Pink and Red

Do you know how excited I get when I hear that a coworker is having a baby girl? :o) I love making little crib quilts and it's always fantastic to have an excuse to whip up a girly pink tiny quilt. Here's one I made last week to welcome a new girl. It's very simple, just a charm pack with a few extras mixed in, and a crib size piece of batting. It went together very quickly since it's so small.

Here's a closeup of some of the pretty prints in this charm pack.

I also recently stumbled over some University of Alabama quilting cotton on fabric.com and almost had a heart attack from excitement. My dad went there and is quite possibly the biggest Crimson Tide fan on the face of the earth. So I had to buy two prints, and I made him up a little sofa cushion and a little grocery bag. I can't wait to give them to him.

And finally... I am at last catching up on the Minoru Sew Along!

My fabric is a very very heavy water resistant outwear cotton from BJ's. It's definitely one of the most expensive fabrics I've ever bought, but I really wanted something that would keep some rain out without being a nylon or poly. The fabric is very stiff- pretty much a canvas- and it's been a bear to sew. My top stitching and gathering could be better, but this is as good as I can get with my machine, which is just not cut out to sew really heavyweight fabrics.

The zippers are metal ones from Pacific Trim. Hey, if I'm using $25/yard outwear fabric, I'm not tossing in cheap plastic zippers; I'm going for the theory that using good fabric and notions here will make it come out nicely. Wish me luck. ;)

Here's the shell so far on my dressform

So far I like it, but we'll see how it comes out in the end!

Bags

I didn't realize it had been a whole month since I'd updated west 38th. Oh my. I do have a smidgen of sewing to show off, although it was for an online swap instead of for me. But it was fun, especially this little kitty cat zipper bag!

This is the L2 bag from Sewing workshop - lined with laminated cotton so that it's a good grocery shopping bag. The print is by Sandi Henderson - one of my favorites from her latest line. I have some extra of this fabric to maybe make pillows from.

I still love this bag pattern, because it holds a lot of stuff. I haul around way too much nerd nonsense all the time. Here's a pile of all the stuff that was in my purse today - this is minus the lunch bag and lots of random papers I had crammed into my bag.

I haven't done much other sewing, but I have been doing a bit of bread baking! We got a fantastic wedding present from one of my aunts who is a very accomplished cook - a cloche for making crusty breads in. It's the Sassafras La Cloche, and it works REALLY well. Sad that it took me months to get it out and use it, but -wow! It was worth getting it out. I've been working on the master recipe whole wheat bread from Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day, which is the whole wheat & gluten free bread book by the famous Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day folks.

Here's my third ever loaf of whole wheat bread...

You can see that the cloche really does give it a super nice crust. Mmmm.

Happy sewing :o)

zip zip

Should I just start every post here with "OMG, so busy!!"? ;) The year has been flying by far too fast for us so far.

It was sadly time to put away the Christmas tree - see you next year, Santa Clauses.



I did manage to find time to make up a little outfit for Kate - an Ottobre Tshirt and a little white baby cord skirt. Since she loved the slip from her 1950s dress so much, I layered this one with some floral quilting cotton to make a "slip" that could show. The skirt has a little waistband that has elastic running through it.

The t-shirt fabric was bought off Spoonflower a while ago (here). I wanted to try out their organic cotton knit, and I was pleasantly surprised that it's a nice knit! Has some horizontal stretch, and it's just a smidge thick but very soft. Good stuff for kids clothes.

Here it is on Kate.

One last shot - I snuck in a quick visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art the other day. I finally have a membership so I can slip in for a short visit and not feel guilty about not getting my money's worth from the visit! ;) Here's a quick view of one of the schmancy french rooms they have. Those are always interesting to walk through & imagine living in such fancy surroundings.

Happy sewing!

2012

This is a tea towel with a 2012 calendar on it:

One of the ships on there - look at the month of April - just so happens to be my Sailor's ship. ;) The other ships are regulars around the NY Harbor. Being the nerd that I am I found the Tugster blog last year, which led me to Bowsprite, who paints gorgeous pictures of the NY Harbor area. In November, Bowsprite designed a 2012 tea towel for a Spoonflower contest & I had to jump on a chance to order it to make up some awesome tea towels for my Sailor's mom, my mom, and myself.

Here's the yard - four tea towels! - from spoonflower:

Well. Guess what, I was a bit rusty on how to get the nice mitered corners and I certainly didn't want to goof these up! Sew Mama Sew came to the rescue with a great illustrated PDF guide on sewing these corners. I followed along -

Put on the 1/4" quilting foot and sew one line around the tea towel, 1/4" in from the edge. Then lift your foot and sew another line, 1/4" inwards from the previous one.

Next, draw a diagonal line across the boxes in the outer corner you've made so that the outside square gets snipped off:

Fold in at the corner of the inner square you marked:

Now fold the edge at the outer stitching line:

And again at the inner stitching line, which will.... MAGIC... give you a mitered corner shape!

Stitch along the folded edge, and all done! Isn't WTGB-109 looking pretty awesome here in April? :)

If you, too, would like a 2012 NY Harbor tea towel, you can order it on Spoonflower on Bowsprite's Spoonflower page. I have my eye on the Semper Paratus fabric, and I think you might be seeing a skirt from it here shortly. ;)

(For the landlubbers, the name of the fabric, Semper Paratus, is the US Coast Guard's motto, it stands for Always Prepared. Every time the sailor laughs at me for lugging around a big purse with band aids, a water bottle, my evdo, a granola bar, extra socks, the kitchen sink, and so forth I tell him "Semper Paratus!")

A small jumper

Here is the Chopin dress from Ottobre Summer 2010 again, but without the front pleats. In this incarnation, it's a little jumper for Anabear to wear to school. I bought the fabric at JoAnn's last year and originally thought I might make it into a dress for Kate. However, I realized that the print is a bit juvenile for her (OMG, my smidgen niece is EIGHT. how did that happen?) and Ana might be more appreciative. Ana is also super attached to her family's cats, so she should enjoy this. I love the full, twirly skirt. I'm picturing this with a little white peter pan collar blouse underneath and maybe a white cardigan on top.

Christmas Sewing

Most years I try to sew a bunch of presents, as I'm very lucky to have family that really appreciate hand made coats or tote bags and whatnot. This year I managed one nightgown so far. Um... yeah. I will claim extenuating circumstances this fall- I was in a car accident, there was that huge attack of hives, and now I've caught some ick of the sore throat-fever-horrible cough variety. I give up, everyone gets home made presents for New Years this year. ;)

We did get a tree up with all our Santa ornaments on it. (Our tree is nothing but Santa ornaments. True story, I had friends whose parents put up multiple trees each December and one was only Santa ornaments. It blew my small mind and I promised myself that when I grew up, I'd have a tree of all Santa ornaments. And now I have one of my own every year and it makes me super happy. (; ) Here are a few of my favorite Santas that I photographed last year right before we put it away:

This one was a gift from my family when the sailor and I got engaged. One of my all time favorites.

Washington state ferry.... I am so homesick this December.

Sweet tooth Santa!

Anyway. I wish I had gotten some better photos, but Kate wore the 1950s dress and slip I'd made her 2 years ago to the Nutcracker this year, and it still fits her! That kid is a skinny minny. Here is the post from 2009 where I originally made it for her. Kate's favorite part is the petticoat with all the netting, so I've promised to make her another one soon. Her mom says that there is always a big fight when she wears the dress because she thinks the petticoat should go above the dress so that everyone can admire it! So cute. So here she is wearing it at the ballet, totally absorbed in the web browser on my phone.

What size is Ana?

Miss Anabear is rather skinny and long, so she's been a little tricky to size for a while. I made up a simple white dress to match her sisters, but I got rather worried when it was done that it was too big for her!

This is a size 6 Simplicity 2989, the same dress I love making as seen in One Hardworking Pattern. Again, I used some leftover silk shantung for the fashion fabric and lined it in silk crepe de chine.

It's a very simple style here, with lace on the hem and puffed sleeves. Love the sheen of the shantung.

But I kept holding it up & feeling like it was just a little too large for the teensy bear, so I decided that since I still had oodles of silk left, I'd make something a bit smaller.

So here is my very first Ottobre! It's dress #25, "Chopin, rose patterned twirly dress" from Summer 2010. I left off the roses & the belt, but I did like the tucks on the bodice, as it adds a nice little touch. It's originally sleeveless, so I added in some little puff sleeves edged in lace. Same as all the others, it is white silk shantung lined in white silk crepe de chine... soooooo much fun to sew up! This stuff is like a dream to sew.

And of course I had a good laugh when I was done, the two dresses are nearly the same size! Oh well, she will wear them at some point if they are too big right now! And until I see the nieces, I have a pile of silk dresses on my chair:

a christmas dress

This will be mostly wordless. I broke out in hives all over, likely due to eating...something? Current fore runner is some chicken tikki masala, which kills me as that's one of my favorite dishes! So this post is brought to you via Blogging On Benedryl.

Thanksgiving: (By the way, we went with a sausage stuffing recipe that was AWESOME. thanks for the suggestions!)

And post Thanksgiving sewing - I knew that I had ordered way too much white silk this spring when I made my wedding dress, but I figured it could be put to good use making Christmas dresses for the nieces. So this weekend out came some of the white shantung and silk crepe de chine from Susan Khalje's store.

This stuff was a dream to sew and press and I spent a lot of time just holding the silk up to the light and petting it. I'm not the only one who has the sit and fondle the fabric before diving in, right?

I used New Look 6907 for Kate's dress. My sister asked for a plain white dress so that they could add different colored sashes and get more use from it. My favorite part was picking out the laces to use.... I have a weakness for going into MJ and buying lace "because I'll use it someday on little dresses for the nieces."

Here's the insides... I just zigagged the armholes where the lining met instead of using more bias binding. It is just a kids dress, so I didn't want to go TOO crazy.

Good luck to all those starting up on Christmas sewing - may your sewing machines be quick and the mistakes few! ;)

happy thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving! Today is military family (& my-kid-sister-is-going-to-the-inlaws-thursday-and-her-little-kids-can-only-do-one-thanksiving-at-a-time) thanksgiving! ;)

That's ok, we like to spread out the holidays.

Have you seen the excellent Minoru jacket pattern from Sewaholic? I've ordered a copy, and I think it might be pretty neat made up in one of the coating cottons from BJs. This year I might end up making up the Artisan's Square SWAP, since it's got a good setup this time around. Very tempting! And of course I still need to sort out the muslin from my vintage coat pattern. It's still sitting in the closet, gathering dust.

I'm off to make more pies, so here are some closing pictures.... I was in the NYC subway yesterday and took these little cell phone pictures of the hats in the 23rd st R station - always one of my favorite subway art displays :)