Quilts for Charity!

I've mentione before that I was involved in my local Can't Stop the Serenity (or CSTS for short) this year, and we had a blast. I manned the merch table, while Ed did raffle tickets. We both busted butt. You can check out one of his projects for it, some bookmarks here.

But onto the quilts!


Baby Blanket Quilts (with Lily as a model)


Can't Stop the Serenity T-Shirt Quilts

This was my first foray into actual quilt making. All of these quilts are worked with t-shirt knit; actual t-shirts really! There was a lot of leftover merchandise from previous years of Can't Stop the Serenity and a whole tub full of t-shirts. I had a lot of red and black woven fabric donated by Ed's mom to turn into whatever, and some batting and fiberfil (which was used for pillows made out of the shirts as well). Me and a few other gals who helped piece and sew a little, ended up making 5 quilts, although I did all the construction, edging and quilt lines. All sold except one at the charity event on September 19th; one of the square block baby blankets.

I will admit that these quilts could have looked better, but in addition to myself never having made a quilt before, all the other gals had never even sewed! So, considering their crash course and my lack of experience I think they came out fabulously. The only problem I had was trying to do mitered corners on the baby blankets. It was impossible! I still don't know if what I did would be considered mitered corners on those, but I used this tute. I used actual baby blanket binding, the satin type. I just applied it like you would decorative bias binding, overlapping all layers and sewing through everything in one fell swoop.

The regular blankets got lapped corners. It was pretty simple and really I think it's my favorite way of doing this. The edges of those are the same color for the back. The baby blankets both got red backsides. I thought it was a nice contrast with the green/black/white of the front.

It did 3 of the quilts without a quilting foot (the kind that grips the top while the feed dogs grip the bottom) until I realized that I had one stashed away. What a difference it made! I kept getting little puckers, because of the knit fabric front and woven back, on the knit side, and the quilting foot really helped with that.

I also killed 2 of my best sewing machines making these quilts. Both of my Singer Stylists, one that uses cams, died in the process of making these quilts. I am and was so sad about that! One I have no clue what happened to it, but the other I think I can fix. I believe the problem is just an old gear that has been groud down into a flat piece of plastic/rubber. I just don't know how to disassemble the gears for it. There are some guides for a similar type of Stylist I can use for reference, and it's probably what I'll do, but other than just forking over the money to get it fixed, I'm not confident in my abilities. I don't want to make more of a mess than what is wrong now and then have to get all of THAT fixed too.

Now I'm stuck with my cheapy Brother and maybe I can get my Singer 66 up and running if I replace the belt (that I bought and has been sitting here for months). I need a good "jeans making" machine and my Stylists were it. My Brother can NOT handle thick material or topstitching through it.

Underwhelmed with 2009 Fall Collections

I got an email from McCalls saying that their fall collection was ready, so I got all excited and headed over there to check it out especially since JoAnns has a bunch of patterns on sale in the coming days/month. It was rather pitiful IMO, and then I decided to check out some others.

I'm not impressed. Somehow I remember last year had a lot of new stuff, with more than 1 or 2 patterns in each category and a ton of coats and fall clothes. Now I haven't checked out Vogue yet, but out of them all besides Vogue, I think that Butterick has the best selection and "look" going for them this time around. The plus size category, of which I fit into, is sadly lacking everywhere. It is a good thing that I know how to alter regular patterns and have a decent stash. Plus since I live in a pretty temperate climate, I can still wear some favorites year round.

But, other than eye candy drooling I haven't been doing much sewing related things. I sewed my first quilt a few weeks ago for a charity event called Can't Stop the Serenity, made out of old Can't Stop the Serenity merchandise, but sadly I forgot to take a picture. I have a few more to do though, so pics will be taken this time! It wasn't a traditional size, but the one I made (with another member putting the top together) was already spoken for! Some pillows, grocery bags made from t-shirts and a few other crafty projects are also on the list of things to do before the screening, which is our big event. We show a screening of the movie Serenity on the big screen, with a similar showing of Dr Horrible's Sing Along Blog. All proceeds go to charity, one being Equality Now and another local charity. Can't Stop the Serenity is a worldwide effort put on by Browncoats everywhere. There is a raffle, the movies of course, merchandise, handmade goodies by people like me, and general fun and merriment.

Shiny!

It's Been A While

Due to a recent vacation and health reasons (this won't be the first time or the last time for a hiatus due to health reasons) I haven't been posting anything on here. Currently I'm rather incapacitated and am not leaving the bed much, but with my trusty and convenient Eee PC laptop I can putter around online from the comfort of my bed, even when I'm too sore to get up.

While on vacation I was given some amazing vintage fabric from Ed's aunt. She said that she's had it for over 40 years but never did anything with it, and since she knows that I like vintage things, fabric and crafty things in particular, she gave it to me, along with some very cool carved coral beads that have an interesting family history that goes with them. I also have a large amount of vintage craft magazines that have some rather interesting projects and pictures in them, that I hope to scan at some point and post about on here. There is one picture in particular that shows a "cuddly" stuffed bear that has the most horrific teeth I've ever seen that I think are glued cowry shells. The grin on this thing is nightmarish! But, that is a post for another time and I will get on with my show and tell for today.

We have a small, foreign car that doesn't have many perks and has pretty small sun visors. Since we also live in the desert and the sun is constantly beating down on us, often when we are out driving around doing errands, we have the sun blazing in our faces despite pulling and maneuvering the sun visors. So, I decided to make some extenders. It was a pretty simple project that has made driving around much more pleasurable.







Basically what I did was measure around the visor and the length of the visor. I added seam allowances and hems for the sides and also added tabs to the edges for easier pulling. The fabric was a remnant that I got in a thrift store bag and is a thick and heavy home dec weight. It is dark blue floral brocade. Ed's side has an open pocket for sticking pens and the gate clicker, which he requested. Since I keep that kind of stuff in my purse I didn't bother with my side of the car (I do not drive). His was a little stiff since I didn't account for the thicker seam allowances by the pocket, and it was requested after I had cut everything out. But, with time the seam allowances have "softened" and it slides nicely for him.

A Quick Tip

I use pastels in art and before I even had transfer pencils I logically turned to my pastel pencils to mark off dots and other marks onto fabric. You do have to test first to see if it will come out, but I use my white pastel pencil more than any other marking tool I have besides chalk transfer papers. It lasts forever because of the pigment saturation and gives a nice solid marking.

Usually the higher the price of your pastel pencil the more actual pigment is in it (depending on the color and if it will come out, that can be a bad thing). I sew a lot of dark colors because that is mainly the colors Ed and I like, so that white pastel pencil gets some use. I also use a blue and a red, although the red is harder to get out and should never be used on white fabric.

Pastel pencils can be found in art supply stores. My favorite is Jerry's Artarama.

Coming up: Car visor covers, my first quilt project and Simplicity cargo shorts for Ed and why their pattern wasn't thought out very well.

When there is no budget...

When there is no sewing budget, not much sewing gets done! It's a lean time for us this summer. I managed to buy a quilting ruler on my birthday but that was about it. I have a great book of quilt blocks, but I just haven't had the mojo to start on one. It is very hard to pick out fabrics for quilting block patterns! I didn't realize that half of the planning of a quilt was picking out the fabrics.

In any case, sewing will resume at some point. No budget and really no inspiration, although there are quite a few things I should get done so I have some summer lounging clothes when it is just too hot to do anything more than watch TV with all the lights off and the ac blasting. Rather than sew my own tank tops, I just went to the big bad Walmart and bought a bunch with what should have been my very limited sewing budget.

I got some absolutely gorgeous knit fabric in what I think is rayon (and one cotton) from Goodwill some time ago. I handwashed and hung dry all of it, and there was some serious yardage in it. I had intended on sewing tank tops with it, but it was so much easier to just buy some. I may pick apart one of the one's I bought to use as a pattern though, since when I went shopping for a knit tank pattern at Joanns, the drawer was an absolute mess and they were out of what I had. Or it was there and I just couldn't find it. I don't have a coverstitch machine so I'm a little leery of doing any binding. I need to read up more on that clear elastic stuff that can be used with sewing knits. Perhaps that is my answer.

No Sewing, A Little Talk

My last project was a plain shirt that I will get pictures of soon, but I've currently been busy making beads. I have a few orders that need to get done and I fell sick the past few days, so it is slowing it even more.

I woke up the other morning with a swollen throat and uvula. Seriously, a swollen uvula (that thing in your throat). It never happened to me before. Now it is less swollen but I'm dragging and all nasal. Woe is me!

But, after all the business of making beads gets done, I have a plan to stencil/paint a Dalek onto some black fabric (white paint with perhaps some red somewhere) to then sew onto Ed's school bag for next semester. He has a fondness for Dr Who and all things Dalek and created his own rendering of it while bored at work one day (shhhh, don't tell his boss). If he'll touch it up a bit so that it can be printed, I'll turn it into a stencil and make something cool. Right now it is his Yahoo avatar, so a bit small.

I tried stencilling onto tshirts a while back and they came out ok. I used regular acrylic paint mixed with fabric medium, but it made the white paint a little less than opaque. One day while wandering the aisles at the craft store I saw some fabric paint and on the back it said it was good for covering black fabric, so I picked it up (with a coupon!). I have yet to try it, mainly from lack of time or space.

Our craft area is turning more into a storage area for art papers, scrapbooking papers which I make cards and bookmarks out of, and other crafty things like the paper cutter, cutting mats and of course the pencils, paints and regular stuff that belongs there. So, it is a bit of a mess and until I can get it clean, or beg it of Ed, this project may have to wait a teeny bit.

Thankfully I have a seperate sewing area, so if I choose to sew in the mean time, I can.

A Pin Cushion For Me

Tired of dragging my tomato pin cushion around with me when I go from my cutting and pinning table to my sewing machine, I went browsing JoAnns the other day for a wrist pin cushion. What a poor selection! Not to mention I figured I could make one for about 50 cents, when they were selling ugly ones for about $8. So I did just that.

From the front: I used some scrap fabric and scrap elastic. I doubled the fabric thinking that it would hold up more. My tomato pin cushion is starting to wear in a certain spot where I stab my pins into, and I didn't want that happening to this one. But, the drawback is that it is almost too tough to poke a pin through easily. I have to touch a finger to the pin cushion to steady it while putting the pin into it. Not a big deal though since sometimes I have to do that with the other one anyways to keep it from sliding away from me.

From the back: Yeah, I know you can see the thread. I wasn't going for looks, just functionality and I have a bunch of little bits of thread on the spools left that need to be used up. I usually use them for the hand sewing that I have to do if it either doesn't show or doesn't matter if it does.

Anyways, what I did was cut out 4 circles of suede and blanket stitched them together. The layers of suede are a safeguard against poking myself. The leather should stop it if it gets down that far. Then, I sewed the suede circle onto the pin cushion by tacking down around the blanket stitch, going through a little leather if I could. Finally I sewed the elastic onto the pin cushion and sized it to my left wrist (I'm a righty and pin with my right hand), gave it a couple zigzag stitches to secure the elastic and I was done!

So, my first and very own handmade wrist pin cushion! It is coming in very handy and I've already used it several times.

Jeans, For Her

I finished my jeans, at last! At last! I finally dragged them out and did the hems. But rather than have Ed help me do the hems I just measured from an existing pair that I have that fits well and used that to find the best inseam measurement. Quick and dirty I suppose. But, it came out well.

The pattern is McCalls 5142:

I used red for the topstitching. I've always worn jeans with the typical yellowish/gold topstitching thread and wanted something different, especially since I saw that there was a nice variety of colors to choose from. So red it was!

The photos are a little washed out, but it is because we took them outside in the blazing sunlight. The sun here is intense! The denim is darker in real life than in the pictures; a very navy denim color.

Front


Side


Back

I also realized as I was doing the hems that I didn't topstitch the outside seams. I don't know if I forgot to do that, or if the instructions skipped it. Next time I will topstitch the outside seams, but for this pair, they are done!

As for the pattern, I think it is an excellent pattern. It shows you how to fit yourself and gives ample seam allowances (I believe 1" seam allowances) for the "perfect fit". Seriously, I will be using this pattern again and again. Paired with the book, Pants For Real People, by the same people that created the pattern, I think that this will be a pattern that I turn to over and over again when I want or need a new pair of jeans. And since I live in jeans, but it is hard to find the right size, this is a perfect pattern for me. Good job McCalls and the Palmer/Pletsch team!

Home Dec - Table Cover

I don't do much home dec sewing, mainly because I'm not into interior design and whatnot. We like a modern look and that doesn't use things like ruffles and frilly fabrics. But, we acquired a table from the side of the dumpster (yes, we "dumpster dive", although rarely do we actually get in one unless there is something awesome in there). We live in a college aged apartment complex and we've found that college aged people love to throw perfectly fine things away. Actually most of the furniture in our apartment is used or from collecting things that are on the side of the trash. The folding table I use for sewing is one of those items!

In any case, we got this cute, retro looking table. It was absolutley filthy with old wax from candles all over it, along with the dust that any outdoor item here in the desert accumulates. After a through cleaning and some elbow grease, the table emerged clean but with a few scars on it. Since the gouges were a little large, but didn't actually go into the table (just into the veneer) I decided to make a table cover for it.

But, the table is round. That means math doesn't it? Yikes, I hate math. But I was determined, so I went in search of the formula to find circumference. Measuring the diameter was a simple as measuring from one end of the table to the other. Entering that measurement into the equation gave me the circumference so I would know how much fabric I would need.

Keeping with the retro feel, even though I will be covering the table and the retro details I decided to give the table cover cording and rick rack. But since I had no cording that was as thick as I wanted I had to make my own. That was only a matter of covering the cording with bias tape, a very simple task.

This is the finished result:

The covering is a tad large and the cording doesn't sit at the very edge in some places, but that was from my late night sewing job rather than from the measuring. There are a few places where the cording slipped to the edge of the fabric circle because I didn't use enough pins. My bad. But, it is still perfectly functional and only I will notice that flaw.

The only problem now is that when you sit in the chair at the right there is a hummingbird feeder above your head, so our little hummingbirds won't feed because we are so close! Note: the chair to the left is the chair that our dog lays in when she suns herself, isn't she just the queen? She has her own THRONE.

Pants For Real People - Like Me

I've been sewing jeans on and off for a little while. I've completed mine and they fit ok, although I think I need to take in the waist a little. I didn't account for the stretch in the denim. Those STILL need to be hemmed though.

But I also completed Burda 7733 for Ed.

The jeans came out ok. Those too need to be hemmed! Can you tell it is one of my least favorite sewing activities? I didn't pattern fit him, figuring that he is pretty normally shaped. When he tried the jeans on they were skin tight in the thigh and the crotch was so tight it looked uncomfortable. The waist is really low on him as well, but I think it is because he has such a nice behind (lol, he's going to hate me for writing that!) and it isn't flat like most men. I'm not so great at altering pants since I haven't made that many, so with Barnes and Noble gift cards in hand (that we got free through Mypoints) we journeyed to B&N only to find that they didn't have Pants For Real People. So, off we went to another B&N only to find there that all they had was Fit For Real People, which I already have, and love.

We ended up ordering it online and having to pay for shipping. Why do I hate to pay for shipping so much? It seems to take away from the fun of using a free gift card. But, I digress. After reading some of the book, I realized that I needed to adjust the crotch by sewing it deeper. I also ended up adjusting the thigh area, although when I originally sewed it, I had trimmed the seam allowances (which I shouldn't have done in the first place, but hey, it happened) so I didn't have much to work with. Because of that, some of the overlocked edge shows where I came thisclose to the edge of the fabric. I don't know how long the seams will last on this pair of jeans, but I can always sew Ed another pair can't I?

Once the jeans are hemmed, which I hope to get done this weekend for both of us, I will post pics. In the mean time I suggest checking out Pants For Real People if you are planning on making a pair of jeans. I really like the idea of pattern fitting, although it is a slow and time eating process, but once it is done, you have a great altered pattern to work from.

JoAnns (yes, I know some hate the place, but it is one of the few places to buy fabric locally) is having a 50% off sale on denim on Sunday I think, so we're going to hit that and I'll have another 3 yards to make Ed a better fitting pair of jeans. He will be going through a pattern fitting, of that I have promised (or threatened? I will be wielding sharp pins...) because I think we will get the best fit that way.

All in all I think Burda 7733 is a pretty good pattern. The instructions were relatively easy to follow, they include seam allowances and what I created looked just like what the pattern looked like, with a few topstitching alterations on my part.

Now I just need to work on that topstitching...