Getting through

Exactly one month ago, I started on a quilt. I need to make this a regular wintertime occurrence. It helps so much. Each little patient seam and square and stitch, one little bit closer to spring. I had fun putting this one together, definitely slap-dash and a little wonky, but full of life and pattern. And I love the colors. I mean, I have to, right? But I mean I really, really love the colors. They're so... March. Ice blue and gray and more gray and brown and white and the littlest, specialest slivers of bright yellow.

Hope.

This quilt was my bus companion to Philly-- I worked on the quilting sitting by my window listening to Jason Isbell on P's iPod over and over and over with it fluffed on my knees. Sunday, coming home, I used it as a pillow-- my 7am bus was wayyy too early for me to be industrious on the ride.
I still have binding to do, of course-- and I'm thinking deep navy blue-- but that's convenient, because I still have winter, too. Though Monday it's supposed to be 57 and mostly sunny, so we'll see. Yesterday I did some outside-work. Today it is raining and I am getting over this cold, and finishing the last of the quilting. So good. So ready for spring.
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Three necklaces

This is making for a pretty good winter, I have to say. Not a lot of folks on the east coast are probably sharing that opinion, but here, things are cozy and relatively calm. Even in the midst of renovation. I spend two afternoons a week (after the writing is done) working on the kitchen, and two afternoons a week doing something crafty. Yesterday I put up some drywall. Monday afternoon I finished a necklace and started a belt.
I've been wanting something big lately. I have a lot of sweet + demure, which is fun, too, but sometimes you want something wild and a little flashy. Just a little. I had a few Anthropologie necklaces I was gawking (like this one and this one) but honestly, $150+? For a necklace? 
I knew I had a shoebox full of broken jewelry saved from my youth, when I spent Saturday afternoons making miniature lamps and vases for my dollhouse, and an antique button habit. I had pliers and wire and all manner of crafty know-how. How hard could this be? I googled. I bought a little bit of chain and some jump rings and clasps for about $15, enough to make dozens of necklaces. Then, I started tinkering.

Mother of peal teardrops wired together with copper wire (this was fiddly), one big chartreuse rhinestone, linen for the backing, jump rings, and copper chain. Yeah baby.

Blue cotton cloth with a piece of cardboard inside to stiffen it, beads, chain, wire, rhinestones, pearls, broken earrings and brooches, a metal teardrop shape that I'm pretty sure came off a fishing lure... uh huh, yeah. This one was inspired by this project here, which I found in my searching. 

Then I made this one, with beads I've had since I was probably twelve, basic beading thread, crimp beads, jump rings, and chain. I want to make another one in green, and maybe even another one in red. Why not? We have six more weeks of winter, and I'm (honestly) in no rush for springtime.
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Skirt!

Woot! This one very nearly almost killed me, but at least it was worth it. Friday, I think it was, I went looking for something new to sew on Pinterest. I wanted something scrappy, because I am a serial buyer of fat quarters and half-yards-- and you can't sew bupkis with fat quarters and half-yards-- but I still want some way of wearing all those gorgeous prints I have squirreled away, however small they might be. Y'know? So when I saw this pattern, I wasted no time. Little triangles! Little triangles in eighteen different prints! I pulled the linen out of my stash (I always buy linen in big 3-yard chunks, because I use it for so many things) and immediately a fat quarter of reproduction fabric leapt off the shelf and declared itself to be the project bandleader. It's that pale viney one, on the far right.

The only problem was, the project called for an elastic-waist skirt, which I knew would not fly. Not in nice linen, not in the wintertime, and not really in my closet. I wanted sleek and pencil-ish. But I confidently proceeded to my copy of SEW U to pull out the all-purpose, customizable skirt pattern I knew was in there... only to find it wasn't in there. Sigh. In the great hurricane of 2011 some of my sewing books and patterns had an incident with the standing water in Patrick's grandma's basement, which is where I'd been doing my sewing at that point. Obviously my SEW U skirt pattern was among the casualties. Sob.
BUT. But, I sucked it up and found a tutorial on making something called a "pencil skirt sloper," by which you can draft your own pattern. Another valuable sewing skill in my stable! I made a pattern, I added a seam allowance and cut it out, I even sewed a muslin, people! I am doing all of the things.
Approximately fourteen hours later... (sewing thirty-six damn triangles takes TIME, apparently)... I was rewarded.

AND, it fit. And now I have a custom skirt pattern to be manipulated, tweaked, lengthened, shortened, widened, narrowed... yeah, it was worth it, I think.
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Finished :: in progress

I made a new favorite thing. 
I made eight log cabin squares and sashed them with hot pink linen and matching quilting cotton and sewed them into a boxy tote bag and that is my new favorite thing. My friend who is going to receive said tote bag shall remain nameless, so that she may have the pleasure of seeing this on my blog and wondering, wondering, if she will be the recipient.

I have been making variations on this tote bag since 2008, and I'm not sick of it yet. I like many things about it: that I don't have to cut any curves (cutting curves is my least favorite thing), that I have the dimensions memorized, that the handles can be long or short, fat or wide-- whatever kind of strips I have left over from the body construction can be turned into handles.
Combining all these features with another of my favorite things-- piecing log cabin squares-- made this sooo enjoyable. Log cabin squares are great. You rummage through your scraps, pick your favorites, iron them, cut them into strips, and start sewing around in a circle. It's the greatest. It's the bean soup of quilting. Throw in whatever and it turns out awesome.
I've been holing up in my studio a lot this week, watching it snow, making things.

(I might be letting the cat out of the bag, broadcasting this one. But I can't wait. Handmade gift reveals post-holidays are nice, but I want the inspiring pictures and the ideas in the moment, you know?)

And as soon as one thing is done, another begins... oooh yes, it's that time of year. 
Tomorrow we're heading south to Maryland, as per tradition, and taking a day after T-day to visit Gettysburg. We did a similar thing last year-- went to Antietam-- and it was awesome. So, we go.
Hope everyone travels safe and has a warm, delicious, joyful Thanksgiving.
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Flower Pillow Appliqué

Part one of the story is, I saw this pillow at Anthropologie awhile ago-- actually, I saw it in Anna Maria Horner's living room-- and I thought, oh, for Pete's sake, I could make that.


Naturally, I wasn't the first person to think I-could-make-that. I started seeing tutorials for making said pillow bouncing around on Pinterest. Lots of tutorials. (I love Pinterest.) The tutorials were really good, but I couldn't look at them without thinking about how I could improve them. That's it, really. That's why I'm a Maker.

Part two of the story is, I made a heady joyride of a Last Convenient Trip to JoAnn Fabrics a couple weeks ago, pre-move, and walked out with more pillow forms than I probably should have. They were fifty percent off; I was insatiable.

The project turned out to be WAY more time than any of the tutorials made it out to be. But I was completely fine with that. Give me permission to dump my scrap box on the floor and spend happy hours pawing through it and cutting petal shapes. I could sit and paw and cut for hours. I ended up drawing the petal shapes on paper, and cutting them out and tracing them. It added a lot to the project, but, it also means I have this great envelope of petal shapes to trace if I ever want to put a flower on another pillow, or tote bag, or...

I'm not sure where it's going to live, ultimately, but I do love that the flower shape is very similar (and complimentary) to the flowers painted on the great room wall. (Which, by the way, has not been touched in over a month-- chalk that up to the garden!)

I love that this was essentially an eight dollar project-- the cost of the pillow form only-- and that it's given new life to some teeny scraps I didn't want to part with. 

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Feeling quiltish

Slowly, in the middle of it all, a quilt is growing. It's a life raft of calm in this week, which is growing to resemble a dunk tank of unknowns. New house, new commute, new patterns and systems, even a new weekend job which will start up soon (waitressing at the [fabulous] restaurant in town). In the midst of it all, this cutting and piecing, each careful seam building upon the last... it's straight-up therapy, is what it is.

What did I used to turn to in times like these, before I learned how to sew?

Anyway, right, the project. I've been de-stashing. The solid squares are linen which has been living in my stash for years-- the unfortunate aftermath of a misguided attempt at dyeing-- and I've been very much of the de-stash mentality lately, both in the fridge and in the craft room. The printed squares were leftovers from a pillow project a couple years ago, and were waiting, patiently, for me to come along and give them a purpose. Initially I was going to regularly intersperse the prints, but ended up settling on a more "deliberate random" design. I like the way the printed squares become more dense toward the bottom of the quilt-- it's playful and perfect for the unnamed-as-yet recipient.

In the meantime, curtains for the new house have been getting sewn, one by one. I can't believe I'm actually going to get to hang them this weekend. Pinch me. Please.

What's been keeping your machine/thread/fingers busy these days?


            

Get my mitts

Aren't the things you figure out by yourself the most gratifying? It took me a couple of tries to get this right-- and, well, it's still a little wonky-- but I did it. 


I decided I needed to make myself a little present-- a reward for painting ceilings and painting trim and scrubbing tile and sewing curtains. And, I thought my new kitchen-to-be needed a little present, too. A little sprucing. So I cut into my Very Favorite Fabric, which I've been saving and ogling at for years, and made an oven mitt.

It went like this. I traced an existing oven mitt, adding about 1/2" of seam allowance. I cut two of those from my Very Favorite Fabric. Then, I cut two pieces of cotton batting and one piece of lining-- I used an old pillowcase for the lining. For the batting and lining, I just cut rectangles. Once the four layers were quilted together-- with lines 1 1/4" apart-- I trimmed the whole stack to the shape of the mitt. Then I repeated the whole thing with the other (mirror image) piece of poppy fabric. I stitched the two quilted mitt-halves together and added a piece of linen bias tape at the bottom.

Now for one more of these, and some potholders, and then more curtains.

And another hike like the one we took last night, please.

Patrick spent all of Tuesday and Wednesday out at the house with his dad, sanding the floors. Another step closer...

            

A bed for Diesel

I had to take a break from my stack this week and sew something fun. Not that curtains aren't fun... well, the product is a lot more fun than the process, you know what I'm sayin'? I'm happiest when my sewing is partly about the creative process, not just the end result. So, I made this. As you can see, it's a bed for Diesel. He approves.

It's basically a big envelope-backed pillow with an extra piece of fabric sewn in on two sides-- a sort of semi-attached blanket for our extremely short-haired, nearly-always-shivering dog who loves to burrow. I stuffed it, for now, with a couple of folded wool blankets, but I think I may swap those out for a squishy comforter--the ruffly, pink one I grew up with-- for something a little more, well, squishy.

I'd originally planned to make some sort of stuffed cushion to fit inside the bed. I even bought cedar shavings for the purpose. And then I thought: no. Better to make the whole thing machine-washable. A long, steady agitation in the washer will handle the dog-stink. A long, steady tumble in the dryer will handle the dog-hair. That sounds just right.

Materials

1 large corduroy slipcover, bought at Salvation Army's half price day: $2

1 fat quarter Heather Ross doggy print fabric (LOVE!): $4

Stuffins: free

So pleased. Now, to make the slow and probably difficult transition from a dog who sleeps on the couch (and our bed) to a dog who sleeps on his bed. Hmm. What do they say about old dogs?

Meet the Stack

Hello. This is my stack. Maybe you have one, too. Mine sits by my sewing machine, and lately it's been growing. It's been growing, in fact, since December. It is getting really quite burgeoning. Now it is time to work on shrinking it.

Stacks expand and contract in my world. Sometimes, there is inspiration but no work ethic. Sometimes, there is work ethic but no inspiration. But lo, for when inspiration and work ethic collide, maximum stack shrinkage is enabled!

I have a plan. I am going to shrink my stack, hopefully down to nothing, by doing the following:

• Sewing curtains
• Sewing pillows
• Sewing a duvet cover (hopefully)
• Sewing a tablecloth
• Sewing even more curtains

For full disclosure, I should note that the delicate fold of fabric in the middle of the stack has already been made into curtains for the master bedroom. And after sewing curtains for a mere two windows, (two out of the twenty-five in our house) I have to say, I'm not sure my current plan to make curtains for all the windows was such a good one. That's a lot of sewing, but. I am committed to my stack. I will make it disappear, one way or the other.

I will sew long straight lines. It might be boring. But, it will result in beautiful curtains. LOTS of beautiful curtains. I will buy presents, instead of making presents, for every gift-related occasion until Christmas. I will focus my sewing on myself, on us, on our new house. I never do this. I always just sew gifts. It will be good. A beautiful house full of beautiful curtains is a worthy goal. And my stack is just what it'll take to make that happen.

A long time coming

All those new house pictures didn't fool you into thinking I wasn't spending any time sewing these days, did they? Oh, I've been sewing. In between the deadlines and busy weekends, I've been slowly and contemplatively pulling this little blanket together. Because deadlines and busy weekends are nothing when you have a friend with a due date.

I love little quilts like this. There are no steps to follow, no directions to consult. Just cut a bunch of squares, lay them out on the floor, and play. I love playing. The colors, the patterns... it's my favorite kind of sewing. This time, I set myself the challenge of working with things I already had on-hand. Sometimes a limitation like that brings out the best in creativity, and I think this was one of those times.

Four more weeks until we get to meet the little one!

You've Come a Long Way, Baby: Craft Room

A view of our new house, past and present. A reminder of how far we've come, and a morale-booster for the upcoming weekend of work.

You've Come a Long Way, Baby. This is going to be my new Friday blog thing. Not because we NEED a morale-booster (though, admittedly, the Christmas-morning glee of waking up early on Saturday morning and getting to work has worn off) but because it's fun looking back. It's fun to pat yourself on the back now and then.

Hello, there, craft room/studio. My, my. Don't you look fine. I can't wait to set up and start creating in this space. It's the smallest of our bedrooms, (though still a fine size) but it commands some of the best views in the entire house. Which is, of course, why I chose it.

Happy Friday!