A Few Scraps

Welcome Mattie

2008-07-27T23:09:00.000-07:00

My sewing drought is over, with this new acquisition, a newly serviced 1951 Singer 401A Slant-o-matic. I'm calling her "Mattie". Mattie is a real powerhouse, (just like Bernie will be again when I find a sewing machine surgeon I trust!) although it seems she has something against free motion quilting. We'll see if the thread stops breaking when I change the needle later this week. Luckily, my commissioned quilt doesn't require free motion work so I am finally working on that again.

Don't you love the details on older things? It is strange getting used to the different pedal on this machine and the new "rhythm". For instance, where the Bernina stops stitching immediately when my foot comes off the pedal, this one slows down to a stop more gradually.

I hope to have a post with that eye quilt completed this week. Besides being motivated by the new machine, the time has come to start building a yurt to shade my preggo self, (and my campmates) at Burning Man next month! We went to Burning Man last year and I'm so thrilled we've decided to go this year. Mattie showed up just in time to sew some canvas covering for the yurt and some crazy costumes for the festival!

Garden Bounty

2008-07-21T08:57:00.000-07:00

My first big harvest of the year! The beets are ready, the first beans have ripened and the potatoes waited in the dirt for me to find them like little red jewels. Everything tastes so fresh and delicious. And cooking with garlic I grew myself is divine!

This is my first year in my community garden plot and I'm learning a lot about the space. It came with a mature grapevine arching over the plot. It shades about half the growing area! And what was beautiful and delicate in the spring became beastly and overgrown in the past few weeks. It was a veritable curtain of grapevines and it took two hours to cut it all back this weekend. Amazingly, there will still be boatloads of grapes to harvest. I'll have to learn more about grapevine maintenance so I trim it right this fall, and hopefully won't need to cut it back in the middle of the growing season next year. This grapevine has been around at least two decades though, so I know I haven't done any long term damage.

The next exciting harvest will be eggplants and tomatoes. Squash is getting ready too!

Old MacDonald

2008-07-13T07:19:00.000-07:00

This is the quilt back I'm working on for my friend's baby quilt. Uh. It's a group quilt that we originally intended to give at her shower and the kid's 7 months old. My first year out in the real world of being a nurse practitioner has required lots of energy and unfortunately, quilting has suffered. You may remember this picture of the quilt center, before it got borders:

Anyway, what had me stuck for a long time was what to do for the back. Of the dozens of fabrics in my stash, none seemed right. Of the few that I optimistically bought for the task, the same was true. I have never been more stuck on the backing! In some impressionable moment, though, one of you free-piecers of letters out there made me think "Hey!" And since the quilt is all about farm animals, I chose Old MacDonald. Luckily, my mama friend tells me they sing "Old MacDonald" every day and her son loves it! Hooray! Many thanks to Tonya for starting this craze. I really liked making letters and it went much faster than I would have thought. I especially liked using scraps in color groups to keep them from looking too perfect. You know how I dislike too much order!

My machine is still broken so who knows when I will finish this poor overdue quilt. I am pretty mistrustful of both repair stores I've taken my vintage Bernina to. One: "the motor's broken, why don't we show you some new machines?". Other: "It's either the carbon brushes or the pedal, but if you pay to repair it and it still doesn't work we'll give you a credit toward a new machine". I don't care for either of these answers, particularly because they don't match. And I don't want a new machine. I like these heavy, metal old workhorses. So while I scour craigslist and eBay for possible replacements, my grandfather, an electrical engineer, is trying to help me diagnose it over the phone. It seems this will require some "circuit testing" with a multimeter - what an adventure! In the meantime, I'm on the lookout for a place in Portland that repairs old sewing machines but doesn't sell new ones. A pipe dream? We'll see.

P.S. Anyone who went to the show in Sisters I hope you post lots of pictures. I woke up with a raging sore throat, sneezing my head off and had to pass...

Thankful Emergence

2008-07-09T19:51:00.000-07:00

Hey there! If anyone still reads this blog after my month-long absence, please enjoy this update cleverly integrated into a list of things I'm grateful for!

First off, and inexcusably delayed, I am thankful for receiving this lovely handmade green book sent by April of By Small Means. April is a loving creative mama who had an inspired birthday idea of making gifts during her birthday month and having a give-away on her birthday! Thank you April, this was such a sweet treat. And speaking of sweet treats, do take a moment to salivate over the lovely red and black raspberries from our garden! I'm so thankful for summer finally arriving.

On to the pregnancy: I'm thankful for all the sincere joy and congratulations I've received from you (yes you!) on this exciting development. I'm thankful that I'm no longer nauseated, and thankful that there's only one little fetus in there, despite my secret desire for twins and my uterus being decidedly higher than one would expect at 14 weeks.

And finally, I was a happy recipient of a "Pay It Forward" from Kris at Quilted Simple. Kris is a motivated quilty mama who destroys all my illusions about farm life without destroying my actual wish to have a farm. This lovely quilted table runner/basket liner she created has been gracing my dining room table since I received it a week or so ago. The colors are perfect! I should have also included a picture of the knitted washcloth that accompanied this thoughtful gift, but it also has been pressed into service and is awaiting a wash. I'm thankful for your generosity Kris! And who could ignore that stunning arrangement from our own backyard? I'm thankful for my husband and his compulsion for buying beautiful perennials. Our gardens are a true place of beauty.

So, with all that thankfulness, and my energy returning after my first trimester slump, I am ready to take on the Pay it Forward challenge! If you want to participate, please post something that you're thankful for right now. I'll create a gift for the first three responders. The rules are that I have a year to pony up, and I'm a notorious procrastinator, so you may wait a while. But oh, that's part of the fun! Then when you get your gift, you can pay it forward to three new participants...

One out. One in.

2008-06-09T09:43:00.000-07:00

While pressing the "publish" button on my last post, my phone was ringing, with the news that my grandfather had died. He was the funniest, happiest person I knew, and the world without him does not seem as grand. I am crabby and out of sorts, worried about my mother, stepfather and grandmother in his absence.

I had intended this next post to be happy news, and it still is. The picture above is my sewn representation of my first-ever, faintly positive pregnancy test that I took weeks ago. Now ten weeks into my pregnancy I've done an ultrasound on myself (to reassure me it wasn't ectopic) and heard the heartbeat, and reassured that things are progressing normally I get to spread the good news. Nausea, yes. Exhaustion, yes. Feeling the shape of my uterus daily, yes. Having to get up at 4 or 5 every morning and eat a banana to be able to go back to sleep, yes yes yes.

So, how ridiculous is it for a person to be pondering, mere hours after her positive test, and before her husband even knows the happy news, "What kind of quilt should I make?". This is a disease, no question! And I so look forward to sharing it with you.

The commissioned quilt

2008-05-27T08:56:00.001-07:00

Etsy restarted a service called "Alchemy" a few months ago and on it I found someone requesting a 6 foot square wall quilt with a "protective eye". I liked the idea of the quilt and I liked the idea of getting paid for my hobby! So I put a bid in and was accepted. I felt very very special for about five minutes until I figured out that a dozen other bids had also been accepted. Who has enough money to pay for thirteen versions of the same quilt? We'll discuss that later.

I had never made a quilt for money before. I started with a sketch based on what the client's stated vision was. The idea was, a random patchwork background of similar but slightly different blues with the eye suspended roughly in the middle. Quilting in the eye would be spiral, quilting from the eye would radiate out.

The quilt came together really easily. My machine died in the middle of the quilting, as you can see I'm less than halfway through the rays and I still have to finish the spiral quilting on the dark blue.

The person who requested the quilt pretty much ignores my emails. I can only imagine they get lost in a sea of similar emails from 12 other quilters. I guess he's not chomping at the bit and cursing my name.

I have to say I don't think I'll be doing a commissioned quilt again for a long time. It really changed my creative process, having to work within someone else's parameters, and also within the parameters that I set in my own description of my vision for the quilt. It made me feel weird that my quilt would be one of so many others. I ended up feeling like I should be working on the paid quilt instead of other things. So my other quilts and my Etsy shop have stalled while this project has been in my house. I feel stagnant.

Lest I sound like I am only complaining: I was prepaid for the quilt, so at least I have the money to fix the sewing machine! I'm almost done and looking forward to the sense of freedom that will come with shipping this quilt off to it's owner.

I'm not dead

2008-05-18T15:24:00.000-07:00

But my sewing machine and my camera are. Makes it hard to post to one's sewing blog! I'm so frustrated. Apparently the foot pedal on my Bernina record 830 originally had some overheating problems. My pedal has a "T" sticker on the bottom indicating that it's been fixed but it's a little suspicious that it gave out during our current heat wave! A new pedal costs $140. And I can't be positive that's the source of the problem without a working pedal to test it. What to do...

This is awful timing. I'm supposed to have already completed a commissioned quilt (more on that to come). I tried to take pictures of the stalled project only to find out my computer won't read my camera's memory card! WHAT is going ON?

Happier news to come...

Noticing

2008-05-09T23:30:00.000-07:00

My good friend gave birth to her second baby this week. Everything went simply, quickly, at home, as she planned. Everyone is doing great. This baby was two pounds heavier than her first, but she only pushed for 8 minutes, and no tear. The labor went so fast, I'm lucky I got there in time!

The last three years I've only attended hospital births; it was nice to be back in the home setting, stripped of the unneeded technology. It was also a little strange to not be the one catching the baby! Since hubby and I will eventually be in the market for a homebirth, it was the perfect chance to see these particular midwives in action. It made me smile to see all their clogs piled by the door with the oxygen tank. Homebirth is so humble!

Thanks for all the kind comments on my finished quilt. I've been enjoying having this blog. I think it's helped me focus my creative energy. I really appreciate being able to share my work and get feedback from other artists who understand this medium!! So thanks everyone. Hubby's on vacation with the digital camera so I'll give you an update on my projects when he gets back next week.

A Big Big Finish!

2008-05-03T09:34:00.000-07:00

There has been a lot of excitement this week, and this quilt is no small part! I'm finally finished. The very first quilt I started, over four years ago. At points along the way I thought I would call it "A Holy Mess" or "A Very Bad Idea" but now we're past all that and its title is "Stars and Squares - Grandma's scraps".

When I first discovered quilting did not have to be boring and precise I was visiting my family and my grandma was showing me the vibrant quilts she was working on. We had just moved to Portland, I was finishing my prereqs for nursing school. Money was so tight. She lovingly sent me home with her scraps from recent projects. It included a lot of squares and triangles for a square in a square quilt she had made. I got some more material from cast off cotton clothing at the Goodwill outlet. I organized a fabric trade on nervousness.org (before it died and was later reborn). We each shared 8"x6" scraps. The green fabric with red dots came from someone in Europe. I used every square inch, I loved that fabric so much.

To make the most use of grandma's odd shapes I started sewing things together in a roughly square in a square pattern. I generally used a squareish shape in the middle, a little strip, then the larger square, and more little strips. I used incredibly small pieces in some parts. I got 24 squares that I mostly loved, of all different sizes.

Then I hit a wall. What next? After stewing on it for months I decided I would suspend all these squares on a blue background. I visited quilt shops and bought different blue fabrics, and then went about making the blocks fit together in rows. The scrappiness of the blocks was echoed in the background by much cutting and resewing and interjecting little colorful scraps as well.

I should point out here that the quilts I had seen were pretty much just my grandma's and a couple of quilts by Anna Williams. In retrospect I can really appreciate Anna Williams' influence. Somewhere along the way I realized that this quilt had gotten very long and skinny and possibly not that useful. I tried to use borders to beef the sides up more than the top and bottom, with only minor success. By the time I got to the borders I had checked out Gwen Marston's book from the library. That's the origin of the crazy stars.

I wanted to quilt the quilt myself, by machine. I took a machine quilting class from Kathy Sandbach, and loved it. But I was overwhelmed by the idea of quilting this big piece. So I set it aside, and made 7 or 8 other, smaller and simpler quilts. Now that I'm finished quilting this I have to say I don't know what I was so afraid of. It really wasn't that much harder than any of the baby quilts I've quilted. It's only 60 inches wide, by 86 inches long, so width wise I didn't have so stuff any more quilt under the sewing machine arm than I have before. This size is really not appropriate for any bed. But that's fine because I want it to live on the couch for all to see. Or maybe be our picnic quilt at the park this weekend.

I learned a lot by making this quilt. I keep trying to put it into words, but it's hard. But the lessons are there, in the fabric and the stitches. Resourcefulness, adventure, planning (or the lack of it). I'm a different person than when I started it. Thanks for letting me tell you the story.

Easy appliqué with a dryer sheet

2008-04-23T11:04:00.000-07:00

I really caught the tutorial bug from Sew, Mama, Sew! This is a tutorial about how to use a dryer sheet to make appliqué easy, quick, and non-scary. You could also use lightweight interfacing if your family doesn't use dryer sheets or if you are sort of a worrywart about your quilting . Your dryer sheet should be USED, and completely free of its fabric softener and chemicals. Tossing it in a load of wash after it's been used in the dryer should do the trick. Don't iron the dryer sheet, it will melt (ask me how I know). Throughout this tutorial, click the pictures to see them larger with glorious detail.

So, to start, gather a piece of scrap paper, a marker, scissors and the dryer sheet.

Draw your design on the paper, at the size you want your finished appliqué to be. Exception: long skinny things (like the beak, as seen below) should be drawn slightly longer and fatter than you intend them to end up.

Now lay the fabric sheet over the drawing. Trace the drawing onto the dryer sheet with the marker. This is the magic of the dryer sheet. It's kind of like fabric and kind of like tracing paper!

Find a piece of fabric big enough to accommodate your design plus 1/4" around. Lay the fabric right side up then put the dryer sheet over it, right side up. I know it seems wrong. Trust me.

Stitch along the pattern line, around the entire design. I prefer to do this step by machine but you can hand stitch just as well if you take small stitches.

Cut the piece out 1/4" from the stitching.

Clip the fabric away from any points. Snip the fabric along any concave curves (On the bird I clipped the crotch, the back of the neck, and under the beak). Skipping this step will cause heartache and gnashing of teeth! Do it!

Now use a sharp scissors to cut a slice just in the dryer sheet and not the fabric. Turn the piece right side out through this hole. No worries if you rip the slice farther, just try to keep the dryer sheet intact where it meets the fabric. The dryer sheet is going to end up sandwiched between your appliqué and your backing, so don't give it much mind.

See how all the raw edges are behind the fabric sheet? Now they can't shred when you're appliquéing!

Iron the appliqué from the fabric side to make it nice and flat. See how nicely it matches the original drawing!

Now you are ready to attach the appliqué to whatever backing you wish. If you already know how to appliqué, I hope you enjoyed the dryer sheet trick! If you don't know how to appliqué, read on... Put your appliqué where you want it and pin it down.

Thread a sharp needle. Knot the end of the thread. Bring the needle up from the wrong side of the backing, directly next to the appliqué. Reminder : enlarge these pictures by clicking on them if you need more detail.

Now put the point of the needle inside the folded edge of the appliqué, right next to where the thread is coming up from the backing.

Bring the needle back out of the folded edge of the appliqué, making a stitch about 1/4". Pull your thread through.

Now you are going to take a stitch below the backing WITHOUT turning your work over. Put the needle in the backing directly beneath where the thread is coming out of the appliqué.

Bring the needle back up, directly next to the appliqué, making a stitch about 1/4". Pull the needle through.

These are the only two stitches involved in appliqué. A stitch inside the folded edge of the appliqué...

Alternated with a stitch behind the backing... Whenever the thread comes up out of one fabric, it dives directly into the other fabric, so you end up seeing very little of the thread. It is always either traveling behind the folded edge of the appliqué or traveling beneath the backing.

Eventually you will realize that you can take a stitch in the applique, then go right into the stitch behind the backing, without pulling the thread through between stitches.

I like to make sure there is always a stitch right at any corner, to keep the appliqué well secured.

When you get back to where you started, take the needle beneath the backing, turn your work over and tie your thread off. You should see a dashed line of stitches in the outline of your applique.

And you're done. Hope that helped... Now, how about this rocking bird skirt!

Four years later

2008-04-21T21:44:00.000-07:00

I started this quilt four-plus years ago. And for some reason yesterday I was seized with the motivation to quilt it.... I'm about two-thirds done!

It is a testament to scrappiness and free-piecing. I have changed a lot as an artist and quilter since starting this quilt, but I am still very pleased with it. I'm excited that I may finally be able to snuggle under it soon.

Purse notebook with fabric cover

2008-04-19T23:45:00.000-07:00

In appreciation for all you readers' lovely encouraging comments I want to share a tutorial. Well, I do also want to enter the Sew, Mama, Sew tutorial contest. I came up with this idea because I have had countless notebooks shredded in my purse. I wanted a sturdy, beautiful notebook that could survive the harsh purse environment. This project took me about 45 minutes, which included me agonizing over my fabric choices. Click on the thumbnails for mammoth-sized images.

Start with a book-style notebook. I use a mini-composition book with strong cardboard sides. On a scrap piece of paper, trace around the top, edge and bottom of the book.

Then, holding the book in place, wrap the paper snugly around the spine of the book. Flip the book and paper over without letting the book shift in place. Lay the paper back open. Trace around the book again and connect any gap in the lines. You will be left with a pattern of the wrap-around dimensions of the book.

Cut the pattern out leaving a 3/8" to 1/2" seam allowance.

Using this pattern, cut three separate pieces of fabric. One for the cover, one for the flaps, and one for the liner. Don't worry too much about the liner fabric, very little of it will be seen. Cut the flap fabric in half.

Fold over the cut edge of each flap 3/8" and stitch. Iron so the turned edge is flat.

Now layer your fabrics. Liner fabric face up. Then flaps face up. Then cover fabric face down.

Pin the fabric stack together and stitch a scant 1/4" from the edge, leaving an opening of 1-2".

Turn your work right side out through the opening you left. Iron the opening if needed to make sure the seam allowance stays turned under.

Top stitch close to the edge around the entire cover, and slip the book covers inside the flaps!

This pattern could be easily adapted with a closure or elastic band. It could be used for any size book. I hope you enjoy!

Abstinence for Realists

2008-04-17T19:33:00.000-07:00

Pardon me while I get a little off topic here - but I had a good laugh when I learned about this new brand of condom available online. A recent study showed that while abstinence only sex education may briefly delay the onset of sexual activity, it results in teens being less likely to use condoms and contraception when they do become sexually active. Even worse, uninformed individuals may resort to dangerous attempts at preventing pregnancy or STDs (as this story suggests). As someone who works every day to keep sexually active youngsters healthy, this condom is the kind of abstinence I can get behind. The kind that acknowledges that eventually, abstinence comes to an end... and you'd better know what to do at that point.

I recently heard a true story of a mother who bought her 12 year old son two boxes of condoms and told him not to come out of his room until he could put them on in the dark with one hand behind his back. He is now an avid peer sex-educator. Wow! I know we can't all be that mom or that kid. But if you have young people in your life, take one small minute now to think about what you can do to increase their awareness of how to care for themselves as they develop sexually. One mom I know has a drawer in the house where the kids know there will always be plenty of condoms, and that the condoms will always be replaced without questions. She tells the kids their friends can take the condoms too. Brilliant.

Last week I had a mom come to our clinic with her 16 year old daughter (who had been sexually active for a year) to get her daughter on birth control. She blinked back tears throughout the visit, feeling a little overwhelmed at seeing her baby as a sexually active young woman. I was so proud of her for being brave enough to face those intense emotions, deal with such sensitive stuff, for her daughter's health. It was clearly not easy for her. In fact, it looked downright messy and uncomfortable. But she did it.

On our patient forms we ask: How old were you when you became sexually active? Every day I will see at least one patient who answers 13 or 14. And at least weekly someone answers 12 or 11. I mention this to convince you that it is not too early to talk about sex in your house! If you are already doing this, thank you. You are not only keeping your kids healthy, but all their friends too. As we in the medical profession know, they trust their friends way more than anyone with a healthcare degree. So get as much accurate, straightforward information into their little circles as you can!

Ok, ok. Soap-boxing finished...for now.

Yo Yo mania

2008-04-15T23:13:00.000-07:00

Maybe seven yo yos don't qualify as mania, but they were an easy portable craft that kept me occupied and not worrying about sudden death on my flight home from San Francisco. Clover makes these cute yo yo makers in four sizes. As you can see, I only owe one size. These have a pretty ingenious design with great instructions included for making perfect little yo yos quickly from fabric scraps. Also nice for idle hands enjoying some TV time. Word to the wise - use strong thread.

Quilt abuse

2008-04-12T21:48:00.000-07:00

That's fair warning for anyone who will be distressed to see how I repurposed a fraying vintage quilt top to make a laptop case for my recent trip to San Francisco (which is, by the way, my excuse for two weeks without blog entries).

The case was hastily constructed when I couldn't bear the thought of another voyage with my former uninspired, bulky and ill-fitting purchased laptop case. The bag is padded with some quilt batting and "headliner" which I found in the remnant section - this is the stuff they put on the ceilings of cars. I really love looking at the fabrics in this quilt top. A close of of my favorite - the orange pigs.

Fancy New Dress

2008-03-28T17:16:00.001-07:00

We have gone out two nights in the past week and both nights I've worn this little number, newly constructed from four thrift store shirts (Total cost: about $3).

I really dig the horses print -the colors grab me. When I put it with the turquoise my heart just melted.

This was so easy to do - just four seams on the serger, and a few side adjustments. I love the way I feel when I have it on.

New Bag

2008-03-23T23:59:00.000-07:00

Lots happening in the sewing room this week - took me a while to take pictures though! I whipped this up when I got tired of pawing through my mess of a purse looking for my cell phone, keys or wallet at key moments. I showed it to my husband. "You made that?" he asked in what seemed to be disbelief. "It looks professional!" Why... thanks, honey.

The butterflies are from a vintage pillowcase. The rest is scraps from prior sewing projects, mostly linen. If I was going to do it again (and you bet I will) I will use interfacing on the fabric for the main body and lining, and I'll add a pocket in the back for my planner. But I'm thrilled. It has lots of pockets. I know where my lip gloss is. There's place for pens. My Ipod is safe. I feel so...satisfied.

Linen and sweater skirt

2008-03-11T22:29:00.000-07:00

At the thrift store I bought a pretty salmon colored cotton sweater with a beautiful knit pattern. It was a terrible cut but lovely knitting. Also at the thrift store I found a raspberry colored linen skirt that had cute pockets but was just too short. This weekend in a flash of inspiration I saw that they should be together and this was the result! I love the gentle scallop to the bottom edge, and tone-on-tone color schemes are very hip right now. I'm super pleased, and I have another linen skirt and sweater combo to try this out again this weekend. As a bonus, the sweater arms were chopped off to make some matching arm warmers...

In-Progress Garden Quilt

2008-03-08T12:20:00.000-08:00

To be honest, I started with a strong bias against appliqué. It is so precise and perfect (italicized words should be said with notable distaste). I never imagined I would have appliquéd as much as I have. However, when I was spending a lot of time on my tuckus in school appliqué kept my hands busy and my mind less antsy.

In my early quilt frenzy I would go the library and rent 10-15 quilt related books each week, soaking up techniques, patterns and of course, beautiful beautiful quilts. I was unexpectedly inspired by Mary Lou Weidman's book Quilted Memories. All her appliqué is free-form, and sewn with abandon. As you might guess, I loved her "who cares what color thread you have!" approach.

So, class by class and block by block I worked on a quilty tribute to my beloved backyard garden, slugs and all. I had thought I would just stitch the randomly sized blocks together, but when I laid them out together they didn't cover enough space. I wanted a laying in the sun quilt, or a picnic worthy quilt. It had to be bigger. So I added borders last week using the fabrics from other squares in the quilt. I'm not sure the layout above is the most perfect layout a person could come up with, but I am certain that I need to get over it and stitch 'em together already so I can enjoy the quilt this summer!

I will show some of my favorite blocks in close up detail when it is quilted. But I thought it looked so happy laid out that I had to share this part early...

Recycled shoppin' bags

2008-03-05T21:54:00.000-08:00

I've seen a lot of good solutions online to the plastic shopping bag problem. Let me show you the two that are working for me. Above: Our big grocery chain has these great roomy $0.99 bags with straps that perfectly slip over the shoulder. They also have an atrocious logo (I mean really, super ugly). that made me not ever want to use them. I solved that, with a net gain of two pockets! I cut the leg bottoms off a pair of thrift-store pants and sewed them on over the logo. People ask me about this bag (and its sisters) constantly.

This rumply thing is rumply because it gets used. It is made from an old super stretchy tee-shirt, and modeled after a standard plastic shopping bag. I have shoved so many groceries in this bag and it's never complained. But for such a big capacity it sure stuffs down small to fit in a purse! I love that I always have it to take with me for any quick run into the store. The straps on this one fit well over the shoulders too. Surely you have a stretchy tee that could have its arms cut off to make a bag? Just take a plastic bag and use it as a guide for where to reinforce the corners and straps. Don't bother finishing the raw edges, they won't unravel, and finished edges will just make the bag less stuff-able.

Quilt in a skirt

2008-03-03T08:25:00.000-08:00

Ok, technically not a quilt, since there's no quilting. But patchwork that's not frumpy is still pretty exciting! I appliquéd one of my randomly sewn strips to a linen skirt from the thrift store. I'm pretty pleased. I had thought it might make the skirt stiff, or mess with the drape of the bias, but the skirt still feels nice and skirty. I may have made the strip a little too wide, especially at the top. I can't wait to find another good skirt for altering to try it again!

A very small quilt

2008-03-02T13:24:00.000-08:00

I finally added the binding to this absurdly small quilt. It's 23" x 32". I don't know who will ever use it, or for what. It is perhaps too neon to hang on a wall. It all started when my grandma and I scheduled a private sewing session with a quilter she really loves, Ginny Taylor. I spent the time sewing strips together, cutting them into gentle curves, and separating them with assorted yellows. Ginny and I traded some fabric and I went home with a handful of partially pieced strips, which I finished sewing up a couple months later.

The quilt was small, and I figured I could add some borders to make it a baby quilt. But I got so frustrated when I didn't like any borders I came up with and finally in a fit of "just finish it already!" I quilted the darn thing. So now it's bound and done. A pretty piece of useless quilt!

I do really like the backing (from the remnant rack) and the random horizontal lines quilting went so quickly.

New fridge

2008-02-29T22:40:00.000-08:00

The old one died, slowly and bizarrely over the space of three days. The new one has been delivered and, as you can see, hubby put the magnets back up...

He's sweet.

A teeny bit of stitchin

2008-02-28T19:36:00.000-08:00

Life after grad school is rough, lemme tell ya. In some ways I brought it on myself. I took a job as the sole clinician in a busy family planning clinic. It's been a big adjustment. I doubt myself constantly every day. I worry about my patients. At the end of the day I feel totally drained. Or worse, last night found me having a good half-hour cry about it all. Every nurse practitioner I know says the same thing: "It'll pass".

I think about quilting constantly but it's hard to do any during the week and still get an occasional workout, dinner with a friend, home-cooked meals and winning the war on dishes. I pulled out a bunch of strips from my scrap bag a week ago and organized them by color themes. I like having something to sit down and stitch together at the end of the night, even for five minutes, to feel like I'm sewing something.

Thrift store upgrade

2008-02-26T09:06:00.000-08:00

This is probably my favorite shirt in the world. I bought the shirt from a thrift store for $1, then added the flowers with free motion quilting. I had a piece of Paper Solvy underneath to stabilize while I stitched, and that stuff just washes away in water. The red fabric came from an old tee shirt. Wearing clothing I've "made" always feels so good to me.