A Well-Traveled Quilt and Pillow

It's been a busy summer and I haven't spent too much time with my sewing machine. I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that I sewed up a storm in the spring and needed a break! I took a 10-day trip to England in April to visit family, friends, and -- most importantly -- Liberty of London for some fabric shopping. It had been three years since my previous UK visit and I was missing England, and the people I love who live there, quite a bit. It was a great trip, but I did have some extra baggage with me...

Yes, I decided to make a quilt and lug it across the pond! My dear friends Alex and Annie May bought a flat in London last year -- no small feat. I thought that was deserving of a handmade (er, machine-made) gift. Alex is an Englishman who studied abroad at Lehigh with me for a year, then I studied in his mother country the summer after. He's become one of my closest friends and we've managed to stay in touch despite the miles. (Actually, I see him more often than I see many of my pals who live in the U.S.!) When he started dating a lovely English-born, New Zealand-bred gal a few years ago, there wasn't any doubt we would become amazing friends, too. So, I had it in my mind to make them a quilt after the holidays, hopefully in time for my April trip.

I started on the quilt some time in the late winter -- details are getting fuzzy because it was so long ago! Annie has an eye for art and impeccable fashion sense, so I didn't want any fabrics that were too stodgy, cutesy, or traditional. I decided that some big, bold florals and geometrics would be the thing. Alex has no strong opinions about design or fabric that I know of, but he does have strong opinions about football, so I designed the colo(u)r scheme around his beloved Tottenham Hotspur team. 

The squares are large -- 10 x 10 -- I think, but that's because I really wanted to show off the large prints. I set the rows en pointe (diagonally) to add some visual interest. I didn't make this from a pattern, but I did pull out Amy Butler's Lattice Quilt pattern for reference when it came to the triangles along the edges. (That's the one I used for Drea's quilt way back when!) I quilted in a grid, shadowing the squares as I normally do.

There's really a hodgepodge of fabric in there. I ordered a fat quarter bundle of Camelot Cottons' Mint to Be line in navy, but I think you'd be hard-pressed to figure out which ones came from that line. There's also some Secret Garden fabric by Sandi Henderson that I've had in my stash since I started sewing, a few blenders from V and Co. (another go-to designer for me), and my favorite Joel Dewberry herringbone pattern that ends up in many of my projects. The back is a large polka dot pattern (Michael Miller, I think), and the binding is from Cotton + Steel. I thought the little Xs were appropriate, since that's how Alex and Annie always sign-off on their emails and texts. (It's a British thing!)

My friends seemed really surprised and pleased with the quilt, which currently sits in their lounge, so it was more than worth the hassle of trying to squeeze it into my suitcase for a transatlantic flight. Even better, they had just gotten engaged a few weeks prior, so the gift had a little extra meaning!

But that wasn't the only gift I made. My friends Lisa and Andrew had a daughter, Hattie, in between my visits to England. I made a pillow for Hattie's big sister Abigail when she was born, so Hattie needed one as well. 

I'd been dying to use the unicorn fabric from Heather Ross since I purchased it about a year prior, and I used some other purples and magentas from my stash. I hand-embroidered Hattie's name like I did for her sister, but this time around, I used quilt-as-you-go method for the pillow front. I'm a new convert! Some of my favorite sewing bloggers swear by it, and it is definitely both easy and effective for a project of this size.

It was a delight to meet Hattie, who is now 2, and see how much Abigail has grown up. They are sweet and silly little ladies, and I hope they enjoy their presents from their American auntie.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn't confess to spending way more time and money at Liberty than was strictly necessary. Annie took this shot of the awesome monkey quilt on display and inadvertently captured my super-serious fabric-buying face!

I don't know what it is about Liberty. My tastes in fabric don't usually lean toward dainty flowers, but there's so much history there and the fabric is so incredibly silky-soft, it's hard not to be enamored with it. They are an English national treasure! I ended up with 2 1/2 yards of fabric, a pack of mini-charm squares, and a large dent in my bank account balance. But when in London, right?

Next up: More baby gifts! (Shocker!)

Liberty Hexie Pillow

I've mentioned my love for Liberty on here quite a few times. (Psssst... If anyone at Liberty wants to give me fabric for my free advertising, I wouldn't complain!) On one of my visits to the Liberty store in London in 2013, I bought a variety pack of hexies for use in some future project. They were probably the cheapest thing in the store, and it was the best way to get a bunch of Liberty prints without spending my life's savings on yardage.

When it came down to using them, though, I had no clue what to do! They came with little hexagonal pieces of paper. I did some research and found out that these hexies were meant for English paper piecing. In EPP, you are supposed to fold the fabric around the paper pieces, hand-stitching them into shape using large, loose stitches. Then, you attach the shapes to one another at the edges using tinier whipstitches, being careful not to sew through the paper. Once your hexies form a pleasing shape, you pull out the big stitches you started with and remove the paper pieces. Lots of pressing later and voila! You have a nice, hand-pieced grouping of fabric that's ready to be appliqued!

I started my paper piecing journey in 2013, but I wasn't that into it. It seemed like a lot of work, and my hand-sewing was pretty sloppy. I made a hexie flower out of the blue Liberty hexies I had on hand, then machine appliqued it with navy thread onto an off-white background. This was on my old sewing machine, though, and the applique came out really heavy. (It kind of needed to be, in order to cover all of my inconsistent stitches!) I'm still debating what to do with this, and it has sat among my sewing projects for a while now.

However, during a recent binge of The Walking Dead, I found myself needing some craftiness to keep my hands busy during all of the zombie attacks. I decided to paper-piece all of the remaining hexies (there were fifty total!).

The front of a paper-pieced hexie, ready to be joined to other hexies.

The back of a hexie, with the paper still in it.

These hexies helped calm my nerves during season 4 of The Walking Dead. I only stabbed myself with a needle once or twice during suspenseful scenes.

I made another hexie flower to match the blue one, this time out of purples and dark pinks. I tried to be more careful with my hand-sewing, and my new machine is much better at applique, so the final product came out better than I anticipated! I originally thought I might frame this or make a mini-quilt out of it to hang on the wall, but I had a small cushion on hand from IKEA, so I turned it into a pillowcase.

Close-up of applique stitching. I used plum thread, with two layers of zig-zag stitching around the middle of the flower, and one layer around each of the petals.

The backing fabric is from one of V & Co's fantastic lines of monochrome blenders, and I think the leaves complement Liberty's florals nicely.

Though I really, really didn't need another throw pillow for my bed, I love how it looks with my bedding set and Aviary quilt.

Apologies for the poor lighting. My room is always dark, and I took this one on my phone, which didn't help!

With this success, I think I will try more English paper-piecing. I'm still not sure what to do with the remaining 30-some hexies. Maybe make a memory board? It's hard to commit to anything knowing how precious (and expensive) Liberty fabrics are -- no room for mistakes! But I do have another trip to London planned for April, so I suppose my arm could be twisted to buy more...

My New Sewing Machine

My Brother LX-2500 has served me well over the past 2 1/2 years as I dipped my toe into the world of sewing and quilting, but the more I worked on it, the more I started to notice its flaws. The thread tension would sometimes change for no good reason, leaving me with trails of loose or tight stitches I would have to pull out and redo. There's not a lot of space to push a large quilt through. The presser foot stopped lifting as high as it should, so I'd have to hold it in place when I needed it in the "up" position. And finally, it was very, very loud. 

As a beginner's machine, I could not recommend it highly enough. It has everything you need without any frills, and for occasional sewing or mending, it would be perfect. But this past fall, I knew I wanted to step up to a better machine. So, come Christmas, I knew what I would be asking for.

I did quite a bit of research. All of the sewing bloggers I read use Janomes, Berninas, or Jukis, it seems. But those are expensive (in the $1000-2000 range), and they also have a different layout than what I'm used to. I don't sew every day, and sometimes I even let a few weeks go by without sewing, so spending more than a few hundred dollars on a machine seemed excessive -- even if it would be a gift! 

Since I had a good experience with Brother, I set my sights on one of their computerized models, the CS6000i. It has the same layout as my old machine, but much more space to work with. There's even a snap-on table that extends your workspace. The digital display is easy to use and there are 60-some stitches. (I've only tried a handful, so far.) The automatic needle-threader was a selling point for me. It also came with a cover and several feet. Best of all, I found it on sale on Amazon in the range of $150, so I keep reminding my dad that I saved him a bunch money on my Christmas gift.

(A bonus peek at my Liberty quilt in progress!)

So far, it's been great. The tension is much more consistent, and so is the stitch length. It runs the fabric through much more smoothly than it's predecessor. And it's quiet! 

My first project was a pillow for my college friend Ryan's new son, Arthur. I used some Michael Miller fabric I had on hand and I machine-appliqued an "A" on the front. It came together in just a couple of hours. I hope the little man likes it!

(Ignore the rogue thread...)

Then, I made an apron for myself with some of the Joel Dewberry's Bungalow fabric my mom got me for Christmas. I used an apron of my dad's as a template, then I pretty much winged it! I mentally split the apron into a top and bottom, then I arranged the fat quarters to fit the separate parts. I lined the top piece and the bottom piece to give it some weight. For each piece, I pinned reverse sides of the outer fabric and lining fabric together, stitched around three sides (leaving the bottom of the top and the top of the bottom open), then flipped the piece right-side out. As I attached the lining for the top, I also attached the neck strap (whose fabric is from the very first quilt I made!). I added a pocket to the bottom. Then I connected everything with the middle band, and topstitched around each of the fabric pieces to give it more of a finished look. 

I decided to extend the ties at the last minute and had run out of that fabric, so I improvised. I wasn't 100% pleased with the top, so I added the extra strip of fabric, which I think brings it all together. When you look at the back, you can see how piecemeal it is, but I figure it doesn't really matter, since it's just for me.

It's big -- the sides wrap around my back, so they're almost touching. However, I'm a messy cook, so that's probably a good thing. I'm very happy with it. I like how crazy it looks with so may fabrics and colors. Maybe it will make me want to cook more often! 

Next up: Laundry Bags, Take 2

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!

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!