It's no secret that I love to play with fabric. Pulling different prints from my stash and mixing them together is very relaxing for me, but I don't do it often enough. And sometimes I do get caught up because I have too many choices. (Addicted to fabric, I admit!) At the moment, I am also working very steadily on my new book and you know what they say about all work and no play! For a change of pace and a little fun, I decided to challenge myself to pull 10 to 15 fabrics in a cohesive color palette in five minutes. Five minutes! This is what I came up with....

Left to right, collection names and designers:

Hatbox by Alexia Abegg, Catnap by Lizzy House, Meadow by Leah Duncan, Cotton and Steel Basics, Meadow by Leah Duncan, Moonlit by Rashida Coleman Hale, Cotton and Steel Basics, Catnap by Lizzy House, Meadow by Leah Duncan (3 prints in a row), Moonlit by Rashida Coleman Hale, Botanics by Carolyn Friedlander

I find this interesting. Orange, yellow and green are not necesarily colors that I would think of putting together immediately. I just love my greens and blues too much! That said, I really like this group and I can completely see making it into some kind of quilt.

I started with the Meadow print that is fourth from the right. It was easy to pull from my Cotton and Steel fabrics because they are still sitting in one pile. I think that is why I stayed in a few collections - they were all right at my fingertips. I did try a couple of yellow Denyse Schmidt prints, but the color was off. Still, for five minutes, I'm pretty pleased. So pleased that I plan on doing it again next week.

Unrelated, but still important:

-You still have time to enter to win a full fat quarter bundle of Tidal Lace by Kim Andersson. The giveaway goes until Sunday night.

-My book, Quilt Essential, is on deep discount over in the C&T store. If you have been wanting to buy it, now is a great time to get it at a great price. They have lots of other great titles on sale, too.

Have a great weekend!

I'm sure you have seen a good half dozen or more versions of these Purl Soho shorts by now. Here's another! They are a fast sew from a free dowloadable pattern so, really, you should make some. The come in kid and adult sizes so even if you don't wear shorts, maybe there is a little girl in your life who would like some. I lengthened my pair by 1.5" because this 43 year old does not rock the short shorts. Just saying.

I sewed the bias binding to the wrong side of the shorts and then folded it around to the front before topstitching them in place as a little extra insurance to make sure the raw edges got enclosed. I used some Robert Kaufman chambray left over from this skirt and the floral print is a Kokka design that I got from Frances at Miss Matatabi. This particular chambray is a little loosely woven. If I were to use it again, I would increase the back seam allowance to 1/2" and maybe even break out the serger because it's really embarrassing to be walking around with a hole in the back of your shorts where the seam didn't hold. Just saying.

Last week, I decided to copy Melissa and make myself a t-shirt.

People! This was fun to sew.

I had the navy Laguna knit in my stash. It was purchased as part of a kit for a dress that I never made. Use it or lose it, right? Right! I paired it with a fat quarter of an Anna Maria Horner voile from the stash. I'm tall with a long torso so I had to turn the fat quarter 90 degrees to get the length I needed, but this print works well in either direction. Plus it looks great with the solid navy.

I followed Melissa's directions, including using the Metro T-shirt pattern by Liesl & Co. I love the process of adjusting patterns. All the measuring, drawing, tracing - I always end up learning so much. This time I altered the pattern to bring the seams forward and create a hi-low hem as Liesl shows in her tutorial. Once I sewed it up and tried it on, I felt that it was way too long in the back, so I drew the hem a second time, taking 3 inches off the back of the tee and leaving the front where it was. In the end, my shirt ended up a little more than 2 inches longer in the back than the front center. (If you do not have a long torso, I think you would need to shorten the front piece as Liesl suggests.)

I've worn this tee a couple of times and I love it. Jane asked me yesterday whether I had made it - the girls were still away at camp when it was sewn up. After I answered yes, she asked where I bought the blue shirt to alter. When I explained that I had sewn the entire thing, she was a little surprised. But for me, that is the icing on the cake. I made a t-shirt that looks store bought! Even up close!

Win, win, win.

I spent a couple of hours yesterday sewing the improv blocks I made in 2008 at Denyse Schmidt's studio into a quilt top. It's mostly finished, just waiting for some "white" borders to make it a usable size.

Only after I took some photos and looked at them on my phone did I see the best bit of improv. Do you see it?

I seriously couldn't have made that happen any better if I had tried.

With both girls away at camp for a couple of weeks, I spent some time thinking about what to send in their care packages other than food. I bought a couple of Lizzy House Catnap fabrics awhile back specifically for p.j. shorts and decided to sew them up to send to camp. Cat faces for my cat lover Jane and mice on bikes for Kate, because why not? They are so dang cute!

I used the same pattern from Stitch magazine (Summer 2012) that I did for their last batch of sleep shorts. The pattern is in women's sizes and downloadable from the site, but does not include any directions. The directions can be found in the magazine, which I do have somewhere on my shelves. But because I am disorganized and too lazy to search for it, I went ahead and sewed without the directions because I'm crazy like that. No, really, I have made so many pairs of p.j. pants and shorts and they all go together pretty much the same way so I just went for it.

Because the girls are away and I can't get a good waist measurement, I decided to make these with drawstrings instead of elastic/faux-bow waistbands. I figure that I can always add elastic later if they want it. Before I sewed the waist casing, I made a buttonhole on each side of the center seam for the threading the drawstring and tying the bow. The drawstrings were made by sewing two 2" widths of fabric together and then pressing the long piece of fabric so that the raw edges are encased in the center and topstitching the tie closed, giving me a very long 1/2" wide piece of fabric. (Does that even make sense? I think you know what I mean. Well, I hope you do!) Once I threaded the tie through the buttonholes, I pulled the ends even, gathered the waist to what I thought looked like a reasonable fit (a.k.a., I winged it!) and then tied the bow. Once the bow was in place, I knotted its tails and cut the excess drawstring off on an angle. Easy, peasy and very much flying by the seat of my pants. I did leave the drawstrings on the long side figuring that we can cut them shorter if needed. Look at me thinking!

Each pair (one women's size S, the other women's size M) was cut out of a yard of fabric so these really are a easy and good stash-busting sew. Fast, too - each pair took about an hour and a half and I do know that assembly line sewing a bunch goes much faster than that.

So yeah, you guessed it. I've got some more fabric ready to be cut.

Just a little over a week ago, we dropped Jane off for a three week summer camp at a college in North Carolina. Back in the early spring, I thought that maybe I should make her a quilt to take because she sleeps in a full size bed here and because the only twin bedding we have belongs on the beds in Kate's room. And because she was going in July and I wasn't sure if the dorm would have air conditioning, I decided that a lovely, summer weight Liberty quilt would be just the ticket.

I ordered a bunch of fat eighths from Dee at Pick Click Sew on Etsy. I have ordered Liberty fabrics from her before and she is extremely attentive and so nice to work with. She also cuts her fat eighths at 10", which makes for a wonderful value. I wanted bright, cheery prints in pinks, reds, blues, greens and yellows and that is what I got. Finding myself a few prints short of what I needed, I took a few pieces from my stash and from my first Liberty of London club installment from Westwood Acres Fabrics. They also cut their fat eighths at 10". Nice, right?

I started cutting for this quilt a couple of months ago, fitting in one or two pieces when I had a small block of time. The fat eighths were each subcut into two 10" squares (for this quilt) and two 5" squares (for another project) and a 1 x 10"-ish strip (that I put aside in my scraps). Jane and I laid the squares out on the studio floor in a 9 x 7 grid and then I sewed them together. Easy, straightforward and fast, the sewing took much less time than the cutting.

I enlisted some help for the basting. Mind you, they each put about eight pins in before moving on. But, it's a start!

The back is a pink Free Spirit voile that was in my stash, most likely purchased for clothing or lining, combined with a larger piece of Liberty to make it big enough. I'm am trying very hard to use it or lose it and this goes for everything in the stash including the precious Liberty, not just the quilting cottons. But I digress... The batting is Quilter's Dream Cotton Request, a very lightweight, 100% cotton batting. The entire combination - Liberty, the batting, the voile back - is the same I used on our Liberty bed quilt and is one I will repeat again. It makes for the most beautiful, soft, drapey, lightweight summer quilt.

The quilting is loops, per Jane's request. I used a hera marker to make a grid on the front of the quilt sandwich and it worked very well as a guide for the free motion stitching. Each loop is about 3 inches tall. The large pattern made for relatively quick machine quilting - it took a couple of hours tops. For the binding, I used another Liberty print from my stash that we didn't choose for the top. It seemed like the right finishing touch.

The quilt, before washing, measured 66.5" x 85.5". We gave it a good run through the washer and the dryer (cold water and then ultra low heat) before packing it up and taking it to camp. All reports are that it is doing its job quite well - keeping her cozy at night and providing a virtual hug from mom, when and if it's needed.

The house is so quiet now. I put Kate on a plane to her camp yesterday.

Boy, do I miss those girls.

 

I managed a second finish last week. I cannot tell you how good it feels to be so productive!

This sweet baby quilt top was finished back in January and it has been sitting in the studio awaiting quilting ever since. Because it is small, I decided to spray baste it. I was not happy with the basting so it sat, waiting for me to take it apart and re-baste with pins. When I picked it up a couple of weeks ago and put it in the to-do pile, I took a second look at the basting and decided to go for it without re-basting. And it worked great!

The fabrics are mostly Shelburne Falls by Denyse Schmidt with a few other pink prints thrown in. I immediately fell in love with the soft, but not washed out pastels of these fabrics, especially since they are grounded with navy. Perfection! The solids came from Pink Chalk Fabrics. I will say it again and again: I LOVE that they take the time to match solids to prints and share that information. Thank you, Kathy and team! I cut the equilateral triangles using the GO! cutter by Accuquilt. Fast and easy, just the way I like it. The sewing took a little time - all those short seams! - but I managed it in a few spurts. Sometimes I think that I should have added more triangles - maybe next time.

I quilted it using straight lines, keeping the edge of my walking foot lined up with the seams. This made for some very simple, very fast quilting - it took me about an hour to quilt the whole thing! Truly! Hand stitching the binding took longer than that. The finished quilt measures 32" x 42" unwashed. Like the Creamsicle Quilt, this one will go to our church/school carnival and be raffled off.

Speaking of which, I wish I knew how to get raffle tickets into the hands of those of you that have expressed interest, but I just don't think it is possible. I will do some checking, though, and if there is a way, I will let you know.

Back in a day or so with another finish AND a reading list at some point this week, too. See you then!

When it comes to naming quilts, I'm often stumped. This one, though, was easy. All that orange and white? Creamsicle! Never mind that I had to explain what a creamsicle is to my children. Don't worry - a trip to the grocery is planned for later today so I can remedy the missed opportunities of their young taste buds.

As I mentioned earlier this week, I pieced this quilt top in 2008. Crazy, right? I am not sure why I didn't quilt it sooner. It's been shuffled around through many studio clean outs and has lingered in the to-do pile. I am glad that I finally got around to finishing it. It's cheerful and happy and very orange.

The top is obviously influenced by Denyse Schmidt, in particular the Hop, Skip & A Jump quilt in her first book, Denyse Schmidt Quilts. I did not follow her pattern, but rather just sliced up a bunch of white fabric into strips and pieced them with similar strips in orange prints. When I look back at the top, I am so happy to see some of my very favorite fabrics - Flea Market Fancy, Katie Jump Rope, some Heather Ross stripe, a favorite Alexander Henry floral, those Japanese elephants...I could go on. These fabrics were among the first ones in my stash - the ones I built it around and, in a way, this quilt is a bit of a time capsule back to that summer when my girls were 8 and 6. I vividly remember sitting on the carpet just outside the door to my original walk-in closet sewing room, cutting fabric while they played in the room adjacent. In so many ways, it does not seem like six years ago.

I pieced the backing from a large piece of orange and white check shirting fabric that was in my stash. I added the Amy Butler floral and the piece of Katie Jump Rope. While I did hesitate before cutting that particular Denyse print, I didn't let myself get overly sentimental. If there is one thing that I am taking away from this quilt is that I need to use the fabric that I love instead of letting it sit on the shelves.

The quilting is simple lines and in keeping with the look of the quilt, they are not at all measured out and not at all straight. This made the actual quilting fast and rather mindless which is exactly what I needed this past weekend. The binding is an orange Kona from my stash and I even pieced the batting from scraps, making this quilt entirely from what I had on hand. I love it when I can do that.

It measures 46.5" x 50" after washing - a nice lap quilt. I am donating it our church/school carnival where it will be raffled off in July.

********

This post includes affliate links. And thank you, Jane, for always volunteering to hold my quilts.