fabric splurge

After quite a long time of reading a much-too-long list of sewing blogs, I have succumbed to the temptations of the release of a line of designer fabric. But not just any designer -- this collection features the art of Charley Harper! After first seeing some of his prints at some friends' house in Washington, D.C., we have been looking at different Harper prints, books, puzzles, etc. and looking for just the right one. I think our inability to choose just one design has been the main thing paralyzing us. Enter the Charley Harper collection from Birch Fabrics. (No, they didn't give me anything for this shout out -- they are quite unaware that I'm alive.)

Aren't these fabulous?! Wrens and nuthatches and squirrels along with those pretty leaf and flower prints!

And the cardinals! My favorite birds! I splurged on a set of fat quarters of every print in the collection. Now the pressure's on for a design good enough to show them off. I imagine I'll do something really simple just to feature the art. It's going to be hard to start cutting!

It's busy around here -- lots of Christmas presents and another quilt commission -- nothing I can show until the gifts are given. Come back for a busy January!

In the meantime, I leave you with life in a nutshell around here. The dog (ridiculous in her life preserver replacing the cone of shame), overexposed in a patch of sunshine, sound asleep, being overseen by the cat, in complete control of the situation. That's pretty much how things work around here.

See you again soon!

que sera in aqua

Things have been quiet here on the blog, but there's actually been quite a bit of activity at the kitchen table. I just finished a quilt commission that I'm going to wait to blog about until it's given as a gift for Christmas. I've also been invited to teach some textile classes at a local art studio -- more about that later too. Stay tuned!

But I did finish this lacy cardigan -- the Que Sera pattern in aqua bamboo blend. I found the pattern on Ravelry via Pinterest and the yarn is a Martha Stewart brand from Michaels -- 40% off my entire purchase, thank you very much. I kept this baby going for many months, picking it up whenever I happened to be sitting in front of the TV with the family. Let's just say that this sweater has seen a lot of Top Gear and What Not to Wear.

I like the lacy shells and the color. The pattern was pretty good, but I did have to do a lot of figuring out when it came to maintaining the pattern while shaping the tops of the pieces. (Know what I mean, knitters?) I chalk some of that up to the fact that this was an independent rather than a commercial pattern -- I often find that indy patterns aren't tested very well. But I'll climb down from my soapbox and say that I loved knitting both fronts and the back as one piece -- oh, how I hate sewing my pieces together -- and the sizing was right on. Though if I EVER knit this one again, I'll make it a little shorter. I must also sing the praises of the internet for the youtube videos that helped me improve my seams by a mile! They look SO much better than the way I used to do them.

It's probably been at least 10 years since I've knitted a sweater for myself, and I have to call this a success. Next up -- a lacy black cotton scarf to replace the scratchy wool blend one I made a couple of years ago. Stop by again soon!

tagged hawaiian

This little quilt finally went off to its new home so I can post it here! The pattern is called "Tagged" so I'm calling mine "Tagged Hawaiian" since I used some of my Hawaii stash for the featured squares. The pattern is from the book Growing Up Modern by one of my very favorite quilting gurus, Allison Harris. Her gorgeous blog is Cluck, Cluck, Sew and I never miss it. I ordered her book shortly after it was published and this is the first thing I've tried from it.

The pattern was super, with great directions for cutting and assembly. Allison did all the thinking for me! Now I can't wait to try something else from the book.

I actually already had both the red and the aqua left over from other projects, and I had collected some single-color Hawaiian florals last summer. The binding is leftover from a friend's son's Bar Mitzvah quilt from a long time ago. (The Bar Mitzvah boy is now a Sophomore in college!) I just did some simple straight-line quilting.

I didn't know what I was going to put on the back, but can you believe this -- I actually already had this Japanese-Hawaiian print from my Hawaii shopping binge from two years ago. What a perfect match! And enough fabric that I didn't even have to piece the back.

This one went to a couple of friends, one of whom works with Bill, who are having their first baby any day now.

I got this picture from the soon-to-be mom after the shower. I hope the whole family likes the quilt as much as the cat does!

red and aqua life-savers

Here's a new quilt now hanging over the back of our couch. I previewed it in this W.I.P. post and now it's finished! It came together really quickly--just squares and half-square triangles.

I admired a design I saw on Red Pepper Quilts and I thought it would be perfect for the reds and aquas I've been hoarding collecting. Since I'm kind of late to the red/aqua party, not only did I have some nice prints in each of the colors, but I also found some where the fabric designer had put them together for me. That floral on the left is my favorite in the whole quilt.

I picked a couple of prints from the top for the back. I waffled about whether to use a blue or a red print for the binding, but in the end I liked all the prints so much, I decided to make a scrappy binding.

I stitched in the ditch around the blocks and then quilted the diagonals through the life-savers. I am so happy about how this one turned out!

The back of our couch is getting pretty crowded -- good thing I have some gifts and commissions coming up!

rayon aloha shirt for bill

Here's the next product from the Kauai '13 stash -- a silky rayon aloha shirt for Bill. The pattern is my favorite old Simplicity 5581 spread-collar shirt seen previously here and here. I got this fabric at Kapaia Stitchery and it was so soft and flowy I wished I had brought back some more.

Well it didn't take long working with it to take back every nice thing I had said about it before. It was stretchy, slippery, wouldn't press for *@#$. I didn't wish for even another quarter yard of rayon, and regretted the length I had bought. 

That having been said, I did manage to coerce it into a pretty nice shirt. I adjusted the collar where the pieces just WOULD NOT fit, and finally got all the seams pressed and the allowances serged.

Matchy-matchy on the pocket and a label at the bottom.

I'm hoping that if I get this one out of the dryer and right onto a hanger, I'll never need to iron it again!

kauai fabric shopping

After last year's fabric haul in Hawaii, I started looking forward to shopping as soon as we planned our repeat trip for last summer. This is what I picked up this year -- a few more of the tiny Japanese-Hawaiian prints, some one-color botanicals, another multi-color postcard style, some silky blue and green rayon and some prints the girls picked out for hobo bags. Oh, and half a yard of the ubiquitous Hula Girl.

This was my first stop, Kapaia Stitchery. I found this place last year and couldn't wait to get back! This year I found that gorgeous rayon and some other quilting prints. This is the store where I saw the original of my Postcards from Hawaii quilt. This year they had a pattern for sale. Mine is all finished and hanging in the living room.

I had seen this store last year but didn't have time to stop. It had plenty to look at but only ok prices -- I had actually already gotten some of the fabrics for half-price at a certain big-box retailer that shall remain nameless. I did pick up a pretty pink floral that will make a great shirt.

This store was up the road in Kapaa. It was a treat to shop there -- their regular prices were pretty much the same as a quilting store at home but I did pick up some good deals on sale.

And check this out! I thought it was just me! I told my family when we were leaving -- 12 days with no sewing? And this is supposed to be fun?!

This was the first of the Hawaii 2013 projects. Frances picked out these fabrics for some new bags for school. More projects to come!

project 52?

Um, whatever happened to that Project 52 thingy? Somewhere on the internet there must surely be a website with the statistics about how far into some type of Project 52 or 365 or whatever the participants lost interest and dropped the whole thing. Kind of like that owl in the Tootsie Pop commercial. Ah-one, ah-two, ah-three. *crunch* Ah-three.

Well, I don't know if we're going to keep going or not. We have done some fun things as a couple over weeks 8, 9, and 10. The first week of Frances's school's football season we tried a new local barbecue place before heading over to the game. It was really good -- I do love a pulled-pork sandwich.

A couple of weeks ago we went on a field trip with my yoga teacher (remember her Diwali party?) to a local Hindu temple with the most amazing carvings. We got to drive over with Dolly and her husband so they filled us in about what we would be seeing. Then they picked out a bunch of delicious snacks for us to taste. It was a scorching hot day, but inside the temple filled with bright white marble, it was like a cool ice cave.

Visitors with bare legs (shorts or short skirts) were given a sarong to cover up with. Bill rocked it! 

All three of us ended up with a fun family date last weekend when we went to Five Guys for dinner. I think we actually started out kind of cranky after a couple of 100-degree days with NO AIR CONDITIONING but we recovered our collective sense of humor over burgers and fries and the Guys' awesome soundtrack. Frances laughed at our dueling renditions of "Born to Run" (me--poetry recitation, Bill--caveman-style sing-along), and we all channeled Weird Al along with "Smells Like Teen Spirit." 

So stay tuned to see what happens next with Project 52. With Frances cheering at high school football, our weekends have filled up with school activities and Bill has some weekend field trips coming up for his class. I'll keep you posted.

project 52: week 7: digital photos, redux

This week we bent the rules about repeat dates and tried again to edit photos and put together a Facebook album, and...

Success!

Not much to report about the date, except that there were more sandwiches, salads, and cold drinks and this time all the technology worked like a charm.

If it helps our date tally at all, the next evening we went out for drinks with our friends Roman and Michele. I think we're counting that as a supplement to the photo editing date.

I promise a better post for Week 8!

project 52: week 6: good idea, uncooperative technology

(Whoops. I meant to post this one a while ago.)

Bill had a great plan for Week 6. Since we were home from our Hawaii vacation, and we had some ridiculous number of unedited digital photos from the trip, he decided we would go to Panera (with their free wi-fi), get dinner, edit and sort photos, and make a big Facebook post about the trip. Great idea -- no cooking and we'd end the evening with a finished album that would make our Facebook friends think we are super cool.

Soup, salad, sandwiches, cold drinks -- check. One camera's worth of photos transferred onto USB drive -- check. Insert photo card from second camera directly into card reader on laptop -- twirling rainbow wheel of death. For 45 minutes. Being impatient, I wanted to immediately force-quit iPhoto and start over, but Bill thought it was just working through the ridiculous number of files and would snap out of it eventually. We'll never know, because when we got home, I restarted the computer and we quickly loaded the photos another way.

It didn't seem so date-like any more, but I did get some of the photos edited in the end. We may decide to lift the Project 52-No Repeat Date rule next week and give this another try -- it's such a good idea. And I want my Facebook friends to think I'm cool.

pattern binge

Did anyone else happen in on the big sale at JoAnn? (No, they're not paying me for the shout-out. I wish.) I was on a research trip to check the prices on some different fabrics. Ok, I did end up buying some stuff, but really just so as not to hurt anyone's feelings. Just a little pile of quarter yards and some pretty plaid oxford-cloth that will make a nice quilt back or binding. But I digress.

McCalls patterns at JoAnn were 70 cents. As in $0.70. Each. If you're not a pattern sewist, you're missing the regular opportunity to be appalled at the notion of paying $19.95 for a pattern for a dress when you could buy the whole dress for $14.99 at H & M. But every once in a while cheapskate sewists like me get a break and they practically give the patterns away. I'm thinking the mark-up on patterns must be like 1000%.

I didn't have a huge amount of time, but I sat down with the pattern book and started listing everything that looked interesting. When I hit the 10-pattern limit I checked out. But I went back on the last day with adjusted standards and found some more.

I found some dresses:

And some tops:

And some other stuff:

This ought to keep me busy for a while! But, wait! Now I need to go fabric shopping...

project 52: week 5: brennecke's

Since it was August Bill took over date planning. We were still on vacation on Kauai. He really went all out -- he gave Frances and Allison some cash and scouted out a place they could walk to at the shopping center across the street for burgers and gelato. Then he took me to Brennecke's Beach Broiler, a restaurant we had fond memories of from two Hawaii trips ago in 1990. It was still a great place to eat with a friendly atmosphere. And it was really nice for the two of us to have a date night alone after a lot of family time on vacation. The food was good too! Fun vacation date!

project 52: week 4: groceries in paradise

Week 4 fell in July so it was still my turn to be in charge of date night. Problem was that Bill was in Hawaii for his conference in Honolulu for most of the week. Frances and I and Frances's friend Allison met him on Kauai on Saturday night to begin our 12-day vacation. We only had Sunday night left but it would have been awkward to ditch the teens on our first full night there, so we had to make do with a morning grocery store run while the girls played at the pool. (One good thing about older children -- you can send them to the pool by themselves with simple instructions. Wear sunscreen. Don't drown.)

It may not have been the most exciting date, but it did give us a chance to catch up after Bill had been gone all the previous week. We were also able to appreciate our relatively inexpensive grocery prices at home and scout the fabric section in the Lihue Walmart. While contemplating the snorkeling gear we got acquainted with a nice couple from Chicago who appeared to be living the dream of vacationing without their children. We bumped into them twice more during our trip!

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?