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laundry from paris apartment

18 Aug

I wish my laundry was in a Paris apartment!

This is my new travel laundry bag made with Bari J.‘s Paris Apartment line.

I’m working with fat quarters so the back uses one quarter with the front pieced to match the size.

You put right sides together, stitch the sides and bottom together, leaving the top open.  Then turn and press the top down 1/4″, then turn down another 1″.  With the bag wrong side out, edge stitch the bottom edge for the drawstring pocket/casing.

Then turn the bag right side out and edge stitch the very top of the bag.  Make a couple of bar tacks at the top edge and bottom edge of the casing, then use a seam ripper to take out the stitches between the bar tacks.  This gives you a little hole for the drawstring.

You could use ribbon, but I made a spaghetti style string for mine.  The main panel on the front is the embroidery sampler from Bari J.’s new project, We love french knots.

I love the look of all the knots clustered together.

Well, all this talk of dirty laundry has reminded me I have my share waiting for me down by the washing machine…

we traveled handmade

15 Aug

We took a little trip last week.

Cj’s favorite part of any hotel stay is having snacks in bed while watching tv.

ahhh the simple pleasures (this was taken about 4 o’clock in the afternoon)

Lulu and I did our best to travel handmade.

Here she is in the elevator with her weekender.

Here’s my weekender.

I love it.

Lily of the valley and purple are some of my favorite things, so I was thrilled to find enough of this fabric. (hooray superbuzzy) It’s the weekender pattern from Amy Butler.  (I love that link because I could access it with my phone and get the pattern requirements while I was in the fabric store, before the pattern arrived at my house.) I tend to have good luck with her patterns.  Although there was one point around step 11 where I finally had to stop and slowly read out loud the same step a couple of times because I just couldn’t figure out what she was talking about.  Once I figured it out it was smooth sailing.  For me, the biggest help was to stitch slowly, pin the corners with several pins, and also not stitch too closely when making the piping.

You can see my zipper pouch made from tape measures that a friend gifted me, along with the tiniest bit of the edge of an embroidery hoop sticking out of the pocket.  I had the best of intentions to get some stitching done, but was too tired by the end of each day.

I also finished a simple drawstring laundry bag from a fat quarter of the dwarves’ laundry print from Heather Ross.

her weekender

2 Aug

This is lulu’s weekender bag.

When it was all done, she threw it over her shoulder and told me it’s her favorite of all the things I have a made for her.

I really don’t think you can receive a better compliment.

It’s made with Ty Pennigton’s home dec fabric (Moorish) and the pattern is Amy Butler’s Weekender.  And, I had no intention of having the fabric line up like it did.  I didn’t even notice how nicely it matched up until I was looking at these pictures.  I know, I’m pathetic.

Now I can get started on mine.

summer days

23 Jun

Seems like it rains everyday, but we have managed to sneak in some outside time.

Lulu is blending colors for the perfect sunset.

I conducted a little picnic blanket experiment.

I got a great deal on some fabric and was desperate to make something loaded with pattern.

I also tried out some applique with satin stitch.

I frenchified picnic to picnique which was not without incident.  After I had everything fused AND stitched down I realized my u was upside down.  After a few choice sewing words, I had it the right way.

It has flannel instead of batting so it’s lightweight.  I used crochet thread to tie it.  Instead of making a binding I left the backing 1 3/4″ wider, folded it over onto the front, and machine stitched it.

Here’s the back.

We are in the midst of planning for next week’s big event.

Someone here is turning 7!

how to make a broken fence block

16 Jun

I always forget all the little short cuts that can make patchwork go more smoothly.

I think about strip sets only after I’ve individually stitched an entire postage stamp style quilt.

So, when it came to making a non-traditional rail fence block I put extra thought into what I could do to make the piecing part go a little more smoothly.

Here’s how I make the blocks for my broken fence quilt.

I cut 12 1/2″ squares of fabric.  (a total of 36 for my lap quilt)

I want 5 bars in each block so I work with 5 pieces of fabric at a time.

I stack the five pieces on top of each other and make 4 random cuts with my rotary cutter.

Then divide the pieces so that each block had a slice from each fabric.

I stitch the pieces together with a 1/4″ seam and press.

After pressing, I trim each block to 10 1/4 ” square.

This method gives you 5 blocks at a time, but my quilt is made of 36 blocks.  For the last block you can just make one block with individually cut strips, you can make an extra set of five (use extras on back or in another project), or you can do one set of six.  I will warn you (because I didn’t think this all way through when I chose this option) if you do six cuts, your block will be shorter than 10 1/4″ .  I simply add an extra strip on those blocks.

For this quilt I cut the bluish blocks vertically and the reddish blocks horizontally.

happy piecing

sometimes friends move away

3 Jun

Lulu is losing three classmates to moves this summer.

One is a close friend who is moving several states away.

Lulu asked that I make a sister doll (like this one  here and this one too) for her friend before she moved.

It’s extra sweet because her friend named it after her so she would always remember her.

They flew to their new home right after school was out for the summer.  Her mom was kind enough to text this photo of her on the airplane.

How sweet is she?

box block quilt

1 Jun

I managed to make my deadline for teacher gifts.

Today is the last day of school.

We went this morning to watch the kids compete in the school olympics.

Both kids competed in the three legged race and neither one fell over!

 

I made a set of pot holders for Cj’s teacher.  I found some fabric with math problems on it and couldn’t pass it up.

Lulu’s teacher will be having her first baby near the end of August.  She’s planning a yellow nursery so I went with a group of fabrics from Kate Spain’s Central Park line.

The pattern for the block is the box block from the book The Farmer’s Wife Sampler Quilt.

I enlarged the template a bit from the one in the book.  I did outline quilting in a sort of tic tac toe pattern on each block with a variegated yellow to cream thread.

The back is a solid piece of the zoo print from the Central Park line.

I’m off to pick up my new fourth and second grade students!

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