Colorful Adventures

Tags

alterations, cats, clothing, embroidery, Pooh, sewing, Shelby

Why is thread on fabric so special, so beautiful?  It’s sort of like handwriting, isn’t it?  You can see the author in every stitch.

Happy Wednesday!

A couple of very colorful finished projects for you today!

First, the embroidery up above.  Here’s the whole thing:

The backing, border, and ties are made of leftover fabric from my Summit Pack.  There’s also a layer of batting in there, just to give it a little body.

I don’t think I’ve posted about this project here before.  The design is from a coloring page (I believe from here), traced onto a scrap of fabric, either a linen blend or a “linen look” fabric.  I started this some time ago with the idea of pitching it to the local makerspace as a potential class, but progress on it has been slow because I always have a million other things that I want and/or need to do while I’m home.  So I started bringing it with me as something to do while I’m waiting for my mother at her physical therapy appointments.

Those appointments have become a highlight of my week.  It’s become such a pleasure to sit and work on this in a quiet room on a sunny afternoon and take a break from all my to-doing and must-get-doneing.  (Why, yes, I am pretty much making up my own words at this point.)  So I was a little sorry to finish this project, but (of course), I have more embroidery projects I’m contemplating.  There’s also an OLD Christmas embroidery kit that I’m thinking about maybe actually finishing (after HOW many years?)

In the meantime, here’s my other finished project–another altered tee, and I am LOVING how it turned out.

Here’s the before, a purchased yellow tee that has been in a drawer for a few years.  I don’t think I’ve every worn it because it’s a little bit small on me.  I’m sure I bought it just because of the color and the gathering at the neck.

On this one, I wanted to change the sleeves a bit, so I cut off the sleeve hems and removed the entire side/sleeve seams.  I added a bigger wedge this time to the sides–1/2″ wide at the bottom sleeve edge to 5″ wide at the shirt hem.

For the cuffs, I pulled out my copy of “Sweatshirts With Style” by Mary Mulari and used her technique.  Basically, you cut a strip of fabric, sew the short ends together, fold wrong sides together, sew onto the sleeve, fold, and press.  I didn’t want to have to re-press the cuff every time this top got washed, so I sewed it down.

Recognize the flowered fabric?  I used it to make a dress last summer.

I unpicked the hem for a few inches to either side of the side seams, then resewed it after the wedges were added to the sides of the top.

The gathered front originally had two small yellow buttons, but I decided it needed something brighter to balance the sides and sleeve cuffs.  These are two buttons and a bead from the stash.

I’m so happy with this top!  Lots of great color, a little bit of swing from the insets, and a fun, comfy top for the summer!

Okay, gotta crawl off to bed.  Have a great week and get yourself a lounge in that July sun.

 

STH

 

 

 

WIP Wednesday: All the Colors (Plus Black)

Tags

cats, clothing, Ellie and Mac Memphis Top, Fab Scrap, Mt. Vernon, Pooh, sewing, Shelby, travel, Tulip Festival, Tulip Town, WIP Wednesday, Zero Waste Daniel

Tulip Town in Mt. Vernon, WA.

WIP = Work in Progress

Hello again!

Inconsistent posting continues, but I hope you’ll bear with me while I work through the stressful and busy phase I’m currently in.  Sewing has been very sporadic, but I’m hoping the next few weeks will be a little more settled and I can get back to making things, as I miss it!

In the meantime, I have a few pretty pictures to share with you, such as that beauty at the top, from the Tulip Festival up north in Washington’s Skagit Valley.  My honey and I signed up to go on a trip up there that was being organized by his workplace.  I’ve always wanted to go, but the 5-hour drive and other logistical issues had held me back, so I jumped at the chance to take a tour where all the stressful stuff was taken care of for us.

This is Tulip Town, up in Mt. Vernon.  They have some displays there that have to do with all the countries that tulips come from, and some stalls where you can order your bulbs or have your face painted, but the main attraction is this one big, square field with rows and rows of tulips.  You and a mass of people wander around in the mud and take pictures to post on Instagram, while employees hover and make sure you aren’t stomping the flowers.

Am I making it sound a little weird?  Because it kind of is.  Everybody takes pictures like the ones above, while the actual experience of being there is more like this:

I have a lot of conflicting feelings about Instagram (and other social media) and how they’re used to show the world one’s perfect, glossy, gorgeously curated life–and monetize it!–while filtering out all the messy, complicated bits.  Maybe I should rebel and institute a policy of only posting pictures on social media of cooking failures, messy makeup, and my kitchen with its sink full of dirty dishes . . . 😉

Despite my complaints, we did have a lovely time, and got to have a fantastic dinner of fresh, local halibut with my buddy Heidi while we were up north.

Anyway, back home, I finally did finish and hem my Memphis Top.  I’ve been wearing it most days since then, so I’m calling it a win.  It’s so comfy, and so cute, that I love wearing it, even if it might make me look a little bit pregnant.

Not ready for Instagram.

I wound up taking 3 inches off the hem, and I think it’s about the perfect length now, though I have found it to be a bit aerodynamic when the wind blows!  That fun, full skirt does fly around with just a little bit of wind, which we tend to have a lot of here in the spring.  Note to self:  maybe find something else to wear when we have those 25 mph days.

The other big news is the little treat I got myself the other day as a reward for being brave (that kind of makes it sound like I was wrestling bears or something, but when you have anxiety, “being brave” can look a lot like doing normal grown-up stuff).  I heard about a company called Fab Scrap recently (I think on Facebook?) that resells fabric remnants generated by the New York garment industry.  I was sorely tempted by the prospect of unique, high-quality fabrics packaged in grab bags, but the shipping costs all the way across the country made me hold off and wait for a sale.  Which finally happened a few weeks ago.

I got myself a dark yard pack–5 pieces of at least 1 yard each–and a black scrap pack.  (Yeah, I seem to be going through a black phase right now.)  Here’s the yard pack, accompanied by a nice note:

The photo shoot didn’t last long before things got a little out of hand —

But here they are:

The two on the left are ponte (or something similar), and the one in the middle is a pretty standard synthetic lining, but I think the two on the right are probably silk.  The black on the far right is particularly nice–it’s one of those sandwashed silks that were popular during the early ’90s, and it has a beautiful drape and weight to it.

And here’s the scrap pack, which is comprised of mostly knits:

I got the scrap pack because I saw this video a while ago, and it’s been at the back of my mind ever since.

The tops I love in this video are the monochromatic ones–the white one that she’s wearing, and the gray one he hangs up–and I’m a little bit obsessed with the idea of combining different fabrics with the same colors but different textures.  So I’ve now got the scrap pack and a few other remnants I’ve picked up, and I’m going to have to try this idea soon!

Have a wonderful week, and I hope you’re finding crafty inspiration all around you.

STH

 

 

 

 

 

WIP Wednesday: Two Steps Forward

Tags

cats, clothing, embroidery, politics, quilting, sewing, Shelby, Social Justice Sewing Academy, WIP Wednesday

WIP = Work in Progress

CW:  Self harm.

I’m not exactly setting speed records here, but I’ve made a little progress on my projects since last week.  The combination of a lingering cold and gloomy January weather is so very un-great for your motivation to get things done.  😦

Above is a picture of my Maybe Quilt top–or 1/4 of it, to be precise.  I’ve been thinking about how to quilt it, and had to face the fact that there is simply no way to do it in two pieces.  It’s sort of grown in the making, and each half of the quilt is about 3 feet by 7 feet!  Sure, there are people who are willing to take on wrestling a quilt that size under a regular sewing machine, but I’m not one of them.  So I took a deep breath and cut each piece in half.  I’m not crazy about putting an extra seam in there, but it was the best solution I could come up with.  Next step is making a pieced back for each 1/4 so that I can finally sandwich and quilt this monster!

I’ve also taken in the sleeves on my PJ top and finished it up.  Pants are next, once Shelby is finished with them.

Also on the to-do list:  research new camera!

Poor little girl.  I accidentally trapped her in the cold garage last night, which led to a frantic search later when I was ready for bed and realized I hadn’t seen her in hours.  Cue the catastrophizing and visions of worst-case scenarios–YIKES–until she finally came out during my SECOND search of the garage.  I think she thought I’d abandoned her!  She’s been very clingy today; at this moment, in fact, she’s somehow perched on the back of my desk chair, so that she can keep an eye on me.

Anyway, I also acquired an interesting new project this past week.  I came across an organization called Social Justice Sewing Academy that holds workshops in which teens make quilt blocks about the social problems in their lives.  Those blocks are sent out to volunteers to be embroidered, then returned so that they can be combined into quilts.  I love the idea of high school kids having their concerns heard in this way (and seeing where they can take such an ancient art form), so I signed up to embroider.  These are the blocks I was given to work with:

There’s an interesting challenge here:  how to use embroidery to enhance a message that’s beyond the usual “here’s a pretty thing” point of embroidery.  How can I help the people who made these get their message across to the viewer of the finished quilt?  Between that and the actual issues dealt with in the blocks, I suspect I may learn a lot from this project.

Also in that vein, we had our local Women’s March this past Sunday; last year my partner and I went to Spokane, but this time I just drove across the bridge to Richland.

I just took a few pictures to give a size of the crowd–best estimate is about 1,000!  Not bad for such a conservative area on a drizzly, windy day.

Couple of handmaids showed up . . . .

If nothing else, it helped us all recharge our batteries a little bit, and I’m glad for that.  Because I suspect things are going to get a lot worse before they get better.

And a song that we sang before we marched:

Have a great week, folks, and take good care of your lovely selves.

STH

 

 

 

 

 

 

WIP Wednesday: Plague Month

Tags

cats, Covered in Love, embroidery, Pooh, quilting, sewing, Shelby, WIP Wednesday

WAKE US WHEN IT’S OVER

WIP = Work in Progress

So I started 2018 with all sorts of ambitions and plans and fresh-new-startedness and then . . . I got sick.

Actually, my honey got sick first, right after Xmas.  And he’s STILL sick, which will give you an idea of what sort of ugliness we’ve been dealing with here.

so . . . very . . . droopy

I SEEM to be getting better in a sort of two-steps-forward-one-step-back way, but we’ll see.  I’m hoping to avoid the second act–starring antibiotics and Prednisone–that my honey’s going through.  😦

I have managed to sew a bit during the plague, though, so let’s talk about that.

I had two Xmas presents to finish up, so those were my first priority.

The first was this embroidery for my buddy Heidi.

Terrible lighting on this is not doing it justice, but I was in a hurry.

Here’s a slightly less shadowy one I took before I bordered and framed it:

This design was a coloring page over here and it immediately made me think of Heidi’s lovely back garden with her cats peeking out of it.  I did this in more muted colors to (hopefully!) suit her taste; most is backstitch, with a little lazy daisy on the smaller leaves and outline stitch on the outline of the cat and the yellow flower.  Very fun to do, but I deliberated too long on starting it and so it wound up late.  She loved it, though!

And I also finished the wall quilt for my partner’s sister:

Finished size is about 16″ x 20″.

I did sort-of-but-not-quite matchstick quilting on this to enhance the sense of horizontal motion.  I skipped over the triangles with the quilting because I didn’t want to obscure the piecing in them, which is really my favorite thing about this quilt.  I used the tip here to start with drawn lines 2 1/2″ apart, then fill in the space between them.

Close-up on the piecing here, because I really need to try this again sometime.  I love the balance of simplicity and subtle detail in this quilt.

I finished the quilt up about the time I got sick.  So what to do now?  I wanted to make something but I didn’t trust myself to manage anything that might require brain power.

I decided to take a stab at some charity quilt blocks.

These are for the block drive happening over here for a charity called Covered in Love that provides quilts for the families of people who die in the hospital.  I’ve been wanting to do some charity sewing, and easy string blocks like these are a fun way to do that.  I’m using some old pillowcases (came in a box of random linens from my Buy Nothing group) as the foundation and lots of bright scraps for the piecing.  I’m up to eight blocks now and have barely made a dent in the box of strings I collected for this, so we’ll see how many I can churn out in the next six weeks or so.

There’s also been some progress on my flannel PJs, but I’ll leave that for next week.  Until then, wash your hands and stay safe, friends.

STH

WIP Wednesday: Festivities

Tags

cats, cross stitch, embroidery, Pooh, refashioning, sewing, Shelby, swears, WIP Wednesday

It’s a stick, guys.

WIP = Work in Progress

Content warning:  Swears

Happy Wednesday, everybody!

I hope you all had a lovely week, whether or not it contained a winter holiday.  We had a fun long weekend here, with SO much good food and music and lights and presents and SNOW!

Maybe only 3 inches or so, but it hung around for Xmas, the first white Xmas I can recall in the time I’ve lived here.

And I did finish my two rude cross-stitch gifts, even if I had to stay up until 3:00 a.m. on Xmas morning to do it.

Patterns from Stitchy Little Fox on Etsy.

The one on the left was for my sister, the right for my partner, and they loved them!  My partner’s immediately went up on the front of the fridge, and my sister told me she HAD to take hers to work.  She works at a Catholic hospital, so I’m not sure how that’s going to work out.  😉

What takes me so long on projects like these is being indecisive.  How to finish them?  Took me FOREVER to make a damn decision; I finally decided to give them these borders and ties so that they could be hung like a picture or put on a doorknob.  Regular frames just seemed too stuffy for them and I couldn’t come up with a way to keep them in a hoop and yet make them look finished.

My sister’s present for me hasn’t arrived yet, but she did bring me this little item:

Another Pusheen sweatshirt!  And even bigger than last time, but this one is made of nice, thick sweatshirt fleece.  Will need to ponder how I want to refashion this.

Before I do anything, though, I still have two presents to finish up, which I’ll try to do this next week.  I’m kind of ready for the holidays to be over so that I can get back to my quilts and other projects (and make use of that Joann’s gift card that Santa brought me!)

I’m ready to move on to 2018!

Have a wonderful week, and I hope all your 2017 loose ends are getting tidied up.  Happy 2018 to all!

STH

WIP Wednesday: Chaos Management

Tags

cats, quilting, sewing, Shelby, WIP Wednesday

WIP = Work in Progress

There has been progress in various areas this week, largely due to me being irritated by the chaos of unfinished projects all around my sewing room.  Black and white quilt pieces over here, Maybe Quilt pieces over there, towering pile of mending in the corner, unfinished Xmas presents next to them–YIKES.  I needed to feel like I was getting a little closer to having some of these things actually DONE, so I channeled my crabbiness into a little productivity.

As you can see above, the green blocks for my Splash of Color quilt are done, though not trimmed.  Purple, red, yellow, and turquoise blocks still to do, then the mountain of trimming.

I’ve also started working on the oversized Pusheen sweatshirt that my sister passed on to me because it didn’t fit her.

Here’s the über-fabulous before picture:

Great, huh?

I’m honestly not actually that short–5’4″, last time I checked.  But some clothing manufacturers seem to think that if you’re big around, you’re also tall; I regularly cut 6″ of fabric off ready-to-wear pants, while thin, slightly taller friends of mine can’t find pants that are long enough.  HEY CLOTHING MANUFACTURING PEOPLE, SHORT AND FAT IS TOTALLY A THING.

So I cut the bands off the bottom, sleeves, and neck, and marked what I need to do on this to hopefully make it a little less sad.

Better!

I’ve got some coordinating scrap fabric (because of course I do), and the plan is to cut off the excess on the hem and sleeves and use the fabric to bind the raw edges.  I’m also going to add a slit to the neckline and bind that as well.  Oh, and there will be hem vents, too, because I never have enough room for my hips in RTW.  Seriously, this is why I tend to make my shirts too big at the hips–I’ve got a thing about fabric grabbing me there.

And the Maybe Quilt top is almost done!

I’ve got it in two pieces at the moment, as the plan is to do Quilt as You Go on it.  So this is half of it on my dining room table.

I laid out both halves on the bed because I’m just having a terrible time getting a sense of it as a whole, and I hoped that would help.

The colors are awfully washed out in the pictures, but they are plenty bold in person.   I hope the quilt police aren’t watching, ’cause this thing has not only cotton, but also rayon, a wool blend, and whatever “linen look” fabric is made of.

Cripes, how did this get so big?  You can’t see it, but it extends over both sides and the bottom of the mattress, too.

I need to find a wall somewhere, somehow stick this top to it, and step back 20 feet, I think.  I still can’t figure out if the whole thing works or is too busy.  I love all the fabrics in it, though, so I suspect I’ll love the whole when it’s finished.

I’m setting the top aside for the moment so that I can work on Xmas presents.  I’d love your input on how you think I should quilt it, though.  My inclination right now–and this changes several times a day–is to do several large spirals.  I’m leaning toward something to break up the linearity of it rather than emphasize it, and spirals sort of bring out the over-the-topness of it, you know?

Anyway, the goal for next week is to focus on Xmas presents.  I should probably also prioritize that fall sweatshirt, considering how we’re rapidly running out of fall.  (I have this thought running through my head now about WHY DON’T I HAVE A WACKY XMAS SWEATSHIRT, but I am diligently ignoring it, as that’s the kind of nonsense that gets me in trouble.)

Have a wonderful week, and I hope all your colors are working well together.

STH

 

WIP Wednesday: Too Much and Too Little

Tags

cats, cross stitch, quilting, sewing, Shelby, WIP Wednesday

My assistant put in some time this week.

(WIP = Work in Progress)

Happy Thursday!

We’re having a chilly, gray day here, so let’s all ignore that nasty business and look at some pretty fabric!

I made some progress on my Maybe Quilt this week.

I wound up with 40 strips, each 42 to 45 inches long, of my colored fabrics, the most I could get without having a lot of repeats.  I sewed the short ends of each strip to a strip of black fabric, making a tube.  Then I laid my tubes out on my dining room table to put them in order.

Needless to say, there’s a LOT happening here!  I think all this lively color will be balanced out by the black border in the finished quilt, though.

Then it was time to cut the black strips more or less randomly so that the colored sections would be staggered.

This whole process was a bit nerve-wracking because it was impossible to get a good sense of how it all would eventually look.  I finally told myself firmly to STOP FRETTING and trust the process!  The whole quilt is an experiment after all, and if I don’t like it, I can take the damn thing apart and have a bunch of strips all ready for another project.

I’m now working (slowly) on sewing the strips together and spending the time thinking about ways to quilt this.  The question is whether I want to do something that continues all the straight lines or something that breaks them up.  Hmmm . . . .

While I mull that over, I’ve also gotten started on Christmas presents.  I recently joined a new Facebook crafting group and it has inspired me to go back to counted cross-stitch.  I’ve decided that this will be the Christmas of rude cross-stitch.  😉

Amazing work so far, I know!

And I have learned two things doing this.

1.  WOW, has my eyesight ever gone downhill since 2009, the last time I cross-stitched.
2.   I really, really need some new glasses, ’cause this stitching with white floss on cream fabric is about to kill me.  That cross-stitch I made for my mother years ago on linen with all those subtle shades of cream and pale pink would totally do me in now.

 

Have a fabulous week and I hope all your projects are just humming along and you’re not wondering where that damn hole in the fabric got to.

STH

 

 

WIP Wednesday: On and Off Track

Tags

bags, cats, clothing, Cloudsplitter Summit Pack, sewing, Shelby, Simplicity 1199, swears, WIP Wednesday

Well hello, Shelby the kitty!

(WIP = Work in Progress)

Many projects in process, as usual, but I also have an actual finish!  And another almost-finish!

ALL THE COLORS!

So I wrote about the Summit Pack last Wednesday–making progress, generally good instructions, blah blah blah, everything’s fine, nothing to see here.

Then I hit the proverbial rocks.

I got to work on putting the front of the bag together and YIKES.

You know how it is when you’re sewing two pieces of fabric together and their curves go the opposite way?  Like when you’re sewing a collar to a stand or putting a princess-seamed bodice together?  And the fabric is protesting and fighting you, so you use lots of pins, but the layers of fabric actually push them out, that’s how hard they’re fighting not to make that curve.  But you cram them together and sew the damn seam, and then you have to unpick and resew the three or four places where the fabric on the bottom folded up and got caught in the seam because it is NOT REPEAT NOT going to take that curve.

That’s what the front of this is, only you do that over and over with lining and exterior pieces, all with sharp angles that other pieces have to be coaxed-slash-forced to conform to.  Oh, and there are zippers, too.

Plenty of unpicking happened here, and easing, and unpicking, etc., etc.  There are definitely some wobbly bits and some slight gathering where my easing skills failed me, but that’s okay with me.  I can honestly say I did the best I could and more re-doing would not help.  And I don’t have any helpful advice, either; it’s just a difficult bag to make.  Absolutely doable if you have some bag-making experience and take every step slowly and carefully, but the kind of project that would probably make perfectionists twitch.

On the other hand, though, look how pretty!

Handy Oyster card slot for riding the Tube!  And passport fits in the back of the purple unit!

iPad fits in padded gadget pocket perfectly for reading on the plane!

Whatever, it’s a little bit wonky, but I love it.  I just put on my to-do list to make some quickie zipper pulls for this, because we are going for maximum fabulousness here.

Also!

I had another squirrel moment this week, because I am basically a big kid (you’re completely shocked to hear this, I’m sure).

I have been invited to the Seattle area to spend the weekend with my BFF, Heidi.  Which means, of course, that I need to make something new to wear.  And, because of that big kid thing, it must involve the new Hello Kitty cotton knit I just got from here.

This is just the nicest fabric–soft and substantial, with great color.

I only bought a yard–I love it, but I’m still cheap–so I’m using the Kitty fabric for the front and back of view A (top picture).  For the rest, I dug through my knits and found the rest of the mystery knit I used for my black skirt.  I don’t know the fiber content on it, but it has similar weight and stretch to the Kitty fabric.

The instructions were a little bit of a mind bender–you sew the sleeves to the side front and side back, then attach the whole thing to the front and back–but quick and easy.  I strongly recommend cutting or marking the notches on everything to help keep you oriented, though.  Don’t be like this dork here; I ignored most of the notches because I didn’t have the mental energy to deal with them at the same time I was cutting out pieces that are a large at the bust and XXL at the waist and hip.  This made the non-standard construction more complicated than it needed to be.

The top is almost finished–just hem and sleeve hems to do.  Here’s a quick and dirty selfie in my sewing room:

No, that’s not some sort of apocalypse happening behind me, just a big window and a sunny day.

Quite a different effect than the striped one on the pattern envelope, huh?  Less sporty, more dressy, even though it’s covered in cartoon cat heads.  Some nice shaping on this; it isn’t the usual tee shape.  We’ll see what happens when I shorten the sleeves to their proper 3/4 length.  Right now I feel like it needs something, but I don’t know what.  Hmmm . . . .

Anyway, have a great Thursday and I’ll yak at you again soon.

STH

ETA:  I have linked this post up to Needle and Thread Thursday over at My Quilt Infatuation.

I’ve also linked to Midweek Makers #73 at Quilt Fabrication.

Sunday Sevens 04-02-17

Tags

cats, Columbia Park, Columbia River, Shelby, Sunday Sevens

Shelby is very serious about her cuddle time.

Hi, everybody, and I hope you’re all having (or had) a great weekend!

I missed Sunday Sevens last week, as I was knee-deep in baby quilting, so let’s see what’s been happening over here.

Some fun stuff has been showing up in the mail!  I won these fat quarters from Kelly at My Quilt Infatuation . . .

. . . and these charm squares, some gridded interfacing, and a Craftsy class from Caroline at Sew Can She!

Two of those fat quarters have already gone into a small project that I’m hoping to finish tonight.

Now that the weather’s a bit better, I’m taking my mother out for walks again.  The grass is greening up nicely, with the trees close behind; the forsythia is already glowing, as are the willow trees (yep, willow trees in the desert . . . I don’t get it, either).

But what’s that stuff on the right side of the picture there?

Tasting it didn’t seem like a super-great idea, but this ground cover looks and smells just like a wild type of parsley.

All sorts of flora and fauna down here by the river . . . .

Asparagus is starting to show up in stores here, though I don’t think the local crop is in yet.  This made a nice side dish for my bacon-spinach-tomato-avocado sandwich.

And one more shot of Shelby, just because she’s so cute with her lopsided exclamation point markings.  I was cradling her with my left arm, shooting like mad with my right hand, and trying not to move and make her run away.  She’s been through some rough times with humans, and she’s still working on that whole trust thing.

As always, the ever-fabulous Natalie at Threads and Bobbins gets credit for starting Sunday Sevens.

Have a wonderful week and I hope there’s some cuddle time in there for ya.

STH

WIP Wednesday: Sewing for the Kids

Tags

cats, Pooh, quilting, Shelby, WIP Wednesday

Spokesmodel Shelby approves.

This project came out of an internal dialogue that went something like this:

Me:  I have all these fluffy, bulky fleece scraps left over after this winter’s orgy of fleece sewing projects.  They’re spilling out of their bin and I swear they’re multiplying in there and what am I going to do with them?

Me:  I mean, I have all these cotton scraps, too, but they’re so much easier to use up because you can put them in scrap quilts . . . .

Me:  HEY WAIT A MINUTE

And so began the googling.  Is there such a thing as a fleece scrap quilt?  I’d never heard of any way of using pieced fleece in a quilt except for rag quilts, and I didn’t want to have big lumpy seams in whatever I wound up making.  I eventually found this post, which suggests overlapping the edges and zigzagging.  Perfect!  I decided to try this technique out on a cushion for the window sill in my sewing room, which is a favorite cat spot for napping.  It had a cushion already, but it was pilling and lumpy, so it was time for an upgrade.

That dark pink there is actually from a scrap of sweatshirt fleece that I used fuzzy side out.  I just thought the cushion needed some dark pink and I’d used up all my fleece in that color.

I had a little 4″x4″ quilting ruler hanging around, so I decided to cut 4″ squares.  It quickly became clear, though, that I needed to cut some smaller sizes to use up my smaller pieces, so I also cut 2″x4″ rectangles.

Sewing them together proved trickier than expected, however, because my crappy old sewing machine was just DETERMINED to eat that fleece at the start of every seam.  EVERY. SINGLE. SEAM.  It was a wrestling match the whole way through the piecing.  I’m looking at the picture above and I’m amazed that it looks as nice as it does, considering the fleece munching that was happening.  One big reason for that is that I made sure that when I overlapped the strips, the edge with all the messiness was UNDER the other strip.  (It occurs to me now that as you get more experience and skill with sewing, one of the most important things you learn is how to compensate for–and cover up–all your mistakes.)

The cushion is reversible, with mostly pink, purple, and black on one side, and more of a mix on the other.

I’ve got most of my blue and orange on this side, including some really fun scraps that I didn’t have much of.  See the sun and the spaceship on the left?

I used some of my larger batting scraps for the cushioning, then I tacked the layers together by hand along the long seams.  For binding, I cut 2″ strips of black fleece, sewed it (right sides together) to one side of the cushion, then folded it over and sewed it down to the other side.  To my surprise, my sewing machine didn’t give me any trouble with that part, even though I didn’t trim the batting from the seam allowance, as I wanted the binding to help secure it in place.

And I’m happy to report the cushion has been a hit!

This was already a favorite nap spot for Pooh, but he’s been spending a lot more time here since I made this cushion for him.  Shelby moves around more, but she’s also in this window frequently.

But wait–there’s also this!

I also made a cat bed, based on this tutorial.

So that’s where that 4″ square ruler went.

Another project to use up fleece scraps, this was supposed to be for Pooh because I finally put our artificial Xmas tree and tree skirt away.

I put away the ornaments and the rest of it early in January (I love Xmas stuff, but having it around always makes my allergies worse), but Pooh LOVES napping under the tree so much that I just couldn’t take it away completely.  I left out the bottom section of the tree with the skirt, and he used it for a while, but then seemed to lose interest, so I figured it was time.  (I’ve firmly established my crazy cat lady cred here, haven’t I?  Yep, I thought so.)

I didn’t have a big enough piece of fleece for this, so I used purple for the top, and bright blue (which I had to piece) for the bottom.  I would have liked to use something a bit more fun, but it’s for the living room, and the person I live with is somewhat more conservative in his tastes.  😦

Here’s the bottom.

The tutorial tells you to use stuffing to fill this, which I didn’t have a lot of (and I didn’t want to get trapped yet again in the Fiberfill Vortex, where you buy another bag to finish your project, but then you have half a bag left, but it isn’t enough for your next project, so then you buy another bag and so on and so on).  I do have batting scraps, though, so I used several circles of batting for the center and sewed another ring of stitching to secure it.  I tore up my smallest scraps and used those–and the last of my fiberfill YAY–to fill the outer ring.

Now, according to the Sewing Blogger Code, this is the part where I’m supposed to say that it isn’t as lumpy as it looks because that’s just an illusion caused by the camera or sun spots or something.  However, the truth is that it is just exactly as lumpy as it looks; I don’t think I’ve ever stuffed anything that didn’t turn out lumpy, which is one of several excellent reasons that I don’t make stuffed animals or things like that.

So far, Shelby has been the only one interested in this.  I had to hand sew the opening shut with her actually napping in the bed; I tried to lift her out of it, but she told me off with an outraged squeak, and I gave in and let her stay.  Anybody who has cats knows getting them to like and use an offered cat bed is a highly risky enterprise, so I’ll be happy if it gets any use at all.  Hell, I’m happy anyway because I used up a fair bit of fleece and about half my stash of batting scraps.  So I’m calling it a win already.

STH