Christmas Sewing or lack there of!

Just an update.  I've been sewing, just nothing worthy of posting pictures of.  I made 4 stockings to hang on the mantle and they came out OK, nothing too special. 

I have my Mama's Boy quilt all layered and pin basted.  It is ready for the quilting part....scary!  I also have the purple dress all cut out and the serger is threaded and ready to go.  Before I can get in there to work on those items, I need to get into the guest room and prepare it for Christmas guests.  My daughter and my grandson are coming in on Thursday and leave next Monday.  Then my brother and sister-in-law are coming in on Tuesday next week and leaving on New Year's Day.  So.....if I don't get to get in there to sew tomorrow, I won't get to until next year.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Finished with Thanksgiving Weekend PJ Sew Along

I didn't get to spend all day in the sewing room today, only a few hours.  I did finish the PJ's ---and they are VERY bright!!

I totally forgot to mention that I made a tote bag from this pattern last weekend.

Here is the finished bag --- shhhh....it is a Birthday present for my sister!!!

Tomorrow is Christmas decorating day so I won't get to sew much, if at all.  Maybe I will get to cut out my deep purple knit dress and jacket during the week and sew a bit next weekend.  Until the next time.....

After Turkey Day Sewing

I got to spend the ENTIRE day in the sewing room!!!  That hasn't happened in a very, very long time.

First I finished the pajama pants

for the PJ Sew along with Ann from Gorgeous Fabrics.  (Thank you Ann for starting this sew along...I needed the push to get these PJ's made since I had originally cut them out in September of last year!!)  And then I started on the top, but stopped for a bit to let the collar cool on the tailors ham before I attached it to the neckline of the PJ top.

So I made this - a thread catcher with a pin cushion attached.  A practical bit of sewing.  Then I got back to my PJ's and this is where I left off for the night. 

Tomorrow after I go to Weight Watchers, nail appointment and then to buy groceries for the week...I will attach the cuffs on the sleeves, the pocket, the hem and then the buttons and buttonholes.  I should finish by Sunday.

Wednesday night I re cut the PJ's from the Large that I had original cut back in September 2009 to a Medium, but after trying them on...I think I could have cut the Small.  Oh well, they will be extra roomy and comfortable for sleeping and lounging around in.

For the next project after the PJ's are finished I have a deep purple stable knit that I will make another dress and jacket with.  I made this same pattern here.  I LOVED this dress and jacket and wore it many times but when I was putting all my summer clothes away last weekend and pulling the fall clothes out, it was too big and I wasn't going to be able to alter it to fit..at least the dress.  I probably could wear the jacket but the dress armholes were too big along with the rest of the dress.  So I decided I would just make a new dress and went to Hancock's the other day.  It is actually the same knit I used on the grey dress except it is purple.  I know how well this knit washes and dries, so there will be no surprises.

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

I'm back in the sewing room!!!

The quilt class was fantastic!  I now feel much more confident that I can machine quilt!  I know I will need to practice, but I really think this is something I can do.

My new serger arrived on Friday, so I got to sew with it Sunday and I've been using it a bit each night.

Here is my Tissue Tote that I made from the free pattern I received at The Teacher's Pet booth in Houston.



And then I made.....12 more!  Gifts!  Free!  Made with fabric scraps in the stash!

I also made a cute little pin cushion.  And I have 5 more of those to make.....because they are cute!  I'll post pictures of all of them later.  Tomorrow night is the quilt guild meeting, so no sewing then.   Friday night I plan to start on the PJ's out of the same fabric as the gift tissue totes.  They have been cut out since last September and now I have to adjust the pattern size used because they will be too large now.  Hopefully it won't be too much of a pain to fix that.  Until then..... Happy Sewing.

Houston Quilt Festival - What a weekend!

I actually made it to the Houston Quilt Festival this year, my first time!  It was fantastic awesome fabulous!  I made the decision to go last Tuesday afternoon after getting a bit of feedback from some posts on PR and the idea was given to me to try Priceline.com for a hotel room.  I didn't even look to see if any of the Host Hotels still had rooms, so I gave Priceline a try.  First I put in $60 and it came back and said to try $75 for a 4 star or better hotel.  So I gave it a try and low and behold it came back at $75 at the Houston Hyatt Downtown just 11 blocks from the convention center where the Festival was being held.  So, I got up at 4 am Saturday morning and headed out to Houston.  I arrived about 9:15 into traffic due to road construction right downtown at my exit to the Hyatt.  I made my way to the Hyatt Valet parking and the valet suggested I try to check in.  As luck would have it, they let me check in!!  I put my stuff in my room and then headed to the convention center and the weather was perfect for an 11 block walk!  I met up with my neighbor and her sister and we proceeded to have a day of SHOPPING!!  Here is a picture of the loot I purchased. I know I said I wasn't becoming a quilter....but I think I might be....it is just so much fun.

I'll describe...Bottom left is a pair of curved snips to cut those jump stitches in my machine embroidery designs, a pair of reverse tweezers- for changing those needles, a quilt pattern to make the with the fabric in the upper left, a slip pad for machine quilting, a tote bag pattern and the fabric that I will use that is folded in the star package and a straight stitch plate for my sewing machine.  In the next row is a freebie of a tissue holder pattern with the fabric and then a few pins that were freebies and the luggage tag from Babylock that was a freebie along with the tote bag.  Also here is the ergonomic rotoray cutter and some nonslip pads for rulers.  I also bought the ruler that has a lip for this rotary cutter to fit on but they were sold out so it is being shipped.  To the upper right are 3 different sized rulers from Quilt In A Day by Eleanor Burns and her cute shopping bag.  I even got to meet her in person!  Then there is the red halo for machine quilting and the last 2 items shown are 2 different patterns for quilt in the hoop for the embroidery machine.  My neighbor and I split this purchase - it was buy 2 get 1 free so we split the cost and will share them.  She took the other one to her house.  And the biggest and most exciting purchase is the ......

Babylock Imagine serger!!!  It has Jet Air Threading for the Upper and Lower loopers!  Wow is all I can say.  It is being shipped and I can't wait to get it.  That means that I can actually change threads when I am serging something.  I have had the same white thread in my other serger because it takes my 30 to 45 minutes to change the thread on the darn thing.  Anyway, we spent the entire day shopping at the vendors and then we all had dinner at a wonderful greek restaurant somewhere in Houston.  I'm sure I could never find it again!  Sunday morning I had a leisure breakfast at the hotel then went upstairs and packed and headed down to checkout around 10:00 am and then headed to the parking garage next to the convention center.  I parked then contacted my SIL and we met up and viewed the award winning quilts and most of the other entries.  Wonderful quilters out there!  I then left my SIL and moved back into the vendor floor where I visited the Floriani booth to talk with them about my software.  She spent a good 45 minutes with me and I feel much better about trying to digitize now.  I headed back out around 1:30 and made it home around 6:15 pm!  Whew!  What a weekend.

As you can tell, the Quilt Festival was a great success for shopping. 

This Saturday I'm taking my machine quilting class that was cancelled from a few months back.  A few of the items I purchased will be used in the class.

I'll post how the class went!

Completions

I'm finally back in the sewing room after my working/R&R trip to Porto, Portugal.  I returned late Wednesday, Oct 13th and needed a day to recover!  Last Sunday I finished trimming the binding for the quilt and then I took 4 evenings to hand stitch the binding to the quilt.  Today I made the label and attached it.

I took the quilt to my Sassi Srippers Quilt Guild club on Thursday and they told me the name of the pattern was Hole in the Barn Door.  I had no idea what the pattern was and surely appreciated the info.  Here is the finished quilt.

Then I worked on the embroidery of the book cover for our Iota Epsilon yearbook, for our newest member, Joan.  I finished that and will give it to her this weekend at our "Get-A-Way" weekend in Tickfaw State Park.  I'm giving Paula the quilt then as well.

Those were 2 items needing to get finished before the end of October!

Now I want to finish the Mama's Boy Quilt that I started in January and work on a few items that I had plans for gifts.  My machine quilting class is now rescheduled for November 13th.  So I'm looking forward to that too.

Here is a few pics of Porto!

Until next time.....

Purple, Purple and more Purple!

Want to see what I've been working on all weekend? A purple quilt!  My friend Paula's mother-in-law passed away almost a year ago.  She was a quilter.  Paula found this quilt top along with the backing fabric in a bag and I volunteered to quilt it for her so that she would have it finished for the anniversary of her death next month.  I found the fabric to make the binding and bought the batting and finally got started Saturday afternoon.  I tell you, now I know why it is SO important to press your squares after you have pieced them going a certain way!  It sure has been a challange getting this quilted when the blocks aren't exactly square and the seams not pressed properly.  It has been a wonderful learning experience.  Here is the quilt top layed out for the basting with safety pins.

I've worked on it all weekend, today ALL day except to eat lunch and dinner. I've finished the quilting and have made the 30 yards of binding.

Here is  a close up of the binding.  I couldn't believe I found something that would match so well.

Here is what the quilt looked like when I finished quilting.

The back is the solid dark purple that was used on the blocks.  It seems that the blocks were made in 1986 since 2 of them were dated with the person's name that made the block.  The story is that Rita's (Paula's mother-in-law) quilting group made the blocks and then they were put into this quilt.  Several are signed by the person's name and others aren't.  It is pretty remarkable for me to be working on something like this.  I feel like I've finishing up a piece of history.  I wonder if the other ladies that worked on it are still living and do they wonder what happened to the quilt?  Some of the blocks were hand stitched and others were machine stitched.

I hope to get to work on it a bit more next weekend, but if not it will have to wait until the middle of October since I am leaving on October 6th for Porto Portugal for a work meeting....and a bit of R & R with my husband since the 8th will be our 34th wedding anniversary!

After this quilt is finished, I'm going to finish the Mama's Boy quilt I started earlier this year!  I'm really not turning into a quilter...full time at least, I will get back to garments one day!!

Later!



Sorry for the massive absenteeism!!

I have been very, very absent from posting, not sewing...but posting. 

I left off after I wore the dress I had been working on.  Since that time I have finished another dress, with the same pattern

AND took my trip to London!  We had a great time - we did have a chance to see the Grace Kelly exhibit

at the V & A.  It was wonderful. Sewing related, I went to a nice fabric store (I don't remember the name) I didn't buy anything there.  They did have the fabrics displayed a bit different than I've ever seen.  They had strips of the fabric hanging from  pants hangers and then those were on round racks with the price/content/location on a cardboard piece on the hanger.  If you wanted a swatch, you just cut a piece from the bottom.  All the actual bolts of fabric were stacked on top of each other along the walls.  Not the most appealing way to display, but efficient.  Then we went to the Liberty Dept. Store....beautiful fabrics!  I bought 3 different fabrics there and it was very hard to decide on just those 3 (limited luggage space).

Once home, I had to begin my next project...an A, B, C baby quilt

for my soon to be born Great Niece.  The shower is in 2 weeks and all I have left is to stitch the binding down. I just can't decide if I want to try the stitch in the ditch with invisible thread, or hand stitch it. I decided to hand stitch!  It came out really nice, for my first "real" quilt.  A few stitches are showing since I did the stitch in the ditch - I wasn't always in the ditch....I was even using my machine magnifying glass.

As soon as I finish this quilt, I'm going back to the "Mama's Boy" quilt that I started in January.  I feel more confident to be able to finish it now that I had success with the baby quilt.  I'm also taking a machine quilting class next Saturday.  It should really help me a lot.  I'm looking forward to the class so much.

One other thing that I almost forgot to mention was my first vintage machine that I purchased on E-bay from a seller in Canada a Bernina 121 born somewhere around 1957. She is a beaut and she purrs like a kitten. I have had some trouble with the stitches but I'm sure it is a threading problem.

Wearing of the dress

I wore the new dress today.  It was very comfortable, but I have one issue with it.  The lining seems to have stretched in the front as the day went on.  Every time I got up the lining was longer than the dress...only in the front.  Which is strange since the lining is cut the same length all the way around the dress.  I'll have to take a tuck in the lining between the front darts before I wear it again.  I'm taking it to the dry cleaner tomorrow for cleaning.

I wore it with this white denim jacket from Chico's today, but once I make the purple linen jacket, I'll wear it with the dress.  It gives me options!

I went through and purged the pattern stash yesterday and posted the 10 patterns on PR yesterday to give away and I gave them away today!  A nice lady in New York has agreed to take them from me.  They will be on the way to her first thing tomorrow.

It's a celebration!!! Happy 4th of July!! And I finished the dress!!!

I finished See and Sew B5235..at least the dress portion of the pattern.  I don't think I mentioned that this dress was inspired by a picture of a dress (109) in the Burda Style magazine from May 2010.

The photo of the dress and this fabric is close enough. My dress doesn't have the princess seaming or a back waist line.  

The view from the back.

Here is the detail of the zipper slipstitched to the lining.

I need to adjust my dress form...she is "larger" than me!!  I just noticed this when I put this dress on her inside out.  The dress fits me much more loose than it does her.  I'm planning on wearing the dress on Tuesday, so I'll snap pictures and post later.

I've changed my mind on making the jacket right now.  I want to make another dress first.  This time with a V neckline.  I saw this but I'll have to trace the pattern and alter it because it only comes in Plus size.  It is dress 123 in the March 2009 issue of Burda Style Magazine.  Not the coat, just the dress.  I'll have to give this more thought since the last dress went together so well...I really hate to take the time to try this one and alter.   

I will give this much more thought!!  Until next time.

Progress

I've had distractions today that have kept me from my sewing.  I didn't get into the sewing room until 2:00  pm.  I had to draft the pattern to make the interfacing for the neckline since I read somewhere that for best results, I should interface the lining along the neckline.  Once that was done and I cut the interfacing, I then got started.

I took a break at 8:00 pm to have dinner and post.  I'm now understiching the neckline and the armholes..at least as far as I can go.

I'll get back in there and finish the understitching and then I'll press really good and call it a night.  Tomorrow the zipper!!

Have a great 4th of July!!!

And the winner goes to - the 4th try

I finished the last pair of Kwik Sew 3614 - the shorts. I made these with the welt pockets and they came out pretty good. I am very satisfied with the outcome. I really think I like this pair best of all of them. Forgive the goofy look on my face!

For my next project - I'm making Butterick See and Sew #B5235.  I'll be making the dress from a Purple  Greek Key stretch cotton fabric that I purchased at Joanns when I was in Florida a few months back.  The jacket will be from the purple washed linen that I have had in my stash for years.  Both items will be lined with Ambiance, the dress with white and the jacket with purple of course.  I'm going to underline the jacket with an ivory cotton batiste to keep it from wrinkling so much.

A few weekends ago, I went to Slidell with my sister-in-law Danette (who I haven't seen in years!) to the quilt show.  I bought two packets of fabric, one with LSU motif fabric and the other with the Saints motif.  I plan on making a quilt using the Cotton Theory Quilting technique so that one side will be LSU and the other side will be Saints!  There were some beautiful quilts on display.  I felt so inadequate and in awe of the work these quilters can do.

I also bought a quilt pattern that I hope to try soon.  It is very simple, but I'm sure it will be a challenge for me.

 

And this is the last of the fabric that I bought at the quilt show...a gorgeous purple and gold Fleur De Li's.

My plan for the Holiday long weekend is to sew the dress, cut the jacket muslin and then adjust if needed and then cut the fashion fabric. The dress muslin was made last week and it fits perfect straight from the envelope with no adjustments. 

That is all for now, happy sewing.

Kwik Sew 3614

Ok, I finshed 3 pair of shorts with Kwik Sew 3614. The first pair was a light weight tan pair that are now too big but great for around the house.

The second pair is from an aqua blue twill from Hancocks and that I also used to practice welt pockets. These were the practice pieces. #1 was using the instructions from a PR online class by Shannon Gifford. I only tried it once and knew more practice was needed.

The second try was from instructions in a post on Gorgeous Fabrics' Blog from Friday, February 23, 2007 http://gorgeousthings.blogspot.com/search/label/Pockets which came out much much better.

Then I made a denim pair of shorts and was scared to mess them up with a welt pocket if things didn't go well, so I'll put the welt pockets in the next pair of shorts - a dark green twill. Here are the denim pair

They are cut 1 size smaller than the first pair and I love the stretch denim. I bought that at Joann's in Winter Springs last month. I messed up the buttonhole when I went to cut the slit and ended up cutting the threads! Drat! I'll have to hand sew around the cut part to keep the denim from unraveling, but since I always wear my shirts out, no one will see it but me.
I didn't do a review of these shorts on PR because they had been reviewed several times already and I really didn't have anything to add.
Next up, the green pair of shorts then a couple of dresses. Hopefully I won't be so long in posting.....