(Denim) Skirting My Way to a New Summer Wardrobe

Every once in a while I get the urge to do some garment sewing. The urge does not last very long, but usually just long enough for me to get a few pieces done. This week, I made three pairs of summer pajama shorts for the boys. Today, I finished this skirt.

I used Simplicity 1717, which is a nice, basic a-line skirt that is part of Simplicity's Amazing Fit series. The only modification I made was the red piping around the patch pockets.  The fabric is a stretchy denim that I bought as a remnant for $5 a long time ago.  I have some ideas for more tweaks to this pattern, so maybe there will be some more skirts in the future.

Kinda proud of my invisible zipper installation -- too bad I didn't have a matching color on hand!

Some very big patch pockets with pre-fab piping.

And finally, the waistband facing using some American Jane Pezzy print -- scraps from the boys' pajamas.

Bloggers' Quilt Festival!

If you're looking for some quilt eye-candy, go over to the Bloggers' Quilt Festival hosted by Amy's Creative Side.  There is some absolutely AMAZING quilting going on over there.  It might become quite a time suck going through the huge number of links, but it's well worth the time for some great inspiration.

Now, to my entry... After kicking around some ideas, I decided to submit my Punctuation quilt:

This is my absolute favorite quilt I've made to date, because of all the crisp, bright colors.  It was also the first quilt where I felt my piecing technique had improved immensely.  The quilting process was also very gratifying, as I was able to use both straight-line and free-motion quilting in different sections of the quilt.  Finally, it just happened to be my 100th post!   For full details about the quilt, you can go here.

The lovely thing is that my youngest son, now 5 1/2, uses it every night!  What better reward than that?

My 100th Post!!

Somehow the month of November passed me by, and I didn't even realize it. It probably had something to do with work and then traveling to Sacramento for a week to visit the in-laws.  Thus this is my long-delayed 100th post!

I can hardly believe it.  I've been able to stick with this blog for four years now!  Reviewing my old posts, I can see how my interests have morphed over the years.  What does remain constant is the borderline obsessive-compulsive personality behind these interests!

OK, now on to sewing.  I finally finished quilting and binding this quilt top, which I just gifted to by youngest.  He is turning five on Monday, yippee!

I went a little overboard on the pics, but I just loved putting this quilt together so much.  I wanted to be able to document all the things I liked about it.  I originally posted about the details here.  The pattern for this quilt is called "Jitterbug," from Layer Cake, Jelly Roll & Charm Quilts by Pam and Nicky Lintott.  The fabric is Punctuation by American Jane, and the background is my favorite Kona in snow.  

"Simple" was the guiding theme when I first considered the quilting.  I started by outlining each of the quilt blocks.  Mr. Elvy then suggested I do a diagonal grid through the center squares, which turned out awesome.  

Then I couldn't resist doing a little FMQ.  I tried not to be too ambitious, as I was with this quilt.  I wanted to complete the quilting as quickly as I could, so I could move on to other projects.  I stitched little boxes around each patterned rectangle along the border, and then did the wavy line on the white background border areas by tracing lines drawn about one-half inch apart.  I think it turned out quite well.

I completed the binding by machine stitching both the front and the back of the binding with a walking foot.  I love this method of attaching the binding -- it is so much faster than hand-stitching.

Here are a few more gratuitous pictures.  This is how the binding looks like from the front.  Once the quilt is laundered, the stitch-in-the ditch seam in the front all but disappears.

The backing is also from American Jane, although I can't think of the name of the line off the top of my head.  It included a bunch of chickens.

Finally, here's a full picture of the quilt.  It's big enough to fit a twin-sized bed, and I was able to make up No. 2's bed this morning with it. 

 

Punctuation Quilt Top Finished!

I love how this one turned out and can't wait to get it quilted.  I have fabric for the binding but need to find something for the backing this weekend.  My LQS ran out of Punctuation yardage, so I think I will go with a nice Kona or Bella solid in a light blue or green (or both?).  Hmm, so many choices.

The pieced border is my favorite element on this quilt.

Lots of fun colors from American Jane's Punctuation collection.

The deets were discussed in my previous post here.  Now I think I'm going to work on some Farmer's Wife squares to see if I can't get caught up on those.  I also wanted to try to make my own version of a Greek Cross quilt -- inspiration here and here.  I have a Bliss layer cake with only one square missing that I think will work beautifully for this.  Stay tuned!

Pieced border corner detail.

Some Bad News and Some Good News

Working hard on getting all my points to meet!

Wow, I can't believe how quickly the summer is moving along.  It seems like the boys just got out of school, and all of a sudden, over half the summer is already gone.

On the sewing front, I had some bad news.  I was busy quilting my Spirit Charm quilt -- it was sort of rough going at first because I had never attempt to quilt a full-sized quilt before.  Some of my early attempts at feathers were a bit shaky, but I started getting the hang of it after a while.  Well, about 2/3 of the way through, my machine died.  I guess it was taking quite a beating.  So that was the bad news.

Now the good news.  I took the plunge and bought a new machine, a Janome Memory Craft 6600P.  I really wanted the Horizon, but I couldn't justify paying twice as much for the Horizon, as beautiful as it is.  That's not to say the 6600 isn't a wonderful machine.  It's got all the options I want, except it's a little smaller than the Horizon (9-inch sewing space as opposed to 11 inches on the Horizon), but hey, it's still 3 inches bigger than my old Necchi!  Plus I guess the Horizon has an auto-tension feature that's super cool too.  Anyhoo, my machine is on order so hopefully I'll be able to post some time next week when it arrives.

In the meantime, I'll post a couple of blocks I've been working on.  Both these were done partially on my old machine, and partially on my mom's little Brother.  The Brother is a little plastic computerized machine that my mom uses only for the buttonhole function, preferring mostly to sew on an industrial Singer.  It actually sews really well; I was also able to finish a pair of PJs for #2.  BTW, the Singer is the one I learned to sew on growing up.  I remember we got it when I was in about kindergarten, so it must be 30 years old or more.

The block below is for a quilt from a quilt called "Jitterbug," from Layer Cake, Jelly Roll & Charm Quilts by Pam and Nicky Lintott.  I'm using a jelly roll of Punctuation by American Jane.  I've had it for a while but was kind of iffy about some of the prints and colors when I bought it.  Now, when I see all the prints together, in combination with the white Kona, I'm really liking how it's all coming together.

I love how the colors are coming together -- Punctuation by American Jane.

This second block, the ubiquitous bow tie, is a mere 6.5 inches, unfinished.  I was playing with some scraps and wanted to see how difficult it would be to put these together.  Each bow tie block uses two 2-inch solid square, plus and two 2-inch and two 1-inch squares of print.  It's a great stash buster, definitely.
 

You might recognize these fabrics from other projects.