Forest Quilt Progress

Slight change to the plan for the forest quilt: I'm going to make a lovey first, with a coordinating quilt to come later. The lovey will be roughly a 24" square, with 2 of the four-part blocks and two bigger, cream blocks. My original intent for the quilt project was for it to be something that my son could snuggle. I realized a twin-size bed quilt probably would not meet that intent. So lovey first, and hopefully a similar bed quilt will aid in the transition to a big boy bed when he is ready for that.

The progress on the lovey is actually coming along pretty well, as small as it is. I have finished the four-part blocks. Yay!

The rest of the fabrics for the top layer are washed and ready to be cut. Sewing together the blocks and strips to finish the top will go incredibly quickly, and I'm hoping to get some time to get that done this weekend.

I also got a chance to play around with some mistake bits, trying to figure out what I want to do with the quilting. My only experience with machine quilting to date was straight lines on a shopping cart cover for G. So I have a lot of learning to do in that department. I played around with the leaf fabric with a contrast thread for visibility. I tried tracing the design, and just some general filler-type motifs that I've seen on other quilts. I wasn't impressed with any of these. On the corduroy, I knew I wanted to stay away from quilting across the plush lines of the corduroy, so tried vertical stripes and loved them. My current thought is to do (evenly-spaced) vertical stripes on the corduroy and horizontal stripes on the leaf fabric.

For the large cream blocks, I had the idea from the very beginning to quilt in some woodsy animals and/or motifs. I came across Lone Minkkinen's Quilting Designs from Nature in the recent American Quilter's Society catalog and was intrigued. I picked up a copy on Amazon (for less than the AQS member price) and am very excited about the designs it offers.

Now I just need to get some time when I am not exhausted and maybe I can start to make some more progress!

Forest Quilt Planning

Back when I was pregnant with my first, I found myself in a fabric store in Breckenridge in search of something fabulous to remember the trip by. I stumbled across a cream and green leaf motif fabric, and bought a yard and a half, thinking I might make a crib sheet out of it.

Jump forward almost two years. I'm dreaming up a quilt for that same baby, whose room is done up in a forest motif, with a tree painted on the wall even. I was gravitating towards green in his quilt, and one day pulled out all of the quilt-suitable green fabrics from my stash. I came across an awesome green cotton corduroy that I had picked up from the remnants at Denver fabrics. Add to that a green leafy quilting remnant I had picked up at Joann's a few days before, and I was starting to salivate!

Leftmost is the Breck fabric

Now I needed a quilt design! I knew I wanted to keep it simple, and was craving something with some empty space after my last, very busy quilt. In my internet wanderings, I came across a "simple four patch" pattern. This was it! After starting to play around with cutting fabric last night, I got on my computer and made a mock up of what the quilt will look like, to figure out dimensions, counts of squares, etc.

With this arrangement and 8 inch square big blocks, I will need a 6-8 inch border for a twin size quilt. I haven't yet figured out what I want that to look like, but I have plenty of time!

My intent is to strip piece the four-square blocks. Last night, I was cutting 4 1/2" squares out of my fabric. Doh! Old habits die hard.

Pirate Costume Stall: Laundry!

I have been so out of the loop with sewing that I got into the long weekend, ready to make some progress with sewing, and realized that I hadn't yet washed my fabrics. Gah! I can't wash them together and I can't wash them completely alone, so they're waiting on my lazy butt getting around to doing laundry in general this weekend. Time to get to it so I have some weekend left to get some sewing done!

Pirate Costume: Fabrics!

I hit up a sale at Joann's last weekend to gather supplies for the pirate costume. My wonderful husband was happy to assist. We settled on a faux black suede for the vest portion of the shirt and a cotton crepe for the sleeves and collar.

We wanted a pretty wide red stripe for the pants, but couldn't find anything suitable at Joann's. I did some searching around this morning and found this awesome cotton fabric at DenverFabrics!

No more excuses, time to get started!

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Update: I got all of the pattern pieces cut out today! I had the scissors and pattern hanging around the kitchen table and cut on things between other things, while my son, G, was eating, playing, etc. I'm super excited about this because cutting out the pattern pieces tends to be my least favorite part of the whole sewing experience. Next weekend (a long one) I can get on with working with fabrics!

One Year Later...

So, my son was born on August 20th, and here I sit a year later, finally starting to think about sewing and blogging again. What a year it has been!

I have accomplished a little bit of sewing in the last year. I finally finished up the curtains and crib skirt around Christmas time, although I don't seem to have any pictures at the moment. I'll have to take some. I also made my son a blank slate of a Christmas stocking for him to embellish in future years (another McCall's 5549).

I also made myself two pairs of pajama pants, both using Simplicity 2317, which I love. The second pair was in a green plaid. It was my first experiment with plaid, and it didn't get close to lining up, but it was a good learning experience.

I've been attempting to whip up two pairs of pajama pants for my husband using Butterick 5572 (finally a pajama pants pattern with pockets!). After several false starts I now need to start over completely because the baby got ahold of and shredded the pattern pieces before I managed to cut any of the fabric.

I have a new goal of making my son a Halloween costume before Halloween. I'm using Simplicity 2561, the pants from view B, right, and the top from view D, bottom left. I've never tried a shirt before, so there are definitely some challenges here. I feel like Halloween costumes are a good time to make mistakes, though.

Also on my radar is a quilt for my son, who will be ready for a bed and blankets before we know it, and a baby quilt for the next son or daughter, due April 2.

This may all be a bit overly ambitious, especially for a pregnant woman with a burgeoning toddler. However, summer is winding down, meaning more time indoors, my son is close to weaning, and I like to have goals. I may not get all these things done in the time frame I would like, but I like to have something to work towards.

Crib Skirt Cut Out

I spent the better part of my on-my-feet hours today cutting out all of the pieces for the crib skirt. I had cut out the panels I needed for the curtains first since they were the biggest pieces. Next, I needed to cut out the pieces for the crib skirt, and then finally with the leftovers I could cut the tabs for the tab-top.

Since almost all of the pieces were perfect squares, I decided to use my rotary cutter and rulers. This seemed to work very well with the cotton-as-linen. However, when I got to the silk I really struggled. My cutting surface was not big enough for the long cuts that I needed to make. So I had to move the cutting pad under the silk mid-way through cutting a piece out. Trying to keep the silk and the pattern in one place while moving a rubbery surface underneath didn't end up working out so well. I also struggled with keeping the silk squared off. I'm not sure if it will be noticeable, but I found it very frustrating as I went.

So now I have all of the pieces cut out and ready to be thrown together. All I have left to cut are the tabs for the tops of the curtains and the two big panels of the curtain lining. Hopefully it will start coming together quickly now.

Still no baby. I'm now 9 days past my due date...

Baby's Room!

I am a few days over my due date with my first child, a baby boy. I have been planning to sew curtains and a crib skirt for the nursery since my husband and I decided to start a family. We decided on the theme for the nursery (woods/forest) back in March when we found out we were having a boy. Pretty soon thereafter, the plan for the linens in the baby's room started to form.

I am sewing a side-drape, tab-top, single-panel curtain in white faux-linen with a green silk border. The crib skirt will be done with matching fabrics with a similar width band at the bottom. I'm using McCall's 4855 as the pattern for the crib skirt. Below are samples of the fabric from Fabric Warehouse.

I didn't have everything in place to start working on the pieces until my third trimester, which I found terribly exhausting. It is only now, as things are winding down at work, and the baby is getting ready to make his entrance into the world, that I am finding time to try to put the pieces together.

I have never made curtains before, so the size of the fabrics has been a little intimidating. It's also my first time working with silk, also intimidating. So far, I have washed all of the fabrics, and pressed the fabrics for the curtains. I have a little more fabric to press, and then I can get going on putting things together!

I am a little disappointed with how the silk came out of the wash. I read online that dupioni should be washable on the lowest setting and can even be dried on low in the drier. So I tried these steps, and ended up with a ton of little creases. I knew that I would need to be able to wash the completed pieces, as they will be in a child's room for many years. So I'm glad I started out with washing the items, but I mourn the luxurious even drape of the silk when it first arrived.