The Quilt Story, Part 3

Wow, it’s been over a month since I last posted! What can I say? Life got in the way. Work was extremely busy, and I was actually pretty productive with my sewing/embroidery in the interim. I just didn’t have time to write about it!

So, back to the story of my first quilt. Thanks to the meticulously detailed quilt pattern I bought from Oh, Fransson!, the construction went along fairly smoothly. (My boss recommended this pattern specifically because it walks you through every step.) I was very nervous cutting into my expensive fabric. I’m sure some psychologists could do a study on what goes through one’s mind when forced to slice up something one has grown attached to. It’s not pretty.

This pattern required fabric cuts in various sizes. Then, the pieces were matched up with other pieces from their pattern “pair” to form blocks that were all the same size. It wasn’t until I started making these blocks that I noticed how crooked some of my cutting was. Thankfully, the seam allowances seemed to cover up most of my mistakes.

Sewing the blocks took a few weeks in itself. I kept them organized through Post-It notes. I laid out all of the blocks per the pattern instructions, but found myself completely rearranging them as I started piecing together the rows. I also didn’t really follow the directions when it came to the directions of the blocks. I was supposed to alternate the ways the blocks faced, but this didn’t work so well with my directional bird prints. I wanted all of them to go the same way. So, I broke the rules and did my own thing. I think it was the right decision.

There is a lot of ironing involved in quilting. It’s actually considered “pressing” since you aren’t supposed to move the iron back and forth (though I sometimes do). I don’t like this. I avoid ironing at all costs. I would rather be seen in a crumpled, wrinkly shirt than have to break out the ironing board. So, this is an adjustment for me. But I followed the directions and pressed all of the seams. This helped quite a bit when it came to attaching the sashing between rows. Everything seemed to line up better than it would have otherwise.

There were many pins involved with this part, too. Pinning is a good practice to get into. It’s generally better to have too many pins than not enough. Fabric has a tendency to bunch up or form gaps when you’re not looking. (It’s sneaky like that!)

quilt top, in progress

For the back of the quilt, I used two large pieces of fabric, two strips of the sashing fabric, and one long row of scraps from the fabric I used on the front. I tried to center the row, which didn’t go exactly as planned, but I like the way it ended up.

After lots of ironing and pinning and stitching and rogue thread snipping, I was ready to make my “quilt sandwich” and “baste.” (These are terms that make me hungry.) I used an all-natural cotton batting (low loft) in the middle, which was fairly thin and easy to work with. The fancy basting pins in the craft store were quite pricy, so I just used some regular old safety pins. They did the trick. I brought all of my quilting necessities (including my sewing machine) to my dad’s house for this part, so that I could spread out a bit more. (My apartment is pretty small, and I would have to move furniture to do it there!)

I used masking tape to carefully line up each layer on the floor. I followed all of the advice I found and trimmed the backing and batting to be a little larger than the quilt top, since everything shifts while quilting. (I used my rotary cutter and cutting mat, which were not nearly large enough for the task, so I had to keep crawling around the quilt to trim it. Must have been a sight.) Starting from the center, I used about a million pins to keep my three layers together. It took me about an hour just to pin the quilt!

Next was the most intimidating part, apart from cutting the fabric: the actual quilting. I didn’t want to get this far and mess up here, so I took the simplest approach possible – quilting straight lines a little bit outsides of the blocks. This is called “shadowing” or “echoing,” as I later found out. I didn’t know how to deal with the bulk of the quilt as I ran it through the sewing machine. A few blogs I read advised to roll it and keep adjusting it as you go. There’s really no other way to do it! Since my quilt was pretty thin, I didn’t have too much trouble. It’s just more awkward than anything. But since you start in the middle and work your way out, it gets easier as you go.

I have to say that quilting is my least favorite part of the whole “making a quilt” process. It’s kind of tedious and plenty can go wrong. At this point, I just wanted it to be done! I used my walking foot for this part, along with a special quilting needle, which made the job easier. I kept the presser foot along the edge of the blocks, so the lines were stitched about 3/8 inch away from each block. Some of my lines aren’t completely straight, and the quilting emphasized some minor variations in the sizes of the blocks. But I maintain that this gives the quilt character. After the quilting was done, I trimmed the excess batting and backing off, using my handy-dandy rotary cutter.

quilting close-up

Last, but not least was the binding, which covers up the raw edges of the quilt to finish it off. I was a little confused about this part, so I went to a few different sources. The most helpful binding tutorial is on Diary of a Quilter. Amy’s instructions are superb. Her method involves machine sewing the binding to the back, then hand sewing the front. It seems like a long, thankless task at first, but is actually fairly relaxing, especially when there is TV involved. It only took a few hours for me to tack the binding on. The mitred corners didn’t come out wonderfully, but they serve the purpose (and I do feel like I’ve improved on subsequent projects). 

binding with wonky mitred corners

I felt like doing a victory dance when I was finished!

 Here’s the end result, held up by my lovely best friend, Drea:

the front

the back
(Ignore the shadows. As I've said, lighting in my apartment isn't great! I also took this picture on a bit of an angle. The back really isn't that crooked!)

And that's the (long) story of how I made my first quilt. It's been living happily on my bed for almost two months and I love it. I don't think I could have asked for a better first quilting project! I'm very pleased with the size, too. It's great for those times when my duvet is too heavy, but a sheet is too light.

I've made two more quilts since this one, which I will post about soon. Just don't take the "soon" part too literally. :)

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!

Adventures in Hand-Sewing (aka What Led Me to Purchase My First Sewing Machine)

Over the past few years, my extended family has grown as my cousins and their significant others started adding to their family. My cousin Becky and her husband Paul have two boys, Ryan and Trevor. Ryan is my Godson and was the first of the new generation. He's turning 5 next month. Trevor is 1 1/2. My cousin Chrissy and her husband Rich have two kids, as well. Sienna is 4 1/2 and Shane is 2 1/2. All four kids are ridiculously cute and I've been enjoying watching their personalities develop. I see them pretty often, and I knew I wanted to make them each something special for Christmas.

After the success of Sean's LSU pillow, I figured I'd make some more pillow covers, personalizing them with some sort of design each of them would like. I immediately knew that I wanted to make Sienna a princess pillow. She's a total girly-girl and is going through a pretty serious princess phase. But I didn't want to embroider a Disney princess or anything, so I found a coloring page of a cute clipart-like princess online. I traced it onto a pink fat quarter I picked up at Jo-Ann. (Pink is her favorite. She is exactly the opposite of how I was at that age!). Then, I embroidered it with shades of pink and purple. I made the princess's hair and eyes brown so she would look more like Sienna. Finally, I added a little frame based on Aimee Ray's Doodle Motifs and stitched Sienna's name at the bottom.

All was going well until I actually had to start sewing the pillowcase together. The pillow forms I bought (from IKEA -- so cheap!) were larger than the pillow I had made for Sean, and hand sewing ended up taking ages. Also, since it was light-colored fabric, I was really paranoid about the stitches showing through. After I finished 3 sides, I put it over the pillow form to stitch up the bottom. But for some reason, this came out lumpy and I had to do a second row of stitches to try and tame it. I think that part of the problem stemmed from the fact I cut the fabric with regular old scissors, so it was pretty uneven in parts. (I didn't have a rotary cutter at that point. Man, whoever invented the rotary cutter deserves a medal!) I was kind of annoyed that after all of this careful hand sewing, the bottom looked so weird. But I wasn't about to start over! I eventually got it to a point where it didn't look terrible, and I didn't think Sienna would be critiquing my work anyway.

However, I dreaded the thought of having to make three more pillow covers by hand. Sienna's pillowcase took me the better part of a week, diligently sewing every night! Would I even finish the rest in time for Christmas?

Then fate stepped in. The day after I finished Sienna's pillowcase, I was perusing dealnews.com (a site that links to sales all over the web) when I saw a listing for refurbished Brother sewing machines on eBay. They came with warranties, seemed to be from a reputable store, and most importantly, they were only $50 each! So, I treated myself to an early Christmas present. I bought the LX-2500.

It's nothing fancy, and if I stick with sewing, I'll probably have to upgrade in a few years. But it does have 17 different stitches and can do buttonholes. (I have no idea how, but the potential is there!) Also, it has a pretty design!

(I haven't given it a name yet. This is something that crafty people do, right? I am thinking Miss Marple might be fitting. In Agatha Christie's books, Miss Marple is always knitting or stitching while crime solving. She seems sweet and unassuming, but she knows how to get the job done. I think this is a good thing for my sewing machine to aspire to.)

I hadn't used a sewing machine since my 7th grade sewing class. My mom never used one, so we never had one at home growing up. It took me few days to get familiar with it and feel comfortable threading it. Things like bobbin winding were completely new to me. Luckily, the instruction manual was pretty helpful in this capacity. I ordered a quilting foot, walking foot, and free motion foot online to give me some more options than the regular old foot that came with it. I had no idea how or when to use these, but I took the advice of some more experienced sewing bloggers and ordered them anyway. (Most feet are under $10. The walking foot can be up to $50, but I got mine on sale for $22!) I also had to run out and buy things like... thread. Silly as it may seem, I didn't think about the fact a machine would require a different kind of thread than what was already in my sewing box. But there you have it.

My first task was to make a dust cover for the machine. I had some fat quarters I bought at Jo-Ann that I wasn't sure what to do with, but they match the color scheme of our living room and I thought they would work nicely. I did some very rough measuring, stitched the top and 2/3 down each side, and hemmed the remainder. Then I added some ties made from brown fabric, and... voila!

Then, I finished off the pillow covers that I had already embroidered for Ryan, Trevor, and Shane. The machine made life soooo much easier. I was able to sew each pillow cover together in about a half hour. I also figured out that I should probably make them removable, since kids can be ... you know ... messy. So, I overlapped two pieces of fabric to make the back of the pillow. The pillow forms can slip right out! (I feel kind of bad Sienna's doesn't do this, but she's also the neatest of the bunch!)

Ryan is obsessed with superheroes and he likes to pretend he's Batman, so his pillow has the bat signal. I printed out an image of the bat signal I found online and used a black iron-transfer marker to put the image on the fabric. The font comes from a Word document. (I tried to choose the font that was most comic book-esque without being Comic Sans...)

Just as Sienna is a girly-girl, her brother Shane is a typical boy. He loves sports and playing outside. His pillow is football themed. I drew this one myself and transferred it with the iron-on marker. I thought it could be a little more colorful, so the red and yellow lines were last-minute additions.

Since Trevor is only 1 1/2, it's a little too early to tell what he really likes. But he always seems to be playing with race cars (usually, ones that belong to his big brother!), so I used a coloring page of a race car and driver  for Trevor's pillow. (There are a ton of free coloring pages online that make for really awesome embroidery designs!) Trevor's name is in a font from Word, too. The checkered flags are my favorite part!

And thus ends the story of how I acquired my first sewing machine. Two months later, and it's already paid for itself. I only regret not buying one sooner!

The LSU Pillow

My brother Sean just graduated from Louisiana State University in December. (Don't bring up the BCS Championship game. We're not talking about it!) I knew I wanted to make him something LSU-related, so I figured I'd try a pillow with one of the logos on it. Originally, I was going to shoot for just a regular old "LSU," then I thought I might get a little adventurous and do the fleur-de-lis with the tiger's eye inside it. It's pretty cool looking, but I couldn't find an image of it that I would be able to trace. I opted to go with the tiger head logo.

This was my first really ambitious embroidery project. Until this point, I had only done outlines. But I had purchased a black transfer marker, meaning that all I had to do was print an image out backwards, trace the image, and iron it on the fabric. Couldn't be too hard. I used some leftover tea towel-weight fabric I had and I ironed on my traced image. However, the marker lines ended up being really thick on the fabric, so I couldn't just do an outline. You'd see all of the marker lines. I'd have to fill in the whole thing with stitches.

I wasn't sure how to begin, so I just kind of attacked it, one color at a time. Black first, then gold, then white, then the purple "LSU." It took forever, probably about 2 weeks of stitching for a couple of hours every night, but I was pretty impressed with how it turned out. Once you start filling in an outline with stitches, it doesn't really matter how you go about it. All of the little stitches just contribute to the big picture. The fabric puckered a bit with all of the stitches, but perhaps that was unavoidable. After all, there were so many stitches.

The problem then became, "How do I get this onto the pillow fabric?" I bought some black cotton yardage at JoAnn -- nothing too impressive, but it would serve the purpose. I hand-stitched the embroidered material onto the black fabric, but then I had all of those stitches showing. I decided to cover them with a border of purple ribbon, but the ribbon was pretty uncooperative. It was more like craft ribbon -- not great for stitching.  I tacked it on with embroidery floss (as shown below), but I wasn't confident it would stay put. So, I ended up doing satin stitches all along the border of the ribbon, on both sides, just to keep it secure. This part of the project took me the longest by far. It was also difficult to get the needle through so many layers of fabric. But I did it for my little bro!

Once I was satisfied with the embroidery/ribbon situation, it was time to make the pillow cover. I followed a tutorial I found online (wish I had saved the link), but actually making the pillow cover was pretty simple. I had purchased a small pillow form from the craft store, so I just measured using that, allowing a little extra room for the thickness of the pillow. Since this is was in my Pre-Sewing Machine Era (PSME), I hand-sewed the whole thing. I cut the fabric in one long piece to save me from having to stitch one side. (The fabric is just folded over the top of the pillow.) This ended up putting the embroidered square slightly off center (it's a bit low on the pillow), but I wasn't about to start over! All in all, it wasn't the most efficient process, and it may not look too pretty (especially the part I had to stitch up after I turned the whole thing right side out), but it's finished. I figure no one will be paying attention to the pillow's stitching, anyway. It's all about Mike the Tiger.

Here it is, in all its purple-and-gold glory:

Sean seems to love it, and it's taken a place on the couch in my dad's rec room. At first, he made fun of me for my new embroidery/sewing hobby, but after receiving this, he seems to have laid off a bit. In fact, he's been showing it off to anyone who comes to visit my dad's house! I think its safe to say it was a success, but I won't be rushing to make another one any time soon... unless I find myself with a few free weeks and an overabundance of patience to spare!