Fat Tuesday sewed a pattern

(and she kicked and screamed and only did it one more time ever)...

Easter is coming y'all! Remembrance of the greatest gift ever given, the annual Smith egg hunt.....and new dresses! Well here is my first attempt, (two years ago), at an Easter dress to get you in the mood to sew something for the little one's in your life...

This was my second sewing project ever. It's a "See & Sew" pattern #B5198. It was a bear to sew. I'm not sure if it was the pattern or just that I was so new to sewing in general but it seemed excessively hard at the time.

(PS- check out that wrist chub- she slays me. I'm so in love)

 It's supposed to have a zipper but I fell for these buttons so I adjusted it a bit for elastic loops and buttons instead...

In retrospect I should have used a solid fabric, it turned out way too busy for my taste even with the seemingly simple pattern. I like the bright springiness of it, but it seems a bit overwhelming.

So there you have it- dress, bag, and headband (way too scrunchy- live and learn) all made by Mama for my first girl on her second easter. (And for the record the things she's double fisting are grapes and strawberries- a treat but not one to make a kid go crazy in church, just one to make Mama stress about the dress and strawberry juice...).

I'll be back next week with last years dresses for both my girls (and a pair of pants for the boy!), and the week after that with this years skirts.  Happy dress making folks- 

sewing...sparsely

 Awhile back, I wrote a post about some different projects I had coming up, and I've made a bit of progress on a quilt for my brother.  Now, my grandma had made him a quilt that he has loved and cherished, so much so that it is worn to pieces, beyond repair.  He asked her to make him another, and she agreed (!), with the understanding that I would help her piece it together during her visit to our neck of the woods.  Well, she was out here for a month, and with all the visiting, cooking, baking, and lounging in the sun, we didn't quite get the quilt finished.  So as she left, she passed along the project to me.  I told my brother I'd finish it as my birthday present to him...I mean, he's my brother, I'm not going to be nice just BECAUSE. :)

So...in my sewing room (read: garage workshop that I share with my husbands tools and new drumset...story on that later), I've been piecing together the last of these blocks!

right sides together

the big block, comprised of four blocks

big block is 17" square

each small block began as a 9" block

diagonal scrappy strips sewn on to a backing piece (scrap)

picking out the fabric for the back.  

love it.  

and my brother approved it.  

and Bennett's hand is trying to touch it in the picture.  

Shopping in JoAnn's with two little ones can be challenging...

Today, I'm trying to sew all the rows together, with sashing in between, and then get it all pinned together tomorrow, so I can tie it (g'ma's preferred method of keeping the quilt sandwich together).  

A good netflix queue and a quilt to tie/bind can do wonders for the soul.

The humble beginnings of Fat Tuesday

 So, waaaay back two yearsish ago, our beloved nanny, Ledah, decided to go and graduate college and get married. I know right? Uncalled for- we miss her terribly, still. Her husband is lovely though and I suppose everyone has to grow up sometime... She told me about her engagement by way of asking if she could have the kids (just Squeaker and Odie, who were barely four and two at the time. Missy was just a large bump on me) in her wedding. Yes!! Yes, you may!  Now what to wear? My first thought was tutu and when she called and said "well, I know it's unconventional, but what about something in the tutu sort of genre?" I knew I was going in the right direction. Except that we couldn't find anything in ivory- only white. Her dress was decidedly ivory with touches of a darker coffee with cream color- white just wouldn't do. So I opened my big mouth and offered to make it... What was I thinking? I didn't sew! My machine was given to me by my grandma (another story for another time) and was circa 1950's. Plus it had serious bobbin issues... Hmmm... Well I was committed, so I borrow my neighbors sewing machine and set off to find a base shirt to work with.

(the dress)

Baby Gap tank in the clearance section- score!  I bought a lightly patterned quarter yard of ivory cotton to be the under skirt, a yard each of ivory and shimmery ivory tulle, and a quarter yard of white jersey knit for the sleeves. 

(Odie 2, Squeaker just barely 4- both mine)

I started with the sleeves. All I could find was white jersey (this was way back before I knew where to look) but my mother in law had the great idea to tea dye them- which worked wonderfully and gave it a lovely vintagey look where the dye gathered at the edges of the fabric and made it darker, so cute. (I will warn you though that when I washed it-,(thankfully I had the good sense not to wash it before the wedding), the tea DID wash out and I was left with white ruffles like you see in the top photo; so beware). I cut three half moon shapes of varying sizes for each sleeve and gathered one edge and then just stitched them on in progressively smaller sizes one on top the other. 

 (Miss Odie on the swing that Mr Handsome made for photos of the bride, adorbs, I know)

The under skirt when on fairly easy, I just gave it a quick gathering stitch and then basted it directly to the bottom of the shirt. Same thing for the tulle. I cut it into strips about eight inches wide and sixteen inches long and folded it over to make an offset square. Then I gave it a gathering stitch on the fold and sewed it to the skirt alternating shimmery tulle and matte every other one. This is where things got hairy. All was well but it was getting later and later and I guess I was getting tired because I ended up catching a bit of the shirt in the stitching I was doing for the skirt. Oh horrors- I picked it out as carefully as I could, (my MIL was in town and she helped- but I was using very tiny stitches and even with the patience of both of us...well), but it was no use- there were holes in the shirt and still a bit of shirt tucked up in the skirt that refused to yield to my seam ripper...sad. Off I went to Baby Gap with my fingers crossed and a prayer in my throat. Yes! They had one more on the rack in her size, hurray! Home again home again jiggity jig. I just snipped off the skirt whole and sewed it on the next shirt. Probably not the most professional method but it looked fine and I was not starting all over again...

(Mr Handsome and one of his three favorite girls)

Lastly I stitched on a few rolled flowers at the waist, some dyed, some not, and called it good. The bride LOVED it- which is all the matters- and Miss Odie looked precious all day long. Even when she sat down at the end of the isle and bawled and refused to go down it even with Squeakers encouragement and I had to carry her down and got to be in the wedding for several impromptu seconds huge belly and all- even then she looked adorable. 

(gazing)

This last photo clearly has nothing to do with the dress, but aren't they the sweetest? I could just eat them with a spoon, to say nothing of that cake and our dearest Ledah's fantastic taste in flowers...

And that my friends, was my first "real" foray into sewing...

projects in the works v. 1

a quilt for my brother

greens, yellows, blues  - using fat quarters and a few cuts of yardage from good ol' JoAnn's.

a quilt for one of my boys - inspired by his grandpa, and two of his great grandpas who were pilots.

using Paper Dolls Around the World fabric, designed by Blue Hill Fabrics 

fabric notecards
inspired by scrap fabric, my love of stationery, and Sergio Mendez, my "beloved" serger.

I will keep you updated on my progress!  And I can't wait to show you a quilt I made for a friend, commissioned by her husband (so sweet) on a surprise basis (I love surprises!).  I'm getting it back from the long-arm quilting lady I use on Tuesday...can't wait!

I'll give you a little teaser...

Check back next Monday, my friends.

Grandma

I had a special birthday treat on Sunday afternoon.  It's not my birthday yet, but I've started celebrating the entire week leading up to my birthday....you know...just to get enough celebration out of my lovely husband, and enough dinners out to feel like I've had a cooking vacation!

So, on Sunday, my little family spent the afternoon at my mom's house, and my Grandma is visiting for the month, "drying out her bones", as she says.  (She lives in Seattle.)  I was working on a quilt for a friend, and I brought it to show my Grandma, so I could get a little pat on the back from an amazing lady who has passed on her blanket-making-passion to me.  Well, we got all motivated, and I started putting all my individual blocks together, arranging them, and she started picking them up and pinning them, getting them ready to go through the machine!

With my kids playing in the other room with family members, I was given the gift of sewing for an afternoon with my Grandma!  And the ironic thing is, she was my assistant.  Instead of the days of yore, where I would be picking out the next square to go in the quilt, she was dutifully picking up the next block in the pattern, and pinning it, right sides together, and making sure the block was facing the right way.

Sometimes we talked.  Sometimes we didn't.  Sometimes we commented on the chaos happening in the other room.  I got the top almost finished, with her help.  And it was a really big treat to sew with my Grandma who I don't get to see often enough.

Grandma with my little Marshall on her 90th birthday!

Patience

          Patience is not my strong point. Well, let me set some perameters around that: patience while SEWING is not my stong point. You've read my "about" page right? The love of fat quarters (i.e. small quick projects), the lack of pinning, the using of the rotery cutter to cut out EVERYTHING, the revoltion with patterns...no, it could be said that I am not exactly a perservering sort of seamstress. Which is why these poor girls got to listen to me whine about my lastest big deal project: a quilt for my wonderful mother in law.
            "Whatcha' doing tonight M?"
            "Oh cutting pieces for this quilt, which I'll be doing FOREVER. Mel, you don't mind do you? If I sit on your floor FOREVER and cut out pieces for this quilt? 'Cause I'm going to be here FOREVER!"
             Poor sweet girls- they were very forbearing. They listened to me whine about cutting, about pinning, (yes, I pinned a little- later I found out it was very nearly totally unessecary, I COULD have just pinned two rows down the middle and been fine I bet), about quilting. Very sweet, very forbearing. In fact not a one of them pulled out the lovely queen sized quilt that Melody has on her bed to show me the bajillion little pieces and roll their eyes as I cut out 6" by 6" or 6" by 18" rectangles.

              But it is done y'all, done. And it turned out so pretty! Please don't mind the poor photos- I'm ashamed (seeing as my other job is as a photographer) but the lighting in my house is horribly awfully horrific for photos at best; and these had to be taken for posterity the moment after the quilt was done and the moment before the quilt was packed away in several layers of plastic to be mailed to my MIL the next day to arrive in time for Christmas, (which for the record, it didn't- but I've come to terms with it, and she LOVED it which went a long way toward making the lateness not matter- for me that is, she never minded the lateness in the firstplace because she's gracious like that). I love it, well, as much as you can dote on an inatimate object that is a whole state and a half away that is.                            

                   So here it is folks, a family tree quilt of my own design. 

                  My foray into quilting has come and well, almost gone. My three babes each have one (babes is figurative folks, they're 5, 3, and 1), my mother in law has one, and I have one more up my sleave- a scrap quilt for myself with all the lovely bits from clothing, and bags, and FUN things to sew that I've done in the last year or so. And then I am done with quilting- perhaps forever. Holly, Melody,  Mary: hats off to you and your patience and your darling quilts but me and my fat quarters are very happy over here in the land of no pinning with projects that can be completed during naptime.
                   In reveiw:   Patience- 0
                                      Quilts- 4
                                      Love of parentheses and using all caps for emphasis- 2,794

                    Until next tuesday.....