Sewing for My Dad

So, it's been a while since I've posted. I don't have any good excuses, just that life seemed to intervene. But I've continued to sew and embroider. The latest news is that I just bought Liberty's new Bloomsbury Gardens line in blue and I'm in love! I finished up another baby quilt for my cousin's new little girl, Sarah, and I'm working on a belated 30th birthday quilt for my best friend, Drea.

But let's backtrack a few months. My dad requested a quilt for his bed when I finished my first quilt. I thought "Sure! It will be fun!" However, choosing fabric and a pattern for a guy quilt was surprisingly difficult. There aren't a whole lot of masculine quilting fabrics out there, and my dad is a pretty simple guy style-wise, so I couldn't venture into anything too modern. I kept it simple, using Amy Smart's Brickyard pattern, though I decided to forgo the borders and added some extra rows instead to make it closer to the size of my dad's queen bed.

I initially drew inspiration from David Butler's new Parson Gray line, which seemed like the perfect "dude" fabric, but once I had it in hand, it still seemed a bit too modern for dad's taste. I ended up using a few designs from it, but turned to the Saville Row line from Northcott Fabrics for the main patterned fabric of the quilt. It's a combo of traditional patterns -- houndstooth, plaids, stripes, argyles, and paisleys -- in black, cream, and brown. Perfect for dad's room! Since his comforter is green, I opted to throw in some green patterns and solids, too, just to add a little splash of color. The greens are from all different lines -- whatever was on sale and that I thought would work. I used a darker cream for the sashing and black for the binding. I quilted it using vertical straight lines, which was something a bit different from what I had done before -- no criss-crossing quilted lines this time! I love the way it turned out.

The back may be my favorite part, though. The main fabric is a brown plaid from Connecting Threads, a store that has great discount fabric. (It's become my favorite place to buy larger yardages of fabric since it's so affordable, but is still of a decent quality.) But the surprise comes in the Civil War print. My dad is a big history buff and would retire to become a Civil War re-enactor if he could. I found this print of Civil War soldiers with excerpts from real letters soldiers wrote to loved ones. It's in cream and brown, so it fit with the overall color scheme of the quilt. I just added a wide strip of it to the back, so it's a fun little secret that's purely "Dad." I embroidered a little note to him, too.

I gave him the quilt for Father's Day and he seemed to love it, even though he knew it was coming. Since I do a lot of my quilting at his house, it was hard to find time to get it done when he wasn't there -- but I managed! I popped into his room last week and saw it on his bed -- with the Civil War side facing up. Perhaps I should have made a whole quilt from that fabric alone. :)

With the leftover fabric, I made him a drawstring bag to hold the quilt using the same tutorial from In Color Order that I've used several times before. I figured he could use it as a laundry bag on vacation (which he did).

My dad's birthday is in early May and I knew I wouldn't finish the quilt in time. So, I made him a few throw pillows. Two are embroidered with Celtic-style symbols and two are made from home decor fabric. All of the covers slip off. (I'm getting better at making pillow covers!) I chose the fabrics to match the style of his rec room, which we've been working on updating. My only regret is not using heavier fabrics for the brown pillows. The Kona solid I used wrinkles easily. But it doesn't seem to be a huge issue. The striped fabric has held up really well.

Recently, my dad has also been learning how to cook. I'm very impressed with the progress he's made. He's gone from only knowing how to make grilled cheese and fried eggs to being adept at cooking 20 or so different meals in just two years' time. So, I embroidered "Chef Joe" on an apron for him. (The apron is from IKEA. If I had more time, I might have made him a whole apron myself, but I needed to make progress on the quilt. Sadly, I neglected to take a picture of the apron. Blogging fail.)

So, those are the "guy gifts" I've made. My brother is now demanding a quilt, too. He wants it to be LSU-themed, so it's a little easier fabric-wise -- at least I already have a color scheme!

In other exciting news, I bought a new camera! It's a Panasonic Lumix point-and-shoot, and I love it. It takes much better pictures than the ones you've seen so far and is less fussy than my old Canon Elph. Unfortunately, it had a small accident on vacation and there appears to be a tiny scratch on the lens. I have to see what I can do about getting it fixed -- or if it's even worth it to get it fixed -- but either way, there are better pictures ahead!

Teatime and Superheroes

My mom's birthday was in early February, and I knew I wanted to sew her something. Lindsay made a cute teapot cozy with a pattern from Retro Mama, and since my mom enjoys a good cuppa as much as I do, I moseyed on over to Etsy and bought a pattern to make her a home for her teapot. My mom loves pale blue, so I bought a few fat quarters of Taza by Dena Designs in blue, white, and aqua just for this cozy. I really like the mix of bold florals, stripes, and geometric shapes and soft pastels. It's traditional with a modern flair.

Here's the finished product:

The back used a slightly different pattern:

This was my first time using a cut-out pattern and there were a few hiccups. It was hard to get the arc of the cozy just right. The batting was a little thick, and I had trouble stitching straight in a few places. (This is before I mastered my walking foot!) If you saw the pieces before I stitched them together, they would really show that I had no idea what I was doing! But I think the finished product looks okay.

I quilted straight lines, since this was still one of my first quilting attempts and I didn't want to rock the boat too much. The most difficult part was the binding, which would not cooperate. It just didn't want to fold over all the layers. I started out machine stitching it, but I wasn't catching all the layers, so I ended up having to go back and handstitch parts of it. I've become more confident with binding since this project, though, and I think next time, I'll make it a bit wider.

I put a little embroidered message inside the lining:

I used variegated floss, parts of which didn't show up well in the picture, but I liked the way it looked on the gray lining. (Ignore that rogue thread... it kept sneaking into the picture.)

I had plenty of leftover fabric, so I decided to make some coordinating coasters. I used this tutorial , which was very easy to follow. It uses a log cabin technique, and each coaster is a little bit different. Quilting was a challenge, since there wasn't much surface area to work with. If I do them again, I'll be a bit neater with my stops and starts.

the front

the back

Yup, I personalized these, too! I tried to match the floss to the petal color, so it would be a bit more inconspicuous.

And here is the whole shebang:

The teapot is mine, included for photographic purposes. I bought my mom her own tea set, complete with cups and saucers, in a powder blue to match her new cozy and coasters. She loved them! I'm not sure about the practicality of having cloth saucers or a lightly colored cozy, given potential tea stains, but at least they will look pretty for a little while and can always be washed.

In other news, I am able to reveal some of the drawstring bags I made. My godson Ryan just turned 5. He's always playing with his action figures and they never seem to stay in one place -- they get stuck in couches, behind his bed, under seats in the car, etc. So I thought he could use some superhero storage to make toting his good guys and bad guys more convenient. I even made him two, so he could separate the good guys from the bad guys when he's not around to monitor the safety of Gotham City / Metropolis / the universe. This called for a special order of some Batman fabric. (The Fat Quarter Shop had a ton of superhero fabric to choose from!)

Ryan didn't seem quite as excited about the bags as I was about making them, but his parents thought they were great! I remember being his age and being disappointed whenever I got something I couldn't play with right away. I figure he'll come to appreciate his superhero storage over time. :) I also got him a book, which he seemed to have more interest in -- Michael Chabon's The Astonishing Secret of Awesome Man. I love a great kids' book, and this is one of the best I've read in ages. It seemed perfect for my favorite little superhero!

I've actually been busy at work on my second quilt. More on that soon!

Lined Drawstring Bag

In my quest to learn more about sewing, I started reading some really helpful blogs. (See the list to the right!) There are easy-to-follow tutorials for just about every aspect of sewing, even how to change the feet on your sewing machine and pick fabrics that will complement one another. I always had this impression that people who sewed, embroidered, and the like were stodgy old ladies who were sticklers for the rules. Not so. By and large, the crafty ladies who write these blogs are young-ish, really psyched about what they do, and eager to share their knowledge from both their successes and their failures. They like big, bold fabrics, bright colors, and taking shortcuts when they can. Some of them are newer at sewing, like myself, while some grew up stitching. It's definitely reassuring to know that the seasoned pros still make mistakes and that's part of the charm of making something by hand. It's a nice little community out there!

Thanks to these blogs and Pinterest, I have no shortage of projects I want to get started on. But I'm a pretty practical person, and I knew I'd have to start small. When I found this tutorial for a lined drawstring bag (it was free!), I knew I had to make one. Or five.

I had purchased a bunch of fabric from an Etsy seller in anticipation of making my plum Aviary quilt (which I will describe in detail one of these days, I promise!). Since the seller offered flat rate shipping and I wanted to get my money's worth, I decided to buy a bit of Alexander Henry's Spotted Owl fabric in Smoke, too. I have a slight obsession with owls and I really couldn't resist. I figured it would be perfect for my new bag, and I paired it with some leftover gray Kona cotton from Ryan's pillow and black cotton from Sean's pillow.

It took me about four hours to cut the fabric, figure out how to pin everything together, press, and sew, but when I was finished, I had this awesome little bag:

It's the perfect size for storing my embroidery projects in my commuting bag. You've already seen the canvas case I keep my needles, scissors, and floss in, but here's a photo of all of my embroidery notions, including my fab magnetic polka-dot needle case and scissors, both from Sublime Stitching. (I'm pretty sure I've ripped off Lindsay's taste in notions!) The scissors have a cute embossed cover and they fit inside the needle case. Ingenious!

The hoop is 5 inches (I think) from Jo-Ann. After trying a plastic square snap-frame, which doesn't hold the fabric very tight, and wooden hoops that sometimes snag the fabric, I think I've settled on plastic hoop -- this  purple one in particular. So, all of that fits into what will henceforth be known as my owl bag which, in turn, fits into my commuting bag. I don't travel light.

Jeni of In Color Order had another pattern for the same bag in a variety of sizes, so of course I had to pay for that one, too. I used it to make birthday presents for a couple of special people. I'll post pictures after they open them.

And finally, I finished my Aviary quilt this weekend and I love it! I'm sooo close to being caught up with my project recap, so I don't want to skip out of chronological order at this point. I also anticipate that post will be a long one, so I may have to put it off until the weekend -- but it's coming!