Stitching in the Barn

I want to participate in Sew Scrappy September just started by the Fat Quarter Shop but don't know if I can. Some of the scraps I have in my modest stash. There's still plenty. I want to do a pillow with Moda Blockheads #33 here . Lets see if I can with my full schedule.

 Made from the information from The Fabric Patch found on their You Tube channel here . I love this pattern it makes the perfect fitted mask. It is supposed to contain 30 sizes.        Applique added to the black one above for my son. Just a font from MSWord enlarged, fused then later stitched.

I saw this wreath on the Charm About You blog while I was scanning Quilter Blogs over the holidays and watched the video at the bottom of her instruction page   and saw a lovely new years wreath in it. In the new years wreath the similar fabrics were paired and I thought they looked like hearts.  I asked my daughter if my MIL would like the wreath in Valentines day fabrics and she thought it was a great idea. We are blessed to have a crafting thrift store nearby. She went and picked up several different fabrics at $3 a yard. It's funny because I donated some Valentines day fabrics to them in the past year because I never thought I'd use Valentines day fabric. She brought home some lovely fabrics, I already had a Dresden plate ruler and I cut an 8 inch strip from each fabric and made a total of 36 hearts over the past 2 days. We only need 20 hearts for the whole wreath. My daughter is going to arrange them into a wreath and add some gems and decorate one side ...

It was February 2016, wow!  I wrote several posts and left them in the draft folder at the end of 2017 but never published them. Life has totally crippled my quilting game for a long time but quilting makes me happy. I'm getting back into quilting and realizing how much joy it brings to my life that I am totally convinced I have to quilt more. I'm going to start with a picture of some fabrics I pulled from my stash for a toddler quilt. I'm going to use these in a quilt inspired by Waves by Missouri Star Quilt Company, info on this page https://quiltingtutorials.com/tutorial/make-a-waves-quilt-with-jenny It's going to have a black background and the multicolored batik as a border. Finished size will be about 50 inches square. If you want a bit of life story you can read it below. I mostly wrote it for self documentation. I've got one baby quilt finished at the end of last year and I'm working on another baby quilt with a QAYG method that I think...

I was looking at my old Craftsy account and noticed I put some free baby shoe patterns on my wishlist ages ago. There have been 2 babies, a boy and a girl, born into my family recently so I thought these would make great gifts.  Then the JoAnn's ad came in and Simplicity patterns were on sale. So after looking at their website catalog, which is in the middle of being updated, I saw they had several baby shoe patterns to sew. When I got got the store, there were only 2 available so I bought those along with pink felt and fleece, on sale, and some fusible fleece to make them. I absolutely fell in love with view G on Simplicity 1677. They are the cutest little felt and fleece Ugg style booties and I knew I'd have to sew these up right away. It was only 3 pattern pieces but it took longer to sew than I anticipated. I made them over a couple of days and I stayed up too late to finish them. The color is best in the first picture.

My added free time and love of quilting has brought on a renewal of a love of fabric. When I saw the new Pen And Ink collection on Connecting Threads , I knew I had to have some! I really love that when your order is shipped it gives you an estimated delivery date but it comes a couple days sooner. My order was supposed to get here Saturday, January 16 but it arrived Thursday the 14th. It may be because I'm technically in a rural area but it's really close enough to the big city that it doesn't take much longer. I got the Zip Zip bags kit , the Jazz Age table runner along with one 10 inch square sampler set of 17 fabrics in that collection. I also got some clearance stuff, 5 inch square packs and a set of fat quarters. I love getting new fabric & petting them! Then, I got the JoAnn's ad in the mail. Anti pill fleece was 70% off so I bought 4 yards for window blankets. While there, I found a lovely navy knit that looks nice on both sides. I got 3 yard...

In my son's middle school, they have restrictions on the size of the bag they can carry around. Last school year I made my own pattern thinking it would be easy but it ended up very involved. I used the one I bought from the school, at the beginning of the year for $15 that was coming apart at the seams as a guide. It was made from cheap nylon and no lining. My remake had a cotton print outside and a ripstop nylon lining inside with grommets in the corners like the original. I used some thick cording for the straps/drawstring and it worked. It took me all day to figure out and 3 hours to make but it held up the rest of the year and his friends wanted to buy it off him at the end of the year.  It was successful but this past summer I saw this pattern at a Jo Ann's and decided to buy it. It comes in mini to medium and the biggest size was within my 17" X 15" maximum limit.

This top was the first time I worked with a knit fabric. I was previously scared of them & I don't have a serger so I stayed away from them. Then I saw this lovely purple butterfly print I just couldn't pass up.  I looked in my pattern stash and on Pattern Review.com and found McCall's 6326 was an easy top that came out good. I chose view C and cut it out in a size 20, one size smaller than the pattern flap measurements. Front

You can skip straight to the review under the break. I bought Burda 7670 at Jo Ann's when they went on sale for $2.50. I buy most of my patterns when they go on sale for $1-$2.50. They go on sale at different times but usually once a month. Burda used to never go on sale but now they do and this one was one of the first I picked up. Before the sale, I get on the company's website, look through the catalog & write down the pattern number and sometimes a brief description. It saves time but sometimes, when I look at the pattern envelope I decide to not buy it because it looks different in a larger picture. Sometimes, I flip through the books at the store and see patterns I wouldn't have picked because the pictures are so much bigger than online, even though they are the same pictures. I've picked up a lot of patterns for basic things like button down shirts, boxers, pants, jeans and coats. I don't ever stitch them up right away but I do read the instru...

This pattern intrigued me this past spring. The shorts were unlike anything I had seen before so I decided to make a muslin for it. It's a misses size pattern and I cut the biggest, size 22.

It's been a long time but I actually got some projects done. I've been focusing on sewing my own clothes and making thrift store items fit. I've had a lot of success this past weekend on both fronts so I'll have quite a few posts scheduled for the next week or so. I think I've caught a fall sewing bug! I took a 3x large knit shirt I found at the thrift store and took it in 2 inches on each side to fit me. I could probably take in a bit more but loose & comfy is OK. Then there was an unknown size, long, purple, knit camisole that gaped a lot under the armpit that I just darted in on the side seams and now it fits beautifully & hides my bra. The most I spent on those two items together was $4 so I'm pretty happy with that. I had a skirt that was two sizes too big with stretched out elastic in the back of the waist. It also had a facing instead of a waistband so I took out the elastic, sewed three channels into the facing around the waist and threaded i...

I've known about this quilt forever. I originally read about it on the Quilting Board way before I'd seen the Jelly Roll Race or the 1600 inch quilt. You can find the original post here: http://www.quiltingboard.com/tutorials-f10/super-fast-jelly-roll-quilt-t44258.html   I recommend you wade through it because there are a lot of nice examples. On page 7 is a picture tutorial and somewhere in there is a discussion of making different sizes and using different widths. She used to have a PDF printout for free but you could just print the first page.  Anyways, I used my JoAnn's, 20 strip jelly roll to try this out.  I wanted to also separate the strips by piecing squares in between them. I really like that look for this quilt so I chose a crazy scrap I had laying around and cut twenty 2 1/2 inch squares. The jelly roll had only ten different fabrics, 2 strips of each, so I pieced squares on one end of each strip. I should clarify, you need to piece strips ...

My kids finished up a project each right before I caught a cold so I haven't been able to post them until now.  My son (11) made a collar for his cat Amy. We set up the Kumihimo disk with a simple blue and black yarn setup and he worked on it for quite a while until it was done. Here's Amy modeling it for us. We left the ends untrimmed so she could play with them, which she did until they came off.  My daughter (19) took Simplicity pattern #1953 and made it her own. The only animal hat she liked a little was the panda except he looks sad so she decided to make a llama instead.  She had a vintage machine that was too powerful for her to control so I gave her my easy to use Singer. She likes it a lot better and had no problem sewing this together. She designed the ears, face applique and snout. It's so cute. It was made to fit my son so he's modeling it for us. She wants to make a whole menagerie of hats now.

I was sick last weekend when I wanted to finish this quilt so it had to wait until yesterday. It's about 33 inches square and made from a kit by Connecting Threads that I got for Mother's Day last year. It's made exactly as pictured in the directions but I pieced the blocks the way I preferred. I thought about changing it up some. I wanted to put something in the light print squares other than the letters but I couldn't decide what to do. However, once I traced out the letters and put the fusible on the fabric, I noticed the fabric went perfectly with them. In the end, I'm happy I didn't do something off the wall.  Since this is a wall quilt, I free motion quilted it very tightly. I had so much fun doing it and picking out what I wanted to do in each square. I think my favorite are the pinwheel and the spool blocks. Quilting it around Valentines' Day also influenced my design. In the blue corner squares, I used a red variegated thread and did a sti...

 I finished quilting the center part of my quilt this past weekend. I started quilting the border but after the first one, I knew the design I picked for it was not going to work. I'll post more about that tomorrow. I needed to take a break from it so I made an apron instead. I used Simplicity 4987 and t he skull and crossbones remnant to make this:

So I couldn't help myself & went back to Jo Ann's yesterday. I was supposed to buy some Kona solid white there but I couldn't resist the sale and I could get it with a 50% off coupon this week. I went to a different store & they had the patterns on my list that I still wanted and the 1 inch bias tape maker I couldn't find at the other store

On Friday, after work, I went to Jo Ann's because of the sale.