Category: Crafts

Gypsy costume

Last night I decided to get a start on the Gypsy costume for Georgia.  I would really like to have both Georgia and Chloe’s costumes done for their party on Sunday.  Knowing the Black Cat costume is pretty easy (just a shirt/ears/tail left) I decided to see how hard the Gypsy costume would be.

I cut out the pattern, then cut out the fabric and got the dress all sewn together.  The only part of the dress left is to sew the ribbon details on the bottom.  Then I have to make the scarf and belt which are both pretty easy (the scarf is already cut out, just needs fringe added to it.

The dress - this thing could fit me except for the arm holes! It's like a mumu.

This dummy is larger than me so it’s also not formed exactly how it will look on an 11 year old – it should drape more on her.  Then I decided to cut out the scarf (it’s just a square) and use the material that will be a fitted belt  to get a closer look at how the costume will look when finished.  So here it is with a little more shape.  The scarf will have red fringe at the bottom and the belt will have gromets and be tied in the front with yellow ribbon – this will be quite fun to make!

A better idea of what it will actually look like.

That was it for my night!  The roofers showed up nice and early this morning.  We got to talk to them about the extra hole we saw up there and they’re going to fix that hopefully.  I also wanted to verify they would be putting ice shield under the copper now that we could see it’s just bare wood up there.  I can’t wait to see what kind of progress they make today!

Sewing

October is a month of sewing!  I have to finish up Emily’s birthday quilt before this weekend when we see her and then I have to get 3 halloween costumes done for my cousins as well as maybe one for myself this year?!

So Tuesday night I squared up the quilt and made the binding.  Last night I attached the binding (still have to do all the hand sewing).

Binding attached ... ready to finish up!

Then I started on costumes, opting to start with Chloe’s costume first.  Chloe is going to be a Black Cat which is the simplest of all the costumes (hence the reason I’m starting it first) – it’s all one fabric plus some embellishments.  I don’t have an actual pattern so I am just winging it.  I started with a pair of pants – going with the pirate pattern I’ve used for 2 costumes already as a base.  Since pirate pants are short I had to adjust them but I got the basic line from the pattern.  I whipped up the pants in an hour.  Next up is the top and some ears and a tale!

Black cat pants all done

I will probably do Georgia’s costume next – a Gypsie – which has a pattern so should be easy and she picked some really fun fabrics and embellishments.  Then I’ll do the princess dress for Maia, again, following a pattern and it’s lots of pink fabrics!

Quilting finished!

Wow – 3 nights on aunt mo’s machine and the quilting on Emily’s quilt is completed!  That’s crazy!  I still have to make the binding and attach it which I will start this weekend and I think I’ll have the quilt done by the time I see Emily on the 18th.

Quilting finished
Close up of some of the quilting

The quilting is a mix of designs, I just quilted what I felt like in each block or section and then went around the border with swirls that had hearts and flowers in them.  I may fix up one corner where the batting was too small, I got some bunching of the fabric, I have to see how bad it is, I can take out the quilting in that corner and fix it if it’s really bad but it was too late last night to worry about it 🙂

Quilt time

I finally had a night where I could work on Emily’s quilt and get the top finished up!  I got the border on last night, then used a spray baster to put it together.  We’ll see how the spray baster works out for such a large quilt but it will make it easier to machine quilt if that’s the route I go.
I’m going to try machine quilting it but if that doesn’t work out i can always hand quilt it and make it her Christmas gift instead of bday gift.  I’m not even positive I can finish it for her birthday even if I machine quilt it.  I’ve never done one this large before!

Anyway – here’s  apicutre of the quilt just after i “basted” it!

Emily's quilt

The back of the quilt is 2 panels of fabric, one red and one yellow.

A little quilting

It doesn’t look much different at this point but it definitely is! Last night I finished piecing all 56 blocks together so it’s a single quilt top now!

All pieced together

Now i just need to cut and add borders, quilt it and bind it – yea “JUST” – oh boy! But I love the colors in this quilt and this pattern really went together quickly. It took maybe 2 hours or so to get all the blocks together, spread out over 2 nights.

I’m a little worried about the quilting part of this, it’s such a large quilt – never done one this large – it’s going to be hard to quilt!

Quilting!

It has been a very long time but yesterday I spent most of the day just doing things for myself.  This included reading a LOT and quilting!

Before lunch I got most of the cutting done for Emily’s quilt and had started piecing the blocks.  The cutting was hurting my back though so I quit for a few hours and read.  Around dinner time I had an unexpected guest – my friend Sarah came up!  So we got dinner and chatted together and then spent the evening in my sewing room and I got the blocks all ready to be sewn together.

After Sarah left I sewed all 60 blocks together!  Then I laid them out to come up with a pleasing layout.  Since it was midnight I decided not to try sewing them together but they are ready to be put together!  Of course then I was up until 3am reading and woke up this morning at 9 to spend 2 more hours reading (finishing my book).

Today Ryan comes home after a weekend away and we can just about start our real vacation working on the house.  I’m going to get started on some projects now and save quilting until later.

And after days of fiddling with my eye-fi card it is FINALLY uploading pictures to my computer automatically again!  So here’s a picture of the 56 blocks of Emily’s quilt all laid out in what will probably be the final layout!

Emily's Quilt - blocks all done

This quilt makes me so happy – I just love playing with bright colored fabrics, now I want one like this for myself (maybe minus Dora) 🙂  In total i’d say it took 6 hours to get to this point so far.  Next I piece the blocks together and then I need to shop for a border fabric!

This is the largest quilt I’ve made to date – it will be a twin size when completed.  Then I need to figure out how to quilt it!

Vacation start – veggie update

Well it’s the official start to our anniversary vacation and I’m going to spend the day quilting and relaxing to start off right! I actually started that last night 🙂

I walked around the garden (took 2 seconds) this morning and noticed my pepper is almost ready to pick! It turned orange!

Orange Pepper almost ripe

Looks like i’ll be enjoying this pepper very soon!  Much better than the tomatoes I don’t eat we’ve picked so far!

And since I got a start last night on quilting I’m all ready to go start cutting the fabric.  Last night I ironed all the fabric for Emily’s quilt and finished piecing the blocks from my herb quilt (pictures later).  We’ll see how far I can get on Emily’s quilt while listening to the end of Anne of the Island (Anne of Greengables book 3).

Tuesday Craft Night

I’ve decided that Tuesday nights will be craft night, which means I’ll do whatever I’m in the mood for but it’s not house work and it’s not work work.

So last night I went into my craft room around 7:30 and decided I wanted to go through my old unfinished projects to see what inspired me.  Finally I decided I wanted to finish up 2 projects – the first is a cross stitch round robin I did back in 2003.  A few online friends and I passed around projects and stitched on each others’ pieces.  My project was herb blocks so I have 8 finished blocks that I intended to finish into a small wall hanging for the kitchen. My grandmother made me 2 matching towels to go with the blocks so I could decorate my kitchen in an herb theme.

My other project is the quilt I plan to do out of the wedding blocks everyone signed for us at our wedding.  I bought fabric in Hawaii to make the blocks but dont’ have a pattern yet.

I decided to start small with the herb quilt.  I picked out two fabrics from my stash that coordinate and that call to me.  Originally I was going to just go with dark green but I decided since I like bright colors so much I would like the quilt more if I added more color.  So I went with brown and gold.  I found a pattern I liked and adjusted the block size to fit the blocks.  Then I cut all the pieces and started putting it together and got 4 of the 8 pieced already!

Now I need to decide if I should use green sashing between the blocks or just attach the blocks and add a green border and then gold/brown binding.

Here is my progress with and without the green… input welcome!

Herb blocks with green sashing
no sashing, green border

My first crafty night was definitely a success, after 2 1/2 hours of fiddling I went to bed and finished reading “A Fatal Waltz” by Tasha Alexander which I loved!  The 4th in the series is a little expensive on Kindle so I need to decide if I’m going to splurge or wait.

Tomorrow night I’m getting together with my cousin to do a practice hair style run for her prom this weekend!

Celebrations Weekend

This past weekend was the annual Celebrations of Needlework in Nashua.  I have been attending for 8 or 9 years now and always have a great time.  This year I decided to take some classes as I skipped it last year due to cost and interest.

The weekend began on Friday, I took the day off of work so I could take a class with my favorite teacher Jeannette Douglas.  I took Royalty ABC:

This class was great, some new stitches, time to stitch, great stories, everything I was expecting and hoping for. I made some good progress on the piece and always love stitching with silks!

Royalty ABC progress from class

Friday night my stitch group descended on my house for dinner with Vikki Clayton of Hand-Dyed Fibers. We ordered chinese and gabbed for a few hours.

Saturday it was back to Celebrations for my next class. This class was much more involved, it was a finishing class by Jackie du Plessis of It’s Finally Finished. It was called Chocolat and appealed to me for a number of reasons, not least of which was the wool bunny!

Chocolat

This piece I did not make much progress on in class, although I did start the hershey kiss (silver) stitching. However I worked on it during the flight to CA and made some good progress.

Chocolat progress

Saturday I had a sleepover with two of my friends staying over, we watched Jane Austen movies and stitched. I made some progress on My Stitching Treasures, taking the Royalty ABC class really got me interested in working on something of Jeannette’s.

Sunday a group of us took a Beginner Finishing course where basics for making ornaments and other small finished items from needlework was covered. This course was a great deal for your money and I started finishing a dragon ornament I stitched a few years ago.

All in all celebrations was great this year because of the classes. I’m hoping to finish something from this year but that’s always my goal 🙂