WIP Wednesday: Rain

Tags

busyhandsquilts, Butterick 5948, cats, clothing, quilting, sewing, splashofcolorQAL, travel, WIP Wednesday, Yakima, Yakima Greenway

I was trying to catch them having a kissy-face session, but managed to take their CD cover photo instead.

WIP = work in progress

Well, it has been a week, my friends.  Some ups in there and some downs, too.

Autumn arrived this week, which has me feeling a bit melancholy.  All four seasons have their pleasures, for sure, but I wasn’t quite finished with summer yet!  We’ve had a little rain, which I know is very much needed, but I can’t help but feel a little gloomy when the weather is gray.

And then yesterday, this happened:

Not my fault, but it was a hit and run, which my insurance doesn’t cover.  😦

Sigh.

I’ve been fretting about it–because that’s what I do–but I’ve decided it’s time to move on to the rainbow part of the rain business.  YOU HEAR THAT, BRAIN?

Because some other stuff happened this week, too.

Like this:

Made some good progress on cutting strips for the quilt.

And this:

B5948 in ALL the colors.  Life lesson:  if you don’t have blue skies, sew some.

You can’t see them here, but I put vents in the sides of this like I did on the tank from this pattern.  Vents always complicate the seam finishing issue–French seams, my favorite seam finish, just don’t play well with them–so I zig zagged the seam allowances on the side seams.  This fabric doesn’t fray much, so I think they’ll be fine.

This took longer than it should have, simply because I was being terribly indecisive about the length of the top and of the sleeves.  I wound up leaving the top a bit longer than I usually do (more of a tunic length) and cutting about 6″ off the sleeves to get them to about a 3/4 length.  (I really should do all my woven blouses with 3/4-length sleeves so that I don’t have to keep rolling them up.)  I wore this yesterday and I think I made the right choice in both cases.

It’s also been raining patterns over here!

I picked up some patterns on sale at Joann’s recently.  I am particularly obsessed with the vest (V8954) and I have a piece of FOREST GREEN mystery knit from SCRAP that I’m going to use for it.

Totally not a Tilton sisters fangirl.

And then I met up with my buddy Heidi last Saturday and she gave me these for my birthday!

We had a lovely lunch and then a walk on the Yakima Greenway.  Highly recommended if you’re in the area.  This part of the path leads right to the door of the animal shelter–a seriously genius move, if you ask me.  I would sure walk a lot more if every walk involved PETTING ALL THE DOGS.

So there’s plenty of good stuff happening in between the stuff that isn’t so great.  I’m basically taking Jenny Lawson’s approach to September:  sit under the sunlight lamp, read a fun book, and pet all the animals.  Plus sewing.

Have a great week, and I hope you’re making time for some good stuff.

STH

ETA:  I have linked up this post to the Splash of Color Quilt-Along over at Busy Hands Quilts.

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WIP Wednesday: Zero to Sixty!

Tags

busyhandsquilts, Butterick 5948, cats, quilting, sewing, splashofcolorQAL, WIP Wednesday

(WIP = Work in Progress)

So last week at this time I was happily dawdling over patterns and fabrics and ways to combine the two.

Then I finished my fabric inventory in Evernote.  And panicked a little bit.  And realized I really needed to get off the damn computer, quit spinning ideas around in my head, and SEW SOMETHING.

So Saturday became Pattern Cutting Day.  I cut Simplicity 8052 (the colorblocked version) out of these:

These actually work better in real life; the knit looks a bit more reddish here than it should.

The one on the right is some sort of drapey synthetic from SCRAP.  I suspect polyester, simply because of those gorgeous colors.

Now here’s the interesting part.  I had wanted to use the poly for the center panel of this blouse, but couldn’t figure out another fabric to match with it (drapey blouse fabric isn’t something I keep around).  I was able to use the “1-2 yds.” tag on my fabric inventory to bring up all the possible candidates and came up with this purple knit that I hadn’t even considered.  I checked the pattern envelope and jersey was one of the recommended fabrics, so I used the purple knit.  That inventory is turning out to be pretty handy!

I also used this pattern to cut my fabulous turquoise curtain fabric:

You may recall this is the pattern I used for my plaid tank; this time, I cut the version with the long sleeves.  I was half a yard short on fabric for that, but I was able to squeeze the pattern pieces on there by changing the cutting layout a bit.  Instead of folding the fabric in half to cut on the front and back pieces on the fold, I just folded it up enough to fit the pieces; that left me enough width to just about cut the sleeves (I didn’t want to piece them because of that big bold print).

Things are also happening on the quilting front.

I recently had to go to the local quilt shop to get a gift and I also managed to come up with a little something for me:

SO VERY ME.

I have two favorite quilts in this book, but decided to start cutting pieces for this one last night:

Is this cool or what?

But I kept hearing this voice in my head telling me how efficient it would be to actually cut BOTH quilts at the same time, since they’re both going to be from my black and white scraps.  And that lap quilt would use up SO MANY scraps . . . .

That’s a whole lotta scraps in there . . . .

I’m a sucker for that whole efficiency nonsense–especially when you combine it with the promise of scrap-busting–so it looks like I’m going to be cutting TWO quilts at the same time.  This is either my best idea ever or my worst.  We’ll see.

Anyway, gotta run.  I have 569 black and white rectangles to cut for that lap quilt, so I may be a while.  😉

STH

UPDATE:  My tube fabric came!

There might also have been a yard of some fun flannel.

!!!

ETA:  I am linking up my Jubilee quilt to the Splash of Color QAL.  I can get that done by January, right?

WIP Wednesday: Preppy Plaid Pillow

Tags

Butterick 5948, clothing, Kaleo, music, SCRAP Tri-Cities, sewing, WIP Wednesday

(WIP=work in progress)

Brand new!  Hot off the pr . . . uh, sewing machine!

I just finished this late this afternoon, and I’m feeling all ready for summer now.

I’ve been a little bit grumpy about how gray and wet it’s been here lately, so I pulled out a bunch of my most summer-y fabrics and patterns and pondered what I could make that would remind me of sunny, hot days.

I started with this fabric, a remnant that I picked up at SCRAP a while ago–great colors, nice, crisp feel to it, but only 7/8 of a yard (53″ wide), which isn’t much.  It’s actually a Waverly home decor fabric and “dry clean only” (HA), but it came through the wash fine, wasn’t stiff like most home decor, and Google told me it was 100% cotton.  I’m not at all a plaid sort of person, but I love the fresh look of this print.  It was probably meant to be pillows for a chair on the deck of a beach house in the Hamptons, but, hey, I can do soft and pillowy, no problem.

Here’s the pattern I came up with–dated 2001, but actually still in print.

View B on the far left only requires 7/8 of a yard for 60″ fabric, so that was what I made.

I was worried it was going to be boring, though, with such a simple design, so I used the pocket included in the pattern and bound the neck edge with a bias binding.

Arm holes are finished with some bias tape that I made some time ago and accidentally cut too narrow.

This fabric had a huge selvage on it and I just barely had enough width for the two pattern pieces.  I wound up having to sew one side seam with a little bit bigger seam allowance, just so the selvage wouldn’t show.

Doing French seams doesn’t work well with vents, so I finished the side seams by turning the seam allowances under and stitching.

Sewing this got me thinking about preppy style, which I’ve always liked.  Not the pastels or the polo shirts, but the straight skirts, button-down shirts, and little cardigans.  There’s just something so neat and tidy about that stuff, you know?  It was a socially-acceptable way for girls to dress that wasn’t frilly or fussy (in other words, I could get away with wearing it while still living with my mother, even though it edges a bit closer to androgyny). It occurs to me that if clothing is a language, we sewing people can use our hobby to explore the facets of what we’re trying to communicate, why, and to whom.  Like lots of things, a simple little tank top can be the start of an interesting meditation.  🙂

This was a quick and easy project–not the 2 hours promised, but are they ever?–and a nice basic pattern to have around.  It’s sized for wovens, but I might try this in a knit just to see how it works.  I spent the winter replacing my oldest fleece tops, but I could stand to do the same with my tee shirts.

I hope you’re seeing signs of spring where you are and having lots of sunny summer dreams.  Here’s some sweet summer music for you to listen to.  (I really like this band–try this and this, too!)

STH

Buttered Scones for Tea

Tags

Butterick 5948, cooking, recipe, sewing

Happy Monday, everybody.  I hope a good weekend was had by all and that those who celebrate Thanksgiving had a fun, low-stress day.

My partner and I had our Thanksgiving meal at a local hotel buffet, as we’ve done for the past few years, and this time we were joined by my mother and sister.  Nice food and conversation and all the beef and gravy that my carnivorous roomie could eat.  He and I took a walk along the Columbia River afterward, then headed home for mulled wine and a nap.  Not a bad day.

On Saturday morning, we headed south toward Portland.  The plan was to meet up with some cycling friends in the afternoon, partner and friends would go off for an evening bike ride, then we’d all get back together for brunch on Sunday morning.  Our van had a different plan for the weekend.  We made it about halfway, then turned around and came home, as we weren’t sure the van would survive the whole trip.  Major bummer, but at least it meant that we didn’t have to share the scones I had made for the brunch.

Those are cheddar and chive on the right, cranberry on the left.  I used half all-purpose unbleached flour and half white whole wheat flour to make them, and I added the zest of an orange to the cranberry ones, but other than that I stuck to the recipes.  The dough for the sweet scones was awfully soft, and I didn’t add the extra flour suggested in the recipe, so they spread out a little in the oven.  Both scone versions were great, though, and we really enjoyed them with our own little Sunday brunch at home.

On the sewing front, I’m close to finishing up the pattern testing project.  The fit needs a little tinkering first, though.  (I have a post slow-cooking in my head that has to do with fit issues and my own apparently-very-unique ones.)  Here’s a preview:

I actually had to break down and purchase fabric for this, which offended my cheapskate and stash-busting sensibilities NO END, but the fabric was on sale at Joann’s and I had a coupon, so that’s okay, I guess?  That’s my story, anyway.

I also took a break from that project last week to whip up a long-sleeved tee-shirt using Butterick 5948 and the red knit fabric I got through Freecycle.

Here it is with a jacket I picked up several years ago from a Coldwater Creek outlet store (still grieving the loss of that store–sigh).

After all the complicated projects I’ve been working on lately, I was dying to make something that was actually QUICK AND EASY.  You know, something that I actually had enough fabric for.  So that’s what this was.  I cut it too big, but it was easily trimmed down later.  I kept it big enough and long enough that I can either wear it as a tunic or tucked into bottoms for layering.

The neckline is a bit wonky–one of these days I need to buckle down and actually learn some things about sewing knits–but it’s soft and cuddly, and it was actually quick and easy, so I’m happy with it.

STH