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Tuesday, April 29, 2014

A week in progress:

So far:

On Saturday I happened upon Pink Castle Fabrics's Japanese fabrics sale. And I got my first Cotton + Steel Trading Card:


 I also visited some thrift stores and found this super cute house shaped cookie jar:

Look how nicely it coordinates with my sewing room!
On Sunday I cleaned out part of my basement, and I found this:


Sunday night, I started cutting out fabric for an ice cream dress for smaller child.

Last night I got as far as pinning the pockets:

Hope to get them sewn on tonight!

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

One more skirt!

And clearly, not the last. I mentioned that I was working on this at Camp Stitchalot, but after the Garden Party Tango top was finished, I was uncertain what to work on next, so I plucked it out of the pile, and hemmed it over the weekend. I chose it over the other skirt I have to hem, which has been in the pile longer, because it's got a straight hem, where the other has miles and miles of curving hem.


Look! Tights instead of leggings! Maybe we'll be to bare legs when the next one is ready for photographing.


Here's a better view of the pocket - the other side is (shockingly) identical, so not many pictures. The pattern is by Made by Rae, but it's one she teaches as a class, rather than selling on its own.

The fabric was designed by my favorite designer - Lizzy House, from Red Letter Day, one of her earlier lines. Now, you would be lucky to find those anywhere, but I walked into Pink Castle Fabrics yesterday and shrieked, because she had in two back catalog prints from Lizzy House I'd been looking for! I love the moon dots from Constellation, and the pink candles! So cute.

Lotta Jansdotter, far left, Tasha Noel in the red.
In the meantime, I have actually begun to pin that other hem, so perhaps it will be done soon.  I have told myself I can't start new clothing projects until these two are hemmed. And I so want to start some!

Thursday, April 10, 2014

Garden Party Tango quilt top!

I finished my Garden Party Tango quilt top a few days ago.

The post about it is now live on the Pink Castle blog, if you want to stroll over and read it.


The quilt has already gone off for longarm quilting, my first to be sent out!

I have learned a few things with this quilt, mostly, I've come to conclusions in regard to pressing seams open. Which maybe I will share in detail later. But briefly, after having done it for most of this quilt, I'm now firmly against it...

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Farmer's Daughter scrappy stars

If you've been following me on instagram, you may have noticed some scrappy stars appear.  Specifically, these:


I got myself in a situation, with this quilt I'm making for my bed (which I have been making for a while now - it's a lot of piecing off little pieces, and it's not my top priority (or my priority top?)). I began to piece a border that was 10" wide, which left me scrambling for cornerstones, which needed to be stars (one day, you will see the quilt and understand). 10" stars! I turned to the trusty Quilter's Cache, which has an index of blocks by final size, and picked out a traditional block called the Farmer's Daughter.


As usual, apparently, when I start with a traditional block, I moved the colors around - instead of a four color block, I made mine two colors - solid, well, sort of? stars. My quilt is blue, black, purple, and grey, and I wanted to do one star that was purple on a blue background, blue on a grey background, black on a purple background, and so on, meanwhile having no repeating fabrics, but I could not get that to work, so in the end I went with two stars with blue backgrounds. And the grey star was a close thing, too, if I had not gotten a few mini charms of Color Me Happy from a friend, I think would have had to forgo that color as well. Because we can't go back on our commitment to having no repeating colors, can we? If you notice down below, I was considering using teal to round out the grey star, but I could not arrange it in any way that made me happy.

Four stars in the planning stages, about 4 months ago...
Anyway, I put a little time in last night assembling said border from blocks I made a few months back. Maybe tonight I will attach it to the quilt. It's a work in progress, this quilt, you see. Right now, it's only a bit bigger than a baby blanket. And I think it will need at least three borders before it is the right size for a queen bed. And I haven't totally decided what those should be, yet, though I've had several ideas. So, once this border is on, it will probably be heading back to the WIP pile for another round of hibernation.

The aforementioned 10" border, when it was still in multiple pieces.
But, it's going to be amazing when it's done! Even if that's a while from now... no rush, though, now that it's practically summer, right?