A tale of two baby quilts

 Recently a dear friend (hey there, Julie!) asked me sweetly if I would be interested to make a couple of remembrance baby quilts for her. Her twin boys had achieved the ripe old age of 3 and she couldn't bear to part with so many of their precious little things from infancy. Knowing exactly how she felt (heh, I have a stash of baby clothes that get me all teary whenever I come across them, too), I happily agreed. She had kept batches of their little shirts and onesies and such and collected a couple of big (ulp!) bags for me. Here's just one of the bags...

Upon sorting through the clothes I realized several important things: A. they were all in very good shape (no horrible stains or damage) B. the colors and patterns were in a range that would harmonize pretty well and C. almost everything was a knit (i.e. t shirt material). A and B had me stoked. C....eh, not so much. See, the trouble with t shirt knit fabric is that its so stretchy in every dimension. Which, of course, is why t shirts are so darn comfy and everyone has a zillion of them. But for sewing, yikes!  A nightmare! Cutting and sewing small shapes accurately and making anything that even looks halfway accurate was going to be categorically impossible no matter what I did.

Hmm. What to do, what to do?  I wasn't stumped--it was a fabric after all-- and I am the master, er, mistress of fabrics, am I not? Why, yes. Yes, I am. thank you very much. :)

SO... I explored my options and did some heavy cogitation for a couple of weeks. Finally, I decided that I would apply my favorite fusible interfacing, Pellon's ShirTailor,  to the little mini swatches of knit fabrics and then start cutting my squares from that reinforced and, more importantly, no longer stretchy material. Luckily the interfacing I use is not horribly stiff and scratchy; the resulting bonded fabric + interfacing will be a little less floppy but still be soft enough for cuddling.  4 inch side is my preferred square size--I've made several quilts based on that dimension and I find it just right. Allowing for a 1/4 inch seam allowance I thus cut 4 1/2 inch squares.

 So first I had to cut all of the little shirts and onesies apart, trimming out the snaps and other unusable bits. That took a peaceful afternoon just me and my fabric shears. You can see the pile above stacked up and waiting for the next step.

Luckily I had several yards of my interfacing on hand and could get right to applying it. Trim to match shape first, then iron. Accumulate another pile of interfaced swatches. Here's one ready for the stack. Guess what else I learned? I'm going to need a lot of interfacing. And when I say "a lot", I mean yards and yards. sigh. Which is fine. JoAnn's always has coupons and a single cut of a yard good counts just like any other item.

And here's the first square! Now, I just need to cut  a few more....

stay tuned!

Catching up

So I finally got all of my t shirt tutorial up and posted and was all ready to post about some fun stuff when, zowie my computer went out. Yikes! I felt so lost--couldn't post on my blog, upload new items for sale in my etsy shop, pay bills, check work email--eeek! Luckily, I realized what was happening (power supply cord went bad) so with my computer's last gasp of charge I ordered a new one online. And it just came--hooray!

So what have I been up to??

Well, I've been knitting t-shirt yarn like there's no tomorrow:

Here's a blue one...

And here's one in a warm colorway for my new kitchen.

Recently, a friend asked if I could donate an energy pop top necklace for a silent auction she is helping to organize. Here's what I came up with on that front:

(Can you tell my son loves the green flavor?)

I finally got really really disgusted with my stained ironing board cover so I made a new one. It only took me half an hour or so and I used fabric I already had. So now I'm thinking "what the heck took me so long to do this???"

I also added some additional padding which it sorely needed. Here's a close up of the fabric: very 60's--I love this sort of motif.

And last, but most certainly not least, I've been teaching a couple of lovely ladies how to sew on Sundays. Here are Fiona and Lauren who have both just completed pockets for shorts or apron, respectively.

Stay tuned for the completion of shorts and apron!

Shameless self-promotion

Hi all, 
Well, the title says it all--sigh. But I figure if you're reading this, you're interested in my doings. Been pretty busy with my day job lately--boring stuff like putting food on the table and endlessly shuttling kids around. I have started on a set of eight simple wall hangings with a botanical theme. I'll take some pictures and post soon, I promise. Seems like I am just able to squeeze in a scant 20 minutes here or 45 minutes there to actually sew a little. Luckily, although there are 8 of them, they are all of a really, (and I mean REALLY) simple format so the sewing is pretty mindless. The biggest part of the project was cutting all the strips. They should be pretty cool, though--similar in format to my Tribal Kat series. Lots of black in these too.


Anyway--news about my art on another front. I was contacted earlier this year by Anne Futterman Collier who was writing a book entitled Using Textile Arts and Handcrafts in Therapy with Women. She wanted to interview me and include a couple of my pieces in her work. She wished to feature 2 of my favorite pieces: Our Lady of Creativity and Nocturnal Sojourn (which you see here above right and to the left). I happily agreed and we corresponded via the magic of email. The book should be out in December and I look forward to getting a copy. If you want one for yourself, click on the link above and pre-order from Amazon. I think it sounds very interesting. 

Well, I thought that was the end of it, but no! Last month I was contacted by the publisher and was asked if thye could use one of the images on the cover of their upcoming book catalog. Well! How cool! Below you can see the image they will be using--nice, huh? (black always makes colors pop--I'm just a sucker for black and bright colors). Unfortunately, I made not a dime for either use, but it is good exposure and they do credit me. Maybe it will pay off in the long run somehow or other. I am a big believer in Karma, after all.

More soon!

Postcard strike

Just couldn't face more frickin' postcards today. So I made another blue strip. Tedious but it has to be done. That makes 5 strips down and 5 to go. sigh.

Chop, chop

Sometimes an idea just doesn't come together. Not a problem if I'm still in the planning stage but it seems pretty daunting if I've already done a bunch of sewing and assembled my top. Maybe I've even gotten to the embellishment sewing or (gasp!) quilting stage. Now what? Here's what I do and it usually works for me: I chop it up and resew it! Often in some sort of "crazy quilt" configuration or just however it seems to fit. I open myself up to the design possibilities and listen to the piece. Then I embellish, quilt or add elements. Some of my favorite pieces have undergone this process. Here are a few:


Only the floral centers of the blocks are crazy quilted here. The technique adds lots of textural interest. Then I just added strips and borders in matching or contrasting fabrics.


Ohh, I labored over this one. It started out as an exercise in working with a monochromatic color scheme. It was ok, but not great. Then I chopped it, sewed all the resulting pieces together and added the sun. Perfect!


This little beauty resulted from a leftover paper foundation pieced strip that just didn't work on the original piece. So that strip was removed and reassembled into what you see here. Its a jewel of a piece with glittery accents in seed beads, lurex embroidery thread and a bit of Angelina Fibers.
Love serendipity!

I love paper (foundation) piecing

After sending in two, count'em TWO, entries to shows this week, I was able to spend all day in my studio today. I feel so accomplished! I was putting some time in on 2 works in progress. Both have been in the works for quite some time--I am too coy to say how long, exactly. The first is a watery background that I am paper piecing in long strips. That means I am actually sewing down fabric (strips in this case) to the back of tracing paper that I have marked with a pattern. It sounds like a silly thing to do but its the easy and foolproof way to get perfect points, especially for triangles. Its a technique that can be very finicky and precise as can be seen in here in my "Stars (too many triangles)"


Whew! When you are done sewing all of the fabric bits and attaching the blocks to each other, you then get to pick out the paper. Usually, that takes an hour or so, but in this quilt, it took me a week. I decided to try to count the number of triangles after I was done and gave up after my calculations exceeded a thousand. Gack! Too many!



Of course, paper piecing doesn't have to be ridiculously tedious and tight and controlled. You can also play around with paper piecing and play it loose. Here is a quilt I made a while back that only has tightly controlled squares, the strips inside the squares are willy-nilly. The paper foundation keeps the squares uniform. Without that backing, the fabric strips would stretch every which way (many are on a bias) and it would be a nightmare to try and hitch them up.


Today, I worked on a blue strip for another underwater piece. It will be a rather long vertical format to really suggest the deepest depths of the ocean. I want the background to have subtle sparkle of the deep blue fabrics I love. Here's my first strip hanging on the door of one of my storage cabinets. Next to the finished strip are the remaining foundations I need to sew! Whew! I've got a ways to go!


I've started on my strip here. Several pieces of fabric have been sewn down and ironed flat. It looks pretty random at this level but when all of the strip (8 or 9 total) are attached it should look pretty cool.


Here I am actually sewing down a piece of fabric onto the previous fabric all attached to the paper foundation.


This is what it looks like from the paper side. The seam line perforates the tracing paper so that it is relatively easy to just zip it off when you are done.


Now, I'm trimming the strips down to 1/4 inch of my marked lines. Later, when I attach the strips to each other I will use those pencil lines as a seam guide and just sew right down them (after aligning the edges).
A neat technique, yes?