September Block Party

Last month no one turned in blocks.  This month one person turned in blocks.  I am going to give Block Party until the end of the year, but if it keeps up like this, I'm just going to drop it. :/

Meanwhile, here's the block I did for the guild for this month!  I'm very much cribbing from my old work this time, as I copied it from the block party I did for the Orange County Quilt Guild in October of 2016.

9 1/2” Framed Pumpkin

For each block, cut:

• Four 1 1/2” squares, two 1 1/2” x 3” strips, two 1 1/2” x 6 1/2” strips, and two 2” x 9 1/2” strips, all of black fabric
• One 1 1/2” square, of either green or brown fabric
• One 6 1/2” square, of orange fabric or Halloween novelty fabric

To make the block:

Using the stitch-and-flip method, sew the four black squares diagonally to the corners of the orange square, making a Snowball block. Trim excess fabric 1/4” from the seamline and press the triangles outward , making a 6 1/2” square.

Sew the 1 1/2” x 3” strips to either side of the 1 1/2” green or brown square. Attach this strip to one side of the orange-and-black octagon.

Sew one 1 1/2” x 6 1/2” black strip atop the pieced “stem” strip, and the other on the bottom of the pumpkin. Sew the remaining two strips (2” x 9 1/2”) to the sides of the pumpkin block. Press. Finished block should measure 9 1/2” square.

Bonus difficulty level!

If you wish to challenge yourself, try piecing the 6 1/2” orange square! Use a Nine-Patch made of 2 1/2” squares, strip piece the pumpkin with 1 1/2” strips, or build “made fabric” using crumb piecing.

In Sickness and Sewing

Ugh.  All the malefolk in the family had a head cold and I caught it last, starting on Thursday.  Kind of putting a damper on Wonderful Husband's birthday on Friday.  He will be getting a rain check for cake and nice dinner later this week.  Last night I thought I actually felt human again - only to have that myth dispelled overnight.  Ah well.  Sleep is for the weak, or something.

I am still trying to get a functional braiding foot and connector set for my very basic low shank Singer sewing machine, so the second dress from the roses fabric remains on hold until that arrives.  However, I did manage to cut out the gathered variant of that dress in a different fabric and spent pretty much all of yesterday sewing it.

This was a third of a yard of quilting cotton I got at the CTA sale; there's enough left that I might be able to eke out a little handbag for Addy to carry her things in.  When sewing for dolls, the scale of the print you're using is important!  The pattern is, once again, Kindred Threads' Cape Island Dress.

The neckline of this dress is a touch wider than I like; I have to arrange it carefully on my Addy doll to keep her shoulder joints from showing.  I might try making it again and stay-stitching the neck pieces first thing, so that handling them doesn't stretch the bias any.  The pleats in the waistband make stitching it to the skirt a bit tricky, and I dislike the second row of gathering stitches in the skirt and bodice pieces being outside of the seam allowance.  I know it's period, and that often the visible gathering stitches were left in (I've seen, memorably, a First Lady's dress that still had them in), but I don't like it, and taking them out after everything was sewn was annoying.

That said, the pattern went together well, and will probably go together faster the next time I make it.  When I'm not 90% made of mucus.  And I'm very happy that I live in a US state that isn't willfully stupid about science, because I've made our family appointments to get our flu and covid shots next weekend, to help minimize future illnesses.

Folklorico

I finally finished the Fiesta dress!

In hindsight perhaps it's a bit plain and could have used a few more rows of trim?  I think it looks slightly better in person than in the photo, however.

The pattern is well-written.  My only arguments with constructing this dress were the moments when the fabric decided to pleat itself horizontally into a horizontal seam and I had to rip out a section and resew it.  Other than that (and running out of ribbon halfway through), I've absolutely no complaints.  I will probably make another version of this in the future.

I have also survived Cake Week!  Squiddle and Jazzy have birthdays three days apart, so a cake for each of them, plus a bigger cake for the family party yesterday.  All three cakes ended up looking more or less like this, except differently shaped (one square, one star, one circle):

And I went to the CTA sewing room sale where I might have spent $42 on the $2/lb fabric and $19 on notions, a couple embroidery frames, and a finished embroidery piece.... ^_^;;  Oh well.  More stuff to sew!

Since the braiding foot has finally arrived, I'd better get to it, and work more on that Cape Island dress, made out of the same fabric as the Fiesta dress.  Onward!

Swimming Upstream

Sometimes projects feel like they've unionized against you.  First I ran out of the ribbon I was using for the Fiesta dress.  Okay, I found a likely match and ordered it and moved to cutting out and sewing the Cape Island dress.  Only to discover that the vintage Singer underbraider and quilting foot that were supposed to work for applying soutache braid... for some reason don't.

So I sighed and ordered a modern braiding foot.  Or thought I did.  I hand-stitched the soutache to the short bodice seams and the sleeve hems.  Two days later realized I hadn't actually hit the "confirm order" button on the website.  So the foot won't be here for another week.

But!  The replacement ribbon for the Fiesta dress has arrived today, and it's a match, so I can continue on with that dress, and after it's finished, cut something else out of this floral (I'm hoping to get four distinct dresses out of this bit of yardage) to move on with in the meantime.

In real life news, Squiddle is twelve today!  One of the two best things I've ever made.  And for his birthday, the school district gave him (and the two other boys in his grade that live in our housing tract) a bus stop he can actually walk to!  So between that and Jazzy being literally picked up and dropped off from our house, I am practically a lady of leisure once I've got them off to school each day.  That said, the early mornings to get them to school are still doing me in.  I've had to take a nap every day so far....

August's Block Party

It's the first day of school, and the house is so... quiet.  (Bar the Roomba whirring away downstairs.)  I am 1.5 loads of laundry into today's 4.5 loads and have been up since stupid o'clock because sometimes your body needs to use the facilities in the middle of the night and won't let you get back to sleep and finally, half an hour before your alarm, you decide "F--- it, I might as well get some work done."

That being said, I am planning on skipping today's meeting of the Gig Harbor Quilt Guild.  I haven't been all summer because children at home, but (a) I haven't completed the blocks for today's meeting activity, and (b) Squiddle now starts and ends school 45 minutes earlier and his bus stop is NOT one he can safely walk home from.  (It involves crossing the highway twice.  I am not pleased with the school transportation district over this.)  So I don't want to risk being late.

Instead, I plan to cut out another doll dress (I ran out of ribbon for the Fiesta dress I was making, and must wait for more to arrive), possibly vacuum, possibly scrub a bathroom clean, and/or possibly finish the newest chapter of my fanfic.  In the meantime, here is the Block Party pattern I gave the Quilters by the Bay for this month:

10 1/2” Framed Ohio Star

For each block, cut:

• Four 2 1/2” squares white or white-base background fabric
• Six 2 7/8” squares white or white-base background fabric, cut once diagonally
• Four 2 7/8” squares green fabric, cut once diagonally
• Two 2 7/8” squares of yellow fabric, cut once diagonally
• Two 1 1/2” x 8 1/2” rectangles green fabric
• Two 1 1/2” x 10 1/2” rectangles green fabric

(Alternately, the half-square triangles can be cut from 2 1/2” strips using an Easy Angle or equivalent ruler. The star points can also be constructed as Flying Geese, using the same method.)

To make the block:

Sew each green or yellow triangle to a white triangle, stitching along the bias/hypotenuse/long edge. Press the seams toward the colored part of the square and trim all dog ears.

Lay out the squares as in the image above, with the green fabric making the star points, and the yellow fabric making the center of the block. Sew together in rows. Press seams as desired. Tip: pressing each row’s seams in the opposite direction of the row next to it will help them nest better! Stitch the rows together and press the long seams as desired.

Attach the 1 1/2” x 8 1/2” rectangles to opposite sides of the block. Press seams outward. Attach the 1 1/2” x 10 1/2” rectangles to the remaining sides. Press seams outward. Square to 10 1/2”.

Bring up to ten blocks to the guild’s monthly meeting to enter into the Block Party drawing.