Manhattan Mermaid

Last weekend I took part in the 30th Coney Island Mermaid Parade. So! Much! Fun!

My costume was almost entirely hand made, I mean really, did anyone expect anything less?

First up, despite the general raucousness and nudity that is par for the Mermaid Parade course, I knew I'd be wanting to keep the girls covered. To this end I made a shell bra by sewing braided t-shirt fabric onto padded inserts I'd taken out of a bikini top a while ago. I have a very comical picture of me wearing the underpinnings of the shell bra but I'm going to keep the wider internet from that treasure. Once the underneath construction was complete, I stuck on two shells from Micheal's using double sided carpet tape and a lot of hot glue, then glued on strands of freshwater pearls to twine around the ties.

For a fascinator I made use of an old knitting project that usually hangs out on my aloe plant, the common octopus from Amigurumi Knits.

A hairband, scrap fabric, shells, many sticks of glue and a bit of stiching later....

No mermaid would be complete without a suitably fishy tail. And that tail was a saga unto itself in sewing trial and error. I bought two yards of an amazing two toned fabric stitched into diamonds from a store in the fabric district, and because I wasn't confident in my own non-existant pattern drafting skills, Simplicity 4043 on Ebay. I do not recommend that pattern, except perhaps as a template for the fin because the skirt as drafted in the pattern looks terrible on. There was so much excess fabric caught up in the fold where the tail curls back up towards the wrist, no shaping in the skirt, just.... ugh. For my first attempt at sewing from a paper pattern it left much to be desired.

So with much trepidation I sliced and spliced, altering the angle of the tail so that it extended out from a curved hem, took in about 4" at the hips and added darts at the waist. To stiffen the tail I sewed in a sacrificed wire coat hanger frame, stuffed with some folded up scraps of batting and then shadow quilted both the fin and a triangle down into the tail. Then I sewed just shy of 100 little silver beads around the waist and fin to make it sparkle.

I even made myself a pair of earrings using long ago learned macrame skills, sliver beads, shells and glue. And a trident for my boyfriend out of a broom, cardboard and golden duct tape.

I think I did OK.

;o)

Finished Pinspired Quilt!

After a mammoth laundry session last week (all household chores were put on hold while I made my Coney Island Mermaid Parade costume!), I finally managed to launder and dry my Pinspired Quilt. Behold it in it's crinkliness!

I riffed off the original block layout with the quilting making columns of stitches in the sashing, and then I added concentric diamond shapes with the wide open spaces. I backed the quilt in a thrift sheet that had served as inspiration for the colour palette, and as mentioned before, I bound with orange jelly rolls scraps.

Unfortunately not all of the blue tailor's chalk I used to mark the quilting lines came out in the wash. I'm not sure what to do about that, short of investing in a fabric brush, but for now I'm willing to ignore it.

The quilt that keeps giving.

Just over a year ago a good friend and co-worker left for New Mexico. As a farewell gift I made him a quilt in his favourite colour, ORANGE. Not having a lick of orange in my fairly sparse fabric stash, I headed over to eBay and bought a bunch of jelly rolls.

Then I sewed together and cut, and sewed back together and cut....

Sewed some more...

Basted, quilted and bound..

 

And finally gifted.(The pattern for the top is here, the back was improvisational.)

And let me tell you, this is the quilt that just keeps on giving. With leftovers from this project I've made a whole other quilt top, bags for Craft Hope, and finally, the reason why I'm showing the quilt in the first place, binding for the Pinspired Quilt! I can't wait to show it once I've washed off all the chalk lines!

Pinspired Quilt Top

Ah Pinterest. A fabulous inspiration and time-sink all rolled into one.

A few of my friends had posted links to quilts made from single blocks, enlarged to make the whole quilt (like this pretty one), and then someone else pinned a link to an amazing resource, Antique Geometric. I was browsing around and came across a Nancy Cabot block from 1934 called Star Lane and I was smitten.

A quick sketch on some graph paper...

A couple of hours of cutting and sewing....

This is how I scaled the pattern up to make a 50" top.

The original entry in the Antique Geometric library tells you that:
Grid = 10 x 10
Division = 2-1-2-2-1-2

If we multiply each division by 5, they become 10-5-10-10-5-10, add 0.5 inches to every dimension for seam allowance, and I added a healthy 1" to the squares I would cut into HSTs. So the pieces you will cut are:

FOUR Blue: 10.5" x 10.5"
FOUR Yellow: 5.5" x 5.5"
TWO Orange: 11.5" x 11.5"
TWO Green: 11.5" x 11.5"
FOUR White: 11.5" x 11.5"
FOUR Purple: 11.5" x 11.5"
EIGHT White: 5.5" x 10.5"
FOUR White: 5.5" x 20.5"

To make all the HSTs:
Pair one white square each with one green and orange square, and two purple squares.
Pair one orange square with a purple, and the last green square with the last purple square.
Pin with right sides together (I did so with the stripes running at 90degrees to get the stripes to line up in the finished square).
Mark the diagonal line with pencil or whatever you like to use, then sew two seams 0.25" on either side of the line.
Cut along your line, press open and square up to 10.5" x 10.5" making sure your seam is running at 45 degrees.

Hopefully the rest of the piecing is intuitive!