My adorable little sister, Lainey, turned 14 about a week ago, and I want to surprise her with a quilt.  I’m hoping that she likes the colors I’ve chosen.  She’s definitely not a girlie girl, but not a tomboy either, so I tried to go with a theme that would fit – blues, greens, oranges, and a little black for accent.  The quilt top is almost done (all except a 4″ white border around the entire perimeter) and I’m hoping to sandwich today and quilt it on Thursday!  When completed, this should fit a double/full bed, roughly 76″ x 98″.

Curi and I have been friends since our then-boyfriends, now-husbands worked together in college.  I guess that means I’ve known her for over 8 years!  We’re fortunate enough that we live close to each other, and try to get together for coffee or lunch relatively often.  She’s a super busy SAHM of 3!

We always try to exchange birthday gifts, and this year, Curi had said she would love an apron – and her only requests were pink and brown.  After a lot of digging around, and not much that made me thrilled, I decided to go with a Sandi Henderson print that had a lot of pink and brown, but also touches of cream and blue – and a coordinating polka dot print to further bring out the brown.  I used the pattern from Indygo Junctions “Ruffled Chef”.  I’m tempted to go purchase the Amy Butler apron pattern now – I can see how easy it is to get addicted to these!

I hope she’s thrilled with it!  I certainly love the way it turned out – maybe she’ll let me take a picture of her in it so I can post here!

Just a little something I’m working on…

These little crib quilts really come together so quickly!

My friend, Jennifer W., has the nickname of “BFF”.  Since I have about 400 friends named Jennifer, the concept of nicknames was so that when I am talking to Matt about one, it was clear which one I was referring to.  I think we were joking one day about being BFF’s, and that we should get matching necklaces, etc, and BFF just stuck.  BFF is a huge Georgia fan.  Probably the biggest one I know of.  (which is good.. cause I don’t want too many of them around, and I happen to really like her)   :)  So I saw this fabric, and thought it would be perfect for her to use as a purse. 

I started with an Amy Butler bag – the Swing Bag (see below).  It turned out great!  But.. I’m a sucker for the boxed edges.  I just love the fuller look it gives the bags, and I’m not one that’s much for pointy edges.  You’ll never see me wearing those high heels or boots that have a point that sticks out 3 feet past the toe.  I would certainly break both ankles.  Not good.  Instead, I wear the stubby toe shoes, like mary janes!  Hence.. my bags have the same look :)

I also didn’t bother with the sash (big poofy ribbon).  I really thought that it detracted from the bag, and I wanted that pretty fabric to stand out!  The interior is a really pretty coordinating red.  I did the handles reverse of the bag, and wish I had the fabrics stay on their respective side.  All in all a really nice bag that I’d be happy to make again.  Did I mention that it requires ZERO interfacing or stabilizer??  A very rare thing indeed, for an Amy Butler pattern.  I was quite happy with that! 

With the boxed edges, the bag has a really nice depth to it!

I love the way the black zigzag reinforcement looks – I wasn’t sure how it would turn out… but quite nice  :)

I’ve been so busy sewing, and not blogging. Obviously.

I’ve got tons of things to post, but I wanted to get this up right away, because I’m giving to Emily today!  This quilt started as a smaller quilt  (the stripes in the center)- a crib sized quilt for her son, James.  Now that he’s three (and a big brother, mind you) he’s claimed that he’s too big for the quilt and wanted a bigger one.  So Emily and I spent some time at Intown Quilters and she picked out the colors that she’d like to have around the original quilt.   The plan was to start with the original quilt in the center, then add a border, then add the large color blocks around it.  Since his room has a nautical theme, Emily thought it would be super cute to have sailboats in the corner.  I’m so happy with her vision of this quilt and ultimately, the way its turned out.

It was so fun to deconstruct a quilt.  It was really neat to see how another quilt was constructed.  It looked like it was hand quilted.  The original quilt was made my Pottery Barn Kids, probably by some woman in China, but she did a nice job!  There’s beauitful colored stitching between each block that we really wanted to preserve.  The only tough part to deal with is that the blocks of the original quilt, although they look similar in size, are all different… half inch here, quarter inch there – ultimately made it a bit challenging to deal with.

After getting the binding off, it was time to sit in front of the TV, watch a TiVo’ed Oprah episode, and start picking away at the quilting.

Once the original quilt top had been separated from the quilt, the fun began of figuring out the best way to lay out the new colors.

The sailboats were simply applique.  I used a satin stitich.  What I did NOT know, however, was how hard it is to applique sharp angles like triangles.  But, by the 3rd panel, I had pretty much got the hang of it!

We had picked out brown as a color for the panels, in addition to the red, orange, blues and green that you see.  But as a full sized panel, I thought the brown was too distracting, so instead I used it to “frame” the sailboat blocks, and that seemed to work out nicely  :)

As far as quilting, I did a simple rectangle, once inside of another, inside of another, and so on; as well as stitching-in-the-ditch around the beige borders and the sailboat panels.  I thought it helped to keep the lines of the quilt simple, and work to elongate the entire look.

Ta-da!  This quilt was originally ~ 35″ x 45″, and now its ~ 50″ x 70″, so its a really nice size increase that James should be able to grow into for years!  It was tall enough that I wasn’t able to really hold it up off the ground – I had to have Matt do it for this photo!  I think Emily did an amzing job picking out all the colors – it came together so nicely!   Oh, and the back is just a solid blue, the same color as the binding.  I chose a real dark blue so it wouldn’t show stains and wear as much over time, because I’m sure this quilt will get a lot of love :)

I picked out the fabric for this before I even had the pattern in hand.  How perfect, right? Birdie fabric for birdie sling!  This bag came out quite nice, actually!  I was exhausted by all the cutting, though.  Took me hours to do that.  It wasn’t so much the fabric that took all the cutting time, but all the interfacings!  There were lots for this pattern.  But, that being said, I’ll definitely make it again and again.  I get compliments on this bag all the time!  It has a really nice feel to it and hangs so well!  I just hope that I”ll get faster as I get more experienced!

All was grand until I got to the point where you sew the lining and exterior together.  I had misread the instructions to say “place handle INSIDE of exterior” when it actually read “place handle OUTSIDE of exterior, between itself and lining” (or something like that, but you get the idea!).  So I sew it up all, then clip it, and when I pull the lining through, I have a totally closed off bag with no handle to be found!  I had to cut it all up and continue from that step all over again.  Even though that major screwup happened, the bag still came out GREAT! The upper edge piece is just a little shorter than what it was supposed to be, but I love it all the same.

The part I found the most challenging was lining up the curved edge of the top red pieces to the curved edge of the exterior and lining pieces.  These curves went in opposite directions, and I kept thinking that there was a mistake.  No, I’m just naive. It was challenging, but not too much so, and of course, it came out just beautifully! I learned that you just start by pinning in the center, and slowly coerce the fabric to turn as you need it to.  Bending the top piece up helped its bottom edge to give into the curve.

This came from her book “little stitches for little ones”.  No, no babies on the way for me at the present time, but a ton of my friends are pregnant and/or with little ones at home.  This is meant to be a full body baby wrap, that is then tied to keep them all snuggled and secure.

My very close friend, Karen, gave birth to Laura Catherine on July 4th, and I thought that this would be a super cute gift for her.  I made this in size 3-6 months, knowing Karen would get more use out of it in the winter, rather than now, at the peak of summer.  She and her husband, Matt, were waiting to find out what they were having, so I was on the edge of my seat waiting as well!  Would I get to sew up cute girlie things or cute boyish things??

I apologize for the coloring of this – the lining of this snuggie wrap is a gray/brown fleece, but here it looks like it has a much more yellow hue to it.  I was so happy with how quickly this came together.  It was really a nice, easy project to get done in the weekend that they baby was born.  The only difficulty came with opening the buttonholes.  I accidentally snagged one, and had to use some stabilized and over-sewing to fix it. (Thanks, Diana, for the save!)

I wanted to go ahead and get my feet wet regarding interfacings, stabilizers and embroidery.  I sure did with this tote.

The sweetest little girl, Sarah, lives across the street from us, and always takes care of our animals when we’re out of town.  She’ll come over to just chat, and often brings us fresh baked cookies, just ’cause :)  A girl after my own  heart, indeed!  Well, she leaves for sleep-away camp in about a week, and I thought that this, filled with goodies to take with her, would be a nice send-off.

Aside from the enormous mistakes that I’ve been able to (mostly) hid, the bag came out pretty well.  I because well-acquainted with some of the different interfacings, as well as stabilizers.  And best of all, I finally got to make use of my embroidery unit! Yay!

The brown ribbon at the top was used to cover up some mistakes, but it turns out that I really like what it did for the bag.  It definitely gave it a little more flair, which is always good!

Here’s the pattern front:

The fabrics used for this were purchased at Wee Scotty in San Francisco.  The dots and stripes go so nicely together, I think.

UPDATE: Sarah adored the bag! I was thrilled!  Until I told them that  I had made it, they thought I had purchased this bag and simply had it embroidered at the store.  Nice compliment, indeed :)

I wanted to start small enough that I would be able to accomplish, but cool enough to keep me challenged. When I was in San Fran last week, browsing sewing machines at Wee Scotty, they had this apron on display. Its the “ruffled chef” by indygo junction.

I loved the ruffles, and that I had the option of the full or half apron.

Whatcha think?

I decided I’d send it to my Mom – she always supports me so wholeheartedly, and I thought she’d like to have my very first-ever sewing project.

Next project – Amy Butler’s Chelsea Tote.

I’m not quite sure what bug got ahold of me, but I’ve decided to start sewing! Me (?), right? Anyone that knows me KNOWS I don’t sew, so this is as much a surprise to me as anyone!

While in San Francisco, I visited Wee Scotty sewing shop and browsed at their different Husqvarna Viking machines (same brand my Mother-in-law swears by) and was taken by the beautiful fabrics. I would’ve bought a machine there on the spot, but they said that they can’t ship out of district, so I was going to have to buy it in my own city. This was good, because it caused me to call around Atlanta to see what shops there were, and I was told that two days later there would be a Viking “Truck event” at my local sewing shop! I was thrilled! I called Diana, my MIL, and she agreed to go with me. I was originally thinking that I’d just get a sewing machine, and then when I got there, fell in love with a sewing/embroidery combo. The embroidery unit can accomodate up to 4″x4″ which is great for me – I think I just want to do monograms/names/small designs, etc.

So, she’s home with us now, and I’m just starting to get used to her. My first project is a half apron… posting coming soon!