Saturday, August 15, 2015

It's a skirt!

My mom made us clothes when we were little, especially pajamas and special occasion clothes. She was a very accurate sewer.  Even though I've quilted for a long time now, I was always afraid to try to make my own clothes.  So I recently purchased a skirt kit and went to work.  I really learned so much in making this skirt.  It was Simplicity Pattern 2226.  I traced the pattern, made a muslin of the waistband for fit, made pockets, used french seams, put in an invisible zipper, and did a blind hem.  I was helped by this great five day sew along from Anna at Noodlehead.  I still feel like making clothes is a lot harder than making quilts, but I do feel confident now to keep branching into the garment side of sewing.






































Linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts

Friday, August 7, 2015

Botanique Quilt

Three weeks ago I was excited to find out that my cousin was getting married in this month.   Of course this means a quilt was in order.  Even though I have five other quilt tops finished, none were a match for her, so it was time make another.

Luckily I had a bunch of Joel Dewberry Botanique fat quarters on hand and a pattern I've been wanting to try called Busy Bee by Villa Rosa Designs.  It's a simple quilt with two different blocks.  One block is made up of two strips, the other is made up of three strips to make 9.5 inch squares.  There were a few very pretty, large scale floral prints in the collection which I didn't want to cut up, so I tweaked the pattern a little to include 9.5 inch square blocks of a single fabric.  I also eliminated the charm squares as a border and added an additional row of blocks.

I'm excited about this quilt because it was easy to put together and I had all the materials in my stash.  I quilted it myself using loops...which I'm still practicing.  I spray basted it with help from this post from Julie at The Crafty Quilter.  I machine bound it with help from this post from Allison at Cluck Cluck Sew.  I'm really pleased with how it turned out, and the spray basting and machine binding really helped me finish the project in time for the shower this past weekend.  Win, Win!


 Linking up with Kelly at Needle and Thread Thursday and Amanda Jean at Crazy Mom Quilts