The Quiet Quilt

I am working on a self drafted medallion quilt, after having so much fun with the Modern Medallion from Handstitched class, and the Marcelle Medallion I did with Penny Poppleton's QAL. Uh, that second one is still in very early stages of handquilting, so I don't know what the hell possessed me to start another quilt.

It's kinda but not really a low volume quilt, and I decided to name it because it's cooler that way, right?  Drafting paper pieced medallions without being exact at measuring isn't awesome, but this his how far I am to date.  I chose all solids for the medallion, one art gallery pure elements solid, with the rest selected from the new colors in the Moda Bella line, since I was lucky enough to win a bundle from Shruti during her Bella Parade.

Natural light is more flattering -  its not really that dayglo playdough colors.  If it ever stops raining I'll grab one outside.  Over there to the right are most of the fabrics I'm pulling from for this. 

And yeah, I put one rows of HST facing the wrong direction.  More unpicking to do - and now I have a lamp for the living room so the light is better in there and I can see what I'm doing in the gloomy rainy season here!

Really I think this might turn out horrifically, but I'm enjoying the process of deciding what I want for each border, and that is satisfying enough!

Aeroplane Bag, in progress.

I had been ignoring the Sew Sweetness Bag contest happening over at Sew Mama Sew! because I have so many things I am working on with a Christmas deadline, and it's got a December 13th deadline.  Considering I've had her pattern for a wallet printed out for a month waiting, I figured if I couldn't get around to making that, a bag was out of the question.

DOH!!!

NEVERTHELESS, I don't make sense, so I got started on her Aeroplane pattern.  I'm happy with how it's turning out, and as I also did the Amy Butler Weekender SAL, felt a bit better about making another large bag, and prepared to keep it from being another floppy mess.

basted interior pocket on top, pinned on bottom

Right now I'm at a bit of a stall, because I did a stupid thing.  I'd been going off my printout of the PDF, which wasn't great quality, so without a clear picture (and her pictures ARE great, I just guess it's time for a new printer) sewed my zipper in upside down on the main panel.

Instead of stopping and checking before sewing the lining on, I sewed that on too and now have a choice.  I can try to do this, and mess with the zipper, or I can rip the whole thing out.  I will probably rip the whole thing out, but ugh!  I am taking a break for a couple days and working on other things.

I also liked sewing in the zippered pockets the way they were set up, and I have a tip if you're having problems, as it was difficult to pin through the layers of fabric and zipper and hold it in place.  I used pins for the first one, then grabbed a bit of 505 adhesive spray basting for the second one.  I'm sure you can see even with my less than awesome photography skills, the difference in the picture, the pinned one is all ripply, and the basted one stayed nice and flat.

Fabricworm review 2.0

I'm working on a neutral based quilt, and needed a few more fabrics. Fabricworm had a great eight hour flash sale, and so I picked up a few more prints, and took the chance to order one of their Japanese/or Organic, scrap packs.

This is the second time I've ordered from them - the other was a year and a half ago, and I talked about it here, including the problems I had with the Aneela Hoey bundle not having all the right fabrics, and how I couldn't get some creases out of a couple prints no matter how long and hard I pressed.  As I've settled on making the majority of my orders from The Intrepid Thread, Hawthorne Threads, and Sewmeasong for my various needs, I have avoided temptation, but it was a good sale dammit!

scrap pack

This ended up being good bad & neutral.  I ordered on the 11th and it arrived on the 18th, slower than expected from CA to WA, even with the high volume of orders from a sale.  They sent the wrong color of one print, I wrote and they checked their inventory, saw that it matched with this being the case, and are sending out the correct fabric, saying I should get it in a few days, and can keep the incorrect one.  That is nice, but a bit frustrating as I am trying to not work on my quilt anymore until I get all the fabrics in.

The scrap pack was mostly Jay-Cyn for Birch Organics (eiko, camp sur and elk grove), with a couple of Rashida Coleman-Hale Koi prints that I already have some of.  The only odd monkey is that Elk Grove elk family print in Sun - it's a knit - I love working with knits for clothes, but I'm stymied as to what to do with a 9" by WOF knit bit of mustardy elks.

I can't say I will start ordering more often from here, but they do manage to carry prints that I don't run across elsewhere which does make me keep browsing them, like this Cosmo Textiles, Halloween Forrest in Black, that I couldn't resist adding to my order.   Cupid kittens with umbrellas...sold!

EDIT - I just sat down and measured the scrap pack for yardage, and I will say that their 2 yards per weight, even with one of the fabrics being canvas, measured in at 2.8 yards. Not a bad deal at all.

Foxes, Mermaids & an Embroidery Wall

I finally finished a vintage mermaid tattoo type embroidery this week that I've been working on for awhile. I had a lot of fun shading this one with colored pencils, and am thinking it's time to upgrade from a 12 pack to something with more variety (fancy!).

It's been added to my embroidery wall, as we are in a rental and I don't want to fix the repairs dozens of little nails would leave, I've taken a slab of insulation that was too small to really be used as a quilting design wall, and made it into an embroidery wall. 

I'm liking this for a few reasons, I can move it around, and even the large hoops are held up by one, yes one, pin.  I will probably be getting around to covering it in fabric - perhaps a vintage sheet soon, so it is prettier.

On a fox note, there is a seven year old of my acquaintance that has suggested she has an interest in trying her hand at some embroidery.  I thought I'd start simple, and use the F Fox pattern from penguin and fish that I got as part of the Handstitched class I did last year.  I am grateful to have bought a Crayola light up box to trace embroideries with, it's such a time saver!

I also whipped up a couple of felt pincushions for her to choose from, and suppose I should pick a sampling of floss in both realistic and fantastical colors for her to pick from, as I probably shouldn't expect her to be traditional about this stuff, now that I think about it.

Easy eye mask & an out of control design wall.

Phew, I've been meaning to make an eyemask for months, and now that its dark all the time & I don't need it, I finally got around to it.  This is the Bari J eyemask, and I spent last night doing some embroidery on the flannel, then whipped it together this morning with  Art gallery's Carnaby Street groovy vibes in citrus.  I just used batting instead of fusible fleece since I have a lot of bits of it.  It lets a bit of light in at the nose, but is more comfortable than the three eyemasks I already own, so it's a win.

Without the embroidery, I'm guessing it could be completed in 15 minutes or less




Made another pincushion, I don't know why.  I actually made three, but that's neither here nor there. Also sorted through some bins & threw some WIP's up on the design wall. 

I'm self drafting a medallion quilt which is going..oddly, and the crosses and HSQ are for that.  The atrocity that is black and red is a sewing machine cover, and what broke my Singer and left it out of commission for a good chunk of this year, sewing through a couple of layers of canvas and batting.  I'd like to finish it now that my machine is back home (and I'm so glad!)

Viking Wear & WIPs

I haven't been making clothes lately -not that I was ever good at it, but there's a Viking themed pub crawl this weekend and something viking is required so I raided my fabric stash to use what I had at hand.

So far I look like a Christmas elf, but oh well :D   I winged both the tunic and apron dresses.  The red fabric is kinda see through, it was meant for a vacation tunic...I'm either heading to goodwill for a slip, or will attempt making one tomorrow.  The apron dress is wool, which I've never worked with before, it's not particularly shapely, but considering I probably wont be wearing it more than four hours, I can live with that. 

For accessories, I made a 6 panel hat by tracing my iron (so glad I found that suggestion somewhere today) for a template, and used some "fur" I picked up from Joann's earlier today for a capey thing.  The brooches are actually beads that I picked up in a lot of beads and trims at an estate sale, they happened to be sewn into this shape for some reason.

I'm not quite sure how to do the cape, sometimes it was pinned on with those brooches which I'd like to do, so I'm still working on the shape. Tzatziki let the fake fur sit on the cutting table for a whole 30 seconds before she jumped up to claim it as a bed, so I took that as a cue to call it quits for the evening.

Maybe I'll end up with better pictures, but the hubby is out of town and the cats wouldn't help me take any :( So there ya go, my first pub crawl, my first winged patterns, my first attempt at being viking-ish.  
 

On my quilt wall (mostly at least)
A Carole Friedlander Tangelo quilt I'm working on for my sister, in purple, green and black.
Starting the hand stitching for my Marcelle Medallion, with Aurifil 12 wool thread (giving me a bit of breaking issues so far, but I'm stubborn).
A mini quilt with 2" squares, as I was considering doing a large version with some much loved fabric, and want to try it out first.  Verdict so far, probably not doing that.

Trajectory Pillow

I'd downloaded Dorrie's altered pillow size (16") version/template of Megan's trajectory quilt after wandering across it on Craftsy awhile back and it felt like a "make a pillow day" so I, you know... made a pillow.

This seemed like a good way to use the Lipari charm pack of Oakshott I'd snagged from Contemporary Cloth that were in stock a few months ago, as I hadn't found any around Seattle to touch and look at.

Working with the Oakshott was nice - the fabric is sturdy, and didn't fray badly during the process.  It turns out though that most of these colors were too dark for my taste to show off their best properties in the gloomy indoors, but look at that nice glow in the sun! I still find them very charming and hope to get a pack of the Ruby Reds sometime. 

Trajectory pillow back

I used Essex linen in Ivory for the rest of the front, and the back is Kona in Iron. It's quilted with Aurifil, which is really starting to grow on me. 

The pattern went together in a matter of a few hours and then I procrastinated quilting it for awhile since we had some lovely warm weather early fall weather that I had to go sit out in.

I'm sure it will bug me for awhile that the fabric looks so much less fantastic in shade than it does in sun but I suppose it's just like my hair, which is always more awesomely impressive when it is out in the sun ;)