Now you see it....

.... Now you don't!

I decided to do some remedial work to the back of my QAYG bee quilt. This involved light-weight, double sided fusible interfacing, more of the floral fabric, a bunch of hand sewing and then some quick stitch in the ditch quilting to secure. So far I've covered the plaid flannel, the pink stripe and the hexagonally quilted green piece. In retrospect, I'm not sure the interfacing was necessary and it's left those patches very stiff. Maybe next time (ha, no next time) spray baste plus hand stitching and quilting might be the way to go. I'm hoping the stiffness will be at least partly diminished when I wash this guy.

I'm thinking of covering the left most purple piece, and potentially picking out some of the quilting on the large purple piece, since the vertical lines are not part of the piecing on the front. I may just go ahead and bind this first to see whether or not I can live with it as is though, because that's a lot of hand stitching!

Quilt in Progress

I think this past round of Queen Bee-ness has been my most successful yet! All blocks were returned on time and the results were pretty amazing :)

Once I had the majority of the blocks I started playing with layout. Obviously if I'd have been smarter I would have figured out whether all the batting scraps I sent out could be reassembled into a rectangle, but I didn't have that forethought. Luckily for me they could be wrestled into shape with only minimal overlap.

The real planning was done once all the blocks were returned, and I pretty much constantly changed the edge blocks as I was going. I pieced together the blocks using this tutorial as a guide, 1" strips of floral fabric on the back and 2" folded strips of purple on the front. It took longer than I anticipated but it was by no means difficult.

All the time I was sewing I had assistance from my little helper, Chinso our foster dog!

I followed a loose log cabin technique to assemble the top and only had to cut one bee block in half and make one single narrow strip to make a complete rectangle! But once all those blocks were together I ended up with a quilt of odd ddimensions - 44" x 54". So I took some wider strips of batting and made three more strips to add along the narrow edge.

Unfortunately, as awesome as the front looks (which I reveal when it's all done) the back is another story. I had thought that by using a few different fabrics a random pattern would be made that would make the back look more interesting. Um... no.

I'm not sure exactly what happened here. One piece is wrong side out, I have no idea where that flannel came from and well, the white thread looks horrible against the solids. SO. I have pre-washed and dried another floral and will be adding a different back to cover this all up. That raises the interesting question of how I'm going to quilt to keep the back in place. I'm guessing stitch in the ditch along the piecing strips and minimal quilting in the individual blocks. I'm not sure I can get to that before I show this at guild meeting on Saturday (in fact I can guarantee it's not going to happen) so I'll have to hide it from sight!

Preparation

My quilt guild runs lots of little challenges and group projects through the year, including block lottos and fabric company challenges, and most recently a group specific charity project.

So in preparation for this coming guild meeting, I spent the long Thanksgiving weekend sewing! Since we started fostering dogs pre-adoption, I've barely touched my machine so it was fun to dust it off and make things!

Fist up was a "low volume" 12.5" block for the block lotto (each block gets you a raffle ticket, one lucky person takes everything home!). I don't really have a lot of low volume fabric, so mine was more volume-y than perhaps it should be. Oh well! I pieced scraps together and then did a standard log cabin construction. Log cabins seem to be my default!

 The second group effort I'm participating in this month is a collection of blocks so that the guild can assemble "emergency quilt kits" for members who have a need to make a quilt in a short time frame due to some kind of unforeseen situation (health crisis, eloping, who knows!). Our first kit will use red and white crosses, using a provided center square for continuity. I delved into my scrap bag and came up with these.

 

The airplane fabric in the bottom square is just about my all time favourite fabric, purchased as part of a 30s repro fat quarter stack from my first ever quilting cotton purchase! If I ever found yardage of this I might buy it all.

A bouquet of napkins!

This past Saturday was my Quilt Guild's November meeting, and look! Look at all the napkins people made for We are Kenya!

The top row includes the most recent six napkins I made, using batting provided by my fellow guild members,  some of my and others fleece, and cotton fabric gifted to me by a friend :) I spent two episodes of "Supernatural" pinning and cutting on Saturday night...

 ... and an hour or so sewing on Sunday morning (when the time change had me up at the ridiculously early hour of 6am!).

So that brings the total number of napkins I have to send off up to 33. I may eke out one or two more before I mail them off next week but don't hold me to that!

Sewing Sanitary Supplies!

I've been slowly making reusable, washable sanitary supplies for Craft Hope's most recent campaign, We are Kenya. It was hard for me to pick a tutorial to follow, mostly because very few sites have user feedback as to what works, and since there is a wide variety of different styles and materials I wasn't sure what would actually be the most practical.

So I decided to go with what I had plus mixing and matching of a few things that made the most sense to me. I followed this tutorial for basic construction, with a little splash of this one, and finally used the idea of a waterproof layer from here. Phew. Got that? It took a few different tries to figure out my preferred method (six, actually) but this is how I did it.

I designed my own template by cleverly drawing around an Always and adding a seam allowance, then cut two cotton outer fabric pieces (pre-washed, reclaimed cotton from here), and one from PUL (a waterproof fabric often used for sewing the outside of reusable baby diapers).

I then made inner cores from multiple layers of cotton flannel, either some really old yardage I've had for forever, or reclaimed from a thrifted and washed mens cotton flannel shirt, or from layers of scrap 100% cotton batting. These were cut to match the center shape of the liner but about 1/4" smaller. I zig-zag stitched around the edges to make a little panty liner thing as seen below:

Then stitched that down to one layer of the cotton on the wrong side.

Then there was a bit of trial and error in figuring out the order and layer of fabric (right vs wrong side and in which order), but I was aiming to have PUL on the bottom (right side out), then the cotton+flannel layer, and then the final cotton layer on top (right side out). I succeeded once. Ha.

I think it was PUL right side up, cotton wrong side up, and cotton+liner wrong side up. The easiest place I found to leave the turning hole was along the top edge, and when I turned everything right side out I made sure the have the PUL on bottom and the unstitched cotton on top. This means the final layer from top is: cotton, cotton, flannel, PUL. Make sense? My machine did NOT like sewing directly onto the PUL but had no problem forming stitches when the PUL was on the bobbin side, go figure.

On some the order ended up being different (cotton on both sides, PUL in the middle) making it difficult to know which side should be the top, so I added a small "handmade by" label on what should be the bottom. I also added a small row of stitches to some of the earlier iterations to hold the flannel core securely in place as I hadn't stitched those the the middle cotton layer. I also top stitched all the way round very close to the edge to close the turning hole. I didn't add any stitching down the middle as I was afraid it would lead to moisture wicking through the PUL layer.

So far I have made 6 pads, all very slightly different but hopefully functional. One is all cotton (no water proof fabric), one is backed with no-pill fleece. The rest are all iterations of what I showed above. I added contrasting plastic snaps to the wings in either yellow or red.

 My fellow Quilt Guild and sewing bee member, Margaret, also sent me 6 pads! I need to add snaps to these and then they are all done :)

I'm planning on making at least 6 more before the deadline (delivered by November 15th!) but I think I'm going to switch to using a different pattern (the second tutorial) using either fleece or PUL as the bottom layer. It's kind of fiddly to cut out all those layers in weird shapes but so satisfying to see the finished product!

Group making!

I've asked my Quilt Guild to help me support Craft Hope (an organization I have supported in the past by making soft toys, quilted bags and aprons) in their 25th project - We Are Kenya.

From the Craft Hope website:
"We Are Kenya is an organization who believes that one way to change a society is to change the future of it's youth. They are a nonprofit dedicated to feeding and educating sweet children in the slums of Soweto, Kenya. Soweto is the second largest slum in Kenya and home to We Are Kenya. Soweto is a large slum whose people daily struggle with sickness, crime, hunger, and hopelessness that results from severe poverty. In a slum where many children have one or no parent, the daily quest for food supersedes any hope for education."

Craft Hope is asking for many different kinds of items for the children and young people they support, including soft toys, knitted/crochets hats and scarves, and the project closest to my heart - reusable cloth sanitary napkins. As someone who has had the privilege of an extended education well into my adult years, it breaks my heart to think that others eager to learn might be stopped by something as simple and natural as their monthly cycle.

So, I put together a few links below with free tutorials describing multiple different methods of making cloth pads, the basic ingredients of which are usually 100% cotton fabric plus some 100% cotton absorbent fabric such as flannel, terry cloth or cotton batting, with the potential to add in a waterproof/resistant fabric such as PUL or micro fleece. Many patterns include some form of wings with a snap fastener, and I've purchased snap pliers and about 200 snaps so I can install them for anybody who doesn't have this doo-dad.

TUTORIALS:
http://mabewithlove.wordpress.com/2014/01/03/cloth-pad-tutorial-exposed-core-overcast-edge/
http://www.millennium-ark.net/News_Files/INFO_Files/menstrual.html
https://sites.google.com/site/shewhorunsintheforest/0011
http://www.daysforgirls.org/#!days-for-girls-patterns-and-instructions/cz7w
http://www.kamsnaps.com/How-to-Make-a-Mama-Cloth-Menstrual-Pad-63.html

 I asked and Craft Hope/We are Kenya would also like waterproof bags for carrying the napkins if anyone feels so inclined :)

 This picture of me waving around the two pads I've made is courtesy of Nellie, and comes via the NYC Mod Quilt Guild website. In my right hand I'm holding an all cotton pad, and on the left one that has been backed with anti-pill fleece to be water resistant.

Quilt Bees- August and September

So somebody got behind on quilt bee blocks again.... yep. It was me.
 

For August's block (sewed this past Saturday... Ooops.) we were sent an image of a flower printed on fabric and asked to improve a block around it. I stalled completely on this, I just couldn't think of what to make. So I eventually decided to keep it simple, do what I know and pulled matching strips and some yellowy-orange scraps and log cabin-ed. I added some shot silk from a failed refashion for a bit of interest, and some top stitching for... reasons.

 For September out mission was to make a house. Again, I stalled. Then I sewed this. It's not my finest hour, but there is a fussy cut Shetland Sheepdog puppy, so there's that.

I'm not really feeling the quilt bees right now which is AWESOME because October is my month. Ho hum!

Another quick refashion

I picked up this Jones New York silk shirt at a seemingly endless yard sale in my neighborhood for $1 (I think technically it might be an outdoor store at this point, every sunny day for three weeks and counting). It was a couple of sizes too big for me and had this weird polo neck/long tie thing going on at the top.

The first thing I did was cut off the ties.... Then the second thing I did really did not work out as I planned and was not photographed. Basically I tried to use the pointed ends of the ties to make a collar for the shirt but failed to take into consideration that I'd need to add a curved edge so it would lie flat. I attempted to fix it but then, meh, I cut it off and made my usual! I took in the sides about an inch on each side, cut a new neckline using the Sorbetto pattern as a guide and then used a doubled strip of the removed tie to make single fold bias tape to edge the new neckline.

 

I wore the shirt to work on Monday and stopped off at the same never ending stoop sale on the way home, and the lady recognized the shirt! She was pleased I'd done something new with it :)

Weekend T-shirt Refasion - For SCIENCE!

I have an embarrassingly large stack of novelty science tees, far more than any self respecting scientist should probably own. I mostly only wear them at weekends and as PJs but occasionally I sneak one in at work, people seem to get a kick out of self-proclaimed nerdery. I came across as stack of mens large science themed t-shirts in my school's thrift store and for 50c a piece I could not leave them. Since a) they originated from someone at my workplace and b) they were huge, I knew I'd have to refashion them.

I've refashioned a couple of t-shirts before by just winging it, cutting off collars and sleeves while retaining original shoulder seams and bottom hems, and hoping for the best when it came to the final product. This time I decided to try something new and use a pattern.

I chose the Colette Sorbetto pattern because I've made it before and because it was free! Based on my previous experience I cut out the size 2 but followed the size 10 lines at the armpit and extended straight down at the bottom to the size 18 lines to add additional length. I folded under the pleat section because I knew I didn't want one on this top. I centered the pattern piece on the logo, traced in chalk and cut out the front....

... then I repeated the process for the back.
 

I sewed up the top according to the pattern instructions, putting in the bust darts before seaming the shoulders and sides with french seams. I tried it on and thought it was a little big but decided to go ahead and hem the neck and armholes by simply folding under and doing two rows of top stitching hoping that loose fitting would work for me.

I was a big WHOMP WHOMP. It was huge! So here I employed my tried and true winging it method and traced around a tee that fits well, pinned and re-sewed the side french seams making sure to line up the already sewn arm and bottom hems exactly.

Much better!

It's still a very simple t-shirt with no embellishment other than the original, but it's an improvement over my previous refashions in several ways. Since the neckline was traced from a pattern it's much more symmetrical and the shoulder straps fall in the correct place to cover bra straps. Secondly, since I made completely new seams there is less bulk at the shoulder and the shirt is actually a length I like. Win!

Garden to Table - Roasted Tomato Sauce

Paste, big boy and super sweet grape tomatoes fresh from the vine, a mini-eggplant and cayenne pepper, and a fistful of fresh basil, thyme and parsley from the herb garden.

 Sliced and arrayed on baking sheets with olive oil, salt and pepper. One onion and half a head of garlic (wrapped separately in foil with oil) were added to the party courtesy of the grocery store, then all were roasted at 450F for about 45 minutes.

 Meanwhile a cup or two of homemade chicken stock defrosted...

 ... just waiting for those roasted toms...

 ... eggplant, onions and garlic.

And couple of blasts from the stick blender just to break up the big pieces. DELICIOUS.

City Gym Shorts

It's taken me several years to rather begrudgingly embrace shorts as more than a loathed clothing item. I'm pale. I have thighs. I have issues with those two things combining in an unflattering way. But then I found a couple of pairs of shorts in thrift stores that fit and were flattering! Shorts! Who knew?!

I'm still not perfectly sold on short-shorts as regular day wear but it's hot here in New York and I like to be able to move about in the garden without flashing my neighbors, so when I saw the City Gym Shorts pattern on the Purl Bee, I thought, why not? At least I can make a try to make a wearable muslin and end up with a pair of PJ shorts in the process if I don't like the finished look on me.

In deference to the original pattern I picked my most Liberty-esque print (a Wamsutta scrap fat quarter from NYC Quilt Guild) and some coordinating solids for the back and waist band. For the bias tape I used the very last of the vintage stuff I bought many moons ago at an Astoria thrift store. I screwed up royally sewing it on, but I don't really care, it looks fine from even a small distance.

 

I made the 38-40" shorts because my hip measurement is somewhere around 38" but I think next time (yes, next time) I'll have to go a size up. These fit but with no stretch in the fabric they are a bit too snug. I have a feeling that my printer shrunk the pattern a smidge, so your mileage may vary when it comes to picking a size. I asked the designer whether it would be possible for her to insert a size guide in the pattern (a square of known size) to prevent this kind of thing, so hopefully that wont be a problem for anyone else.

 

I had a bear of a time getting the elastic into the waist. Again I was using something from the big bag of thrifted goods and probably it was a touch too wide. I'll have to cut the waist band a 1/2" wider on the next pair.

This was an extremely simple pattern and very quick to put together, and if I was really a shorts person rather than someone who just plays one on the weekends, I'd sew up a dozen!

Recycled Jewels Quilt

I've been collecting shot cotton items on my trips to Goodwill and Housing Works Buy The Bag. with the idea that I'd eventually make a quilt. I'd gathered two pairs of yoga pants, a torn queen sized fitted sheet and a few other odds and ends, including a floaty Indian cotton striped skirt with a brown lining.

Fast forward to about 6 months ago when 12 triangles of shot cotton plaid turned up on the scrap pile at NYC Metro Mod Quilt Guild" and I finally cut into a cotton Indian skirt to make eye patches for a certain fox...

In a frenzy of piecing I put this top together in one night. The super simple expanding borders made it go very fast and since I had no plan it grew very organically. I had to piece several of the strips to make the sashing long enough but that's hardly noticeable since I took a lot of care to match stripes.

It's positively luminous.

Seen here with corn.

 

I kept the quilting pretty simple, concentric rectangles in the borders, but had a bit of fun in the central medallion by adding three 8-point stars. The thread color matches the fabric on the front and is consistently dark green on the back. The backing fabric was one side of a king duvet cover from Goodwill. 

The only new fabrics are Kona solids (turquoise and dark blue for the binding), the central scraps and the batting. I'm glad that I allowed the fabric to tell me what to, it dictated how the final quilt was structured and which accent colors to add. It honestly feels like the only part I played was working the sewing machine!

Quilt Bee Catch Up.... Again

May and June kind of got away from me what with finishing up a paper for publication, my parents coming for my PhD graduation festivities, and then returning to the UK myself. Since being a good Bee participant is important to me, I e-mailed the May and June Queen Bees in advance to give them the option of having fabric returned or asked for a little leeway with more time. Both were gracious enough to allow more time, so jet-lag and coffee fueled I worked my way through the blocks on July 4th!

For May I made four more Amish Blocks for Judy. This quilt is going to be stunning, so much color and movement is packed into these teeny 4" squares. It's obviously taking a while to create all these blocks (at least since at least November last year) but I'm looking forward to seeing it once it's put together.

 

For June we were asked to use a provided 10" square plus 5" square of pale grey polka dot fabric plus a 10" square of our own plummy purple fabric to make a 13" churn dash block. I've never made on of these before and the tutorial provided was super clear and seemed to include a whole heap of short cuts that made assembling this block super quick.

I obviously drank enough coffee to also get a jump on July's block, four strip and paper pieced scrappy blocks using warm and cool colors and neutral corners. This was fun! I made use of the 45 degree cut-off sections from making the first block to start the second warm or cool strip to try to reduce waste. This is going to be really fun once it's completed.

Now August, I'M READY FOR YOU.

GCSE Art - My Early Adventures in Quilting

My parents finally decided to switch around the layout of the bedrooms in their house making my old bedroom the master since it's the biggest and has an en suite bathroom. This meant redecorating, rearranging furniture and archeological digs through the kind of things that get put at the back of deep closets by a 6-18 year old girl. While I was home I spent a few days digging through this stuff, throwing the majority out and making a small pile of things to keep for that indeterminate time in the future where I'll have space to take it.

A large portion of both piles was made up of my GCSE Art projects. I got an A in Art way back in 1999, specializing in fabric and textiles. It was a humorous and painful exercise to go through everything. I found a lot the the way Art was taught and the way work had to be done incredibly frustrating and still, 15 years later am slightly annoyed by it. A HUGE part of the "process" was showing development of ideas, creating sketchbooks of trial runs. I don't know about anyone else, but that it not how my ideas come to me. Yes I can see the point for developing new skills and what not, but my ideas tend to come to me fully formed or I experiment along the way within one piece. This meant that I spent a lot of time back-filling these "holes" in my "process" rather than actually making and doing, which in the end felt contrived and awkward to me. Looking at the work now, it still does. Still there are some things I do still like which I think show the fledgling quilter in me trying to break out.

I clearly remember the day that I drew my first still life of a pepper in pencil crayon. It was the day I decided I could draw. It was the day I decided to keep art as one of the 9 subjects I took at GCSE level, sacrificing Geography in favor if paint and glue and all kinds of creative things. For this project I believe we had to design a repeating pattern then transfer it to fabric (wax resist). I then quilted it using hand embroidery and embellished with little seed beads. I had not yet learned the importance of backing fabric. I might one day back and bind this to turn it into a proper wall hanging.

Whatever this was inspired by it was made in the same way as the pepper quilt above. This I did not keep because it's just so... ugly?

A marriage of two passions - Art and Science! This is still one of my favorite final pieces (yes, done before the two process predecessors) based on my own pseudo-coloring of microscopic images of plant cells. Given the folders of histological images I have sitting on my computer from my PhD, this might be an idea I could return to for future experimentation.

I've got more photographs of weaving, embroidery, some machine sewing experimentation on paper, but I'll save those for another post, hopefully when I'm over my jet lag...

(Not Quite Pooh) Bear

I'm currently in the UK taking care of visa business and spending time with my family, this after a week of my parents visiting me in New York for my PhD graduation, so there really hasn't been much crafting happening in the last few months. However, I did finish one sweet little project for my now 18 month old nephew just in time for his naming ceremony!

When my nephew first set eyes on him he immediately exclaimed "Pooh Bear!" and gleefully shoved the bear's snoot into his mouth. I think he likes it.

To make this bear I used a fairly old pattern from a 2007 Interweave Knits Holiday Gifts magazine (Classic Teddy Bear - Ravelry) and the very last of a skein of Mirasol Miski Llama (previously used for a cowl, a bunny and a bonnet). The pattern is annoying and I wouldn't recommend knitting as written. If I remember right the increases all happen on the last stitch instead of one stitch from the edge and there are about a gazillion pieces all to be knit flat and them seamed. I think I forgot a piece on the feet but after knitting and blocking each of the twelve million other individual pieces, I kind of gave up.

This is the first time I've made a hinged toy and I might have squeezed the safety doodads one notch too tight for the limbs to move freely, but that does mean they aren't coming off any time soon. The eyes are also safety, while the nose and mouth were embroidered using a scrap of brown Noro.

Hopefully he'll last through a few good chewings while my nephew is still so tiny!