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Home of the Organized Crafter.

Archive for February, 2010

I finally got around to doing some proper galleries of my finished objects. If you refresh you should be able to see them all along the top of the page. Have a look, poke around, and let me know if anything is wonky. If you click on one picture, it will let you scroll through them all. Or you can just click on the picture again and it will take you back to the gallery.

It is good to see them all on this page and organized so nicely. Lets forget the fact that I have been at the computer all day doing this when I should be doing things like cleaning and finishing 20,000 other crafting projects I have on the go.

I also have updated the card gallery to include a whole bunch of cards that I have made over the last little while. Here are a couple of my favourites.

One of the new yarns that we got at the shop I work at is Unplanned Peacock Silk Boucle. This stuff is to die for – so soft, so shiny, so….silky! Whitney asked if I could make a shop sample, and mentioned that I get to keep the sample when we are done with it. That I can do!

It is a simple drop stitch pattern, which I think shows off the colour and texture of the yarn so well.

I used US9 needles, so that it would be nice and airy. This is the best boucle I have ever worked with. It is kind of bunched, rather than looped, so there is nothing to snag your needle on. It’s lumpy and bumpy without all the annoying parts.

And because it is silk, it has a wonderful drape too. It really does feel like a cocoon around my neck.

Secretly I wish I wasn’t so happy with it – because I want to wear it rather than display it!

Thanks everyone for your sweet comments on our quilted gown. The show is next weekend – I am starting to get nervous!

The final quilt that I made for Christmas this year was for my preteen (recently had her 13th birthday, so frighteningly she doesn’t fit in that category anymore) niece.

As always, you can click for a larger picture. I decided to do a wonky log cabin pattern, by following the tutorial on Tallgrass Prairie Studio. It was such a fun way to make blocks, but definitely time consuming with so many little pieces. As each block was made one at a time, one piece at a time (pressing and cutting between each strip) it took a lot more time than I thought it would.

I used Tula Pink’s Hushabye fabric for the majority of the quilt, with a few others for accents. I pieced the back because I wanted to display some of the great fabrics in this line.

For the binding I used a chocolate swirl accent fabric. Handbound, just like the other two.

The quilting was done on Laura’s Statler, and it is a simple meander. I didn’t want the quilting to take away from the wonkiness of the blocks.

As I said at the start, each quilt had something that was my favourite. L’s was the fabric, Z’s was the quilting, and B’s is definitely the piecing.

While I don’t know that I would recommend making 3 quilts in the month before Christmas, seeing the kids reactions was worth it. Mom (TJ’s sister) had a fantastic reaction too, all teary eyed from the corner. They are great kids, and they deserve something special.

I still have one more quilt to show you, but I wanted to take a little detour to show you a project that Laura and I just finished.

See, a few months back, Laura came up with this grand idea that we should enter an item into the Wearable Art competition at the Mid Atlantic Quilt Festival. We could use her Statler to quilt some fabric, and then sew an evening gown. I will admit, I thought she was a little crazy at first. But the idea warmed on me, and I am glad it did.

We have called our entry, “Aubergine Evening”.

We used formal satin for the main fabric, and sandwiched batting between that and some muslin. Then we quilted the fabric with a lotus style flower repeat.

We varied the size of the pattern repeat so that the material at the top would have smaller repeats. Once it was all quilted, I took the 10!! yards of fabric home and cut out all the pieces for the dress, along with a purple lining fabric for the inside. With all the pieces cut out, assembly began. I am really proud of how the zipper came out in this dress – it is certainly my best yet.

Once all the layers were together, I hand bound the bottom of the dress together with more satin.

The final step was to make a small wrist clutch to go with the ensemble.

I used one of my very favourite closures for this piece too, as I thought it went with the quilted pattern well.

We had to apply to be in the show, and we got word last week that we had been accepted! Colour me shocked. I really wasn’t sure what was going to happen. Yesterday Laura came over and we packed the whole thing up and sent it off to the show. We are at the point now where we can do no more, we just have to wait to see if the judges and the guests at the show like it.

If you happen to be in Hampton VA the last weekend of February, would you come by and vote for us? Or at least say hi. :)