Sewing Buddies Pouch Swap

Sewing Buddies is a program put together by Deborah Moebes over at Whipstitch which I've watched for a couple of years, but finally decided to join for 2014. She describes it as, "a fun opportunity to meet other folks who love sewing.  That’s it, in a nutshell.  I hope you’ll find that the videos, challenges, giveaways and other fun stuff that comes along as 2014 unfolds adds to that for you, but at the core, the Sewing Buddy Project is about making this virtual sewing community immediate and tangible for each of us, by giving us a friend to share ideas, make nerdy sewing jokes, challenge us to keep our goals, and to grow our sewing with."

One of the challenges this year was to make your buddy a pouch. My buddy needed a pouch for her iPhone, and she asked for, "one with a zipper. That would be really useful. And maybe the pouch could have an inside pocket for the ear buds. I like most colors but prefer that it not be pink - pink has never been a favorite. When you choose the fabric, think "fullness of color" ...I like color, color, color! (I think that is why pastels are not my favorite.)

I think I nailed it with this fabric. Nothing pastel here :-) The fabric is called Effervescence and is by Amelia Caruso for Robert Kaufman. It was screen printed in Japan with 15 different colors. 

The pattern runs the full width of the fabric with an awesome border that I thought would look great for a skirt or dress hemline. I've no idea where or when I bought this, but it's been in my stash for awhile, and I was happy to use a bit of it for this gift. 

As requested, the pouch has a zipper

and a little internal pocket for ear buds. I sort of used this pattern, with some modifications.

This was a fun swap and project, though I've got to say that if I was making this pattern again, I would rework it so I didn't have to put the zipper in by hand. That was a serious pain, and I wasn't happy with how messy the stitching looked. Ah well. "Tomorrow is another day"...

Remember that DIY Bath Remodel

I realized today that I never posted any finished pictures of my do-it-yourself bath remodel. I mentioned it nearly a year ago way down at the bottom of this post.
  

The photo on the left shows the room at it's very best... blah even at Christmas, and what were they thinking with that honking big sink in such a tiny room? At the time of my post last year, it looked like the photo on the right. I had pulled up the 1980's marble floor tiles and (as expected) found wonderful 1930's hex tiles underneath.

And then I started pulling tile off the walls. Oops. Guess I'm not going to be slapping new tile up over that backing. 

So I hired a handyman to help me with the wall board and a bit of carpentry.

While he was working on that, I decided I needed to strip 80 plus years of paint off the doors and door hardware. That old crock-pot works great to get the paint to loosen up from the nickle plated brass hinges and door knobs. Just put the metal pieces in the crock-pot with warm water and a bit of dish soap. Turn it on low and let it "cook" for several hours. The paint softens up and slides right off.  

Once the handyman was done I added some glass tile for a back splash, and painted the walls a bright sunny yellow.

The whole color scheme was worked around this fabric I fell in love with and had to have for a shower curtain. Designed by Pat Bravo for Art Gallery, it is from the Retro-Spective line described as "bringing you back in time, ...features designs from the 40's with the original colors of that period". 

I thought the yellow was a little too mustardy for the walls, so went with a shade more like lemon pudding. 

Now that I have lived with it for several months, I must say I don't love it. Kind of wish I had chosen something a little more

And I may get around to painting in there again this summer. Fortunately it's not a big space to paint.

I do love this cute little basket I made out of fabric scraps. It's all wrapped - not a bit of stitching. 

And the work to strip the doors was probably worth it. Of course there is no telling how many brain cells the chemicals and lead paint killed off.

This was my real nemesis. Don't let anyone tell you it's easy to drill through ceramic tile. Even with a great drill and the correct bit, it took hours. Never again.

But I adore the top down/bottom up shade. It is just the color of the tile and lets in lots of light, and a view of the trees and sky, without letting anyone peer in. All in all I'm happy with the project, and would definitely DIY again with some handyman help.  

A Gaggle of Geese

I might have mentioned that I've been a bit obsessed with hexagons. Well add flying geese to the list. I'm working on a block quilt where each block is made up of a different design using flying geese - those cute triangles that veer in one direction and another.

I've also done quite a bit of experimenting with making the geese fly in a circle and paper piecing is my savior. I made three gifts with a similar theme for three friends who had birthdays in January and February.

Jim was gifted with a two bottle wine carrier and a pouch that holds a reusable ice pack in case the wine is white - or in case room temp is just too hot as is often the case of a Southern summer.

Alice, an inveterate knitter who seldom ventures out without a project, received a project bag along with an accessory pouch to hold all the etcetera that usually floats around in the bottom of a craft bag.

Here is another view that shows detachable shoulder strap.

And Joan received this table topper/hot pat/wall hanging. Yeah, I know, but it really could work as any of those. It has pockets for hanging, is insulated, and could be just decorative on the table.

Each of the circles is made up of four paper pieced sections, and though it looks a bit complex, it really is easy peasy. Paint by numbers for quilters!

Here you can see how the sections were assembled for each piece.

This is the template I drew up. I made my template at 6 1/2 inches so that the finished circle would be 12 1/2 inches, but you really could make it any size. Feel free to reproduce it either by copying the picture and inserting it into another document or application, or by using this as a guideline to draft your own.

And if you aren't an expert paper piecer, by all means take Amy Gibson's free class on Craftsy.com. In the 2012 Block of the Month class she gives and excellent explanation of how to paper piece. 

The only thing I would add to her instructions relates to perforating the paper. Amy recommends that you use your sewing machine without thread to quickly perforate the paper along the seam (and future tear) lines. While this works really well, it is hard on the sharpness of your needle. 

I recently learned a new trick and now I use my tracing tool to quickly perforate the seams. I like this one from Dritz. Give it a try and let me know what you think.

And goodnight to the Old Lady whispering "hush"

Don't you love Margaret Wise Brown's classic bedtime story? The illustrations by Clement Hurd

are brought to life in a new collection of licensed prints by Cloud 9 Fabrics. When I saw the fabric being offered by one of my favorite retailers, I thought immediately of a friend with a new baby and decided I needed to make something for her.

In the past, I've made quilts for baby showers, and then followed up with a gift when baby is born of some bookends and a starter collection of board books. Goodnight Moon is always among them. 

This time I decided to make something that would work as a baby quilt, but also hold up to rougher use as a playmat as baby grows through toddler stage.

And I love that Cloud 9 produces only organic cotton fabrics using low-impact dyes, so you know it is safe for baby.

How is that for bright primary colors?

There's little bunny....

and pesky mouse.

Clementine Glory. What a perfectly  Southern little girl name!

 

I used this dark teal solid for the back, which coordinates with the prints, but also won't show stains as much as a lighter backing. We are talking children playing on the floor in a house with dogs.

If you are looking for a quick and easy gift for a new baby or a toddler, this is it. This play mat is made up in the wonderful “Goodnight Moon” collection from Cloud 9 Fabrics. The design is a very simple large block patchwork that even the most novice quilter can easily master. Consisting of only three sizes of blocks, it’s also really quick. You can cut and pieced the top in an afternoon, and the quilting design (a simple diamond grid) is just as straightforward. No special skill required. Find the pattern here.

Improvisational Quilting: Floating Frames

For most of the quilts I design and make I start out with a pretty complete design on paper before I begin cutting into fabric. The quilt I made for my niece Coleen, dubbed Floating Frames, was not like that at all. When I saw this fabric collection from P&B Textiles in the Hawthorne Threads newsletter, I really loved it and ordered a half yard of most of the prints in the line, plus a couple of recommended coordinating fabrics. I always love it when online shops take the guesswork out of finding coordinates, don't you?

photo courtesy Hawthorne Threads

A couple of months later, after looking at it for a bit, I decided the colors would work for a quilt I wanted to make for my niece. However, I knew I was going to try something improvisational, so guessing the amount of fabric I would need was a bit of a challenge. Just to be safe, I ordered a few more prints and solids. Well and then I didn't think I had enough fabric for the backing... Before I knew it, I had 14 1/2 yards of fabric.

Fabric

Hah! Talk about crazy town. The good news is that after making a quilt that measures approximately 50 by 60 inches, I still have almost six yards left in pieces ranging from more than a fat quarter to more than a yard. That's enough for another whole quilt top! 

Finished

But enough about stashing building and busting. The real question is this. How do you write up a pattern for a truly improvisational quilt? My conclusion is that I can't. Others have, I know, but I could never tell you at this point how to precisely measure and cut to make a quilt that looks exactly like the one I made.

I needed that big red dahlia for the center!

However, I can share a bit of process. The first thing I did was to cut out some large blocks (six by six inch) of the prints I wanted to be focal points. Next I cut strips of all of the other fabrics in widths of 3 inches, 2 1/2 inches, 1 1/2 inches, and one inch. I used these strips to build frames around the center blocks, building them up and trying to maintain a contrast of light and dark with small pops of red.

Frames floating on a black wall

After looking at the resulting big framed blocks, and laying them out against a black background this way and that, I decided that I wanted to set them on point and add lots of smaller blocks scattered in and around the larger ones - much like a modern grouping of photographs on a wall, but all askew.

This little block almost fell off the edge

This is where things got interesting. It was easy enough to cut various pieces of the colorweave black (my background fabric) and to join and square the blocks up into rows. What I hadn't counted on was the corners. In order to finish the corner pieces I cut a bunch of triangles. What I neglected to pay attention to was where the bias edge was going to fall on these triangles. As you can imagine, I had some fits (and colorful language) when these bias edges tried to warp the whole thing out of shape. Next time I would cut more carefully to place the bias edge (if there must be one) in the least difficult location. In my opinion, that is along an outside edge where the whole thing can be squared up if need be.

Quilt back

Despite my whining, this whole project really was fun, and I will definitely continue to do more improvisational piecing - even on point projects like this one. I even did a wonky piece job on the back of the quilt. Just a glutton for punishment I guess. Though I learned a great trick for making sure that a pieced back is lined up with a pieced front in this Wendy Butler Burns class on Craftsy.com.

Labels tell the story

So I can't give you a pattern to follow, but I can give you a suggestion. Buy a stack of coordinating fabrics and start to play. When you are finished, you can add a label like this one that tells the world, "I made this".