by Nancy
The color this month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is purple. Here’s my first purple house. The fabric for the door comes from the original crackpot quilt – Nicholas’ baby quilt made by his aunts and grandmas before he was born. I didn’t realize I had any of the fabric left, and it was a nice surprise when I found it among my purple stash.
I finished my 4th scrappy blue house this week. They are a lot of fun to make!
by Nancy
Last weekend, while I was watching a soccer game in chilly weather, I was struck with inspiration for my next quilting project: a warm quilt for soccer game watching. Since Nicholas’ and Andrew’s club soccer team colors are red and white, I decided to use red and tan. Here’s what I found in my stash:
My plan is to do some machine applique letters to spell the kids’ names, soccer, and their club name, Cutters.
I haven’t done any machine applique in a while, so my first practice letter wasn’t great, but after I looked up the directions for how to pivot on inside and outside corners, things went much better.
Since it was fall break, I had quite a bit of time to work on it, especially since the weather was bad and the kids were visiting grandparents for the first part of the week. I really wanted to find some good soccer print fabric, and I went to all 3 fabric stores in town but didn’t find anything I liked.
I did do a few other things besides sewing during fall break, such as cleanin
g out some closets and making cinnamon rolls. Yum!
On Saturday Andrew had a soccer tournament in Indianapolis, and there was enough time between games to visit one of the quilt stores. They had just what I was looking for:
So far, I have the letters of Nicholas cut out, ready for applique…
By Nancy
School starts Monday, so on Saturday afternoon Nicholas, Andrew, and I went in to school to hang up my quilt. Everyone agreed that it should go on the wall above my computer, and hanging it was quite easy. I used Command removable hooks, which seemed to work well. Hopefully it will still be on the wall when I go in Monday morning!
By Nancy
Anna’s quilt is finished! I finshed sewing the binding on this past week at the Quilting Ladies, and then I put a label on this weekend. I am not very good about putting labels on my quilts, but this time I did it. Now all I need to do is give it a wash, and it will be ready to go to Anna. Yay!
I’ve also finished machine quilting the tulip wall hanging for my classroom, and now I’m working on the binding for that.
by Nancy
Here are a few updates on Crackpot project progress this week:
At school, I cleaned out a third filing cabinet drawer. Three down, one to go! (For this summer, anyway…)
The binding has been machine sewed to Anna’s quilt, and now I’m working on hand stitching it to the back. I got one of the four sides done, working on it a lot while watching World Cup Soccer. I’m very happy that the U.S. and Germany made it out of the Group of Death.
I basted the top, batting, and backing of the Tulip Quilt for my classroom.
And I started quilting it! (The window work is finished, so my sewing machine is now back in the sunroom.) I’m quilting in the ditch around the flowers with clear monofilament thread.
by Nancy
Saturday was the last blue Scrappy Saturday for May. I finished up a 10″ block of blue scraps:
I also finished 70 of these 3″ rail fence blocks.
I hope to turn them into a reusable grocery bag. I had some extra duck cloth in the basement that I planned to use for the bag, but when I got it out of the basement, it smelled sort of funny. So, I threw it in the wash this morning. It came out very wrinkled, so we’ll see what it looks like after some pressing or whether I need to come up with a Plan B.
This gray jacket is my first sewing project for 2013. It’s a tailored jacket with a shawl collar and sleeve vents, and it’s fully lined. The gray wool tweed fabric had been in the cedar chest for a while.
Here are the sleeve vents.
I hadn’t made a tailored jacket for a while so I needed some reference materials. The Bishop Method book is from 1959. It’s the same book (but not the same copy) that my mother used when she took a tailoring course and made a gray suit for me in 1959 or 1960. There’s lots of valuable information in that book. The other books are newer, and they show methods for using fusible interfacing. That’s primarily what I used.
The fronts, including the undercollar, were interfaced with Armo Weft. All the other pieces were underlined with French Fuse. The chest reinforcement is French Fuse. The back stay is made of poly cotton. I made the shoulder pads from poly fleece, making my own pattern so they would fit this jacket. The sleeve heads are made of lambswool that must have come from my mother’s stash. The lining is polyester.
The pattern is from 1989. Check out those shoulders!
One resource I did not have available was my favorite alterations book. Someone else checked it out of the library. The nerve! I’m third on the reserve list. As a result I was left on my own to make the many, many, many alterations. I made two muslins. Of course, I shortened the jacket and the sleeves. I lowered the back neck seam, adjusted the collar to match, narrowed the shoulders and the upper back, enlarged the biceps, and enlarged the waist and hips. By the time I was finished with all that and more, I had to draw a pattern for the lining.
And in keeping with the retro nature of this project, it was sewn entirely on my 1964 Singer. The Baby Lock was temporarily indisposed but has recovered by now.
This was a challenging, but very satisfying, project. I enjoyed re-learning lots of tailoring techniques.
By Ann
13 blocks* completed; only 36 more to go!
*One more block has been completed since these photos were taken. 3 more are nearing completion.
by Nancy
I finished sewing the hanging sleeve on yesterday at Quilting Ladies:
