After procrastinating finishing the hem for so long it's silly, my patchwork skirt is now done! :)
is hanging a skirt in a tree sillier than picnicing pillows? I think perhaps it is. and you know what? I like taking silly pictures :)
I bought the fabric from Joanns probably three years ago, it was a pre-made patchwork so making my skirt was actually very simple. The pattern was Flirting the Issue by AMH. Another yard and a half out of my stash! :)
Recently, my three boys participated in a Living Timeline for school. They each chose a historical figure, dressed as that person, and gave a short speech about their life. 18 kids or so were in the living timeline. Oldest to youngest, my boys were Thomas Edison, Harry Houdini, and General Stonewall Jackson.
Since Edison and Houdini mostly wore dark suits, those costumes were easily taken care of.
For the General's uniform, I thrifted a grey men's suit coat to upcycle. I shortened the sleeves and body. The coat had gold buttons on it to begin with, so I removed them and saved them to use later.
I cut an 8 1/2" x 11" piece of craft felt in half and sew the pieces end to end. Then I sewed the yellow felt to the underside of the up-turned color. Once I rearranged the gold buttons the coat looked like this:
Four of the buttons fell off during rehearsal, so I sewed on replacements, and another fell off during the performance. I guess I need more work on my button sewing technique :)
I loved this opportunity to sew for one of my sons :)
However, this project has made it painfully obvious that outside of piecing a quilt, my sewing skills are all but nonexistent. I would like to change that, so I can sew more things for my family. Perhaps even conquer my fear of sewing clothing :)
hello! today is crazy busy, so I'm just going to show you a couple of quick pics of what I'm working on right now. more info will follow as I {hopefully} find time to sew & make a bit of progress. ok, here we go!
I'm making a patchwork skirt, because who doesn't want to wear a quilt? {and it's plaid!!}
these are 144 cracker blocks 1/3 of the way done. I still need to cut 288 squares on the diagonal and sew 4 of the resulting triangles to each block {that's 576 triangles for all you math geeks out there :) } I started these at the quilt retreat I went to awhile ago.
My project was inspired by {this tutorial} from the Moda Bake Shop by Trish of Notes of Sincerity. I used a charm pack of Dream On fabrics by Moda, a pretty blue floral flannel from Joanns for the backing, and about five yards of pom pom trim to sew into the side seams. I wanted to lengthen the scarf and make it like the infinity style. {I should probably mention I have never made an infinity scarf before}
This is my scarf, sewn with right sides together with a small opening to turn the scarf right side out. Aside from taking forever to pin the sides together with the pom pom trim {and having to redo one side}, everything was going great up to this point. Then I turned my scarf right side out, and got...
a fully lined tube instead of a scarf. It looks like one of those giant worms from Tremors :)
I turned the scarf wrong side out again, got out my dressmaking shears, and cut through the scarf. After sewing the raw edges, I now have a scarf. Not an infinity scarf, but a wearable scarf. With a whole lot of pom pom going on :)
My 7 year old said he would help me get some pictures. Um, yeah.
This is the only picture he took that actually had me in it and wasn't blurry. Unfortunately, my eyes were half closed and I was in the middle of telling him to stop running around in the tree fort with my camera & stop taking pictures of his brother swinging from the tree like a monkey. No way am I putting that weird pic of me on here. But hey, the scarf looks good!
I like my scarf, and I think it turned out great in the end even though it isn't exactly what I had planned. But honestly, I think I liked the man eating worm version best ;)
Be sure to visit the other stops on today'sschedule for more pom pom fun!
So, the Kids Clothing Week Challange ended awhile ago. Were you wondering what happened to that? Yeah, so is the pile of fabric in my sewing room. Oops. It turns out, when you have never sewn any clothing before, it is a bad idea to commit to sewing 3 pairs of shorts and a dress during the same week your Hubby flies to San Diego and you have to pack the kids up to stay with relatives while you go on quilt retreat. During baseball & golf season. Because standing at a quilt retreat holding a pattern you can't make any sense of when you could be piecing a quilt just isn't a whole lot of fun. Which is why I didn't.
I still intend to sew the promised garmets, but it isn't likely to happen before school ends.
Hmmm, a post about what I didn't sew {???} Hopefully I'll be able to redeem myself tomorrow.
If you look carefully, you can see three pairs of shorts, just waiting to be cut out and sewn up :) One pair for each of my boys, and a dress for my goddaughter. That's the plan.
I haven't actually done my one hour of sewing yet today, but I still have hopes of squeezing it in before bedtime.
I did go shopping this weekend, and that counts for something, right? That part was fun, I'm good at fabric shopping. I've been honing my skills in that department for a few years now. With some experience under my belt, I can puruse bolts of cotton with the best of them, confidently laying my selections on the cutting table. "I'd like one yard of this & this, a yard and a quarter of that, and two-thirds yard of this" just rolls off my tounge with ease. Yup, I was feeling pretty good leaving Joann's.
Today I opened up the dress pattern. I'm in trouble. Call Mom kind of trouble. (I've had alot of over-the-phone sewing lessons from Mom.)
It makes no sense to me, in any of three languages, and I keep seeing something about cutting the lining?!? All I can say is, I hope it still looks like a dress without one, 'cause I didn't buy lining fabric, and the shopping is done. lol
Hey, did you notice my new button? It's over there, on the right. That's it :) I'm taking the Kids Clothes Week Challenge!
I've never sewn any clothes for my kiddos, it's one of those To Do's that haven't made it off the list. I'd like to make something for each of my boys as well as my goddaughter.
I don't have any definite plans yet, but these fabrics have been hanging around with no purpose for a long time now:
The top fabric is a paisley I-forget-what -it -is-called, the pink floral is seersucker I think, and the red on bottom is corduroy.
And from my garden:
I'm so thrilled my daffodils are blooming!!! I'd cut some to share with you if I could, but we will just have to settle for virtual flower sharing, won't we? These are new to my garden this spring. My Mother-in-law shared some bulbs she divided last fall. They were originally planted around the family farmhouse decades ago by my husband's step-grandmother. I like having flowers blooming in my garden that have a family history. :)
