Category: sewing

Weekend Project No. 1

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Friday afternoon I broke into my fabric stash – notably the big trunk at the bottom of the pile that is chock full of winter fabrics – the wools, the fleeces, the corduroys.  (I not inclined to show you the pile either, as it’s not really a nice, neat pile, more like an corner that is piled and crammed and overflowing with ‘supplies’ for all my crafty endeavors that could be mistaken for a hoarding house.)  The shot I posted Friday is really not even a drop in the bucket – that was just what was speaking to me that day as far as wardrobe makeovers go.
This purple plaid has been kicking around in the stash for some time.  I think I got it at either an old SPCA rummage sale or Focus Flea Market (both of which are no longer to my great sadness.  More than half my house and wardrobe came from those two places over the years).  I’ve never seen anything like it.  I think it’s a wool fabric.  It’s woven and two layers – the plaid on one side and a solid purple on the other.  It’s a funky size too – a 35″ x 37″ square.  For years I’ve wanted to do something with it that would show off both sides, but couldn’t come up with a satisfactory answer.  Until Friday.  I was playing around it, bemoaning to Edie that it just wasn’t big enough for anything fun, that I didn’t particularly want to put a seam in it, but maybe that was just what I needed to do when it hit me.
I cut a 6″ strip, hemmed the raw edges, added a very large button hole and voila:
 A fabric cowl.  Instant gratification.
And it’s reversible.  I pull one end through the button hole on the other end and it’s attached.  I’m utterly amazed at my brilliance.  Needless to say, I’m absolutely loving this.

Something New.

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I’m sick of my winter clothes, so I thought I’d make myself something new. And I’m trying out this blogger app on my new iPod touch. All sorts of new things.

Sometimes, really.

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 It’s Mid-January.  
I’m starting to get cabin fever.  I know, it’s way too early for that.  I think it’s mostly due to Edie being home sick 2 days last week with yet another bug going around, that I managed to catch as well.
It’s just a mild cold.  But the idea that I’ve got another one after the back to back ones that kept me out between Halloween and Christmas has me cranky.
Also, I’ve now spent the better part of the last 3 weeks in my tiny, dark house with my family.  I love my tiny dark house, I love my family.  But enough. 
Thankfully, the weather was warm this past weekend.  Warm enough I wandered around outside and noticed my hellebore starting to bloom.
 
They aren’t supposed to do this until closer to the end of February.  
I’d love to regal you with tales of my outdoor adventures this weekend, but not long into my soaking up the sun out there Saturday, I had a run-in with nature.  A bird perched itself on a tree branch above me and proceeded to relieve itself, all over my lap.  That was enough nature for me for the day.
I headed back inside, where I was inspired to do some cleaning – not only did I get the Christmas cookie tins and holiday china packed away, I re-organized the upstairs linen closet.  Admittedly, balling up sheets and shoving them in wasn’t working anymore, which is what prompted that bit of organizational madness.
Once I got the house clean, I have to admit, I was sort of looking for an excuse to sit and work on my two big projects – Pat’s sweater and the quilt.  I’d recently realized I’d made major progress over the holiday break where we sat and watched tv almost incessantly when we weren’t hosting friends.
 Several inches worth of progress on the sweater.  It finally is starting to look like something.

Friday night, as I was sitting and ripping out delicate little stitches, I realized I was over halfway done ripping apart the quilt.  More like, 75% done disassembling the back from the front.  That definitely went faster than I thought it was going to.
Both are projects I had pie in sky visions of being done by Pat’s birthday, which is a week from today.  The quilt isn’t going to make it – even if I do get the back fully removed, I still have quite a bit of repairs to make to the top of the quilt. It could be an anniversary gift.  But the sweater?  I think I could make that happen in the next week. The weather forecast for the week looks conducive to sitting and knitting.  And having spent a big chunk of Saturday cleaning, I think I could reasonably pull it off.

How my latest project became way more of a project than I thought it was going to be when I started it.

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When I first met Pat, he had this quilt on his bed.  It was soft, slightly tattered, definitely loved and just the right weight to be used all year long.  That quilt stayed on our bed for some time – I don’t remember exactly when it was deemed a little too shabby to be used everyday anymore, but I do know it was pre-Edie.  I assured Pat it could be fixed, that I could fix it and so I put it in a pile of projects to be worked on and there it sat, for some time.  The quilt would come up now & again and I’d think, fixing that quilt would be a great gift for him.  We have a number of quilts his grandmother made that I blogged about last year (only I’ve just realized that the images are MIA so I’m not linking that post until I figure out where those images are), but as I have realized, this quilt was different, because it was made by his other grandmother.  His maternal grandmother was a beautiful seamstress, quite the quilter and owned a fabric shop at one point. Her quilts are all over our house.  This quilt in question was made by his paternal grandmother, who was not known for her sewing.  She was married to a farmer and I don’t think they had a whole lot to their name to begin with when a tornado came through one spring day in the mid 1990’s,  leaving them with their lives, but not much else.  Pat’s grandfather was never quite the same after that, but I suppose when you are 94 years old and have a house land on you, you’re bound to experience some sort of effect.  
In researching how to repair some of the other quilts around our house, I came to the realization that this quilt needed more than just a few patches and a new binding applied – if I was going to do it right, which I wanted to do, as Pat loved this quilt, not just because it’s one of the few things left from his grandmother, because it was he thought, the perfect sleeping quilt.  And doing it right meant taking the binding off, taking the back off, replacing some quilt parts, the backing and the binding. 
 Surely it couldn’t take that long.  A few hours with a seam ripper and it would all be good, yes?
 I thought I could start it just before Thanksgiving and have it done by Christmas.  His birthday later this month at the latest.  
That was before I got into it and realized that this quilt had been quilted through all the layers – top, batting and back.  Machine quilted, with lots of tiny, tight little stitches.  The quilting rows were about 2-3 finger widths apart, and the quilt fits a full size bed.  That’s a lot of tiny, tight little stitches to pull out. I literally have to take the entire thing apart.
Parts of the quilt are so fragile that I have to very slowly and patiently pull every stitch out as carefully as I can.  I have spent hours on this quilt, I have gotten friends to sit on the opposite end of the quilt and help me, and for about 20 or so man hours spent taking the quilt apart, I have gotten about a quarter to a third dequilted.
I realized as I got into the project that the batting between the layers was disintegrating, leaving a trail of fuzz behind.  I had every intention of surprising Pat with this project, but between the mess it was leaving behind as well as the realization that this project was going to take far longer than I had anticipated had me share with him that I was finally working on his grandmother’s quilt.  So much for the surprise, as well as the idea of it being a Christmas or birthday gift this year. This little project is definitely much bigger than I bargained for.
But the quilt itself?  It is most definitely a scrap quilt.  There are some old flannels that I imagine were shirts of Pat’s grandfather.  There are some sweet children’s fabrics, there are what appear to be upholstery fabrics, seersucker, dressier fabrics, vintage prints and more.  As I slowly work my way up and down the rows, I wonder where each piece of fabric came from and I ponder what scraps I’m going to use to repair the quilt.  
As you can see, it’s very much a patchwork quilt, no real pattern, so I think it gives me some room to include some scraps of our lives in it. I never really knew his grandparents, but as I work on this quilt, as I get to know each and every bit of fabric used, I feel like I’ve gotten to know them just a little bit.  I’m actually glad I’ve waited until now to repair this quilt – had I done it earlier, I wouldn’t have done it right.  This way, it will hopefully be around for many more years.
But first, I need to get the darn thing apart.  

Currently…

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I finally finished getting the garden in this weekend, although I still have some raspberry bushes in a bucket (Pat & I are debating their placement) and the landscaping plan in the backyard has changed somewhat (Pat wants to add a pond or some sort of water feature.  I think he’s realized I need a new digging project.) and weeding is never-ending.  All this rain the last week or so has brought back weeds I thought I’d dug up already.  I just walk around with a shovel in my hand these days, attacking weeds and vines.  Which is how I got poison on my hands again.  I hate when I get it on the palms, really makes it hard to do stuff.  One of these days I’ll learn to wear gloves, but that won’t happen until I find gloves that fit just right.  I have been looking and tried some on the other day when I was picking up netting for the blueberry bushes, but the ones I really liked they didn’t have in my size.  All I ever seem to find these days are the type of gloves with the rubber on the fingers and palms – I don’t like these gloves at all, what happened to the good old fashioned canvas ones and why are they so hard to find?

The Planting Seeds Music Festival is tomorrow at Buford.  It’s a music festival celebrating all the Charlottesville elementary schools gardens.  I’m the food chair for the whole shebang, so today I’m wrapping up loose ends, dotting my i’s and crossing my t’s.  I got the rough draft for the flyer for the class picnic out today too.  I’ve put Edie’s class picnic together since kindergarten.  It’s really quite easy – I can pretty much tell you who’s going to bring what, who’s going to help and who’s going to call me the morning of in a panic. When you do the same thing 5 years in a row, you learn these things.  There’s also prep for the upcoming swap going on.  I’m really excited about some of the responses and what people are bringing. 

Last weekend’s bug seems to have faded into just another huge allergy flare-up.  I woke up feeling crummy yesterday, with that lovely racking allergy cough I get that just hurts.  I don’t like the stuff the doctor gives me for the cough – honestly, I can’t take anything stronger than a tylenol without some horrible reaction.  But, at least Pat was home so that I could lounge all I wanted to.  Also, it was Mother’s Day, so I had full cart blanche to lounge.  I got myself caught up on the NYTimes Book Review section. I had like 3 months worth of Sunday’s piled up.  It was heavenly.  We went to Mono Loco for dinner, where I realized the tequila in my margarita made the cough stop, at least for a while.  I think I’m going to need more medicinal tequila.

We officially have the fattest squirrel you have ever seen in our yard.  I’m going to see if I can’t get a picture to show you.  Seriously, it’s huge.  When Pat got a good look at it on the back porch today, he wondered if maybe it wasn’t a small groundhog with a bushy tail.  It is that fat.

We are hosting one of Pat’s coworkers this evening.  I had totally forgotten about it.  Honestly, since I came home from the gym this morning (which totally kicked my butt.  I definitely was aiming too high after taking most of the last week off with the ick), I have been lounging in my bathrobe coughing and answering emails about the festival.  I have exactly two hours to get the first floor of this house in presentable condition.   I want to make a better impression than I did the  last time we hosted his coworkers.  At least I have no where to go but up, right?  

Because I have so many other things to do.

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‘Tis the season and while I suppose I should be busying myself with getting ready for the upcoming holidays, I instead chose to take time to finish new potholders I had started a few weeks back.  To be fair, I was trying to make a path to the fabric stash in order to make gifts when I suddenly decided I needed to finish this project first.  The ones I have are so worn out that I might as well just use my bare hands when pulling anything out of the oven these days, so I really should have done myself a favor and just finished them when I started them.  Darn you girlfriends stopping by for a quick glass of wine!  (Actually, you’re welcome anytime.  I love a distraction.)
All materials are from the stash – a cow print cotton on one side, black linen on the back.  I like for my kitchen things to be black & white with little hints of color, so these fit the bill perfectly.
I machine quilted a thick layer of fleece to the back of the cow print, sewing around the edges of the black marks.  I added another layer of fleece when I sewed the black linen on and some red gingham ribbon and called it a day.  The cow print I picked up as a remnant probably at Joann’s, and the linen is leftover from a pair of pants I made myself a few summers ago.  It’s quite thick and durable.  I suspect it will hold up much better than the cowprint. I was a little fast & loose with the whole quilting thing, not really taking the time to ensure that all was flat and smooth and properly laid out.  (This is what my Aunt Loretta would call a typical Becky job.).  They faded in the laundry, because no, I didn’t wash the fabric beforehand.  (I’m really a lazy sewer, in case you hadn’t figured that out by now.)  I’m happy with the way they turned out though, because they are still pretty cute and in better working shape than the last pair. 
Now I suppose I can get back to working on gifts.  Or not, as I seem to recall some pants of Pat’s that need to be hemmed…..

Counting Down.

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 Many moons ago, I saw a handmade advent calendar somewhere in the blog world and thought, hey, I could do that.  And so I did.
It’s 4 rows of pockets, straight across.  Most of the materials were vintage thrifted items, including the candy cane bias tape around the edges.  To mark the pockets, I used ribbon that I wrote numbers for dates on.  Some of them are barely holding on anymore.  I keep meaning to fix that.  I know I’ve been saying that for the last few years.  Maybe this year is the one it gets done….

The appliqued ornaments and tree boughs across the top were from the Christmas tablecloth my parents received as a wedding gift.  35+ years of gravy and wine stains take their toll you know.
This is just one of the several new lives I’ve been able to give that tablecloth so that it’s still part of our holiday traditions.
 
Over the years, I’ve learned to sync this calendar with the one on the kitchen wall.  While certain activities come back every year, like “Write a letter to Santa”,  “Go Ice Skating” never happened, no matter how much I pushed it.  Some days I just pop a piece of leftover Halloween candy in there and call it a day.   By syncing it with our calendar, I’ve learned to not tell her to bake Christmas cookies the same day as her Christmas concert at school. Not all the activities are holiday based – some, like yesterday’s “Play Uno as a family”, are just things we can all do together.   It’s definitely changed over the years, as she’s gotten older and busier, but it still remains one of her favorite things about this time of year. 

So pleased with myself.

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Instead of throwing things away or donating them to say, Salvation Army, I seem to be rich in friends who instead think, Oh, I’ll give this to Becky and she can do something with it.  Over the years, I’ve been given an assortment of goodies- old aprons, quilts, quilt tops, shower curtains, sheets, duvet covers, and so on.  Some of them I pass along.  Some of them sit in a pile, awaiting inspiration.  And some, like today, actually get used.
I bought these black linen capri pants at Old Navy eons ago.  I loved them.  They were comfortable, fit well and went with everything.  I have worn them out, but can’t quite bring myself to part with them yet.  I have attempted several times to remake these pants with no success.  I can do skirts with no pattern, but anything else, forget it.
A friend gave me an old duvet cover a few weeks ago.  I dumped it on top of a pile in the happy corner and debated what to do with it.  The fabric was light and seemed like it might be really comfy during hot weather.  And there was alot of it.  Today, while trying to figure out what to do with myself (unemployed stay at home motherhood when your kid has been shipped off for 3 weeks is a strange place for me to be in), I decided I was going to attempt to make a pair of pants out of the duvet cover, using my treasured, tattered old navy pants as a pattern.
Voila!  The finished result.  I cheated and cut the pants out on the seam instead of the fold.  Same idea really, yes?  Since the original pants are a bit too big these days, I didn’t add a seam allowance, hoping that would fix the ‘baggy’ problem.  It did for the most part, but I definitely need to make some adjustments. However, for a new pair of lounging pj bottoms, they work.

I love this fabric – a floral paisley?  Yes please.  I had a pair of pants in high school out of a similar fabric that I adored, so I was really sort of excited about a new pair out of this fabric.  The duvet cover is pretty big – I think it’s a queen or a king, so I have alot more fabric to perfect my pattern.  They are as comfortable as I thought they would be.  I started and finished something in an afternoon – not such a rarity for me these days anymore I’m proud to say.  And, I successfully made my own pattern.  Yes, I need to tweak it, but it fit! I’ve not always had such successes with sewing without a pattern.  Hell, I’m not always successful with a pattern.  But that’s another story….

A new pocket for purple moose.

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When Edie was days old, our dear friend Anne presented her with a small stuffed purple moose that went on to become the toy that we couldn’t go anywhere without.  You know the kind.  She still sleeps with purple moose, although after getting lost in the covers of her big girl bed more than a few times, she’s tucked him into the pocket of a large pillow I made her, so she always knows where he is. 
When Edie was ready for a big girl bed, her Uncle Gil so kindly gave her one taking up space in his attic and included this lovely white coverlet.  It had belonged to one of his family members – Great Aunt maybe?  I can’t recall.  After many years of wear though, it started showing it’s age recently.  See?
It’s just given out in great big spots. 
Edie is off to Camp Lachlan on Sunday for the next three weeks.  She’s a bit nervous about this – three weeks away from home and she won’t know anyone.   Knowing she was going to want to bring purple moose along, I cut into the old coverlet yesterday and made a new travel pillow, with a pocket,  just for purple moose to go to camp.  I thought it would be a nice touch of home for her to have with her.
He is now ready for camp.  And she’s getting there.  Knowing she will have her most trusted companion in her beloved old coverlet has helped.  (I think shopping Monday for her toiletries, new trunk and picking up her new personalized stationary helped too.)
And I actually started AND finished a project in one afternoon.  Must have been the fact that the AC upstairs by the happy corner made that the most pleasant place in the house. Any excuse to stay up there…..

It’s Finished and It’s Alive!

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Edie requested I make her a skirt, one of my whimsical tiered skirts.  Of course missthing insisted on approving the design, ie, fabric selection.  I laid one out and had it approved, only to discover I didn’t have enough fabric to make it as promised.  Which led us back to the drawing board.  After going through a few versions that were deemed “Not ‘Alive’ Enough.”, we reached a compromise that would use all the fabrics in the approved ‘ALIVE’ design, but in accordance to the amount of fabric I had on hand, all of which were from the stash.
Apparently “ALIVE” is Edie’s new phrase.  I like it. 
Here is the skirt in question, finished!
The bottom has a small ruffle out of this really great striped seersucker type fabric.  It was supposed to be the bottom tier in a 4 tier skirt, but I realized I didn’t have enough of it, so we compromised and made it the ruffle. The bottom tier is a pale pink, with white raised dots that don’t necessarily like to show up in photos.

The middle tier is a solid purple linen and the top tier is a fun pink striped paisley pattern.  Paisleys were definitely my most favorite part of the 80’s and I still have a fondness for them.  Edie thought this fabric was ‘wild’ and she loved it with the polka dots and stripes at the bottom.

I drafted the pattern myself, something I don’t usually do with success, but I have found with elastic waist skirts, I can do it if I follow a certain formula.  So, I measured her waist and her length between her waist and knees and took it from there.  I made it a little big, so she had room to grow into it, planning to add elastic to the waist as needed.   Pat thought I was making myself a new skirt at first, because it’s not little girl sized anymore.  Then again, our girl is 4’9″, which is getting to be pretty tall.  Her new flip flops are women’s, sized 7/8 and quite frankly, there’s not as much room as I think there should be for her to grow into them.  My baby is no longer a baby, and not so much a little girl anymore.  She is definitely becoming a tween, as evidenced by the list of music she left on my desk this morning that she’d like for me to add to her itunes.  Heavy on the Taylor Swift.  Oh my.

That is as close to modeling the skirt as I’m going to get from her.  For now, it hits her mid-calf and is quite cute.  I’m hoping this will fit her for a few years.  When she was younger, she had a big aversion to anything ‘plain’ which she called boring and demanded I make fancy, by any means necessary. Then she went through a phase where she only wanted me to make her solid colored clothing.  A white linen blouse.  A purple linen dress.  I was quite excited to meet her demands for a skirt that was “ALIVE”. Even more excited to see her pair it with a patterned shirt.  It makes me happy to see her so fearlessly put patterns together with patterns because she pulls it off so well.  For a while there, I thought she’d outgrown that. 

I hadn’t finished a sewing project in what felt like forever.  I have a number of projects halfway done, or laid out,  but never find myself finishing them.  It felt good to finish something.  It’s pointed out to me that I finish lots of other things I set out to do, like gardens and cakes and canning, but it really nags at me that I have such a hard time finishing sewing projects.  I’m trying to be better about this and this was my first step towards it.  It feels good.