Friday, December 30, 2016

New Year's Pen-Eve?

Got a bit more sewing done today, and I've been poking at transferring the sewing blogs I follow from my browser bookmarks to the sidebar here.  There are a lot of them!

Let's see.  I finished the drawstring playmat for Squiddle's Duplo blocks.  The one I made a touch larger than the one in the tutorial; it has a 40" diameter when flat, and thus far contains both his train set and construction vehicles set when it's pulled into a bag.  More than I'd thought it would!  And a couple more yards of fabric used up.  I need to make him another for my parents' house.  Theoretically this will make for easier cleanup; you just toss the blocks onto the mat and pull the drawstring when you're done playing.  I did have to switch back from the Babylock machine to my Singer 15 to finish the mat.  No matter how I fiddled with the tension on the Denim Pro II, it just wasn't working to topstitch around the edge through four layers of quilting cotton.  Ah well.  I just needed it for the buttonholes, really.

I also sewed my nine blocks for this month's Block Lotto.  That was actually kind of fun, and used up most of the 1.5" strips I had lying around and not yet put into the box of 1.5" strips.

And, not something I sewed today, but something I'm just getting around to pictures of, one of my more recent quilts:


I titled this one "You Are My Sunshine" since I made it for my older son, Squiddle, while I was expecting my younger son, Jazzy.  I gave it to Squiddle as a gift when Jazzy was born in September.  The blocks I won in May from the Orange County Quilters Guild block of the month drawing.  Two of the blocks are mine - top left and bottom center.  The brown sashing was a remnant, and I used almost every last scrap.  One of the sashes is pieced, I had so little left!  The blue border I picked up at the Bargain Bazaar at Costume College this year - at a certain point they switch over from "make us an offer" mode to "fill a trashbag for $5" mode, and I walked out with two trashbags full this year.  The backing, which I don't have a picture of, was a couple pieces one of my quilt guild friends gave me, that coordinated perfectly with the front.  And the sunflower fabric in the cornerstones is actually part of what I love most about this quilt.  It's from the fabric stash I inherited from my maternal grandmother, the one who first taught me to quilt.  I think she would approve, having her fabric used in a quilt for her great-grandson.

Thursday, December 29, 2016

Found: One Pig

Not much sewing today.  I did borrow my husband for a few minutes this morning to hold quilts for me out in the sunshine - I needed photographs of two of my more recent finishes and one that I'd somehow never got photographed before.  It was the second quilt I made since I started making quilts again.  Which was when Squiddle was about eight months old (May 2014), so I've been quilting for about thirty-one months now.  Not counting my dabbling in it a couple times over the last twenty-five years - this is the period when I've actually gotten relatively good at it.  And looking at my gallery and adding in the three I took pictures of today, that's eighteen quilts I've made start-to-finish in that time period, three tops I've quilted, and one top I haven't.  Not bad!

Anyway, the daily thread for today was pulling out the other of my two modern machines, my Babylock Denim Pro II, cleaning it out, oiling it up, and sewing a couple buttonholes onto what will soon become a drawstring playmat for Squiddle's Duplo blocks.  And when I say "cleaning it out" I don't just mean dusting it with the canned air.  When I opened up the bobbin case I found Squiddle's George Pig toy, which has been MIA for months.  Sigh.  And he wonders why Mummy doesn't like him playing with her sewing machines....

Wednesday, December 28, 2016

Inaugural Post

Well, I'm intending to get this blog started in the new year, but since I spent a reasonable portion of the day sewing, which is intended to be the focus of this blog, I figured I'd give it a whirl.

My name is Kristin.  I'm a stay-at-home-domestic-goddess to my husband of twelve years and our two little boys (ages three months, and three years and three months; their birthdays are three days apart).  I blog about my life at http://sakon76.livejournal.com/.  I'm a reader, a writer, a gardener, a cook, and a seamstress.  I sew clothing, costumes, and quilts in varying amounts.  I have, literally, a wall of fabric.  I am calling it "the challenge."  And my two darling boys, "the obstacles."  Because despite not having a job outside the house, as anyone who's ever babysat an infant and toddler can attest, keeping my boys clean, fed, and happy takes up a lot of time!

So my goal for 2017 is to see how much of a dent I can make in that wall.  (Picture forthcoming.)  I have the quilting cottons separated from the rest, and the "rest" mostly separated by type.  Not much in the way of knits, but plenty of linen and cotton and silks and wools.  There are a few synthetics, but most of my stash is natural fabrics.

Today's sewing, which I think I'm going to title "The Daily Thread" as a play on "give us this day our daily bread": two yards of white flannel cut up into forty-five 8" squares and hemmed on my serger/overlock machine.  My little sister is expecting a baby in three weeks, and I've found dry wipes very useful with my boys.  I had also made up some for myself when my older son ("Squiddle") was born; about a baker's dozen sustained hem damage over the last thee years, so I rehemmed those today too.  A couple summers ago I took a class on sergers through my local community college.  I learned a fair bit in the class, but honestly, just sitting and sewing on the thing all day long, fiddling and adjusting as I went, made me feel more in tune with its nuances than that class managed.  It's never going to be my primary machine, but I can see where it will get more used in the future.

So I'm down two yards of flannel, a small to-do stack, and six spools of thread.  A good day.