Monday, March 29, 2010

Quilt Top for the Church

I've only been to two church quilting meetings. They're very unstructured, you just bring your own toys and find a corner and do whatever. There's some fabric available, and I fell in love with this at the first meeting, but couldn't bear to actually take it out of the box and start cutting it up. I lacked math and bravery enough to match the amount of fabric that there was to a pattern and to a size. But after thinking about it for two months, the next time I went I brought the roses fabric home with me and just sliced it up into strips and assembled it as you see here. This was all the white roses fabric there was, but it was just enough!

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Superstar Barbie

Just what I needed! Another Barbie! I didn't have enough before this!
Hey, seriously, she was only three dollars...

Monday, March 22, 2010

spiral hems

I organized the spiral patterns on a page so I can refer to them by number. Or I ought to give them names, d'ya think? Maybe I will after I finally make a test for Skirt 1.

Anyway I made another Skirt 3. Here it is with the gores all together, and then together with a hem. I only need to make the elastic waist and that's quick.
Karen picked out those fabrics!



I wrestled with the serger yesterday! Felt like an hour, probably not that long. It should have been easy to change the threads, yet everything went haywire. Wrong tension or snapping, one looper mysteriously not threaded... started over from scratch and it was worse! Imagine a machine you need tweezers to thread. But once it finally got working right, it makes hems just like a charm. I serged the edge of Karen's skirt. Took only a few minutes, brrrrrrr around there, and it's done.

I pulled my spiral dress out of the closet, where it's been hanging ever since I made it. Remember that dress? How long's it been? Whenever I've had to sit down for a while, I've worked on hemming it by hand. I've gotten a couple feet of the hem done that way. Oh boy, how exciting...
Well I ripped out the couple feet of handstitched hem and serged around the edge. Five minutes and it's done. FORGET about some more elegant solution, let's wear the blasted thing this year, while I'm still walking around would be nice! It's not like there's going to be a surprise hem inspection! It looks fine enough :-)

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Burda spiral skirt

Look, Burda just came out with one! It's definitely better than the Butterick version but not as nice as mine :-)

http://www.burdafashion.com/en/Patterns/Main_Collection/7946_Skirt/1270778-1128998-1002130-1450414.html

I'm still around. Flash class just finished. I'm working on a spiral skirt for Karen, it's all cut out and sewing that today. Someone's asked me for lengths of spiral skirts, how long does it take to grab a tape measure?? Anyway it's on the to-do list! A couple other requests, I'll get to them...



Thursday, March 4, 2010

Camping Shirts

More free fabric! By the way it was cut, I think it was intended for
curtains. There was plenty to make two shirts for the boys! And they LOVE their shirts. It's so cute and makes me so happy when they boast about wearing clothes that I made for them. It's best in their opinion when they have a shirt AND pants on that were both sewn by Mom.

the Pfaff buttonholer






The Pfaff buttonholer is like the coolest thing EVER. I hadn't used it before this! It is so easy and perfect. The attachment holds the fabric like an embroidery hoop and does the moving for you. There's a setting for how long to make the buttonhole. Just push the foot pedal and watch it do its thing and then it stops automatically when it's done. Sweet...