic" to me. I pulled darks and lights from my box of precut 4.5" scrap squares (it is down to about 1200 squares now!). It's not my favorite, but If you squint your eyes just right, you can detect the pattern! It is a case of complete salvage. Two yrs ago I bought 4 unused lavendar curtain panels at Goodwill for a buck or two each. They had 2 yards of fabric in each! I pulled them out for the backing and binding! There is no fabric that I won't eventually use!

Progress in New Directions

I have been playing in EQ6 for a month now, designing different things to make with my 25 FQs of hand-dyes I got last month for my birthday. I have contemplated a variation on a Lone Star as well as a detailed New York Beauty quilt. Both of those got overruled. I'm just not in the mood for the paper piecing right now. I love this idea. The tree in the center is just pictorially - It will really be more "tree-like", with actual leaves in all of the colors. I'm calling this my Tree of Life.
The first border of intertwined pinwheels/stars is immensely tedious. They are small, only 4" square when finished, plus they are a partial seam construction. Some of you may recognize this as the construction from the Colorblocks (the 4SQS5 summer block swap). In theory it is not hard, but the tiny size of these makes it difficult. Here's a look at the first 4. I have nearly 9 done now, and hope to have all 20 by week's end.

I have also nearly completed the smocking on the dress I am making my daughter. It's fairly simple, but I thought that was OK since the fabric is pattern-heavy. I'll begin dress construction soon.