Still Alive

Just busy.

T-shirt blanket for a client.

Yes, those are real ballet shoes.

More Blankets

So there has been a Thing happening in our family which has made it somewhat difficult to focus and sew but I have been making this and that. I have several partly finished projects....maybe you'll see those later. =)

Over the last four years at the school I work at there have been 3 pregnant women on the staff each year (different ones each year, obviously...). But only three. No more, and more importantly, NO LESS. Always 3. Each of the last three years, one of the three is someone I happen to be pretty good friends with, which means I have made at least one baby blanket every year. This year, the baby mama is a very outgoing, bubbly freshman English teacher that I call Jessica Rabbit (in my head) because she is very......va-va-voom. =)

She and her husband have decided not to find out the sex of the baby, so that presents some challenges when choosing the color for the blanket. You have to make sure that whatever you make isn't too girly, but not too boyish either. They have painted the nursery green, so that gave me a little direction. First, I made this one:
But it just wasn't right. There is nothing wrong with it....it just.........wasn't right for THIS baby. So I went through my stash and pulled out this fantastic Heidi Grace fabric. Check out those birds and the teeny tiny ladybugs! Then I found some coordinating fabric and made the same around the world pattern, just brighter. It is backed with bright green flannel and tied with white embroidery floss in the center of each white square. I really like it, and I hope she does too!

Blankets

I haven't made many tshirt blankets lately, but I recently got 4 orders (well, I'm still waiting on confirmation on number 4, but still) all in a row. I finished two of them over the weekend. I also now have a giant pile of tshirt pieces, which I need to find something to do with. I have some ideas, but am still waiting for inspiration to coalesce. I am also excited about Urban Craft Uprising this weekend....I haven't gone to a craft fair for a year, not since last year's UCU. I love these shows....and since I am short on time, maybe I will find some gifts for my family. Fingers crossed! If you are in the Seattle area, I highly recommend it -December 5 and 6 at the Seattle Center.

Blanket Timeout

Made for a friend who is giving it to someone else.

Michael Mille 'Lil Cowpokes pattern, blue handkerchief pattern and red/cream homespun from JoAnns, brown and light yellow cotton sashing, cream satin binding, brown minky fabric on the reverse. This is the first time I have sewn minky fabric and it was a little tricky, but not as bad as I was expecting. I had the most trouble with the satin binding, which is why it ended up a little weird.

Diapers and Delicacy with a Request at the End

I am FINALLY on spring break, so I am hoping to have a chance to sew later this week. My friend B would like some cloth diapers, so I am expanding my repertoire slightly...we'll see how it goes. I'll keep you updated.

HOWEVER, if you are a cloth diaper person, I did find this site, with a bunch of free cloth diaper patterns on it. I plan on making good use of it. And, if you are a mom who uses or used cloth diapers, let me know what you liked or disliked about them. I have learned a few things....apparently, pins are O.U.T. and velcro or snaps are IN. =) I love me some snaps, so am looking forward to installing some! Also, apparently fleece diapers are the coolest, because fleece is NOT absorbent. So....when you have to clean a dirty diaper, the "deposits" therein just roll right off! I did not know that! Again, let me know if you have some input on things you liked or disliked. She likes pocket diapers (see here or here or here for examples) so I am going to work on those.

And a few weeks back, I made these for a friend going through a rough time....well, actually, they were for her two sons.

They were designed so that her husband would be able to write messages to their two sons on the blank squares using permanent markers.

I used some more printable iron-on transfer paper (I love that stuff! Wish I could find it cheaper...) to do the photos and I really like how they came out. In fact, I like the blankets a lot overall. The background and the blank squares are made out of unbleached muslin and I used some fleece I had on hand for the backing. In fact, the only thing I bought was the black fabric for the picture outlines. I had everything else on hand.

Which I choose to see as a BONUS, not an ADDICTION.

I've heard she liked them a lot too, and that's all it takes to make me happy.

I also suddenly realized that it is April, and I didn't do a tutorial. Any requests? I need to do two, one for this month and one for last month. I was considering doing a sashing tutorial (the strips between the squares in the blankets) but wasn't sure if anyone would be interested. So, any requests?

It's Supposed to Look Like Water....

About 3 or 4 years ago (maybe longer than that?) I started buying fabric with the idea of making a quilt that looked kind of watery. All of the fabrics were teal green or blue and none of them had a distinct pattern. Most of them were batiks or something similar and when I finally decided to make the quilt, I realized that I had enough material to make SEVERAL quilts. I made two large ones of the same pattern, and gave one away as a wedding present a few years ago. I have another top of the same pattern that I will someday finish and keep (probably) and I have made a few other things from the same fabric.

My friend Shannon is having a baby in about 6 weeks and she is having a boy. Since I live in Seattle and am friends with eclectic souls, she didn't really want to have one of the three options available for boy babies - trucks, dinosaurs or zoo animals - so I tried to think outside the box. I opened up the scrap box and these colors just jumped out at me. It's a baby blanket, so it doesn't have to be super manly and these colors will work for a boy and they're still kind of artsy.

I think. I did run into trouble when I tried to quilt it. GAH. I didn't have time to handquilt it so I tried to quilt it on the machine. It puckered a tiny bit on the back and it didn't turn out quite like I wanted it to. =( Boo. So I washed it, which helped a little....now it looks a little more wrinkly. Can you tell I don't quilt very often? I love making the tops, but that's as far as it ever gets. Sigh. Ah well. I still think it's pretty (er...manly). I like the way the back looks...the grey looks like stone and I love it next to the blue.

Weekend Projects

I love weekends!!! In fact, my facebook status said; "Columbia Lily wishes she could make a living by sewing. Or teaching sewing." And it's true. This weekend I had to work on school stuff, so I did some of that but more of sewing. =)

First, I am doing an exchange with Aimee over at Jewel Street Designs. She liked the little elephant pouch I made over my birthday week and I love her jewelry, so we made a deal. Here are her elephants:

I think I was supposed to make 4 of them, but I got really annoyed with the last one and it ended up in a pile on the floor and will soon be in the trash after I remove the zipper. I used a really light linen and had to line it with really stiff interfacing and it just was not working. Then I lined it with a really loosely woven ticking and it just ended up with a lot of holes. SO.....I made another smaller elephant pattern and ear pattern and put an elephant on a mini pouch. I hope she likes them! The eyes are super tiny buttons (about 1/4 inch wide) that I got at a quilt show several years ago.

Secondly, my friend Shannon is having a baby in a couple of months and so I made her a baby blanket for her shower. I had a LOT of leftover fabric from a quilt I made a couple of years ago so I just pulled a bunch of those scraps and put them together in a brick pattern. I am wavering about outlining 3-4 bricks in black but I can't decide. I make baby blankets larger than traditional ones, usually about 36"x48", and I really like the way this one turned out. I think that this combination of colors and patterns looks a lot like water. It still needs a backing and to be sewn together, but that will happen later.

I also made a purse for my friend's mom, but I don't have any pictures of the outside yet, so I will post about that in a day or so.

Oops

It's been a while....It has been an incredibly busy week but I am finally to the point where I can work on crafty stuff. So I fought with a purse lining last night until I ripped holes in it and flung it across the room. So I will try again tonight. Meanwhile. Last weekend I put together a memory quilt top for a client. Here's the finished product. She did all the squares herself except the ones with photos outlined in black, all I did was put it together since she was having trouble lining up the sashing.
Er....pardon the extremely dirty floor.....I was in a crafty Zone.

Weekend Update

It is COLD COLD COLD.....I am hoping for a Snow Day tomorrow...fingers crossed. Instead of grading, I finished this:
You can kind of see in the top center square that there are several things in one square. That started out as a child's hat, which I split and flattened, also a piece of a tracksuit (DO NOT IRON...) =) and they are sewed onto a pair of basketball shorts.

T-Shirt Blanket

A few weeks ago, I picked up some shirts from a client who wanted a 3x4 t-shirt blanket. Normally, I can do these without a lot of thought, but for some reason - perhaps the lack of thought =) - this one gave me problems. First of all, she had enough material for 13 squares, but wanted some of the smaller writing pieces to just be added to other squares so that she would have 12 total. I cut the shirts apart, and for some reason ended up with only 11 squares. I couldn't figure out where I went wrong, so I just created an extra square, which looked great!

Then, I started putting the blanket together, which I do in strips. After I had all the strips sewn and was about halfway through sewing the strips together, I found the missing square. The client wanted to use the original plan, which meant that I had to take apart all of the stitching on the above square. Since this is t-shirt material, it meant that every stitch caused a little bit of stretching to happen, making it harder to line things up when I resewed it later. I got it done though, and took apart the strips, and sewed the pieces where they were supposed to go.

Back to sewing the strips together....and since I topstitch both sides of every seam for stability and flatness, I had sewed 12 seams when I realized I had sewn one strip on upside down. So...back to the ripper (not my favorite utensil) and I had to tear out 9 of the 12 seams. I finally got it done (thank goodness) and here it is....I didn't take pictures of the back, but there is light gray fleece on the back.

Blanket

One of my other sources of income is making t-shirt blankets, and I've done so many they are pretty mindless by this point. I worked on this one all weekend....it is the first double-sided one I've ever done. I will say this, doing these gives me a window into what people were like in college. Hm...