Attempting the Washi Dress

There are a few patterns that float around the blogosphere that you see so often that eventually you just need to try. That's how I ended up making Anna Graham's 241 Tote, my Wiksten Tova dress, and now the famous Washi dress, by Rae Hoekstra.

I bought some Anna Maria Horner linen, Parenthetical in Deep, for the occasion. It's such an amazing print. I may have to get more to use to make an Art Student Tote, the pattern for which I bought a few weeks ago. And I may have to get some of Parenthetical in the cream color, and make another dress...

My first attempt at the Washi was definitely a failure. With three out of four measurements I fall right between M and L, and then an M for the fourth. Per the pattern description, the measurements are supposed to be somewhat generous, so I started off making a muslin in M and put it on. Way too tight!

Take two and I went for L. Still way too tight. This was rather mystifying. My measurements are smaller than the range for L (even measured over the top of a lightly padded bra), and I'm only a B cup. Searching on Google and resource links on Rae's Washi page pointed me to a couple of blogs and resources. The description of issues that might require a Full Bust Adjustment (FBA) certainly sounded like the problems I was having, but being a B cup and using a pattern that was supposed to accommodate B-C cups, it didn't make sense. The next alternative was moving the darts down and adding some length to the bodice. As that was the easier adjustment to make, I was going to attempt that first before the FBA.

While I was in the process of making those adjustments on the pattern and browsing Google to find other people's experiences I came across another blog post, Jen over at Made on the Couch in which Jen was having the same problems I was. She had found out that the problem was the pattern not having been printed at the correct scale. In her case it was 1/8" of an inch difference, which as she rightly pointed out isn't a lot on its own, but makes for a large difference over an entire pattern. I'd had the pattern printed by a friend at his job (I haven't owned a printer in a couple years), and while he'd supposedly printed it at 100%, it may have been the printer that just wasn't accurate. In my case, the difference was 1/16th of an inch. Not quite as big a discrepancy as Jen, but over the width of the front bodice, it adds up to 1 1/4 inch. Finally it made a lot more sense.

Once Jeff goes back to work and has access to the really nice and accurate printer there, I'll have him print the pattern again and will attempt Washi once more. In future I think I may also opt for a paper pattern rather than instant gratification if the option exists.

Fossil Squared

Over the summer I finally finished my brother's quilt. This was the quilt I'd hoped to finish back in May to take with me when I visited, but sadly it didn't work out that way. I was unhappy with the random straight line quilting I was doing, and had to take all that out. I ended up running out of time to take it out and re-do it.

The pattern is based on How To Be Jenna's Dusty Springfield quilt (which she now sells a pattern for on her site!) I made mine larger and made it 6x7 colored squares rather than 5x6. I wanted to be a nice big quilt for a 6 foot guy to snuggle under, hence sizing up. At this size it'll also be a decent throw across the end of his bed too.

For the back I used a charcoal batik from Joann's with 2 more squares from the Benartex Fossil Fern charm pack. As my brother liked quilts that ran from warm to cool colors, I picked one of each. In the future if I go the route of (Joann's?) batik again, I will likely pre-wash the batik, or not forget the color catchers in the wash. I think it was the batik that bled through a bit and left some staining on the white on the front around the stitching. It wasn't hugely noticeable, but it was a rather devastating find, as I had wanted it to be amazing. The color catchers would likely have really helped. I quilted it with straight lines through the white between the color blocks and the crosses.

Besides the bleeding issues, I'm really happy with how this turned out. When my dad and step mom came to visit from the UK in October they took it back with them and will be giving it to my brother when they see him in December. I hope he loves it as much as we here all did, it was hard to let that one go!

WIP Wednesday #9

I'm feeling pretty good about the progress I made on the weekend with my brother's quilt, which only has the hand-stitching on the binding left. A task that's being accomplished in the evenings whilst watching TV.

Then there was the Flip Side top I finished, which now moves towards another stage of completion. Or, rather, the stack of finished quilt tops that need assembling and quilting. With that one, I have the backing fabric, and won't need to agonize over the choices for a pieced back (Ghastlies quilt, I'm looking at you! And my Lotta Jansdotter Echo quilt for that matter.)

Over the past few days, though, I've been working on a Sparkle Punch (Wonky Stars) quilt. I'd cut 3.5" wide strips of about 81 Lizzy House fabrics back in April, and now came time to convert those strips into squares. 80 pairs of 5 squares for whole stars, and then more squares for the partial stars.

Monday I sliced up some white cotton for the 384 neutral squares I'd need. Then more cutting as most of the patterned squares needed slicing into triangles. Presently I'm sewing the star points. Hopefully by the weekend I can get most of those sewn, trimmed and sewn some more and ready to plan the layout of the entire quilt.

Echo sitting on a project in a more embryonic stage, which will be an adapted Jaybird Quilts' Chopsticks quilt, with Wrenly fabric and Kona solids. This will have to wait a little longer, as I want to clear a few more WIPs off the list, or make some more progress on them first, before I end up with a huge stack of quilt tops and too few finished quilts.

WIP Wednesday #4

It's been a while since I got any real sewing done. The holidays interfered a bit, and some personal stuff too. Recently I decided to start cutting into half of my Fandango layer cake for the Jaybird Quilts' Carnival pattern I've had lying around for a while. I did quite a bit of the cutting the other weekend and on some random days here and there along with a little of the piecing too.



Yesterday I finally sewed together most of the blocks, and then the rows and the rest of the quilt top.

Lieam helped while I pieced the rows...



Blocks all done and now awaiting the borders:



And roughly 5 seconds after laying the blocks on the couch to take the above picture, Shiloh made herself at home on it...



I'm not sure what it is about fabric and quilts, they are like cat magnets! I do look forward to one day having a living space that has a separate room for me to use as a sewing studio, and for Jeff's music things, one where we can restrict the access of the furbeasts (and sometimes even the teacup humans!).

I'm glad I got some more progress made on this quilt though, it felt good to be able to sew anything more than 15 minutes worth.

Wip Wednesday #3

Back in August, I was lucky enough to win 2 charm packs of Kate Spain's Terrain over on Melanie's blog, and a while ago I decided to indulge my love of whirligig pinwheels and make some. For this, I used the Charmed Whirligig tutorial over on the Turtle Hill Quilter blog.



Now I have a stack of lovely colorful Whirligigs!



Of course, in a moment of inattentiveness, I messed it up a bit too, and cut 2 of the charms the wrong way, so they whirl in the opposite direction. Doh!



I'm considering using the two wrong-way-round whirligigs in the backing. No real loss, but it shows you what happens when I start cutting before a morning dose of caffeine!

WIP Wednesday

On Monday I picked up my Flipside quilt again, and took what I'd assembled apart again (2 rows of blocks and the sashing between them), and reassembled them with some tweaking so that the inaccuracies are either gone or much less noticeable (spray starch with the pressing was a lifesaver here, smaller pieces tend to be so much easier to get pulled out of shape, and this stops that quite a bit). I'm much happier with it, though there are still 2 other rows that need to be attached, and the sashing will need to be duly tweaked, because those inaccuracies from having pieced almost half of each block on a terrible and inaccurate sewing machine before I got the new one certainly took its toll. Ah well, onward and upwards!

Here's what I have so far (Lieam made himself at home almost immediately):



And yesterday I managed to get the Olivia the Pig quilt for Miss Matilda basted. Apparently I need to do this during the day and not in the evening. For a start, the kids are at school for large portions of the day (though yesterday they were with their dad), and the cats are asleep most of the day, which stops Miss Isobel from lying on it immediately, and Mr Lieam from tearing across it as though it's a playground, as he is wont to do when I make the bed as well. Both he and Shiloh L-O-V-E it when you make the bed or fluff the sheets and covers. I'm not sure why it tickles them so, but it does.



Now, this isn't a large quilt at all, but man do your knees hurt after sitting that way for a while basting the entire thing. I'm a bit iffy about the idea of spray basting, though I guess it washes out completely? The fact that my knees wouldn't feel like I'm 85 when I get up after half an hour on a wooden floor makes it appealing though. Ideas?

I hope to get the Olivia quilt quilted tonight, it'll be some simple quilting, probably wonky lines straight across. I haven't decided on grey thread or white or possibly to go for pink. I made the binding a few weeks ago, so I don't have to worry about that, and can sew that on pretty easily. The binding will be Kona Charcoal with bits of the red with white polka dots interspersed.

Oh, and I extended the dining table and put the leaf in. This gives me a bit more working space, and also enough space on the table that I can keep project stuff on one end, and have enough room for everyone to sit comfortably and eat at the table. I do so long for a separate work room! I have to say I was a little bit envious of seeing Julie Herman's lovely new work space on her blog yesterday. So much sun and light in there! A very happy place to work in.

Ending the Summer

I feel like time has slipped by the past two weeks or so!

The kiddos came back from vacation with their dad, and last week school started for Dashiell. He's back at Kindergarten, with the same teacher and the same aide helping him, so many things will be familiar for him.

This week, Matilda had orientation for her 3's preschool class, which starts tomorrow. She's so excited. She's wanted to go to school since she was old enough to express a desire to, and since Dash has been going (he's been in various Special Needs school programs since he turned 3 and left Early Intervention for CPSE/CSE).

Summer is almost gone, and it makes me a bit sad. I'm happy for the days with more moderate weather though... what we have right now is perfect! Warm, sunny, days with nice temperatures, low(er) humidity, and cool evenings. I'd like months more of this please!

The past weekend we took the kids to the Renaissance Faire, dressed in last year's Halloween costumes (Renaissance princess and a knight). Matilda really enjoyed all the dressing up. Dashiell's a little difficult to manage at events like this, but I think he enjoyed himself too.

All of this means that I haven't sat at the sewing machine all week, besides to fix some elastic on Miss M's undies, and a ripped seam on her costume.

My Flipside [Rachel Griffith pattern] quilt has been giving me some problems, which hasn't helped. All blocks were partially sewn on my old machine and partially on the new one, so the seams for the older machine stitched parts aren't as accurate, and so the blocks aren't accurate as the pattern calls for. This is an issue because the sashing uses a little block of color on the intersection between blocks, and I'm having problems matching the seams up. The discrepancies are REALLY bothersome and noticeable, otherwise I would have just gone ahead with it. I haven't entirely decided whether I'm going to try again to make things match up, or just do away with the little colored intersection squares, and just make it white sashing all the way. I think the latter may save my peace of mind.

Last week I received some Terrain charm packs in the mail. I was lucky enough to win a giveaway on Melanie's blog My Fifteen Minute Break {thanks Melanie!}. I really want to make Whirligig pinwheels with them. I do have a Lil' Twister ruler, but while fun, that doesn't leave me with square blocks. I'm considering making one of the pinwheel quarters a different fabric, rather than pinwheels all from the same print, but I'll have to play with that and see.

Starting With New

I'm not sure there are words to describe how much better sewing is with a machine that functions properly. It's so much easier! I'm not fighting to make the pieces go through straight now that I have a new 1/4" foot (after having to replace the one that came with the new machine due to being slightly bent). The feed dogs on this machine actually work properly, so things don't shift as much. I can finally sew without feeling all frustrated and on edge.

I'm very excited! It's nice not to feel constantly stressed while you sew, afraid that the inferior machine is bungling up your nice fabric, and that your quilt will, at the end, not be as awesome as you imagined because there are all these tiny mistakes constantly adding up to make the whole thing off.

The replacement foot didn't arrive until Friday, and I didn't get as much sewing done on the weekend as I would have liked, due to various social engagements, but I've managed to sew on my Flipside blocks a little yesterday and today:



That's roughly two-thirds of the way in, then I'll need to cut up the white sashing and such.

Halloween Taffy

Anyone who knows me knows that I have a deep abiding love for spooky and creepy things. I love things like Halloween and the Day of the Dead and the symbolism and decor surrounding these days. I like scary movies and horror and other speculative fiction and have spent plenty of time socializing within the gothic and peripheral scenes in various places for longer than I especially care to admit to. I'm not sure when this interest was hatched, but it's been longstanding. I think quite a bit of credit should go to Roald Dahl, one of my favorite childhood authors. He was always nice and subversive with his kids' fiction and its crazy sense of humor.

I love the visuals that the gothic scene taps into, the black and white horror movies of Bela Lugosi and the Hammer films with Christopher Lee as Dracula, the drippy lace of the Victorians, the decidedly skewed artwork by people such as Edward Gorey, Charles Addams and Tim Burton, who also invokes these moods so well in many of his movies. So when I came across Alexander Henry's prints of the Ghastlies, I was sold. These prints are very reminiscent of the artwork by those people... scratchy ink drawings with dastardly themes.


The Ghastlies. Delicious!

Initially I'd thought about trying to use some of the larger prints in a pattern such as Hibiscus, taken from one of the Quiltmania magazines that my mother had and which is now in my possession.


Hibiscus - Quiltmania #41 - May/June 2004.

And then the other day it hit me, after I had gone ahead and ordered the newly released patterns by Jaybird Quilts... Taffy would be perfect! It has large focal squares for the larger scale prints, and allows for the use of a variety of the smaller scale prints within the rest of the blocks. I do still want to do one in the Kate Spain Terrain line though, when that comes out (oh, September, you are too far away still!), but in the mean time, this is a pretty neat project that I'd like to put together.

Rain, Rain, Go Away!

I had big plans to take pictures of the top I finished for Matilda's Olivia the Pig quilt, but the weather isn't playing nice. It is pouring with rain and is dark outside, and even darker inside. I feel bad for my son Dashiell, today was supposed to be their outside water fun morning at school. Well, they'll definitely get wet...

So here's a picture I prepared earlier!

With all 3 of the quilt tops that I'd been working on finished, I don't feel so bad starting other ones. I have to wait for batting before I can work on those again.

One of the other projects I have waiting to start is Flipside. The pattern is by Rachel Griffith and the fabrics are from Kate Spain's Central Park line. I really really like this particular line of fabric, especially the oranges and yellows, it's so sunny and bright and makes me very happy.



With the weather the way it is, I'm sure I'll get quite a bit of cutting done this afternoon.

First!

I finished my first large quilt top. I would say it was my first quilt, and it was certainly the one I started first, and acquired fabric for first, but not the one I finished first.

The honor of truly being the first one goes to a Charm Square Baby Quilt I made using Elizabeth Hartman's free pattern, and with a pack of charm squares of Oliver + S's Modern Workshop, with Kona Meringue for the sashing. As that is intended for a gift, only a sneak peek of that one:



My Kitchen Window quilt top, inspired by a custom bundle that I saw on Fabricworm's site a few months back. Pattern from Elizabeth Hartman's book.



Certainly it was a learning experience. It has plenty of flaws, though nothing that really takes away from the enjoyment of the piece (the underside is a little embarrassing though, where I can see all the issues with not so accurate seam allowances), but definitely something that has taught me a lot in various areas. I still have the basting and quilting and finishing to do, so I can't get too ahead of myself here, but I'm pleased with the results.

Quilting With Cats

Life with felines is pretty fun. That said, they sometimes have a habit of getting fantastically in your way. They also seem to be drawn like magnets to anything you make, or anything you are about to start working on. I swear they have a sixth sense about these things...

Until last Saturday, we had 2 resident felines. Shiloh (stripy, now quite large, a huge wimp) and Isobel (tortoiseshell, bossy, sounds like Fran Drescher with a 2 pack a day smoking habit). Ever since we had an additional cat house guest earlier in the year, the idea of adding a third, and adding some cat testosterone into the mix has played on our minds. We finally went to the SPCA and acquired a small black 8-week-old boy cat, whom we have named Lieam, after a mouse from the graphic novel series Mouse Guard, written and drawn by David Peterson.

Trying to quilt with cats involves all kinds of obstacles like having your rotary mat covered in fur-beast:



Receiving "help" with the cutting:



And having to iron around objects:



Our newest addition, Lieam:

Mail Goodies

Yesterday the UPS man delivered the remainder of fabrics from Kate Spain's Fandango line that I'd ordered last week. This fabric will be used to create a rendition of Jaybird Quilts' Carnival pattern.

I still need to order my contrasting solid, but I'm very excited already! Last week I also received some other Kate Spain fabrics, a layer cake and another fabric for binding from her Verna collection. That will go towards making Bloom's Abracadabra quilt.

Presently I'm working at finishing up the other 2 quilt tops that I'm working on. My Kitchen Window quilt top is almost complete (hopefully today!), and the Olivia the Pig themed quilt I'm working on for Miss Matilda shouldn't take too much longer either.

Sometimes it's hard to focus on finishing things and stop from getting too over excited about new projects, so I'm trying very hard to avoid getting ahead of myself, and to avoid putting too many projects on the list of things I want to do and creating a list that'll never get finished. This kind of thing is made even more difficult with so many outstanding patterns and fabric collections out there! Eek!