Ready to wear

There is a new baby in the house:

That's her! The Janome Cover Pro 1000CP. This is a cover stitch machine. Cover stitches are commonly used on t-shirt hems on ready-to-wear clothing as well as many other uses. The cover stitch looks like a straight stitch from the front, but stretches like a serged stitch on the inside. I have been wanting one of these for years and finally decided to take the plunge. A cover stitch machine works a little differently than a sewing machine - it's probably closer to a serger, but it does require some modification when using. Luckily the

helpful folks who provide reviews over at SewingPatternreview.com have a wealth of information on this machine as well as many others. Check them out the next time you need sewing info on just about anything.

Meanwhile, I decided to whip up some t-shirts for my daughter and test out the cover pro. Just a few...

She should be set for awhile. Now I will move onto the rest of the family. Check out the hems ~ looking good!

I think I'm gonna like this new machine.

Happy Sewing!

Quilt 2

...of 2010

This one is a keeper - as in, it's staying in my office. This pattern is a modified version of Amy Butler's Mid Mod quilt.

My quilt squares are a bit smaller than the pattern calls for (13") and there are 4 x 4 squares instead of 3 x 3. I used solid Kona Cottons in jewel tone shades to match the room they were destined for. The border is done in Kona Bone and finished in black binding with a red backing.

Perfect for cold winter nights.

Happy Sewing!

Shabby Chic

The Bohemian Bag pattern from Lila Tueller done in Heather Bailey's Nicey Jane. Lookin' kinda' shabby but still chic! Shh this one is a gift!


Another version of the same bag, this one has been modified by me to include a zipper closure on top and a zippered pocket inside. If you are looking for info on how to add a zipper closure to an otherwise, non-zippered bag, head over to U*handbag for a great tute on that.
The fabrics in this bag are from the Whimsy line, Pillow and Maxfield.


If you like a big purse, this one fits the bill - there is lots of room in there for just about anything.
Short and sweet ~ Happy Sewing!

And so it begins.....

I have always had a love-hate relationship with quilting. I tried once, maybe 20 years ago and the result was not pretty - really it wasn't. So that was the end of that, I vowed never to go there again. No way, no how, was I going to become a quilter! But it did keep niggling at the back of my mind. You see, it really bugs me when I can't do something. It grates away at me until finally I have to do it just to prove to myself that I can - once accomplished, I'm perfectly happy to move on. Probably there is some psychological term for this, but whatever. As a result I have been skirting around the quilt world for a long time. Kind of hard to be a sewist and not notice a few quilts here and there along the way. I attempted a doll quilt back in the spring, and all went well but I was still stuck on the stippling - so I cheated and used my embroidery machine for that part. But see that's where it kept bugging me - "you should be able to stipple", my brain kept saying.

Next I tried this stipple design set from Eileen Roche - which uses a unique piecing approach and allows you to machine quilt using your embroidery machine. That resulted in this purple quilt for my daughter. Well really she got it by default since it was a tester piece and the only fabric I had enough yardage of in my stash was purple. So that pretty much meant it was destined to become hers. This quilt took me a good 3 days of patiently waiting on the machine to finish and then moving the hoop progressively along the strips until all 7 of them were completed. Then I had to piece it. It turned out ok, but I wasn't really loving it and it was a ton of work - I'm an instant gratification girl and this was taking too long. Plus, my brain still wasn't satisfied. It kept whispering "stipple, stipple", to me. Yeah I'm weird like that.
Fast forward to the doll quilts - last blogpost - I figured I might as well try the stipple free-motion quilting on one of them since it was just a doll quilt and not a huge investment in time and money. I had watched the You-tube videos, and checked out the quilt blog tutes (thank-you Dog Named Banjo and Crazy Mom Quilts), I was prepared! Amazingly, the result actually turned out pretty well. I was totally stoked with myself for having conquered the stipple. Enough so that I felt like I could stipple this much larger Neptune quilt. I had put together that quilt for my mother-in-law. Et Voila! Not too shabby if I do say so myself even without a fancy BSR (which I would dearly love) and finally finally, I can check that one off my list. Trouble is, now I have the stipple bug - I want to make more of these quilts. They are so cool and soft when they come out of the wash all raisin-like. The next one is already sandwiched and awaiting the machine and I'm pretty sure that I'm not going to stop there!

Happy Sewing!

Mini Makeovers

Happy New Year!



With the New Year we have a little room redo going on at our house ~ but this time the renovation is on a small scale.

My daughter wanted some bedding for her dolls and that gave me an excuse to go to town and really make some fun doll bedding. Doll quilts are a perfect way to practice stipple quilting which is a new (to me) technique I just learned using the doll quilts to practice on (more on that later). Meanwhile here are the bedding sets - complete with matching teeny tiny throw pillows and shams.

How cute are these?
Yeah I'm tooting my own horn but seriously, these are so stinkin' cute I just want to crawl right into that bed. Did I mention teeny tiny throw pillows? I'm overcome by the cuteness.



Oh to be a kid again....

Happy Sewing!

ADDENDUM

I really shouldn't write blog-posts when it's late at night I'm dog tired. Here is some detail info that I neglected to put in above:

The strip quilt (purple/aqua) is just random widths of strips i put together. My finished quilts needed to be 22X20 to fit the bed properly and giving them about a 4-5" overhang on either side. So I was aiming for that size. My bed size is about 22X10 - so my 'mattress' covers where that size. The block pieced quilt (green) is loosely based on this great tute from Alissa at Sew Mama Sew. I used 3.5" squares and then added a border width that would fit my finished size. The flower quilt (pink) was made by cutting bias strips of coordinating fabrics and then gathering them using my ruffler set at 1 for lots of tight ruffles/pleats. These were arranged to make the flower and then pinned and sewn into place. The ruffles fluffed up nicely in the wash and almost have a chenille look to them. I drew on the quilt top to loosely follow the flower outline and then quilted that using my darning foot.

Fabrics used:
Strip quilt: Farmer's Market (Sandi Henderson), Cloe's Imagination (Tina Givens), Olive Rose (Valori Wells), Michael Miller dots
Block quilt: Pop Garden (Heather Bailey), Olive Rose (Valori Wells), Mezzanine (Patty Young), Michael Miller dots
Flower quilt: Soiree (Lila Tueller), Mezzanine (Patty Young)