Tag: sewing review

Monthly Review · Sewing

Sewing Review

LSiehLeave a comment

I’m back! This time with my sewing projects for the month. I have been sewing lots of wintery things. I need some more, longer sleep shirts. I do not enjoy the random cold spot in the middle of my back on cold winter nights. Brrr…

This cozy shirt is one of the warmer shirts I have made. It is. Relaxed Raglan pattern from Patterns for Pirates. I ordered the fabric after getting a sample of a different color in an order. It was not entirely wht I expected, but it’s still soft and warm. 

It grew a little as I was making it, so it’s pretty oversized, but perfect for sleeping in. The sleeves are deliberately long, which really meant I didn’t shorten them. 🙂 

I know you’re probably completely sick of seeing this pattern, considering I have made a bunch of them. It’s interesting to see just how much it changes with each new fabric. I intend to make many more. These are the other two I’ve made.

This one is a black sweatshirt material fleece. I did something funny with the neckline, so it got really wide. I’m considering adding a comtrast band under the first. It’s definitely an “at home” sweatshirt. I was wearing it before the picture, so that’s why the sleeves look wrinkly and weird. 

Mmm… pink.. The floral fabric is a triblend with cotton, spandex, and rayon. The pink is a lovely cotton spandex. Both fabrics are from Girl Charlee and were on sale! That makes these even better! 

I still have a bunch of the floral fabric and am debating what else to make. It’s so soft! 

I had one disappointment when sewing this month. I made these cool foil lightening leggings.

They seemed stretchy enoug, but then when I went to put them on, they wouldn’t stretch past my derrière! Boo! I will just cut down the side and add a strip of plain black. The pattern actually comes with a pocket feature, which I might just try out. 

I also made my purple harem pants and this lovely vest for Kalamazo. I seem to have only uploaded a close up of the vest. I’ll have to post the full costume one day. It has a green background with a gold crackle overlay. Those flowers are iron on pieces and it’s accented with gold dance coins.

I wore a green tank top, gold jewelry, a fairy headband, and a fairy skirt. 

Last Friday, I attended a tree skirt workshop with my MIL, but it isn’t finished yet. It still needs some bias tape, which I need to make. Sadly, no little elves have appeared to do it for me, so it’s taking a little bit extra time. It was a fun class though and a pretty easy pattern with the special curvy ruler. I would definitely take a class at the store again. I’ll write more about it when I have finished it. 

I didn’t really make many new things for my vending event, but I did make these three Star Trek tea wallets. 


“Tea, Earl Grey. Hot.”- Picard

I think there are a couple more things that I have finished or made, but haven’t taken pictures of. I’ve been finding myself reaching for more handmade items lately. It’s fun to wear them and have people try to figure out if it’s one I’ve made or not. One of my kid clients didn’t believe me that I made my dress today and said I must have bought it in the store. I must be making some professional looking items!  

My goals for this month are to finish up the Christmas gifts, sew up enough items that my fabric fits in bins again, and to make up my cozy jammies and sweaters. I would like to try some of my other patterns too.

To send you off to dreamland sweetly, here are pictures of Fancy utilizing her holey sheet to perfection…

This Is The Quilt That Never Ends…
Crafty · Monthly Review · Sewing

This Is The Quilt That Never Ends…

LSiehLeave a comment

Sometimes quilts get away from me. This one is doing that right now. The book says 24 rows of 18, but I took two off the ends. We’ll pretend I was smart in the beginning and meant to make 16 across in each row, since I had 8 colors and that makes two of each… That sounds good, right? Obviously it had to be a rainbow. 🙂

There are a few mistakes, I had one square sewn the wrong way and need to see if I have to pick out the whole row, or if I can just switch one around. I can always hide it at the bottom and call it my “humble square” if needed.

I’m trying to decide to reduce the columns too, so that they are proportional, but am also trying not to end up with random extra squares. The extra squares are winning. I made a bunch of extra strips last night, but made too many of the wrong colors! Now I have to decide if I need to continue to make more of the strips, or go with the 19 rows. I have 12 made already. I have these piles complete with all the colors. I’m leaning toward just dealing with the extra squares and using only the ones I have completed.

This one I picked specifically to use a project from my books. The book is called Relax and Quilt and it has very nice projects, mostly traditional piecing.

I checked my original notebook and I have 6 potential quilts picked out from this book. I tried to pick at least a few from each book, so I would have options. I must have gotten it from a rummage sale, it has a $1 sticker on it!

Fancy decided to “help” me lay out the quilt.

She’s been attached to me since I got home from work and is currently keeping my feet warm. 🙂 I like snuggles from her.

I’ve really only worked on the quilt this weekend. It was fun going through my scrap stash to find pieces that would work. I even cut into a few pieces of my fabrics I’ve had forever with no actual plan for them! I used a mix of older and newer fabrics, including some from my Christmas fabric box from my Mom. It’s a big step!

I realized that I’ve never done a review of the books I’ve used. I’ve gone through my cookbooks, but not the sewing stuff. Since I only worked on the quilt, I thought it might be a good chance to go through them.

I’ve finished a bunch of projects from my UFO box and a couple from online. I typically use Bonnie Hunter’s Quiltville quilt plans. http://quiltville.blogspot.com/

Her tutorials are quite easy and I use her scrap saving system, so I have the right pieces already cut. The Rainbow Chevron is one of her quilts, the “Friendship Braid” border.

Another book I’ve used is Quilts From The Quiltmaker’s Gift, by Joanne Larsen Line and Nancy Loving Tubesing. This is one of my favorite kids’ books. The illustrations are beautiful and the quilts are the quilts from the book. The book tells the story of a quilter who gives away quilts to those in need, but refuses to give one to the greedy king. He gets mad and tries all sorts of ways to get one, but there’s a surprise ending that I won’t spoil.

I loaned my copy out and it sadly, never returned, but my Mother in law gave me her copy for Christmas a few years later, so I was so excited! I used the Flying Birds pattern and put it in the “Streak of Lightning set. It still needs borders and backing.

The Rainbow Snowball quilt was from Making Scrap Quilts To Use It Up by Lynne Edwards. 

That was another quilt that wouldn’t end. It’s still hanging out in my house. I may need to find a backup home for it soon.

The kudsudama flowers were from Button and Stitch by Kristen Rask. 

It’s kind of weird to think that in 67 projects, I only used about 6 books. I used some patterns too, but didn’t want to get them all out. I also don’t think of them as books per say. I know I have a few more that I’ve used, but one of them was a total dud and the other has been lost somewhere in a pile..

I should probably start weeding these books out too. I just like to have options. I might be a dragon in disguise actually, with a hoard of sewing books and fabrics. I like that better than admitting to possible hoarding tendencies…;)

Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed touring a few of my books. I’ll share some that I haven’t used yet in another post!