Neglectful Sewing

My sewing machines are getting jealous of my other projects.  Although, I've managed to churn out 4 hooded towels and embroider another one in the past week.  I have been meaning to post the instructions for making those for about a year now... 
I've reorganized my sewing area again.  I can't decide if I should get rid of a bunch of stuff or hang on to it.  The problem is that many many times I'll be in a fix and some of those things that I have left over from other projects, or got from other people come in extremely handy.
After Christmas, I'm not starting any new projects until Abby's quilt is done.  She'll be happy to finally have it after a year of waiting.  Part of the problem is that JoAnn's doesn't sell the pink print that I've been using and it is not exactly a popular color of pink at the moment.  The plan is to head out to a quilt shop to see if I can find something that might work, but I really don't want to take any kids.
That's what has been going on in my craft world.

Still Working...

This quilt is taking a LONG time. I knew it would, I just thought I would have more time to work on it. My goal is to work on it for at least a half hour everyday. Probably in the afternoon while Seth and Lucy are napping. I think that even with home schooling that it will work.
I'm really excited about some of the designs that I'm stitching. As soon as I get some good work done on them, I'll post pictures.
At some point, I'll need to start on our Halloween costumes. What I had planned, isn't going to work, so I'm going for something much, much easier. I'm putting my other idea on the back burner probably for a couple of years. It really does depend on what happens with the kids and school.

An intermediate post about Abby's Quilt

Well, I got it all laid out:

And sewn together:

Now, I have to go buy some of this (I'm going to use cotton this time, more expensive, but also more breathable and easier to sew, or so I hear):

And lots and lots of these:

And I need to track down some more of this (or at the very least something that is the same pink color):

I did the flowers on my embroidery machine, the designs once again are from Designs by Juju. I made the hill appliques on my sewing machine. I ripped strips of varying widths and sewed them together. Lucy's quilt is going to be very similar, but with purple and yellow daisies and a different striped print. I'm using a twin bed sheet for the backing and planning to use cotton or perhaps wool for the batting. I'm going to be sewing designs onto the strips, which I'll post when I get done.

Seth's Quilt

Well, I finally got Seth's quilt done. Sorry about the perspective on the picture.

Now that I'm done with it, I really like it. It went through several iterations. At first I was going to put animal print squares where the green jungle print squares are, it just didn't look very good, so I went with the jungle print. After I got all of the stitching done around the squares to quilt the front, batting and back together (referred to as "stitch in the ditch" by quilters), I realized that there was way to much room for the batting to move around and clump. So, I sewed around each of the animals, and then I wanted to do something on the other squares to help keep the batting in place, but also keep with the theme of the blanket. What I finally came up with was footprints. I found pictures of the animals footprints on the Internet, made stencils, traced them onto the quilt and then sewed around them. Here is what the zebra footprint looks like on the back of the quilt:


There are two of each footprint on the back, Zebra, monkey, lion, tiger, jaguar and elephant. Under Seth's name, I put his footprint. The animal appliques I made with my embroidery machine and got the patterns from Designs by Juju.

Apart from taking care of the baby, my major hold up was lack of skills and direction. I could have called it quits after stitching around the squares, but I'm glad I didn't. I think the quilt is awesome and I sure hope that Seth likes it. I'm not to happy about the stitching, but I'm learning and if I stay too concerned about perfection, I'll never get anything done.

Up next: Abby's quilt! This shouldn't take as much time because I learned a lot doing Seth's quilt and I've already got it started (it was something to work on while I was being indecisive about the direction I wanted to take with Seth's quilt).

Jamie's Christmas Project

Jamie made some Pajamas for his sister, Lura for Christmas. I think he did a good job. I mostly watched and gave advice.
He also embroidered a shirt that said "Here's my pajamas. Where's the Movie and Popcorn?" We then also included some popcorn and a copy of our Christmas Pageant. It was a fun gift. Good job sweety!

Slow Progress

I'll post pictures of our Halloween costumes on my blog, as long as my computer holds up.

I basted Seth's quilt on Monday. Basting is when you temporarily sew or bind something so that you can sew it the way you need. For a quilt like Seth's you simply want to make it so that the three layers stay in the same place relative to each other. There are a few ways to do this. If you are hand quilting, you can use the traditional way, a quilting frame. I find that quilting frames take up way too much space, cost a lot, are hard to store, and I'm not a big fan of hand quilting anyway. If you are machine quilting there are a couple of ways you can baste your quilt. One way is to use spray adhesives, something that I have never done, although I have some and plan to try it some day. Another way, the way I use is to lay the quilt out on the floor and pin it with large safety pins.
When I baste Bailey's quilt, I'll post a tutorial.

Dirndl und Lederhosen

Willkommen in Deustchland!

Last year's (and consequently this year's) costumes were really difficult for me. Why? because there are no mainstream patterns for Lederhosen and dirndl. I couldn't find any patterns for Lederhosen, even when I searched in German. I found a couple for dirndl, but they were really expensive. For each costume, I basically had to make my own pattern:

Lucy and Abby's were the easiest. I started with this:

and ended up with this:



all I really had to do is create the design on the front of the dress. I added the embroideries on the aprons this year, as I now have an embroidery machine!

Mine was harder, but not as hard as the Lederhosen. I started with this



I used this pattern (the white one in the back) because the bodice was fitted the right way and it had the neckline that I needed, although I had to modify it, to be lower. To create the waist I just cut 5/8 inch below the waist line on the pattern. The skirt was just three rectangles that I cut and then sewed onto the bodice, gathering at the top.



The shirt pattern had to be modified to, as it was, it showed a little bit too much skin. I might use a different shirt pattern this year, if I have time to do it.

The result was this (I'm thinking about adding embroideries to mine, but I haven't found the right one yet. I don't think the pattern I did on the girls' will work on mine. I'll post new pictures if I do it.)



The Lederhosen are not made from leather, although it would have been fun to learn to do the leather work, time and especially money greatly hindered that idea. Luckily I found some cloth that worked perfectly on sale!

Here is what I started with:


I literally took measurements off the picture, which I got off the internet and printed out. I then used some of my awesome math skills to figure out how big I should make the different elements of the Lederhosen. I used a friend's embroidery machine to make the designs on the pants. I used thread close to the same color as the cloth to make it look like the designs had been pressed into the leather (from a distance, it works). Most of the lederhosen I saw in my research either had green embroideries or designs formed in the leather. The only thing that I regret about these lederhosen is that the front pieces are only decorative. I never got the chance to look at a pair of lederhosen up close, so I couldn't figure out how to make the front peice properly, so I opted for the easy way out. The basic pants pattern came from pajama pant patterns.

I ended up with this:

Here's Bailey in his costume (from last year):

I'm really excited to create six new costumes for next year. We are already trying to hash out plans for them, but you won't find out until next Halloween what they are!