Weekender Finished!

Picture overload here friends.  Consider yourself warned.  I am just so thrilled with this bag.  I stayed up till midnight last night, hand sewing the lining into the bag and I had a hard time getting to sleep afterwards because I was so excited to be finished and that it looks great.

I definitely feel like I am behind the times when it comes to sewing the trends- and getting into sewing the Weekender is definitely an example of that!  I know I was intimidated- people really make a big deal about how difficult it is to sew this bag.  But it's not that bad, honestly!  I would even do another one.

I did English paper piecing for this outside hexagon panel ages ago and it sat for a long time.  Completing this long-standing WIP feels so good!

This finish coincides with the May Le Challenge link-up with the theme word, "Blossom."  There are lots of floral fabrics included in this bag but my favorite is this older Melody Miller linen weight fabric shown between the handles in this picture.  I have a friend who told me she doesn't really like flowers in fabrics and I was surprised: that's definitely a difficult motif to avoid in fabric!  Luckily I love them.

In this post, I listed many tips about making the weekender.  The only thing I would change is that I would encourage you to make your own piping.  The piping designated in the pattern is much chunkier than the store bought piping and makes a bigger statement.  Making my own piping this time around was easy.  Now I am going to make my own for my daughter's dress- it's not hard!

This typewriter square was the impetus for the color scheme of this bag.  I won it in an IG giveaway.

On my last Weekender, I waited way too long to make and install the lining.  With this bag, I basically told myself I couldn't do anything else until this bag was truly D-O-N-E.  Here are the lining fabrics I chose from my stash:

I installed an interior zipper pocket - something that will definitely come in handy I hope!  I used instructions for how to do so via the Noodlehead 241 pattern- I definitely like her method.

Linking up to Finish it up Friday and Le Challenge.

Donut Dress

After I finished the fox quilt top, as a little reward to myself, I allowed myself to make Charlotte another dress.  Sometimes I get in a mode of wanting to make dresses all day everyday and that is just not practical- but it's so much fun!

When I saw this donut fabric, I thought it would make an adorable dress for a four year old.  Then I decided to make more of an event out of it and take a special trip to Annie's Donuts with Charlotte wearing the dress.  

Annie's Donuts is a locally famous donut place that is known to be delicious and to have a lot of variety.  My initial impression was that it was a donut place that put candy bars all over their donuts, which truly isn't very appealing to me.  But then I tried their Maple Old Fashioned and I finally understood the hype.  It doesn't hurt that they have warm glazed donut hole samples available too.  

Charlotte was hesitant to stand in front of the counter and have her picture taken but she did great.  The place was really busy and no one paid too much attention.

Here's my crazy crew shown below.  We had a fun morning.  Nick and I didn't go too crazy eating donuts: we've both been trying to lose weight.  Nick has lost 20 lbs and I've lost 10 (typical guy vs. girl dynamics when it comes to losing the pounds!).

The pattern I used was the Oliver and S Bubble dress.  So classically simple and a polished piece.

The button selection at Hobby Lobby is awesome.  It's tempting to start a button stash and just buy a ton there.  The brand they sell is called Sew-Ology and the stuff is much cuter than anything I've ever seen elsewhere.  How perfectly do these pink and white stripes go with this dress?!

With so much to do lately, I felt a little silly giving time to this project, but I just couldn't get the idea out of my head and I figure when you're four years old, you can wear donuts!  It's cute and fun.  Life's too short to not make these fun projects now, before she's older and won't wear hardly anything handmade.

Linking up to Sew Cute Tuesday.

Scrappy Project Progress

I have a few scrappy projects to talk about today.  First up is my pixelated Hello Kitty top.  The picture below shows how far I have gotten.  I have to admit that I haven't worked on it in a while, I feel too much urgency to work on other things before my summer trip.  All of these fabrics are from my scrap bins with the exception of the plain white:

Here's another scrappy project that was gifted to me by six guild friends who made this adorable mini quilt.  They made this for me because of that retreat swap that fell very flat for me when I received nothing handmade.  It's hanging in an honored spot in my sewing room.

We had a guild event at a LQS where we all worked on our own versions of the Color Dive Quilt.  In 6 hours I felt like I didn't make a lot of progress on my AMH HST's, but I had a lot of fun with my friends.

Linking up to Scrappy Tuesday.

Fancy Fox Quilt Completed

 I finished my Fancy Fox quilt.  I am so happy with it!  Close to completion, I was getting a little tired of the project but the effort was worth it.  I started this at the February guild retreat, so it didn't languish in the WIP pile too long.

I don't know if there's much more I can say about this project.  Elizabeth Hartman is a talented designer and I enjoy her patterns a lot.  I want to make many more of her other animal quilts.  In the early days of modern quilting, her blog and first book were significant resources for me learning quilting techniques and I can thank her for the information I used when I finally took the plunge to try free motion quilting on my domestic machine.

I am not sure when I will finish this quilt.  I've got lots on my plate right now and it's not urgent.  But it feels so good to have it done, after I finished it, I rewarded myself by allowing myself to sew up yet another dress for my daughter.  Stay tuned :)

Linking up to Finish it up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.

WIP Wednesday: Weekender

Do I really need another handmade bag?  No.  But I love the process of making these and having a patchwork Weekender has been a dream of mine for a long time.  I kind of bungled my design/fabric choices with my first Weekender, so here's take two:

A while ago I finished this English Paper Pieced panel of hexagons for the outside of the bag.  I laid it on top of a panel of Anna Maria Horner home dec fabric (first quilting around the circles):

Do you notice the piping?  I made it myself!  It wasn't so hard after all.  I would definitely do it again and it's much larger than the store bought stuff.

The next part of the project was considering the design of the other large pocket on the opposite side of the bag.  I considered adding a paper pieced word (Maker? Create?).  As I was about to purchase a paper pieced alphabet pattern, my baby woke up and all plans to continue to sew halted.  It may have been meant to be, however, because when I woke up, I had a new plan to make tiny dresdens:

I really wanted to sneak in a bit of that Catnap fabric, but I didn't want to have a big bag that made me seem like a crazy cat lady with cat faces all over it.  This was a great compromise!

Designing the end pockets were an almost easy decision.  The typewriter was a no-brainer.  Deciding on the other side took me a lot longer.  I finally found a scrap of the double-gauze Princess and the Pea fabric.  The scrap came from making this quilt and the yard piece I had used really looked like swiss cheese- I probably shouldn't have bothered to save it!  But I am glad I did- I love that princess so much!  I love her facial expression and body language- she is so cute and feisty.

Making this bag has proved really therapeutic lately.  Lately I have had a lot on my mind and sometimes my emotions feel overwhelming.  I bring this up not to focus on my current stress level, but more to praise this hobby that is always interesting, rewarding, and fulfilling.  Sewing at night, by myself, with a favorite show streaming from Netflix, has proved very therapeutic lately.  I just don't know what I'd really be feeling if I didn't have this awesome and very healthy coping mechanism.  Most people I know don't have a hobby or interest that they are really passionate about.  I can't imagine that. Occasionally sewing adds to my stress level but more often than not, it truly provides an amazing outlet for me of expression, utility, and joy.  This all probably sounds a little cheesy but oh well.  Sometimes I feel compelled to explain why I do what I do.  I'll be back on Friday with my finished Fancy Fox top.

Linking up to Let's Bee Social.

WIP Update

I finished the 80th and final fox block last week.  Happy day!  

Now I am sewing them all together in columns.  I think today I will be able to start inserting the sashing, I hope I will have a completed top to share by the end of the week.  I am enjoying seeing this come together.

My interest in sewing clothes for myself is increasing and I want to start by making a simple knit t-shirt.  I decided to work my way up to that somewhat scary goal by making a knit dress for Charlotte with knit purchased from Joanns:

I actually really like this print and the quality seems decent, it just seemed like a good idea to use materials that are locally available and affordable to try something new before I dig more into my *very* small designer knit stash that I purchased around the holidays.

So this dress really was an easy sew but I made it very hard on myself when I didn't carefully and correctly transfer the dots on the patterns that were meant to aid the placement of the interior pockets.  It was hours of seam ripping folks.  Besides that idiotic mistake, sewing this dress was a pleasant experience.  Unfortunately, the dress is way too big as a 5T on my daughter: a risk I knew I was taking but I didn't want to invest in the smaller size range of the pattern yet.  When Charlotte grows more, I will post a picture of her wearing this.  Right now it just looks like a too-long nightgown.

After the dress was made, there was exactly enough material to eke out a pair of leggings.  Charlotte loves this outfit, as you can probably tell from this picture.  She's also getting a kick out of seeing herself in the mirror.  She cracks me up.

So I am getting closer to bravely cutting up this Lizzy House Catnap knit to make myself a shirt. (I love this print so hard!  I hope I can score some on sale soon to make Charlotte at least a pair of leggings.) This is the pattern I have but I am not sure if I'm convinced it's the best pattern for how I want my shirt to look.  I am considering the Grainline Studio Lark Tee and the Liesl and Co Metro T patterns as well.  Do you have any suggestions?

On a personal note: this little guy just passed his 11 month mark, we're only a few weeks away from his first birthday.  He is a good sleeper and eater (thanks to 8 teeth!) and is getting into everything.  Our family is just one month away from our family vacation in New England.  My husband and I are going to celebrate our ten year anniversary and he'll have to return to Colorado (after two weeks) while we spend eight more weeks with my parents in New Hampshire.  I am excited and nervous all at the same time.  Right now, I feel like my to-do list is just growing and so I guess I need to end this blog post and get to work.

Thanks for reading!

Finish: Heart Quilt

I have a quilt finish to share!  I made the top in January in anticipation of a baby shower and soon changed my mind about giving it away (making another quilt instead).  This top hung in my front living room for quite a while and then finally ended up alternating between the back of my chair or the ironing board in my sewing room: moving it out of my way constantly was definitely annoying!  So even though I had been considering making it bigger and adding to it (my running joke was that I would add the term "unconditional positive regard" to it and make it massive) I decided to quilt it up and finish it.

I used my walking foot and used the seam lines as a guide to do an approximate 1/4" grid with grey thread.

I used pretty, coordinating fabrics from my stash for the backing:

I knew that the Tula Pink Eden Mosaic in Magenta fabric would be perfect for binding.  I love this fabric so much!

I am thinking I will list this quilt in an Etsy shop like I've talked about opening (someday).  Alternatively, if I have a special friend have a baby girl, it will be ready.  This quilt was made from scraps and stash; I'm linking up with Scraptastic Tuesday at She Can Quilt and Finish it up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.

Le Challenge: Fine

 For as long as I have been sewing, I've used a magnetic pincushion.  It broke around Christmas time and I couldn't find a replacement (I'll admit I didn't look very hard).  I started using the one and only handmade pincushion I have: this apple pincushion (pattern by Sandi Henderson).

I'm late to the game but I finally realized that the magnetic pincushions aren't necessarily superior to handmade pincushions.  I thought it was great that I could just "throw" the pins onto the magnet and not worry about it.  But this often led to pins on the floor and other undesirable landing spots.  And it broke- which is definitely not something that would happen to something like this cute apple:

For this month's theme, "fine" at Le Challenge, I decided to make a pocket pincushion.  The pattern comes from Heidi Staple's Sew Organized for the Busy Girl.  Handmade pincushions are just as "fine," if not better than, the magnetic pincushion I have been so loyal to.

For this project, I dug into my Liberty Lifestyle scraps as well as a F8 of Mochi Linen Dot in Sand.  I never know what to do with F8's but this was a perfect project for them!

Yesterday we had a major spring snowstorm in Colorado and all of my fun weekend plans were cancelled.  It was a bummer but my husband and I took advantage of being forced to stay home and we did a major spring cleaning.  Our house has never looked so good.  I didn't realize how bad it had gotten until we made it look so good!  A side benefit of our day was that I found these cute scissors that fit perfectly into this pocket pincushion and even match my fabrics!

Thanks for reading.  I also finished a longstanding WIP last night and will share that next.

Bubbles, Ice Cream, and Playtime

 I love Oliver and S patterns, I am sure that's obvious by now.  Within the past week I made clothing items from three of their patterns.

Here's the bubble dress in size 5T:

I used some pretty Joel Dewberry Atrium fabrics.  This was a very fun sew.  I do enjoy dress patterns with sleeves that aren't the traditional "set in sleeves" that sometimes are tedious to assemble.

Next up is the ice cream dress.  I've made this dress before but my daughter has since grown out of the ones I had made.

 Isn't this bear/forest print adorable!?  I would've preferred to pair it with a pink solid but I have so much Kona "Rich Red" in my stash for some reason, so I opted for using what I have.

I ommitted the front pockets that are supposed to go on the front of the dress, the print is just too busy and I didn't want to break it up.

I finally mustered up the courage to try sewing with knit and made Charlotte some Playtime leggings.  It was a fun experience and they came out really nice.  Charlotte said she wanted to "wear these pants everyday"- which is a great compliment from a four year-old.

The 5T sizing is a little big on her, I am considering investing in the smaller size range of the pattern.

Having a daughter to sew for is such a joy!  I am really enjoying it.  I have to admit that I feel a little guilty about making her so many clothes.  I think it's because making a quilt feels like I am making an heirloom that can be enjoyed for many years to come, by many people.  I am not sure what will become of these clothes that she will (all too fast) grow out of.  But I do get such a kick out of her excited reactions to the items I make her and I think it's fun to watch a favorite fabric print "walk around."  I also have to say that a lot of the clothes available in stores are not as cute and child-like as the ones I can make her.  Sewing for her is easy, compared to sewing for myself, because I don't have to worry about things like a bust adjustment and the patterns I like aren't super fitted, requiring scary things like invisible zippers.

I do think Gregory gets a little jealous that I make his sister so many things but I honestly have no interest in sewing clothes for him.  He's very picky about what he wears and is perfectly content with wearing super hero t-shirts and basketball shorts.  I try to give him attention and care in other ways.  I'll admit that when I had Owen almost a year ago, I wanted to have a girl simply because I love sewing for Charlotte so much.  It's all good though!  I love my family and this hobby of mine that is very versatile and rewarding.