Skirt!

After weeks of being far too busy to do anything, finally a little time to work on Olivia's skirt.  She's nearly done now - and in fact, it's wearable, though she'd like to add a row of buttons down the front middle for effect. 

A bit more skirt

Olivia worked on her skirt today. She did the dart, the side seams and the zip.  Next step, the waistband; then it's just the hemming to go.  Probably won't get a chance to work tomorrow, but who knows.  

I found this pattern really frustrating - even though it's easy to stitch, the measurements seem really off; according to the size chart, for Olivia's waist measurement she should make the UK12 (despite usually wearing an 8 or sometimes 10); when we cut out and assembled the 12, it's (not surprisingly) way too big in the waist! We were able to adjust by increasing the darts and taking in the side seams a bit, but why is it so wrong? Weird.

A spot of dress- (well, skirt-) making

Way back at the end of the summer, Olivia picked out the (very simple) pattern for a straight skirt, and some fabric. We are finally getting a chance to have a go at cutting it out - between her busy weekends doing things like the Duke of Edinburgh Challenge and my being away looking at universities with Sarah, etc, neither of us has really had time before now. Luckily, it's a very simple pattern: four pattern pieces (plus interfacing) and a normal set zip, so it shouldn't take long to assemble, even for a beginner. 

Tula Pink Bandwagon

I've seen lots of blog posts about the Tula Pink City Sampler and the blocks look like the kind of thing that's just up my alley, though I'm not sure I want to do a sampler quilt.

But I decided the book would be a good investment anyway as I'm likely to want to make loads of the blocks for other purposes...

In this case, Olivia had a mini-jelly roll of red and white fabrics and a fat quarter of cow fabric which she wanted something made from. 

So I used block no 1 (might as well start at the beginning) to knock up this little runner, which will be for her dresser, once it's quilted.

Skirt, part III

And at the end of Day 3, we had some of this!

Of course, this was preceeded by a bit of this:

It works. It's a nice, simple skirt, which doesn't match any of the t-shirts which Olivia brought to the US with her...

In the end, she borrowed one from Grandma which works a bit better (though it's too big - the colour is good, though). 

Skirt, part II

Today, we made the waistband, lock-stitched the edges of the skirt so the inside seams wouldn't fray, ran the gathering stitches along the top edges of front and back of the skirt

and actually pulled the gathers in for the front of the skirt and stitched the waistband on (shown folded over here, so it looks finished).  

Tomorrow, we will gather and add the waistband to the back for certain, and possibly more - I think we're having a quiet day at home, so there should be plenty of time to sew, and it's an easy skirt to make.  I am only doing a little of the work, mainly just demonstrating (so, for instance, I zigzagged one of the four edges, and sewed half of the first gathering stitch row) - Olivia is doing most of it.  It's quite slow going for a garment this easy, but that's because I'm making her read each step first and then making sure she understands what it's telling her to do - hopefully this will stand her in good stead in future if she wants to make something else!  I've already spotted a piece of fabric in the stash that my mother is getting rid of which I think would make a cute skirt if this one works out...

Skirt, part I

After ironing the pattern, Olivia carefully cut out all of the pieces (I say "all" - there are only 4 pieces to the skirt, which is partly why we chose it as a first dressmaking pattern).  She'll have to cut out a piece of interfacing tomorrow, but we didn't have that in the house this morning, so we couldn't do it at the same time.

Then she pinned the pattern pieces on to the folded fabric

And cut out the fabric (and labelled it carefully). Tomorrow (or perhaps Thursday, depending on our plans), we'll start the actual sewing.

A summery skirt project

We had a little trip to JoAnn's today - amazingly enough, I didn't even look at quilting stuff (though I will, later in my trip - but my mother is clearing out her fabric stash, so I want to look at what she has before I bother to buy anything...).  The main point of the trip was that Olivia wants to try making a skirt (with some help from me, of course) and as my mother has a sewing machine and we have lots of time, this seemed like a good chance to do so. We chose an easy pattern and a cute fabric, though my mother thought she had fusible interfacing in the house and she doesn't, so we'll need to nip back before we can put the skirt together, though we could get started on it tomorrow...  I'll keep you posted!

Yes, a few other bits and pieces may have slipped into my basket as well...

ATCs with the kiddies

Today we made some ATCs together for a swap - we did them all as round robins - we each made a background to start, and then passed left and let the next person add an element and so on until we'd gone all the way around. These are for a swap of ATCs done with your kids - the kids will each get an ATC to keep, in return.

This first one is my background, Alex's jewel dots, Olivia's mushrooms and Sarah's butterfly.



This one is Sarah's background, my leaf in the foreground, Alex's small leaf and woman's face and Olivia's black and white flower (the music was part of the background).



Here is Alex's background (half blue, half rose), Olivia added the bird, Sarah added the stripe of red tea paper and I finished it off with the word "rose" and the cut out roses on the bottom half.



And finally, Olivia's background; Sarah added the white glittery stripe and flower, I added the woman and the flower and dragonfly punches and Alex finished it off (with some trial and error and consultation) with the red gems and the red bird.

Olivia's Easter card & other stuff

We'll start off today with something different - this postcard with an Easter theme was made not by me, but by DD2 Olivia for her friend Jiwon, who recently moved back to Korea. She perhaps left it a bit late to reach Jiwon in time, but it's a lovely card nonetheless. I did help a little - I cut out the sun (the background part) and oversaw the general construction, but the design and most of the work is hers. Not bad for a nine-year-old. I especially like the nest, which was entirely her concept and work - very clever.



What I did myself today, was to finish (!!) quilting the Contrary Wife. We ran some errands this morning, including a trip to the department store for more thread (of which they didn't have the same colour, so I have use a very slightly different colour to finish - I couldn't tell the difference myself when going back to check later, so I don't think anyone else will be able to spot it, even if they look!) and some notions (like Olivia's Easter themed buttons, above, and my booty, below). This afternoon, the two kids who were here (Sarah was at a friend's house for a birthday sleepover weekend - she was there almost two whole days) parked themselves in front of a DVD and I did some sewing. And amazingly enough, finished it. Tomorrow I shall make and attach the binding, then hopefully a few evenings in front of the telly will finish it completely. I did tell my customer I'd try to finish by mid-April, and it looks like this will actually happen, which is great.




Here are the other two insect blocks. Another dragonfly and butterfly, this time I have reversed them so that butterfly is uppermost (or maybe it's the other way around - anyway, it's opposite to the right side, so the ones that are the same insect are diagonally placed from one another).

And here are some treats - the aforementioned notions, most of which came from the sale bin, and the thread to finish the quilt - I bought two similar colours to what I had bought before (which of course, I hadn't taken with me, only having made a note of the number) - one of which was much better than the other, but hey, one can always use up thread, right? And on the right, some yellow fabrics - this month's club from eQuilter. If Joyce is reading, she will no doubt spot the yellow/orange colourway of the blue fabric which makes the border of the Contrary Wife quilt - I know from her blog that she's recently acquired some of this herself...

Doll quilt; recycling

In addition to spending some more time working on the blocks for the Contrary Wife quilt (which I shall spare you a photo of this time) , today I helped Olivia quilt a little teddy bear quilt she pieced together yesterday - I did let her try out a little free-motion quilting, but she wasn't happy enough with her results to do it on her "real" quilt, so I quilted it myself. At her request, lots of swirls and loops and some flowers.

On the right, the start of some postcards for a "recycled" theme. These started with a quilt sandwich made from an old Brownie's shirt of Olivia's (not suitable for handing on as a) it was the really old style shirt and came from a jumble sale in the first place and b)it was covered with specks of paint, etc) - this was the sandwich I used to demonstrate FMQ to Olivia and let her have a go. We did that mostly in yellow thread so it would add texture without really showing - I then added more stitching in various other colours, before beginning to embellish. The black lace is from a bra which was being thrown out (has a tear in the lace of the cup) and the silver punched bits came from a Coke can (ok, Diet Coke really). What's next? Not sure - need to check and see what I have knocking around that falls into the category of recycled. I know my mother brought me a couple of baggies of buttons and other embellishments from yard sales, some of which still have bits of shirts on them, so I know they aren't new! And used postage stamps are always a nice touch. We'll see what else I have in a few days' time when I work on them again.

Busy, busy, busy

Well, technically this particular piece isn't part of my busy day, but as you may notice in the photo, the sun is out (again! I'm beginning to doubt what country I'm living in!) which makes for good photos. So there it is - done. I really like the border - might well do that again with another piece.




The piece on the left is one of Olivia's creations - she came upstairs while I was working and asked if she could make something, so I got out the new little machine and set it up for her - she designed a little quilt and then I helped cut the pieces and she sewed them together. Meanwhile, downstairs, chutney. After the initial chopping and whatnot, it more or less makes itself - I'll let you know in a couple of months whether it's any good or not (it needs to mature - no sarky comments, please!).





And finally, here's what I can show you that I actually did today - I also worked on putting the outside border on the Twisted Mystery quilt, but I can't show that. On the left is an ATC for Textile Challenges - it's an Embellishment Challenge - I got "fibres and yarns" - easy enough as I happen to have lots of fibres. The background is made entirely from couched blue yarns with a few yellow and red-orange ones on top. And eyelash yarn around the outside.


On the right, a journal quilt - again, made with a piece of the complex cloth I made the other day. When my mother and I were working on it (she helped me stamp it) we thought it looked like a seascape, so I went with that - added some seaweed and some fish. And so I'm caught up with the journal quilts. Of course, a new one will go on my goals list for this week! I've had fun with this project, but I think I will be glad when it comes to an end in November. I seem to be busier and busier lately, so it won't be a bad thing to have one less regular committment.

Teacher cards & other bits

Did a little less work today - shoulders still feeling all that quilting yesterday! Though I did take the quilt around to Sharon this morning, and she seemed very pleased with it, so that's good. Anyway, one thing I did do was put some hanging tabs on this little beauty - I was going to do a sleeve, but decided not to in the end, due to the height of the hanging rail (which was already on the wall) - this way, I didn't have to move the rail down, and also, I quite like having the blue at the top again. It's not the same fabric which is in the centre, but it's very similar, so works well. I have moved the quilt which was in this space - the spring Four Season's quilt - it was actually a little large for the space anyway. Not sure where I will put it yet, but I will find it a home before too long...





I also did my journal quilt from last week, which really bears no relationship to the week, except that the kids and I had the sequins out today. The background is a paper napkin from a pack I bought in Sainsbury's (but they are much too nice to be used as napkins), I then quilted it a bit, added a few feathers, and a load of sequins. Simple, but effective... and done!


But the main thing I did today was to help the kids do their end-of-year cards for teachers - which mainly involved wielding the rotary cutter, fusing, and in Alex's case - helping with the glue. The design is entirely due to the children in each case, with relatively little input from me, other than the occasional reminder not to put stuff too close to the edges (as that hinders the satin stitched edging later). I did also do all the edges - more for time's sake than anything else. The three above are Alex's (he has two TA's in his class) - and below, Sarah's are to the left and Olivia's to the right. No surprises there - some people may think "less is more", but Olivia is certainly a "more is more" type of girl!