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!

replacement potholders

These are particularly horrible. And I'm embarrassed to think about how long they have looked this bad. I did buy them new, so once upon a time they were spiffy.

Better? I salvaged the rings off the old ones and used a combo of house fabric scraps and some Insulbrite I got at -- you guessed it -- M & L. I told Bill that we can never move away from here because I don't know what I would do without M & L. Judging by one of the bloggers I like to read (Dana at MADE), who is from Orange County and now lives in Texas, what I would do is come back here to shop!

These guys turned out pretty cute -- we'll have to leave it for a cooler day to test them out, though!

pink and brown quilt

No name on this one -- just a pink and brown half-square-triangle quilt. I bought a few matching fabrics that I found in the sale section in the back of M & L (buying quarter yards of all the high-end quilting cottons in the back of M & L is my new hobby -- about 70 cents per cut, baby!) I added some other patterns from previous shopping expeditions and some solids left over from the graduation quilts seen here and here. The size is kind of a small lap or large baby -- 40 X 46.

I mixed the lighter background patterns with the solids and put the white with the darker  patterns. One happy accident is the way the diagonals of prints and solids lined up.

I quilted on either side of the seams around the squares and down the diagonals of each square. You can see that my ditch-stitching could use a little work! Actually all the quilting on this one gave me a pile of trouble. I finally figured out a way to adjust the needle position so that I could chart an easier path with the presser foot, and then the diagonals went a little easier. I bound with this hot pink dot seen previously in the rainbow sherbet quilt, though I did have to go buy some more -- not enough left over. 

I'm really happy with the back of this one. Almost got those horizontals straight! These were all the coordinating prints, so it's nice to see them together.

This quilt has no planned home, so maybe someday I'll sell it. Where? Who knows?

vintage modern christmas

I finished this quilt a few weeks ago. I adapted the pattern from a few brick-style quilts I'd seen online, particularly this one by Rachel at Stitched in Color. The top went together quite quickly and I like the non-traditional colors for Christmas.

I started with this vintage mod-style street scene and then added in some fabrics that went along -- some I already had, some bargains, and some splurges. (It's easier to splurge when you only need quarter yards!) I like the way both the blue and green look like snow in their own way.

I got the brainstorm to quilt in this chicken-wire pattern when I saw it on some blog about patterns you can do with a just a walking foot. Ok, you can do this, but WHY??? I got about a quarter through before I decided this was no fun at all. But by then I was committed. In the end I think it turned out fine but way more trouble than it was worth. I'm sticking with straight lines for a while.

Here's the back -- this photo really shows off the crinkliness in a nice way. Just some scraps of the fabrics from the front and bound in a solid black.

It's been hanging in front of the fireplace since I finished it, but now I'm ready to pack it up and surprise myself with it in December!

start with an ikea curtain...

I scored these Ikea curtains at the Goodwill last year. No idea what I was going to do with them. (Now, that sounds familiar.)

Well, we've been enjoying the view of this beautiful plastic dog crate for the past year since we adopted Chloe. Pretty, hmm?

Better? It's like a play tent for the plastic crate.

She looks pretty cute in there. As soon as I started working with her bed she jumped right in and went to sleep for 2 hours. It's a good-dog day.

Here it is closed up for bedtime. Definitely an improvement over the previous combination of gray plastic and old car towels.

But don't forget about the scraps! How about a cool Swedish canvas belt?!

Still another curtain left -- what else should I make?

birthday shirt for bill

After spending 48 hours alone at home, during which time I could have sewn anything I wanted in complete secrecy, I thought of making Bill a shirt for his birthday. But by the time I came up with this, he and Frances were already on their way home from the desert field trip. So I got it cut out Sunday afternoon and then frantically sewed Tuesday and Wednesday, while turning a blind eye to the dishes, groceries, and housecleaning, and finished it with plenty of time to take pictures!

The bowling-shirt design is a modification of the pattern I used for Bill's Hawaiian shirt. I attempted this modification on a more traditional men's shirt pattern a few years ago, but I could see right away that I needed to use a spread-collar shirt as the base. I paid particular attention to matching the patterned fabric -- didn't I do a nice job?

I found a place for my label at the bottom of the front -- I was worried it would be too itchy in the neck and I thought of all the many labels I have cut out of clothes. That wasn't going to happen here!

And here's the "keeping it real" picture -- this is the melted interfacing from the shirt front. When they say fusible I don't think the idea is to fuse it to the iron. It took a good 10 minutes with the magic sponge and some very careful knife scraping to fix this. When will I learn to check the temperature?!

rainbow sherbet quilt

Here's the second of the graduation present quilts -- I looked into the freezer case at Baskin-Robbins the other night and spotted Kelcey's quilt in the Rainbow Sherbet!

I copied the bricks pattern from Diary of a Quilter -- thank you, Amy! This was really the polar opposite of the previous quilt with the 5 X 5 and 5 X 10 blocks and I loved how it came together. Frances picked out the fabrics, first the hot pink and orange polka dots and then the solids to go with them. I don't think it took 2 hours to cut, arrange, and piece the top. Love!

We picked out this bright pink for the back and I pieced a strip of the polka dot leftovers to make up the difference. I am really liking this plain diagonal quilting -- I think it works well with the squares and rectangles, and I can pull it off with just my walking foot on my plain old sewing machine!

We found this cute print with both the pink and orange in it for the binding -- I think we picked out the off-white for the top before we found the binding fabric. For next time: don't forget to match the whites!

Here are both of the graduation quilts! Cute. I can't wait to give them to the girls!