Olive

Olive Ruby
19/9/2012 4.38am
3.505kg 47cm

Triangle Corners with Directional Prints

A tip when sewing 'triangle corners' with directional prints. You think I would remember this now considering how many of them I have sewed over the years, but I always seem to have them going in different directions. This usually doesn't bother me, but now and then I want them going in a particular direction. 

 The background (small square) flips at a 90 degree angle so if you want it going in the same direction you need to turn it 90 degrees before you sew it - you can just see I have turned the houses so the bottom of them is facing the edge of the fabric. I left the yellow fabric to show you how that flips.

 After flipping and ironing, the backgound of the top one has turned 90 degrees while the bottom one is facing the 'right' way.

I have sewed a few triangle corners and flying geese recently and think I am a convert to pressing the seams open. It does take a little more time and I have burnt the edges of my fingers a couple of times, but I really like the way they sit flat and I think it makes it easier to match the points and corners. What do you prefer - pressing to the side or open?

Ceci Shorts

Spring is here and the weather this weekend has been beautiful. So it was time to go through the girls clothes and organise what they needed for the warmer weather. Amelia wants lots of shorts and searched Etsy with me looking for patterns. She decided on the Ceci Shorts. I used some denim I had in the stash and Amelia chose some contrast fabric for the pockets. I vaguely followed the pattern for the pockets, I just did the binding at the top in my own way. For the rest of the shorts I followed the pattern exactly.

The denim I used was light denim, but more like a drill weight which was probably a bit heavy for this pattern. I sewed the ties in the middle of them to keep them tied as they were just coming undone. I am not sure if they would stayed tied up with lighter weight fabric, but I suspect they might still need to be sewn together. I made a size 7 for  Amelia and they fit pretty perfectly, if anything they are quite generously sized.

I am pretty happy with this pattern, it was well explained and both the other girls want shorts too. It comes in sizes 1-8 so I know it will get a lot of use.

Scraps

Turning scraps into squares and strips.

Making Nappies

How cute is this nappy? You really can't go wrong with red and white spots and babies I think. I used the Green Beginnings Cloth Diaper pattern from Fishsticks. It is a very well written pattern, everything from the type of fabric to the type of thread to use is explained and there are lots of pictures to help you. I bought all of my supplies from Nappies Covered. There is also lots of information on there about sewing your own nappies.

Now I have made one I think a few could be sewn up pretty quickly so I am going to wait and see how it fits in case I need to make any changes before I make more of them.

This was my first time sewing with PUL and I really recommend a teflon foot if you are sewing with it. I don't use my teflon foot very often, but it is one of the most useful sewing machine feet, I find laminated fabrics are almost impossible to sew without it.

Good Mail Week and Vintage Patterns.

Last week was a good mail week. A fat quarter bundle of the new Denyse Schmidt Chicopee arrived and it is even nicer in real life than I thought it would be. Such great patterns and colours.

 Also the new book by Julie of Jaybird Quilts.

I have also become slightly obsessed with searching the vintage mail order patterns on Etsy which is kind of ridiculous considering my size right now, but we had such nice spring weather all weekend I am thinking of summer dresses and hoping I get time to make some this summer.

Shop News

I will be closing my Etsy shops for a little while soon as I wait for this baby to come. I can't promise I will be able to make it to the post office or even email patterns as fast as I like to, but my pattern shop will still be open as all the patterns in there are instantly download as soon as you have paid.

So if there are any toys on Etsy you have had your eye on grab them in the next couple of days.

Modern Quilts from the Blogging Universe

Look what is for pre-order on Amazon and up in the Martingale shop! I am just a little bit excited to be part of this!

Whirligig Shrug

My blood pressure has been doing its own thing recently and last week it went up and up so I had to spend the weekend in hospital being monitored. It is all fine at the moment and I am home where I am checking it myself and resting to keep it down. 

This has meant a bit of knitting time. I managed to knit most of a little Whirligig Shrug over the weekend. I made one of these in a bigger size a few years ago and loved making it so I made one in a 3 month size. I used Debbie Bliss Cashmerino DK which is beautiful to knit, so so soft. More details over on ravelry. I noticed you can now get this pattern in larger children' sizes, up to size 12.

Hats and Knitting

A few more hats while I had the pattern out.

 This cardigan has been finished for a little while, but I only got around to blocking it today. To be honest I would have happily frogged it and never thought of it again, but I made it for Grace and she loves it so it was her call. The pattern is Pistache, a free one or ravelry. I have definitely learnt my lesson about trying things on as I knit. It is top down so it wasn't hard to try it on Grace as I went, but I got lazy and just kept knitting. The sleeves and width are huge, not just a little big, but huge. Luckily I did check the length as I knit as if I followed the pattern it would have been down to her knees. It became a chore to knit and I really did not enjoy it at all.

 As soon as it was finished I cast on a little Whirligig Shrug in some Debbie Bliss Cashmerino DK. It has immediately made me love knitting again.

Baby Hat

I found this great tutorial for a baby hat today. You need only a little bit of stretchy cotton fabric and about 5 minutes to make one. My kind of sewing at the moment!

Quilt Backings

I am always on the look out for good quilt backings at good prices. I had some really good luck on Thursday at Textile Traders. The quilt fabric section of Textile Traders can be a bit hit and miss. Sometimes they get great shipments of fabric in and a few years ago they had lots of Amy Butler and other designer fabric. I hadn't found anything great for a while, but I loved these for quilt backs the other day. The added bonus was it was buy 2 get a metre free. These three are all from Anthology Fabrics which I had not come across before. I also found odd random bolts from Freespririt, Michael Miller, Kaufman and Moda.

Boot Rack

My clever Dad came for a visit this week and he turned up with this great boot rack he had made mostly from recycled bits and pieces. It fits perfectly near the front door. The girls love it so hopefully they will keep putting their boots on it and not in the doorway.

Quilting with Aurifil

My free motion quilting experiment quilt is finished. This was great fun to do and I learnt a lot.
It was my first time quilting with Aurifil and I am a convert! It took only a little adjustment on my machine - I had to tighten the tension a little bit - and then it sewed perfectly. Those reels of thread do go a long way, the quilt is quite heavily quilted and I estimate I used less than half a reel. I will definitely be using for all my quilting from now on and I will use it when I piece my next quilt.

The Elephant in the Room

That is how I fell at the moment, like an enormous elephant. I am 34 weeks now, and have hit that stage where I need to bribe my children to put my shoes on and would just like to lie on the couch and eat dark chocolate mint tim tams in between having naps. No such luck with three other children to look after and some sewing deadlines coming up. Which really is a good thing. I need things to focus on or I end up feeling pretty anxious. 

I am not one of those calm people who deal with issues as they come up (luckily I married one of these people). No I overthink everything until I assume every problem that can happen will happen. I was so anxious when I was pregnant with the twins that we didn't buy anything for them until they were born and then I had to send Chris out to buy a pram and carseats and nothing is different this time, especially after last year where I had a very very unexpected pregnancy. (Sometimes vasectomies just do not work. At all.) And then a miscarriage and all the sadness that goes with it.

So now I am trying to keep busy, trying not to overthink everything and trying to focus on other things that need doing around here.

More quilting

I am nearly at the end of my free motion quilting experiments, just a couple of squares to go. This was my favourite one from yesterday, big and little spirals. The pattern is in Modern Quilting Designs by Bethany Pease.

 I took some pictures of the back as it was hard to get clear ones of the quilting from the right side. I am definitely inspired now to finish some quilts and get to quilting them.

Vintage Patterns

I came across some patterns that were headed to the tip yesterday. I may have squealed with glee. I was restrained and only took these 4 classic children's patterns.

Quilting

I have slowly been quilting each square differently. Some things are working, some things aren't, but I am discovering what type of shapes I like quilting and which ones do not come naturally for me. I'm also discovering that I love some patterns that I never thought were my thing. Lastly today I have discovered that taking photos of quilting is very very tricky, so apologies for the photos, I'm going back to the sewing machine.

Quilting

I think I am going to free motion quilt a different pattern in each block. To make this easier I quilted 1/4 inch from each seam to stabilise I could then remove all the safety pins so I don't have to worry about them and can focus just on the quilting.

Ice Cream Dress

My first Oliver & S Ice Cream Dress. It has only taken a couple of years to buy the pattern and get around to making one. I made the 12-18m size for a present. It looks huge at the moment, but luckily children don't shrink and it should fit for the second half of next summer.

There is not much to say about this pattern that hasn't been said before. If you want a good summary of it see the Sew-a-Long from a couple of years ago. As always with Oliver & S patterns I made it exactly as the pattern said to and noted little changes I would make next time. Nothing huge, I just have preferred ways of doing some things.

I bought the bigger size as well as my girls love to wear smocks and dresses over shirts and leggings so I think this will be perfect for them.