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I realize it’s been sounding like crickets lately. I have been swept up in my work and my family, and I haven’t done much in the way of sewing for quite some time. I miss it dearly. I loved playing with color, texture, learning new techniques, and finding my creative side in the stuff I sewed.

I have that Star Trek themed quilt sewn together, but I haven’t quilted it yet. I have other Star Trek blocks ready to piece together for some simple quilts, but I just haven’t done that, either.

Because I need to rebalance some time to be creative, I’m going to at least get my quilt top out and photographed for the blog, then find my box of projects and choose one to finish in the next month (and getting a quilt top pieced counts as finishing). I have a dress I need to sew up, too, and all it takes is a few seams and adding some straps! And, with that, I’m aiming for a weekly progress post here to at least show myself that there has been progress over time!

Here’s hoping I can find those projects I had been setting aside for so long…

Four, one-yard cuts of flannel (two bought on clearance for $2/yard, the others bought on a 50% off sale for $5/yard).

Four-ish yards of elastic.

Eight pairs of pajama pants. (Two pairs of pants from each yard of fabric.)

Six pairs of pants were cut and sewn today over the course of about two hours total. The other two were done a few weeks ago in a moment of desperation when all of his pajamas were in the washer.

I love pajama pants!

I tried something new with these pants: I attached the elastic at the top so that it would peek out the top, rather than inserting the elastic into a casing. It let me save an inch of fabric that would otherwise have been lost to the casing (after finding that G’s legs were a little longer than I realized!). And I must admit, I kind of love the look! My favorites are the space print and the dinosaur print. The robot print is from a pair I made for G last year, but I had triple-hemmed them, with the intent of letting them out as needed. Well…letting them out was definitely needed this month!

And now for my favorite part – the photos (click on each for a larger view).

Last month, I finally tried my hand at shirring to make myself a skirt.  After finishing with the skirt, I decided to try my hand at a summer dress.  I found this tutorial video that I followed with some minor modifications (made shoulder ties instead of the halter tie), and ended up making 3 dresses!

Here are the three dresses, with some lessons learned from making them.

The three finished dresses!

This was the first dress.  I used about 1 1/2 yards of cotton fabric and black elastic thread.  Lesson learned from cotton fabric:  cotton, after shirring, will kind of poof under the shirred area.  For this dress, that poofing looks fine, but others might not like the slight bubble appearance.

Next lesson learned:  don’t fret when after about 5 rows of shirring, it isn’t already shrinking as expected.  This dress didn’t shrink down from the shirring until a good couple of inches were done.

Next lesson learned (and this was actually learned from the last dress I made, making me go back to the first two and fix them):  the shoulder ties need to be more securely stitched into place than just one line of stitching long the hemline.  The ties in the long dress ended up nearly tearing out entirely, so I went back with white thread and sewed back and forth all along where the tie and the dress met up.

Thing I love most about this dress:  the way the flower pattern looked after shirring!

Cool flowers after shirring!

The ties need to be secured better – see how it’s already kind of pulling on the fabric?  Not great.

The second dress was made using a knit fabric rather than cotton.  You can see in the photo that the fabric drapes a bit nicer than the cotton did.

Lesson learned from this dress:  I used only 1 yard of fabric for this, folding in half and cutting for the two panels (I used 1 1/2 yards in the first dress, using the same approach of folding in half and cutting).  The shirring is definitely more snug as a result.  Next time, I’ll be using 1 1/2 yards of fabric for a more comfy fit (thinking in terms of maternity clothing, I won’t be able to wear this too comfortably during my next pregnancy).  (No, I’m not pregnant.  I just like the idea of not having to completely change wardrobes during pregnancy.)

The pink, white, black dress.

The whole dress is narrower than the purple dress, but the shirring especially.

Last is the maxi-length dress.  This is the dress that taught me to be sure to secure the shoulder ties well.  I already did that, and you can see how it isn’t pulling on the body of the dress as much as the ties on the purple dress.  I’m just glad I was able to save this before the ties completely tore out!

Another lesson learned:  this knit fabric was not as great quality as the white, black, and pink.  I could feel the difference in quality when I bought the fabric, but it was very apparent while sewing.  I had to unpick some stitching from this, and it left holes in the fabric!  It was overall more difficult to work with.  BUT I did buy the fabric on mega clearance ($6 for 1 1/2 yards!), so I’m not going to complain too much about it.  The pattern also isn’t my favorite, but, again, I wanted a longer dress, and it was $6, and it’s definitely cute and brighter for summer (or those grey days when I wish I were sunny).

Sometimes, creativity can be entirely accidental.

My husband’s birthday was this last week, so I hit up my favorite party supply store (the Dollar Store) and grabbed a few decorations.  Among them was 1 helium balloon.  Yes…one balloon.  I claim duress of lots of people in line, and I didn’t want to hold up the line by making the lady blow up a bunch of balloons for me.  Besides, I was walking home with little man in the stroller and wasn’t sure how more than one helium balloon would do in the breeze-turning-wind on the way home.

The lonely balloon posed an interesting quandary…what on earth to do with it?  I tried tying it to the back of a dining chair, but that almost made the fact there was only one balloon even worse.  I tried just leaving it, but little man was grabbing it and I didn’t like the idea of him getting tangled in the string.  I had bought a banner that I hung in the window in the dining room, and while I was okay with the result, I wasn’t thrilled with it.

So, I tried tying the balloon to the banner.

I thought it turned out kind of nifty!  I didn’t take into account that the weight of the banner would help draw the balloon down into the window frame, and I didn’t expect the lift of the helium to make the banner curve a little more interesting.  Heck, next time, I might even buy a few more balloons and tie them along the banner.  If the line I’m in isn’t too long, that is…

This post should probably be titled “what I did with the rest of the jelly roll.”

Answer:  I made a summer quilt!

I had 10 strips of fabric left from the jelly roll, and a little left over from the table runner, so I decided to make a bright and cheery lap quilt to liven up our living room (which is currently full of dark furniture and a futon with an old blue mattress – it needs color!).

Once I sewed the last strips together and cut blocks (about 8.5″), I realized I didn’t have quite enough for a blanket.  A wall hanging, maybe, but not a blanket.

So I went back to Joann’s in hopes of finding another one of the rolls, but they were sold out.  Bummed, I went with plan B.  They had hexagons and triangles of precuts of the same fabric, so I debated between buying one or two of those and piecing other blocks, or finding coordinating fabric.

I went with coordinating fabric.  I also found yardage of some of the original fabric from the roll that I bought.  I had no pattern, really.  I was just flying by the seat of my pants on this.

Lines of very bright fabrics.  The big print is from a different line but matched PERFECTLY.

This is the lay-it-out, now-what stage of assembly.

I ended up using the solid orange between the lines of blocks. I needed something to help break up all of the prints. I also decided to use the green fabric for the first border to help tone everything down, and the white-based fabric for the outer, thicker border to pull it all together.  I really love the result.  It’s bright, fun, and summery, without being too hard on the eyes with all of the patterns involved.  I’m not sure what the backing will be for this, but it will most likely be orange, though it’s just as likely to be green or red.

And because I have so much fabric left over from this adventure, look for a handbag and throw pillows I’ll be making next!

The finished quilt top.  I LOVE how this turned out!

More finished quilt-top action.  Can’t wait for the chance to finish this at my mother-in-law’s!

For the quilting novices, there is a vocabulary that might make you chuckle regarding “precuts” or pre-cut pieces of fabric that come in little packages like…jelly rolls (2.5″ strips of fabric), charm squares (5″ blocks), and layer cakes (10″ blocks).  I’ve also heard of bally pops, which seem to be 5″ strips or so, but I’m not sure.

Below, you will see my very first jelly roll purchase.  It was on clearance at Joann’s.  I usually stay away from precuts because they’re so much more expensive than just buying fabric you cut yourself.  But it’s a trade-off between someone else doing most of your work for you, or you spending time coordinating 10+ fabrics to get that “jelly roll” look, and then annoying the cutting counter personnel by asking for 1/4 yard cuts of each fabric.

At any rate, I was looking for a project to do for my mother for Mother’s Day this year, and didn’t see anything that screamed “pick me!” until seeing this.  I loved the spring/summer feel to the fabrics, and finding an orange to coordinate was super easy.

After playing with the order to sew the fabrics in, I originally decided to do two sets of 5 rows each. I was using a pattern in which the rows are sewn together, then cut into lengths, then sewn off-set by one row each length. Unpick a few on each end to create points, and add a border, batting, and backing for a quick table runner.

The original first set of 5 strips sewn together.

The original second set of 5 strips together.

I ended up sewing both of the chunks together to have all 10 rows, because the 5 rows was going to end up making for a very skinny table runner.  I cut this into 2.5″ strips, and then aligned them so that the finished piece would be 7 blocks wide (I picked 3 blocks from each row).  This was pretty time-consuming, as I was trying to get a randomized look, and had to keep adjusting everything to avoid having the same squares right next to each other.  But the end result was worth it.

I decided to use fusible interfacing for this project, something I haven’t done before, to give the center some weight and stability. It made sewing the borders a DREAM. No fussing with every stitch line or having the edges stretch or warp in any way! LOVED it. I will be using this trick again!

The interfacing on the back of the center portion of the runner.  This was so great to work with!

Main portion of the finished top of the table runner.

One end of the runner – I really like the pattern for this.

Once I get a photo of the finished product, I’ll add it to this post.  I used a yellow fabric for the backing and binding, which just completed the sunshine feel to this table runner.

So, Mother’s Day 2012, I decided to make a table runner for my mom (post coming soon) and a John Deere themed wall hanging for my mother-in-law.

I don’t have photos of the completed projects for either thing yet, but I did take photos mid-way through my wall hanging creating to illustrate a quick lesson I learned about machine quilting and color-matching.

As you can tell in the photos, I was using the traditional John Deere colors of dark green and sunny yellow.  This presented an interesting dilemma for the quilting.  My mother-in-law has taught me that when machine quilting, you don’t want to overpower the quilt with a contrasting thread.  Instead, you want the quilting to blend in with the fabric.  Because the strips for the blocks on this wall hanging were about 2″ wide each, and alternated, I could either have used yellow thread on the yellow strips and green on the green, or use one color throughout.  I decided to try a little bit of contrast and use yellow throughout.

Bad idea.

The first block, I did a stipple design (looks like puzzle pieces).  The result was a little jarring, so I tried a different design on the second block – loops and stars.  The result wasn’t as bad, but it certainly wasn’t good, either.

Stippled.  Massive yellow thread overload!

Loops and stars. Not as bad as stippled, but still not good, either.

I stopped after the second block, consulted with the hubby who agreed it was a little overkill, and decided to leave the fabric immediately around each block’s center unquilted for the rest of the wall hanging.  That left the two already quilted blocks to deal with.  The only thing to do when stitching goes badly is…unpick the stitching. And HUGE thank you goes to my husband who spent a few hours doing just that for me!

Lesson learned:  Sometimes, a little quilting is all you need.