Fabric Friday Week 32: July 28

Happy Friday! We're quickly approaching the new school year and I'm overburdened with scheduling appointments and reading assessments and final playdates for distant friends, so what I really wanted for this week's bundle was something calm and soothing. I started with some grays but I wanted to add in color too, so I went for muted cool colors. I'm surprised at how much I like it! It kind of reminds me of a calm beach day. The kind where you sit back and enjoy the sound of the crashing waves with an overcast sky that mutes all the bright blues to grays and steely blues. 

Happy weekend!

Little Women quilt

If you've seen very many of my quilts, you'll know I definitely don't stick to a single fabric line when selecting fabric. It's not my style. I like quilts to be unique, to be me. Sometimes, it doesn't work out. This time, I think it did.

Last fall, I went to Garden of Quilts at Thanksgiving Point with a friend. It was great, I had a great day. There was a small vendor area, and a local shop had a booth. They had a sample quilt with a kit for sale and even though it's not my usual style, and I really don't tend to go for kits, I just couldn't help myself! It was an economy block quilt with Little Women fabric by Jill Howarth. 

I very quickly determined it make it larger and drove to the local shop, about 25 minutes from my house. I was delayed about a week because I got really sick, and by the time I got there, they didn't have much fabric from the collection left. I intended to purchase a bit more of the focal prints to help make it larger. I ended up ordering some from Hawthorne Supply Co, one my go-to online shops. And of course pulled a bunch of fabric from my stash. 

When it came time to cut, I decided to make the economy blocks a bit bigger than the kit pattern, and I used a tutorial by Diary of a Quilter for the math.

I think I didn't get the layout perfect, I have clumps of darker ones, and sometimes the blocks aren't spaced as evenly as I'd like. Overall, though, I'm pleased with it. I backed it with coral minky and I think it will become a fast favorite of my girls. I ended up with another wavy binding, even though I was careful and I'm beginning to think that maybe it happens mostly with minky backed quilts...if that's the case, I'll just have to suffer through wavy bindings because I love minky just too much. Consequently, I have four little girls myself and relate to the Little Women story, so this quilt feels special. 

Fabric Friday Week 31: July 21

I had hoped to get some fabric friday posts scheduled before our trip, but that did not happen. I was just too busy getting ready, and even things I had hoped to get done around my house didn't happen. It's okay. We got the important things taken care of, we had a great trip, and we made it home safe and sound. I try to be safe since this is a public blog, even though I don't think anyone is actually following along, and didn't post details about our trip before because that's just not safe. It's not good for strangers to know when your house will be empty or when and where you'll be...so, I was vague, and I did schedule posts of projects I finished up for while we were gone so it would look like we were still around, maybe...not that anyone really pays attention here, but still.

So, we took our four girls on an adventure in France and London! We de-jetlagged in Paris for a few days before picking up a rental car in Rouen and driving to central Brittany where we did a week long moving on bike tour. It was hard and beautiful and lovely and I feel so accomplished. Hopefully the girls do too. After, we had a rental house in Brittany for a week, and then also briefly in Normandy before ending in London so we could see Wicked and Back to the Future (highly recommend!) and then arrived home again on Sunday. It was long, and I'm glad to be home, but there were some really great moments too.

So, a new bundle! I chose to start with a fabric I bought at Liberty in London from their sample sale. So, no selvage. It feels more like quilting cotton than their silky cotton lawn, which is just fine for my purposes, and after I asked for half a meter I instantly regretted it, but also reasoned that it really is plenty for me. It's the light blue with trees. I added in some other colors and I think it's a pretty decent combo. I also paired a similarly colored print from From-Frou in Paris, the one with lemons. It was fun to pick up some new prints in Europe and they feel extra special, especially the Frou-Frou ones because I can't buy them here. Odds are, I could probably find the Liberty prints, but the Frou-Frou are harder. 

Scrappy Sampler

I have returned from our long trip across the pond and am still sorting out jet lag, bah. I hate jet lag. This time has been especially rough, for some reason. Not sure why. We had a fantastic time, I got to do just a bit of sewy tourism when I stopped at Frou-frou in Paris and Liberty in London (and took in lots of inspiration in tile floors and colors, etc...) and I picked up a couple of UK sewing mags in the airport before our departure flight. Maybe I'll share more of that later, for now, I have a quilt I finished up a few days after we got home. 

I had picked up two quilts from my quilter a few days before we left, but didn't have time to bind them before our trip. I did have time to pick out binding fabrics, and I thought I needed to buy matching thread for one, but I ended up using some from my thread box luckily. 

The first one I finished is one I've blogged about before, here and here. I started making these sampler blocks way back in 2016, many of them from the Sampler Shuffle that was coordinated by Pat Sloan. I supplemented with some blocks from a Summer Sampler and some other traditional blocks, and then I had plans to try my hand at free motion quilting it on my domestic. I sashed it with a magenta from my stash that wasn't quite the best match but I didn't care because I knew it was a first go at FMQ and didn't expect much. I got the backing ready, and then it just sat. And sat. And sat. For years! I didn't really want to quilt it myself, and so I never made time for it. 

A few months ago, I was clearing out a drawer and found it and decided it was time to make a decision. Finish it or get rid of it. I opted to finish it, but it was really small because I was going to quilt it and wanted to start with a doable project. I'd say, crib size. I don't do crib size. So, I took it apart and then made another few blocks and made a bunch of hourglass blocks to set them with. That made it lap size, and I took it to my quilter, and here we are. The end! 

Haha okay, not really. What else about this quilt...well, I made it from scraps, in a narrow color scheme. I think most turned out pretty decent, some I really love. I'm happy to have this UFO done. I didn't realize it was as old as it is until I went looking for when I started it and realized it was 7 years old. I think I've been in a clean out mode, lately, I'm not sure why. But it's been really gratifying to use up fabrics I don't want anymore for scrappy backings, and to finish off spools of thread from my thread box, Which I did for the binding. And the backing on this quilt, consequently. I just didn't think of it initially because I did the backing months ago when I took it to my quilter. 

Scrap Pouf

I saw the free pattern on Closet Core for a scrap pouf and immediately wanted to make one. I've become somewhat self-conscious about my fabric waste over the past few years, and I've tried a few different things to mitigate all the waste. At first, I looked into recycling the scraps. I already try to be very judicious and save in my scrap bin anything usable, but that can get out of hand, and there's always something that gets cut off. Eventually, I learned that a local food pantry that takes donations also advertised that they could reuse or recycle textiles, so a few times, I dropped a bag of unusable scraps off, and included worn out kid socks and undies and things. But it was hard to verify that they actually recycled, and I felt a bit bad about that, saddling them with my trash. A friend told me about H&M's textile recycling program, but at the time its as paused for covid...and then I found this free pattern for the pouf and thought it would be a fun way to use up some scraps and upcycle unusable scraps. 

It came together pretty quickly, and the only changes I made were to fuse interfacing to the pieced center instead of interfacing individual pieces, and to make the side taller. I didn't think a short ottoman was what I wanted. I think interfacing pieces might have been smarter, but I don't think it turned out poorly. And, when I made it, I was at a sewing night with friends and had my serger out but not my domestic, so I only serged the seams. This turned out to be a bigger error, and I had to repair it. Which is why you're getting a blog post, honestly, since I actually made it a while ago. I reinforced the seam that burst, and did so with a shortened straight stitch and an additional pass with the serger, and then I also reinforced the top seam as well. 

While I was at it, I decided to try to restuff it. I've had problems with it not holding its shape and I worried this was because I used lighter weight material, although I think it wasn't forbidden in the pattern. I had already sewn up a sack for scraps using an old piece I no longer wanted, and I put that inside so that if I ever needed to wash it, or change out the scraps, they would be contained. But, there were also a whole slew of worn out kid socks I had just stuffed in there. I opted to remove the socks and old clothes and will take those to H&M to recycle next time I'm in the area, I'm still using that service for worn out clothes. I reserve the pouf space for fabric scraps. I'm saving up for my next pouf (and hopefully I'll have more luck on my second go!) but I also added a bunch today to fill it in. 

So, to help with the shape, I stuffed more scraps in, and tried to shake them down into the pouf. Then I pulled the excess fabric of the sack up as much as possible and instead of just knotting the end like I had, I took a long selvage and tied it around the base as tight as I could.

 SO, I hope that without much space to move in the sack, it will help the scraps keep their shape a bit better. So far, it looks promising. Fingers crossed! A word to the wise: a scrap stuffed pouf is HEAVY. Mine is all the heavier because it's taller, of course, but even still. Packed full of scraps, it's heavy. Just in case that wasn't obvious. :)