w.i.p. wednesday

I always enjoy getting to see other crafters' WIPs (Works in Progress). It's inspiring to see their beautiful finished projects, but I like being able to peek in at the process before the product. Here is some of my process!

Here are some purple and lavender ripples on the way to becoming another gingham baby quilt. The top is pieced now and it's awaiting quilting.

This mess is on the way to becoming a red and aqua lap quilt. I have been hoarding collecting reds and aquas for a while now and I'm excited to try this new pattern.

Meet the square ruler and rotary cutter, my new best friends. I have discovered the secret to making perfect HSTs (half-square triangles) -- make really sloppy, messy, imprecise HSTs and cut them down to perfect. It seems like it's going to be tedious and boring, but it actually turns out to be quite satisfying.

I have been slipping away from other things I should be doing to work on this. It's coming along pretty quickly. Good luck with your WIPs until I see you next time!

project 52: week 3: british night

This week's date was a little hard to plan. I had a couple of ideas, but I was trying to work around my daughter's schedule, which kept changing. I suspected that eventually she would end up being gone Friday night but it wasn't until I dropped her and a friend off at Disneyland that I finally had a plan.

First we went to our local British pub, The Olde Ship. We always get the same thing there, Scottish Bridie, beef in sauce wrapped in pastry with vegetables and mashed potatoes and gravy over the whole thing. Divine. Bill gets a Twisted Thistle beer and I have a pot of the best tea in the world. Ok, in Fullerton.

Then we came home for the main event, a movie on Netflix. But wait, before you think that sounds too, too lame, we watched 56 Up, which we have literally been waiting to see for 7 years. It's the latest installment in a documentary series that started in the 1960s following a group of people in England. In the first film, 7 Up, the filmmakers profiled these 7-year-old kids and then they come back to the participants every 7 years. It's quite addicting and we have been eagerly anticipating this movie since 49 Up SEVEN years ago. We were not disappointed. It felt like catching up with old friends.

linen a-line skirt

I followed this tutorial on one of my favorite sites, Crafterhours, and made this linen a-line skirt with a jersey-knit waistband. I'm pretty pleased with the way it turned out (way more pleased than I am with this photo -- I'm terrible at taking photos of clothes, I need a class or something).

It fits well, though the linen-blend isn't as drapey as I would like. Maybe it's the cotton that keeps it stiffer, but at $2.79 a yard, it was the perfect fabric to try out a new tutorial with. Maybe I'll try it again with some 100% linen. The jersey waistband is really comfortable --but it does bear a striking resemblance to maternity wear. Or wait! Yoga pants! Not maternity wear!

gingham style

I have been so excited to try to create this look. I've seen some quilts like this online and gingham seems to be everywhere right now.

I envisioned cutting out 3.5 inch squares and piecing sections of the quilt, but then I realized I could piece vertical strips, slice horizontally and then sew the checkered strips together and Bob's your uncle -- gingham. It's baby size at 36 x 48.

Backed once again with my fave Ikea nummern and bound with a vintage floral I found already cut into strips in my Nana's stash. I bound this last night while sitting and visiting with my quilting group Material Girls -- a lovely group of ladies who have been together for many years and invited me to join this spring. Such fun to hang with other quilters!

More Etsy stock! Question: wash/dry for crinkliness or not?

washi party

I have been meaning to try this pattern for quite a while now. I love the way the dress looks, I love the empire-waisted tunic, I love the notch in the neck. I have also had both of these fabrics for a long time (see this post and this post) so it was definitely time for a Washi party around here!

I got invited to a Hawaiian-themed Bunco night, so I decided it was time to break out the pink floral from last year's trip. I had more than 36 hours to make a new dress -- what?! I was a little unsure about starting out with a new, indie pattern with such a tight production schedule. I have been sewing with commercial patterns since I was a kid so I feel like I pretty much know what to expect from them. I have been a little skeptical of some online clothing tutorials and independent patterns I've seen in books -- many of them don't seem all the way thought out. But I decided to take the plunge anyway!

Well, this pattern from Made by Rae was really spectacular! It took quite a while to print and tape together, but once it was ready to go it did not disappoint. Everything fit together perfectly, it ran true to the measurements given in the directions, and those directions were super clear and easy to understand. I don't know when I have ever had something turn out more exactly like I expected! My family are all tired of hearing me sing the praises of the Washi dress pattern -- I am practically stopping people in the street to tell them about it.

The dress is really comfortable and I think it made up really nicely with this pink Hawaiian fabric.

I liked it so much, I immediately hauled out these green skirts and started cutting out a sleeveless tunic. I had plenty of fabric width but the skirts weren't long enough to get the entire length of the back in one piece. So I split the back piece at the high waist and then I was able to use the seam allowance to make a casing for the elastic. (As with the pink dress, I decided not to try tackle shirring on this go-around.) I thought I remembered seeing Rae or another of her followers substitute a casing and elastic, and I was perfectly happy with how that turned out.

The new serger made the insides almost as pretty as the outsides.

So that's the Washi Party at my house. I think both of these babies are going on vacation with me this summer!

scrappy patchwork quilt

Remember when I said I still had lots of 3-inch squares left after this quilt and this quilt? Well, here they are! This scraptastic baby quilt is made from the remaining 192 squares and the beginning of that monster bolt of quilt batting I just bought, now known as the starting capital for my quilt business. 

The quilt is 36 x 48, and I made it by first making 12 4 x 4 squares. It was harder than I thought to put everything together -- I wanted to make it look like a random arrangement  without getting any clumps of colors or patterns. I think it turned out fine, though if I stare too hard at it I can see where the shades grouped up, completely by accident. But I'm pretty sure I didn't get the same fabric two squares in a row though.

How much do I love this backing fabric?! $4.99 a yard from Ikea! The print is really obvious in this distance shot, but it's big enough that it's almost abstract up close. I bought 4 yards and went back for more yesterday, but I couldn't find any more. :(

The binding is a dark navy stripe I scored from the clearance section at M & L. The quilt is a nice light weight for summer -- or life in Southern California!

Another quilt for the stockroom of the future Kitchen Table Workshop Etsy store!

Project 52: Weeks 1 and 2

Since I came up with the idea to do Project 52, I find myself in charge of date nights for the month of July. For week 1 we already had plans to go out to dinner with another couple while both of our teenage daughters were working on a play together. Since I had already planned that date, I'm taking credit for it for date night!

We had a great time with our friends and even spent some of the time talking about things other than the girls! The food at Kentro (one of our favorites) was good and we hung out there for 3 hours! Going out with another couple was a winner.

Week 2 was our anniversary. No pressure. But if I figured out anything from reading about Tiffany's year of dates it was that good dates weren't necessarily fancy or expensive. So I poked around on the internet and found a website that listed places in the OC to play pinball -- one of our favorite pastimes when we were dating up in the Bay Area. The website even listed exactly which machines places had and rated their condition. We ended up at a pizza place in Fullerton with 5 good machines. We had a pizza and some sodas, broke out a roll of quarters and had a fun date. 

Project 52

I stumbled on Project 52: Date Nights on Simply Modern Mom. Tiffany and her husband decided to take on a year-long project to have weekly interesting but low-pressure date nights. Their constraints were a little different from ours -- they have young children to work around, but could have at-home dates once the littles were in bed. We have just the one teen who is often away from home, but there's no having a date night when she's here. We might be able to afford a little more now than when we were in their shoes (grad students with young kids) but we have the same issues of "We are too busy. We can't think of anything to do. The house is a mess. We are tired." Blah, blah, blah.

So, armed with 52 weeks of ideas from Simply Modern Mom and some simple rules:

• Can't do the same thing more than once in the same month. This means going out for dinner can only be the date ONCE a month, instead of being the only thing we can ever think of.
• Take turns being in charge of date nights on a monthly basis. This will relieve us of the endless attempt to reach consensus, which always results in us going to a well-worn restaurant or ordering take-away and watching tv.
• No children allowed. With only 3 people in our family, it always seemed a little mean to go out and do things without Frances. But hey, she's 16 now and goes out and does plenty of stuff without us!

we will undertake this Project 52! 

(We'll leave for another time the topic of why all of the role models I seem to be finding online are under 30 and LDS when I am neither of those things. Talk amongst yourselves.)

nerd alert: pattern organization

After one too many times going through ALL of my patterns (it turns out I have about 100) looking for that ONE that I want (see this post) I decided to implement this pattern organization system I found in a sewing book. Can't remember which one, sorry. The basic idea is to create your own pattern catalog like the ones in the fabric store. The pattern envelopes go in a notebook in clear plastic sleeves and the instructions and pattern guts go in these tidy white envelopes in a bin in the garage. Just like the drawers at the fabric store.

Oh, yes I did. If OCD makes you uncomfortable, you might just want to look away.

But look: the pile went from this to this! (And confession: ironing all those pattern envelopes was very satisfying.)

Now I can just leaf through the notebook when I want to make something. 

Coming soon: crazy quilting action!

patchwork selvage bag

I have had a little Guatamalan cross-body bag that I carried my iPhone and house key in while I walk. It's almost perfect -- but the problem is that it's just a little too small so I can't close the top and on the rare day that I get rained on a little on my walk (Like today. In July. What the what?!) I'm afraid my phone will get wet. So I decided to dip into that ever-growing bag of trimmed selvages and see what I could do. It's basically the same as the one it's replacing, but a little bigger.

Here's the inside. A little snap on the flap that will now close.

And inside here I made a little velcro pocket to keep my key separate from the phone. You can almost see it.

And I have to put this one in too. Chloe is wearing Frances's mini mouse ears hat. Can't you just read her mind? Seriously? A hat? How long do I have to do this?

vintage slip dress

This vintage pattern hangs in my dining area. I bought it in a very hot jumbly antique store in Richmond when visiting my friend Gregg one summer. I have always wanted to try making the little slip as a dress or nightie. I decided to whip one up between other projects this weekend so I started looking for the pattern itself since I knew I had only framed the empty envelope. I went through all of my patterns, thinking I must have slipped the pattern guts into another envelope. No dice. Thinking all the while, "I really have to reorganize these patterns." (Post coming soon!) Then I remembered a bag of children's patterns I had stored in the office -- still no dice. But I remembered saving that pattern! 

Wait a second -- I opened up the frame and found that I had stored the pattern in the back! That's what I call too clever by half.

The fabric and trim started life as a cute little Eileen West cotton lawn nightie that was relegated to the scrap bin when I developed an inability to sleep in anything that wasn't stretchy. It would be great if I had taken a picture of it before I started, wouldn't it? Oh, well. 

It's a little short in relation to its width -- if I make it again I might make it a little longer. I need a little girl to try it on!

I think I'm almost more pleased with the way the inside looks! Loving my new birthday serger!