Commentary about works in progress, design & creativity
I finished the second Wheelchair Quilt in time to hand it in at the meeting on Saturday. Now I am done with wheelchair quilts for this drive.
I have some 9 inch squares and am thinking of making some kits with the leftovers as I don’t need them hanging around. We’ll see.
In planning to go over to Cyndi’s house for a Sew Day, I decided to get back to the Sad Quilt / Country Revival. I thought I could sew one block and then I wouldn’t have to haul a ton of stuff over to Cyndi’s It has also been awhile since I worked on it.
Since it has been so long, I had to remind myself how to everything. I made some cutting errors and had to re-cut, but the piece is ready to sew.
I finally finished the EPPic Case Base. I didn’t follow the directions exactly, but made the base my own. Mostly, I changed from the elasticated cord required to foldover elastic. I don’t think I will need more than space for two spools of thread if I am EPPing.
I took a scrap of ribbon and used it to cover the raw edge of the elastic. I would continue the foldover elastic up to the seam with the upper pocket next time, but the ribbon was a good solution for now.
I was able to sew the binding to the outside of the case by machine, but then I had to unsew it. It looked bad. I re-pressed the binding to give myself a little more space and then machine sewed it again. It is better this time. I am now sewing the second side of the binding by hand.
The guild Pillow swap is today. I was assigned to swap with Christine. Since she wouldn’t be at the meeting, we swapped at Sew Day.
Pillowcases were an option so we swapped pillowcases. I found some flannel fabric while I was with Mary in Ashland. I almost bought some for myself and made more pillowcases for us at home. I resisted.
The cases in the photo above and to the right are the pillowcases I received from Christine. DH will have a fit since he thinks we already have too many pillowcases, but what can I do? As President, I need to be a good guild citizen.
I like making pillowcases. They are easy to make and useful.
I haven’t worked on the Pandora Charisma for a few days, but I did make some progress.
I finished the mesh pocket, as you can see. I picked the foldover elastic and zipper especially to match the background fabric.
I can’t believe how much easier this bag is to make the second time around!
I haven’t made the gusset yet, but that is coming up. So far I have some of the pockets made as well as the front and back panels. I have a fair bit to go, but am making progress intermittently between other projects.
I powered through the chunking of the Sidewalk #6: Green and was able to finish. I wanted to get one of the Wheelchair quilts up on the wall, so I needed to finish the Sidewalk quilt.
I really need to make the Half 16 Patches more colorful. The alternating white squares in the blocks means the quilt is primarily white which maybe isn’t so great for a donation quilt. I thought about using a color for the 8.5 and 4.5 inch squares, but am pretty sure I don’t have enough of any one color and am not sure scrappy would work with this design. I’ll have to think about it some more.
The back took longer than I expected as I used a lot of smaller pieces. Still, it uses up a lot of greens that I probably won’t use. Also, I get to add to my ‘Fabric Used” spreadsheet and up the number of donation quilts the guild gives away.
BAM is collecting wheelchair quilts for the veteran’s hospital in Palo Alto. We had planned a sew Day, but our Sew Day had to be cancelled, so I made one top at Super Sew Day and am working on another one.
We are all working to the same pattern from Sunshine Linus.
Both quilts use some Moda fabrics I won as part of the UFO challenge. As per the pattern, I cut the fabric up into 9.5 inch squares and sewed them together.
I had enough squares for at least one other, which I am working on now.
I didn’t include a back for the first one, but will sew a back for the second one. I have to sew this together first.
Someone else will quilt it. I didn’t cut off the corners as I thought the longarming would be easier if that step was done after quilting.
I am making good progress on the EPPic bag. I am not working on exclusively, so it is taking longer. I slotted the Sidewalk #6:Green quilt in so I can hand it in on Saturday.
I am finding that taking a pause between steps is working out well for me. I am finding solutions that make the bag better for me.
As mentioned, the directions are not as comprehensive as other pattern designers’ patterns. This has made me bolder. I don’t feel like I need to do the step her way. I feel liberated to do steps in a way that makes the bag work better for me. This is very novel. I still feel like I am doing the steps ‘wrong’. However, as I look at the photo above, nothing looks wrong about it.
That pause, rather than blindly trying to follow the directions, is giving me some freedom. I am not saying “when I make this again.” I am asking “will the designer’s solution work for me this time?”
That led me to doing the thread holder a little differently. The pattern calls for elastic. I decided to use foldover elastic.
I didn’t think I would need 5 spools, so my foldover elastic solution holds two. One thing I am never sure about when using foldover elastic is how long of a piece to add and how tight to stretch it. We’ll see if this works.
I have been collecting various blocks using 2.5 inch squares for forthcoming donation quilts. I finally had enough of the green half 16 patch blocks to make another Sidewalk quilt.
I started putting the blocks together in chunks on my small design wall, but couldn’t look at the whole thing until Cool Four Patch Fun was off the large design wall. I did a fair job spreading dark and light greens across the quilt. I don’t think this will take me very long to put together. I might have it done for the next meeting.
There is a lot of white in this quilt design. I think I need to try one where the large center blocks are a different color. White isn’t great for a donation quilt and I am sure I can find enough of whatever color to make a good looking quilt.
As the title says, Cool Four Patch Fun is off the design wall and ready for quilting.
I am glad this is off the wall. I am a bit tired of looking at it, though I do like the way it came out.
I think I am tired of it, because of how long I have been working on the Four Patch Fun blocks. It’s my own fault, but I did use up a lot of scraps making these blocks.
I came home from Sew Day the other day and made another Mini One Handle Tote. It has been awhile since I have made one, but it has been on my mind to make another, so I did. It really didn’t take me very long even though I had to search through everything to find the project folder. I still haven’t found it, but I had the tutorial, which made it easy. The worst part was that I had to make another handle template and I don’t like it as well. I think I need to adjust it a little, but it worked out fine in general.
I haven’t tried a pocket yet, but I think I will on the next one. Fingers crossed I can figure that out.
I do want to make more. It would be great to find my original template. I am wondering if I didn’t make a project folder for this tote?
Gosh! I started this project in 2023! I am really not sure why I didn’t just make it.
This bag is easier than I expected. The pattern is by a new-to-me designer, as in I haven’t made any of her patterns before. The style of the directions are less hand holding and more “do this any way you want.” This style brings me up short a bit. I know how to do all of the steps, but I am unsure that I am doing it ‘right’. I can see that I encountered that sort of feeling when I worked on cutting out the pieces last year. I’ll have to think about that.
I started out with the exterior, as it said in the directions, and I finished that section pretty quickly. It makes a difference when everything is already cut out and interfaced.
The next part was an inner vinyl pocket. Here I found that the naming of the pieces, or my understanding of the naming was a little off. I had to be really careful about making sure I had the right pieces.
I didn’t understand the pleating instructions, so I didn’t sew the pleats down initially. I clipped them and then sewed the top pleats when I sewed the foldover elastic as binding. I kept the bottom ones clipped until I had that AHA moment on how to sew them (horizontal to the edge not parallel to the pleat as I originally thought). I am glad I paused and let the directions simmer a bit.
I have never made a vinyl pocket with pleats before. It makes sense, but I wonder how the pocket will hold up?
I didn’t really run into any problems until I got to the flap, which is part of the interior. I am not sure I have made a bag with a flap like this before. I didn’t really understand the directions.
I was able to find a page of video tutorials on the Chasing Tigers website. I do appreciate the effort that goes into these videos. It was really helpful to watch the video as one step was missing from the printed instructions – sewing up the sides.
I added a snap, as you can see. I didn’t have the magnetic snap with the prongs, so I used the SnapSetter and enjoyed hitting the tool with the hammer. LOL!
The corners of the bag edges are rounded and the pattern comes with a template for doing that. I didn’t want to use the tissue paper pattern/template I made. I went rummaging for a couple of corner rulers I have. I found that the Katie’s Korners Radial Rule (wasn’t able to find a link, so if you see one, buy it; very useful) was the perfect size for this project. Again, I was glad to find the exact size that I needed. I think an approximate size would have worked, but since I haven’t made this project before, I wasn’t sure what effect a different sized corner would have.
One thing I still need to figure out is the what the difference is between the patterns in the bundle. I am sure I knew at one point, but I have yet to figure it out. This is probably where the names of patterns comes in handy.
I am not sure what is next in the pattern, but I am making good progress and am pleased that this UFO will be finished soon.
The 1-2-3 Mosaic table runner is finished. This is a project I worked on myself from start to finish. No longarming this time.
Amazing, right?
I quilted the small piece using a wave stitch, as shown, on my new machine. I have wanted that stitch for a long time and really like it. I need to ask some questions of the dealer, but it worked fine the first time out.
The back shows the quilting really well. It is simple, but I am pleased.
I also used the stitch lettering to make a simple label.
All in all, finishing it myself made it a very quick project. It is sitting on my buffet now.
We had a fun Super Sew Day over the July Fourth holiday. We held it on Friday and Saturday so it was double the fun.
I went with a bag of small pieces of Soft and Stable that had been annoying me. My goal was to make them into larger usable pieces, Frankenfoam. I used Frankenfoam in the Palomino Pouch project and didn’t get any reports of problems. I cover the outside with some SF101/ProFuse to smooth out the bumps a little. I think for small projects, or those with a lot of seams, Frankenfoam works well.
I started out sewing like sized pieces together. By the end of Friday, I was less careful about ‘wasting’ foam. I ended up with two pieces about 4 feet tall and 2 feet wide. I estimate I got the approximate size of one package of ByAnnie Soft & Stable. It was a good project to do when people were asking me a million questions. It was easy to stop and start without losing my place or having to figure out the directions again.
I really could have done more, but I decided I didn’t need an absolutely square piece to use it.
As a result, on Saturday, I cut up one of those pieces and make the exterior of the Mindalin tool roll. This pattern can be found in Make Modern issue 70. The pattern calls for foundation pieced blocks to make the outside, but I decided to use selvedges to make the exterior. It looks really cool, IMO.
The last thing I made with selvedges was the Sleeping Bag pouch. I want to make another one, but haven’t gotten to it yet. I seem to have a never ending supply of selvedges, so I wasn’t worried about using up the ones I had collected.
A lot of people were making the Everything But the Machine Tote. The guild may have a sew-a-long for this bag as it is very useful. It has drawers inside to hold your travel sewing supplies.
The front provides a great way to showcase a special patch, embroidery or fussy cutting.
Christine made hers all in one day.
I originally bought the Hippie Specs case pattern because I wanted to try making a clear vinyl eyeglass case. I know it wouldn’t be super secure in terms of protecting the glasses. Still, I had the image in my mind and wanted to try it.
I came across the roll of flowery vinyl when I was putting away a new roll of lavender vinyl that I bought to make a Pandora Allure. I talked to my niece about it and she said she loves that flowery vinyl, so I decided to make her a glasses case that matches her pencil pouch.
As you can see, the pouch didn’t quite come out as intended. 😉 It is different, more three dimensional than the others. I sewed the seam bottom wrong. Still, maybe it can be used as a glasses case or some other kind of pouch?
One of the things I wanted to test was how the inside would look if I didn’t include a lining. I am a little bit of crazy person about not having the zipper tape show. I swallowed that need and went for it.
I’d prefer to have the zipper tape covered, but the inside doesn’t look too bad. I sewed really carefully when doing the top stitching. The top stitching looks pretty good. I also bound the inside bottom using foldover elastic.
I am going to try making another one sewn as the pattern shows. I have plenty of the flowery vinyl and no plans to use it for anything else.