Re-designed Skirt

The holey pants

This skirt started out as a pair of pants that my daughter loved until they were holey.  Those who have known me for a while, will know that I hate to throw things out.  So I decided to make a skirt out of it.  I had been looking through my stash of fabric for a while trying to find the right material.  While I was in Hancock's one day I found the perfect fabric and I just couldn't let it go.  I fell in love with the plaid.  I found this cute pattern to go with it.

My other fabrics

I started by laying the pants on a flat surface.  After getting them flat I cut them off right at the crotch.

Pants cut off

Ok, I had to trim a little more.  I started pinning the first layer on and found that one side was longer than the other.  I sewed the side seams first, then sewed 2 rows of basting stitches along the top edge of the material.  After sewing the 2 rows I gathered them by pulling on the threads on one side of the material.  I started pinning on one side and and gathered until the side seams matched first on one side then the other.

The top Layer, gathered and sewn

The last layer

The last row is plaid.  This means that the plaid needs to be matched.  After pinning all the way around the skirt, I sewed the row of ruffle to the skirt. After sewing the seam, I sewed the seam flat to the pants base.  The first layer is then complete.So I cut my material in two width wise pieces.  I them matched my plaid and pinned it all of the way down.  After pinning I trimmed the part that was over the edges on either side.  After sewing the side seams, I pinned and sewed the hem in.  This is easier because there is less material to handle.  After sewing the hem, I sewed the 2 rows of basting stitches to make it easier to gather.  The next step was to pull the stitches on one side of the fabric.  This makes it much easier to make a nice gather.  After that I just had to pin and sew the layer to the one before.  I got everything pinned, trying to get all of the gathers fairly evenly dispersed.  I got everything even and sewed the last layer on.  After I got everything finished I realize I may have made it too long, but it turned out just right.  B loves it!

Finishing up

                                                                              My happy girl!

A Dress Makeover

My daughter in her new dress

A piece of the original dress

Now this post is not about fashion.  It is about using things that are available.  I have been given some of my grandmothers dresses that are too large for me.  I had a thought that I might be able to cut them down and make dresses for my daughter.  I started with the pattern that she chose, then I matched it with the dress that I would be able to cut it from.

The pattern piece pinned to the dress section

The pattern that she chose was of course a princess cut.  There was only one dress that would work for this pattern.  Of course, I had taken the dress apart before I thought about  taking pictures.

It took me two sessions to get everything all cut out.  I cut out a size 10 knowing it would be a little big right now, but it probably won't be for long.  The work of a mother is truly never finished.  As I was cutting the front panel out I realized that I couldn't cut the pattern out as it was designed.  Because my grandmother's dress had a V neck with a dickey, I had to cut this dress out with a V neck.  Fortunately, my grandmother's collar and dickey were still usable   So I can just cut the collar down a little because it is too wide for a little girl's dress.  The collar and dickey were very nicely made with decorative stitching along the edge.

Cut to pattern piece

Back of the dress

I started by sewing the sides to the middle sections.  Then I sewed the middle seam up the back, using a wide basting stitch through the section where I will install the zipper.  After that I pinned and sewed the zipper down.  After the zipper was sewn I had to pick out the stitches that I had used to keep the zipper centered.  Then I sewed the collar pieces onto the appropriate front section with the facing.  After I got the collar pieces sewn down to the main piece, I sewed the two front sections together making sure that I matched the edges at the collar.  After I sewed the pieces together I sewed in the dickey.

Front of the dress

At this point the front and back are still separate.  I laid the back section down on a piece if scrap material and cut facing for the back.  After sewing in the facing on the back, I pinned and sewed the shoulder seams. I still had the sleeves to put in.  However, I was able to leave them hemmed from the original dress, so I didn't have to put hems on them.  After the shoulder seams were finished, I pinned, eased  and sewed the sleeves into the dress.

Now all I had left was the side seams and the hem.  I did add a small tie to the sides of the dress, because I knew it would be loose through the waist.   After I finished the side seams, I had my daughter try on the dress.  I wanted to make sure that the hem was the right length.  I pinned the hem and started sewing.  As I was finishing up the hem I was trying to figure out what I could do to make the dress a little more fun.  I thought of all of the white 1/4 inch satin ribbon I have and thought that it would do the job.  So I added one row to the sleeves and three rows at the hem.

I think that this dress turned out very nicely and am looking forward to the next one.  Oh, and my daughter really likes it also, always a plus.  ;)

The Artful Camera

So my husband bought me a really nice camera for my birthday/ Mother's Day/ anniversary/ Christmas.  His comment was 'It took me 10 years, but I didn't forget."  He really is a keeper! 

So I have been having lots of fun with my new "toy."  And one of the things that I have found is that the camera straps that come with the camera are not very comfortable.  So after finding a tutorial on Pinterest about making your own camera straps, I decided that I could do this.  So I am going to make a camera strap to replace the one that came with the camera.  I don't like have the strap on all of the time, but it is nice when I don't have somewhere safe to put it down. 

So I am using a bunch of blue scraps left over from my sister's quilt and I am going to make 2' pineapple blocks and sew them together for the outside of the strap.  I am going to back it with some white flannel.  I decided  to use a layer of flannel as batting instead  of adding bulk with the regular batting.

This is the last piece of the second round 

 This was definitely an interesting project.  To begin with, the finished size of my blocks was 2 inches.  Needless to say, this means working with very small pieces of fabric and in very tight spacing.  To start off, I had seen a blog post about a lady (Connie from QuiltWorks in TX) who was making a quilt with blocks this size.  Now I don't have that much patience, but I do love tiny things.  So I decided to give it a go.  I will admit that my blocks only have 32 pieces while hers have over 40.  However I have three kids to keep out of my hair while I work.  This always makes life interesting.  It is also why I do a lot of my work like this after they are in bed.  ;)  After seeing her picture with a 2 block wide strip around her neck, I thought that these would be perfect for a camera strap.

Finished block

To begin I found a pineapple block layout and used my computer to shrink it down to the correct size.  Next, I used tissue paper cut down to about 4 inch pieces and laid the first one directly on my screen and traced the pattern onto the tissue paper with an ultra fine sharpy pen.  The next step was easy.   I used my rotary cutter to cut 3/4 inch strips of white and colored fabric.  I cut enough for about thirty, because I wasn't sure what would look good all laid out.  It took about 20 minutes to put each block together.  After the forth or fifth round I was able to sew the opposite sides before stopping to trim the seams and iron them.  If I hadn't done this it probably would have taken me another 5 to 10 minutes per block.  I laid them out so that the dark and light blocks alternated.

 As I finished blocks, I sewed them together.  This way I didn't have to worry as much about my youngest son trying to carry them off on me.  He does love to get the "skinny" on all of my projects.  I made a total of 15 blocks for this project.  After I got all of the blocks assembled, I then took 2 layers of white flannel, and pinned them to the back side of the blocks.  After I cut them down to the right size, I stitched an X shape with my machine over the center of each block.  This way I get the quilted appearance.  After I trimmed the flannel and the blocks down to the right width, I used double fold 1/4 inch bias tape to finish the edges off all nice and neat.  After I finished the strap itself, I sewed a large key ring to each end of the strap and added a swivel spring clip to that so I can clip the strap to my camera.   I have been using it now for a couple of weeks and I must say that I absolutely love it.

Baby Stuff: Finished at last



So it's all finished.  I hand quilted this and it seemed to take forever, especially to my husband.  I took it with me almost everywhere, including to church.  I paper pieced all of the blocks.  I did use others ideas as a starting place for the four seasonal blocks (Thank you), but I incorporated them into a large block of my own design.




Log Cabin

Spring






Summer



Center

Fall



Winter

So I got all of the blocks put together and started quilting.  Now the basics were no problem.  I just quilted around the shapes.  However I still needed to fill in some open spaces inside the blocks in order to have the right amount of quilting i.e. no more than four inches between stitching.  So in the summer block I added a cloud in the sky and leaves in the tree. 

Fall leaves detail

 In the fall block, I didn;t want to add to the busyness of the block, so I quilted along the lines of the pieces.  This gave me complete coverage for quilting purposes.  I also added a cloud in the sky in this block as well.

In the spring block I quilted around both of the birds seperately.  Also while I quilted the greenery I did not quilt on the embroidered flowers.

On the divider strips I quilted a simple vine and
leaf pattern.  The I hand drew with a quilting stencil transfer pencil.  It helped to keep them fairly regular.  I am very grateful to have finished this.  My sister is happy with it also, which makes me happy as well.  All in all I am very grateful to have this quilt put to bed so to speak.







So now on to a new project.


 

Baby Stuff 2

So to update, I have almost finished two blocks for my sister's babys' quilt and got a third mostly ready to put together when I realized that the horses legs were backwards.  So I redrew my pattern pieces and got everything sewed again.  And yes conundrum strikes again.  I had the piece for the top of the tree in the block ready to attach to the other portions.  Well, I went to put the block together and now I totally cannot find it.  Granted with my usual amount of chaos, I can still usually put my hand on what I am looking for. (My husband claims it is nothing short of a miracle and he might be right some days.)  Usually it is just that even though there is a method to my "madness," no one else understands my method.  Well, tonight I looked under my desk.  I looked where I had left it and all of the surrounding area.  I even looked under all of the other supplies I had right there for the other blocks.  NO such luck!  And of course everyone else was sleeping so I couldn't even ask if any one else had seen it.

So, I put that block to the side to deal with tomorrow.  So now I start working on the center block.  This will be a horses' head looking out of a stall door.  Well, I no sooner got most of the horse together when I realized I don't have enough for the horses' face.  Normally this would be a non-issue considering the amount of cloth I have stored in my daughter's closet.  It is even nice and accessible there, but this material did not come from my stash.  Shh, don't tell my husband I brought more material home!  He might have a coronary.  ;)  So now I am going to have to put off finishing the block until after I can raid my mom's stash again tomorrow.  I am really having fun doing the horses out of soft fuzzy material, but there are some complications when it doesn't come out of my stash. 

Those of you who know me are probably busting your sides laughing to think that I had to get More material to make this quilt.  In my defence, I am not spending money on it.  I am also getting it out of my mom's way since she has the scrap material from like 7 different people in those totes.  It was even a trip down memory lane because she had material in there for outfits that I made as a teenager.  Now before you panic I am only 35! 

So I didn't find any more of the brown moleskin in my mom's stash or mine, but I did find some grey that will work well.  The only drawback is that I now have to redraw 4 pieces so that I can use a different color on the horse.  So now to work.  Oh, and we found the piece I was missing, so I can put the summer block together, and my husband made no complaint about the fabric I brought in either.


Center block all put together

center detail

Now, I have my center block complete, but I am still having problems with the horse on the summer block.  I finally decided to toss the horse and start over.  I really didn't like the design of that block as well and this way I don't have to refigure it yet again.  I really don't know why the legs won't match up with the body.  I must have made a mistake somewhere, but after drawing the section with the legs twice and both times it was wrong, I figure that there must be a flaw in my design.  So I am borrowing some inspiration from elsewhere.  Thank you Lord for Pinterest!!!!!   I also made a decision about the blocks in between the seasonal blocks.  I am doing a very simple log cabin design in blues.

So the next post will finish up this quilting adventure.  It has been a lot of work and a lot of fun.  I will admit that I am almost sick of this quilt though.  It will be nice to work on something else for a change. 

I am sorry about the tardiness of this post but I have been dealing with some technical issues.  I hope that they are now resolved.

Baby Stuff

Well, the first weekend in March, my husband and I went on to marriage retreat.  I cannot describe to you what a blessing it was.  There was one couple there that has been married for 63 years.  And they were still holding hands.  Now that is the picture of love that I like to see. 

We had a wonderful group and loads fellowship.  Of the 5 couples that attended in our group, four couples stayed in the same hotel.  We would gather after the evening session in the lobby and play games and have snacks and fellowship.  It was great to get to know some of the couples from our new church family better.  We had such a great time together. 

While I was there I was able to get some work done on the quilt I have started for my sister's baby boy.  She is due in May, but we are having a baby shower for her at the end of March, and I really want to get it finished before her shower.  I am making a paper pieced quilt of my own design.  I am going with horses because she loves horses.  I have 2 of the blocks mostly finished now.  I had the fabric sewn for the block but I still needed to do some hand work on each block that I had finished sewing.  For the corners I decided to go with the four seasons.  So I have mostly finished the winter and spring blocks.  I still have to add the mane and tail to each horse, but I got the flowers on the spring block and the snowflakes on the winter block. 

Spring detail: blue birds

Winter detail: snowflakes



Spring detail: flowers

               So after we got home I started working on the summer block.  You know how they say that even the best laid plans go astray, well, somehow I put three of the sections of the block together backwards!  Yes, I said backwards!  Oh, well, they also say live and learn.  All things considered, with having three kids underfoot it has gone together remarkably smoothly.

So I am going to re-draw the pieces for the section with the legs.  There wouldn't be anything left of the paper pattern if I tried to take the stitches out and sew it on the other side.  That is one downside of sewing though the paper, another is that you have to redraw the pattern pieces.  Oh well, again, live and learn.

I am still trying to decide what to do in between the horse blocks.  I had drawn up a pattern, but the more I thing about it the more I don't want to use that pattern.  Which kind of stinks because I  drew out 4 copies (which of course took three tries to get the measurements right.)  At the moment I an contemplating a simple log cabin design.  They are quick and easy to put together and are after all classics.  The complication is deciding what layout I want to use because my other blocks are 16 inches square.  I think I am going to go with a log cabin design with 8 inch blocks, but then again give me a few days and that may change again.  ;)  Anyway, I plan to finish the horse blocks this weekend, along with making royal icing flowers for my nieces birthday cupcakes, oh, and I have to go feed and water chicken and feed cows too.  Nothing like a full schedule to prove how productive you can  really be.

Hang in there folks, it's gong to be a crazy ride for the next couple of weeks!