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