Venturing into the vault of UFOs

Today I decided to revisit an old project... and I mean an OLD project.

Okay, maybe not THAT old! Nearly two years ago I bought the Fig Tree Quilts pattern "Summertime Stars" and that stack of fat quarters of Amy Butler's "Love" with coordinating solids.

I started working on it almost immediately, making one stack of 10 blocks.

And then other things took over (as Other Things are wont to do). These blocks got stowed away in a wire basket along with the untouched fat quarters... until today!!

Until THIS

becomes THIS

Now, is it dangerous that I left the step of piecing the blocks together into a finished quilt top until another day? Days DO sometimes become years in my world. But I'm trying to change that. Here's to moving forward!

Sunday - let's reflect

It can sometimes be difficult to get back into the swing of things after taking a little break. I'm finding that to be the case with my sewing, not just the blog, but things are beginning to roll again. I only have one NEW item to show for the last couple of weeks, but have been trying to photograph other things and update my Etsy page.

And yesterday I went to a baby shower for a good friend, for which I went to my standard shower gift - the Amy Butler Nappy Bag. It amazes me what a great response this bag gets, but I'm glad it works!

I used a twill from the MoMo collection "It's a Hoot" for the outside of the bag.

(love that owl!)

For the lining and pockets I kind of pieced together some coordinates I had already in the stash - since I didn't actually have the pattern with me when I bought the lining fabric, so I bought short - it ended up being the lining on the back of all of the pockets. But thankfully, I had a bunch of that Robert Kaufman Metro Living in green, which I had passed up on a previous project, and it just happens to work with the MoMo. Yay!

And it's nice how well the Valori Wells "Nest" and Joel Dewberry "Modern Meadow" coordinates fit perfectly as accents in the pockets.

a quick baby quilt (or wall hanging)

The other evening I was paging through my sketchbook so far this year and landed on a page for a really simple crib-sized quilt that I penciled in May. I had played with the design in EQ7, as well as typing out instructions a few weeks ago. Here are some of the theoretical sketches from the EQ program:

So, I decided that after finishing my last 2 blocks for the Nubees Block Swap I would try my hand at bringing this quilt to fruition. And if you are going to do one, why not do two at the same time?? I decided to make one as a baby (or kid's) quilt, and try the other one as more general, using a print from Amy Butler's Soul Blossom line.

I managed to choose the fabrics from my stash (only 4 per quilt top), cut and piece both quilt tops in one afternoon. Boy how I love chain piecing! I'm definitely looking forward to doing more of these, perhaps sticking to kids' quilts and bringing in more brights, like that second illustration above. But it was certainly nice to start and finish a top in one day! It's been a long time since I have done that, or even started a new project at all besides the individual block swaps. More to come, indeed!

Barcelona Skirts

For about 2 years now I have been meaning to make more skirts from the Amy Butler pattern "Barcelona Skirt," but for some reason it didn't happen until this week. It's not that it's a complicated pattern - in fact, once you've done it one time, it goes pretty smoothly from there. I even picked out some fabrics about a year ago specifically for this purpose, but put it off so long that I completely reconsidered my choices.

When I first made this skirt, I found a fabulous Tina Givens fabric at Cool Cottons here in Portland. And when I wore this skirt to the shop a few weeks ago, co-founder and owner, Marie, proclaimed that she, too, had made the same skirt using the same print. Great minds think alike!


And while at work, I kept eyeing a particular print from Michael Miller Fabrics, from their Metro Living collection. I finally caved, again with great encouragement from Marie. So, when I finally dragged out my old pattern from my sewing table drawer, I decided I was going to maximize on the effort and cut out two skirts at one time. I don't know whether it's consistency of taste or what, but as it turns out they are both predominantly grey - however the Andover floral is actually yardage I bought many years ago, while working at another quilt shop that is sadly no longer around. However, it was a print I loved then, still love now, and has been used in several quilting projects already (including one of the main prints in my queen sized quarter log cabin quilt).

and the Michael Miller one:


One thing I DID learn in this process, however, is that this pattern most definitely is more effective cutting and sewing from unwashed fabric. It not only accentuates the fraying of the raw edges on each tier of the skirt, but I found that the medium is just a hint too big for me, but I don't dare try and cut the pattern to the small, but with a hot water wash it seems to shrink just about the right amount to fit properly!
Now if only the temperature would stay above 58 degrees so I might actually get some wear out of my cute new skirts!