Cuddle Quilt

I recently finished a new quilt for my wonderful mother in law, Lynne.  She intends to use it in her office for the children she sees in her therapy practice, but if I were her, I'd be sorely tempted to keep this quilt all to myself.

The top of the quilt is made with a selection of Anna Maria Horner's Folksy Flannels line and the border and sashing are solid white flannel.  You may remember me starting this quilt back the day before Christmas.  I know I said at the time that I was going to keep it, but luckily I have enough fabric left over to make a whole 'nother one for me.

I backed the quilt using some fleece I bought at JoAnn's and since it's suppossed to be cuddly and soft (and because I wasn't sure how well hand-sewing a bias binding to fleece would go) I wrapped the fleece around to the front and sewed it down to finish the quilt.  Since the fleece won't fray, I left a narrow raw edge that will curl up and look cute when the quilt is washed.

The quality control department has given the cuddle quilt its official stamp of approval and I will be shipping it off to Wisconsin promptly.  And, I'll be adding "make another flannel and fleece quilt" to my ever-growing list of things to do.

Spring

About twice a year, I really get motivated to deep-clean our apartment.  I keep it reasonably clean year-round, but every spring and every fall, I really get it super-clean.  This spring, I took it a little further and de-cluttered all of our closets and rooms, repainted the living and dining/sewing areas, and made a few strategic furniture purchases at Ikea.

A few posts ago, I mentioned that my husband and I were in the housing market, but after reviewing our budget, we decided to wait a couple more years before committing ourselves to a home purchase.  When we decided to stay in our apartment, I decided that we needed to re-vamp a few things to make our 660 square feet a little more manageable for the next two years.

Believe it or not, this closet gets re-organized more often than any of our other ones.

First on the to-do list was going through all of our closets to find things we could donate or throw away.  I brought no fewer than 1000 bags of trash and donations out of the apartment.  Ok, maybe it wasn't 1000.  But it sure felt like at least that much.

Trash I found in the linen closet.

Peter kept bumping his head on the desk that the TV sits on whenever he would try to get to his toys.

My favorite part of our spring make over has got to be our living room.  I repainted and put up a new Expedit system from Ikea.  I changed out the artwork behind our couch.  I used to have photos up, but I took some paintings I had done in college, covered the canvases with a few favorite fabrics, and hung those instead.  I'm also in the process of recovering our throw pillows and will post pictures when they're done.

The paint color we decided on is Glidden Antique Silver.  It's a slightly blue-ish grey and I love how it changes with the light through the day.  We also freshened up the trim with bright white paint.  The fabrics on the wall are from Anna Maria Horner's Innocent Crush line and Heather Bailey's Nicey Jane.  The pillows will be re-done with mostly Nicey Jane, as well.  

And, of course, no living room would be complete without a cozy reading area for smart little guys.  He's telling me all about how Mr. Brown Can Moo.  

Girly, Squared

I finished an adorable quilt for my boss...  No pressure there to turn out something fantastic, right?  Well, anyway, she came to me a few months ago and asked me to make a baby quilt for her soon-to-be granddaughter and I was more than happy to oblige.  I love sewing for my boys, but at heart, I'm a girly girl.

I had so much fun digging out all the pretty pinks and greens in my stash to whip this little beauty up.  I used some Tina Givens, Amy Butler, Joel Dewberry, Anna Maria Horner, Erin McMorris, and Heather Ross.  

I like the way the orange Innocent Crush helps to make the pastel pinks and greens look a little more mature.  I wanted this to be a quilt that would last from infancy through childhood and the orange gives it just the right amount of edge.  I chose to frame each of the feature fabrics with Kona Coal for the same reason.  The dark grey is a great (and very trendy) neutral, but it also lends just the right amount of "grown up" to the over-all look of the quilt.

I finished by sashing the quilt with Kona Pale Flesh (which I think we can all agree is the most unattractive name for any fabric ever), backing it with a vintage sheet I had in my stash, and binding it with a little more Coal.

So, back to the pressure of sewing something for my boss.  She's wonderful, and I knew she loved the fabric selection.  BUT!  Just as I was trying to finish this quilt, my sewing machine stopped working!  Luckily, my wonderful friend EmmmyLizzzy invited me and Pete up for a sleepover and to use her fabulous sewing machine.  She is a lifesaver.

All in all, the quilt was a huge success.  I didn't get to be there when the soon-to-be new mom opened it, but my boss very kindly posted to my facebook page that everyone loved it.

Garment Construction and My Favorite Coat

I've been sewing for about three years now.  I started with simple patchwork quilts and I have moved on to more challenging quilt blocks and I've begun sewing a lot of garments.  Mostly, I sew toddler-sized garments for my toddler-sized Pete, but I have tackled some dresses for myself as well.  All this to say, I feel like I have a pretty good sense of how pattern pieces for garments come together.  Sure, there's the occasional tricky turn to hide your seam allowances, but generally there's a predictable order to things.  Starting today, now that winter is nearly over and my winter coats will be packed away for the spring and summer, I'm going to be testing my garment making confidence.

A few years ago--maybe even before we were married, I don't honestly remember--my husband bought me the. Most. Beautiful. Coat. Ever.



Purchased at Express c. 2006

 Every time I wear this coat, I get compliments.  Most people say it looks vintage which is why I fell in love with it in the first place.  The coat is a creamy wool with a satin ruffle around the collar and down the front.  The belt is chocolate brown satin ribbon, and the lining is the same satin as the ruffle.  Unfortunately, the coat is beginning to show signs of wear.  You can see a little pilling on the wool in this photo, but the worst wear is happening inside the coat.

Satin is a notoriously difficult fabric.  It's slippery, it frays very easily, and it can wear and tear very easily as well.  The photos above are the armholes of my coat.  Basically, the lining has shredded all along the seams and, unfortunately, a little whip stitch is not going to help matters one bit.  Since I consider this coat to be probably my best "statement" piece for winter outerwear, I think it's worth taking the time to really restore it so that I can get as long a life out of it as possible.  So, I decided to cut the existing lining out of the coat and use it to draft a pattern to make a new lining.  I gotta admit, here, that I'm scared shitless that I'm never actually going to be able to wear this coat again--at least, not with a lining.



From top: 1" grid interfacing, Licien voile, inexpensive quilting weight cotton

I use the grided interfacing to trace all of my pattern pieces from purchased patterns, so I figure it will work equally as well for tracing around the existing lining pieces of my coat to create a pattern to work from.  That way, I don't have to continue to handle the fragile satin and hope it stays put while I trace it onto my good fabric.  I'm going to use the inexpensive quilting cotton to make a muslin.  I don't usually make a muslin when sewing store-bought patterns because money is tight and my time is tight, so I save both by just going for it.  In this case, however, I had the fabric in my stash and that voile up there is kinda precious.  I'd rather not have a technicolor lining a la Joseph due to having to piece fabrics together to make my lining, so I'm going to go full-tilt and make a muslin from the pattern pieces I draft.  Better safe than out 3 yards of gorgeous Japanese fabric.

If any of my sewing friends out there happen across this post and have words of wisdom, I'd sure love to hear them.  In the meantime, keep your fingers crossed for me!

 

Wordless Wednesday: Like Father, Like Son