Project Three: First Quilt Square

Hello again!

I realized that no matter how many amazing projects I want to try from the crafty blogs, I did actually buy this sewing machine for a purpose.  I promised a friend of mine who was having a baby that I would make her a baby quilt.  (I say was having because I am so behind that she has now had said baby!)  Since that's the plan, I needed to get on the learning to make quilts part!

I decided to use some of the fabric Mom so generously brought me on her visit and see if I could make a very basic quilt square.  The quilt I have planned for E. is all squares, so I have already bought a 3.5" square template.

I had some trouble getting 3.5" strips to be even, maybe because my cutting mat isn't that big?  I need to work on that!  There is a LOT of cutting in my near future.  Either way, I did manage to get a bunch of squares out of the fabric eventually.

I laid them out in a grid on the cutting mat, so I could see how it would look in fabric and not just in my head.

Once I decided I liked the layout, I started pinning everything together as instructed by my little sewing manual. And yes, today's lesson is that pins are sharp! Who knew? :P

It took a surprising amount of time to get everything pinned so nothing buckled and everything lined up right. (I forgot to take a picture of the first pinning set. I sewed the first batch of pairs together and then did this part.)

One I had everything pinned, I sewed the 1/4" seams and I am very proud that they are pretty much straight!  They're not perfect, but I have no illusions about my beginner status with getting really straight seams.

Then I had these three sets of squares and I pressed the seams so they would all lay flat.  Is there a direction you're supposed to press seams?  I pressed mine so the edge faced left for some reason, but then I realized I didn't know if there was a right way to do that part.

Once I won the fight with my iron and got all the seams pressed, I pinned one set together, sewed it and pinned the next.  I am getting better at the seams - these are closer to straight! (I am so proud of myself.)

And then, all of a sudden and much faster than I expected, I had a quilt square!  It's so pretty. :)

This only took me about an hour and half from beginning to end.  I honestly thought it would take me much, much longer.  Apparently, I'm cooler than I think?  Haha, or this is easier than I think!

I actually love the way this looks.  I think I might find a similar fabric and make a quilt for my bed that's just very simply squares alternated like this.  It's basic, but somehow I like the look more in person than I do when I lay it out as an idea.

Next up: Learning to cut straight strips, so I can start cutting for E's quilt!  It's going to be SO cool when I'm done.

Wish me luck,
A

Project Two - Success!

Well, I've had this vision in my head of a blanket I wanted to make for awhile now, but I wasn't willing to do all the embroidery by hand. There was a piece on Etsy of an airplane with just the loop line behind it that stuck in my head.  I don't really have much space left on my walls for more art, so I wanted to do this instead.

I found a big piece of fleece on sale and it turned out to be the perfect size! 2 yards of 60" wide fabric makes a perfect blanket to curl up in on cooler nights.  I had this plan of cleaning Sunday night, but the piece of fleece thrown over my chair was taunting me....

So instead of cleaning, I decided to make my first attempt at overlock stitching and see if I could make the blanket I could see in my head.  I spent a good bit of time reading the manual to my machine and it looked pretty simple.  I called Mom and asked if I could really just overlock stitch the edge of fleece and leave it.  She said yes, so I went for it.

Trying to deal with the giant piece of fleece was...interesting....

I think I might need a bigger sewing table if I'm going to keep doing things like this! (Or at least somewhere else to put things like the manual, so I'm not pushing them to the side while doing the sewing part.  OK - perhaps just some organizational skills would probably do the trick, but we're pretending.

I had the tension a little too tight (still getting the hang of that part...) and it made this awesome, slightly scalloped edge that I ended up loving.

It looks a little better on the large scale, but then you could see the dog toys shredded all over my floor!

I made a paper airplane and laid it out so I could see what the outline would look like. I drew it out on paper and messed with it until I liked the look

I really had intended to stop there for the night and clean up those shredded dog toys, but I was having so much fun I couldn't stop myself!  .  Then I killed the blade of my rotary cutter cutting around the template - silly me.

I had some white cotton I had grabbed for this purpose, though I hadn't really thought I'd use it so soon.  I laid my template on top of the fabric and held it down with the ruler while I cut around it.  I tried pinning it, but it made it hard to keep the ruler in place and made the fabric buckle a little too much.  It worked in the end, but it involved a fair amount of cursing and impatience on my part!

Then I had a paper version and a fabric version. Hooray!  I tried to rub the pencil lines onto the fabric, which was a total failure, so I just drew them on with a mechanical pencil and ran a straight stitch in black over them.  It worked perfectly. :)

I think I did pretty well!  The tip of the plane came out a little curved, but I actually liked that in the end.  It made it look more like it was flying somehow.

I should have cut allowance to fold under the edges, but of course I didn't think of that until after I had gotten to this point. (Oops! Rookie mistake!) I decided to just go with it.

Once I had the plane cut, I needed to mark the line to sew in it's path on the blanket.  I laid the whole thing out on my bed and used some white chalk to mark the line I wanted to sew.  It sorta worked, I guess.  Let's say it worked enough to do the sewing, but not so much that I would do it again.  I need a better method to mark the line on fleece!  Once I'd drawn in the line, I placed the airplane and stood back to make sure it looked like I wanted it to.

(Please ignore the total disaster that is my house right now. I pulled everything out to organize it and it's not going well!)

I brought it back to the machine and got completely tangled up in the fleece trying to find the starting point of the line.  The puppy thought this was hilarious and tried to make off with the blanket while I was fighting with it.  (Thanks, Casey.) 

I used a zigzag stitch 7mm across and made it fairly close together. I will confess the beginning of the line is a little funky, because I was messing with how close together the zigzag was.  In the end, however, I got it right and it went pretty smoothly.  I even used my machine on the high speed setting for the first time! I felt magic.  And there were only a few moment when I panicked because I couldn't find the line too.

Once the line was done, I placed the plane and basted it down with dark thread.  I used the white thread to applique around the edge. (Can I just mention that I LOVE my new sewing machine?!)

And then it was done!

And there we go - my second fully successful project.  In fact, so successful one of my friends has asked me to make him a more manly version for his couch.  Since my dog steals his blanket every time we come over, I think that seems only fair!  I guess that gives me a chance to remember things like folded edges on the applique too.  I am scheming presents for more people already....

But anyway, hooray success!
A

First Sewing Project - Tissue Pouch

I have been playing with my sewing machine and having masses of fun seeing what all the stitches are and how they work.  I now know how to adjust tension and change presser feet and all that good stuff.  And, of course, I now feel like a genius!

I was trying to think of something completely simple to try as a first project, since I don't know anyone here who can help me learn all of this.  Of course, my mother and grandmother are both fantastic sewers, but neither lives less than 4 hours away.

I have had this nasty cold that leaves me needing tissues every 4 seconds for the past week or so and my bag is covered with the little bits of tissue that come off when I fold the new ones and put them in my purse.  So I decided to make a little tissue holder to protect them! (Yes, obvious I know, but I'm pleased with my self anyway.)

I started with a piece of fabric my mom sent me to learn with and cleaned up the edges with my rotary cutter. (Best tool ever!)  I pinned a 1/4 hem on the long sides and then ironed it down, so it would stay.

It looked like this:

Yes, I know I should iron first.  My iron was being grumpy about those last few wrinkles.

Then I hemmed the rest of the way around and it looked like this:

And I ironed it again to make sure those last wrinkles were gone.  Also, I learned something important while doing this: the pins I use with awesome tops that are hard to lose in my rug are also NOT iron resistant.  I did absolutely melt one ot my iron and spent 20 minutes figuring out what to do about that. Yup, sometimes I'm an idiot.

Then I took the easy, no measure method and folded some tissues the way I usually do, put them on top, and folded the fabric around them the way I would want it to close.  I had not really intended to put a closure on this, so I didn't do the smart thing and mark the velcro and sew around it at this point. I think that would have been the right method.  Probably?

I folded and pinned the bottom sides to form the pouch and sewed them on.  I did not manage straight seams, but I'm giving myself a break here as it's my first real project.  I swear I can sew straight seams by hand! Really.

Then I had a really cute pouch:

At this point, I just folded it over to where I would want it to bend and ironed it down.  Then I decided I should add velcro so it doesn't come open in my bag.  I have this sticky-backed velcro and I was just going to depend on the sticky, but decided to see if I could sew around it.  It was, um, well not very neat.  I guess you can't really see the messy, uneven sewing around velcro on the finished product.

But look! Tissue pouch for my purse. :)

And closed:

I feel so accomplished!  It's my first real sewing project all on my own.  I didn't even have to call Mom and ask for advice.  My seams aren't straight and there's a point where I had the tension wrong and the thread bunched, but I don't care.  I made something all on my own!

And that's all my happy project news for the day.  More to come soon!

A

Exciting News

Well, I finally bought myself a sewing machine, so there will be more projects coming up on here.  I have a few things I need to post.  Of course, I killed my camera, so things are taking awhile to get photographed and I know posts are better with in progress photos!  Note: I absolutely get to blame the puppies for the broken camera, but they were so cute in progress that I can't manage to be mad.

Anyway - my Brother CS6000i should be getting here today and I will get to play with all the many, many pieces while I try to channel 3 generations of quilt makers! :)

Wish me luck!

Royal Icing Bone Decorations

Well, after all this time, I have decided to come back to the blog with a new purpose.  I think I am turning this into a craft project blog, perhaps with the occasional infusion of the zombie project I'm working on.  Sound like fun?  Good! I think so too. So without further ado, my latest success:

Ta da!

 

Those, my friends, are royal icing dog bones! No, I'm not crazy. Let me explain.

I have a puppy, whose name is Casey.  Casey has had a very rough first year of life - four homes before he found me, a pretty serious infection, lots of shots and vet visits and unhappy weeks for the puppy.  He is the sweetest dog and ridiculously well behaved for the amount of time I've spent training him.  And he's turning one this week!  That's right - soon, he will be a man! So I'm throwing him a party, because I never turn down an excuse for a party! 

So now - how do you do this?  Well, I didn't think this through, so I don't have a good picture tutorial, but I will make one at some point.  It might be a minute, since it's going to take awhile to use these up! But that doesn't mean I can't explain.

This is a closer shot of a few of the bones:

Sorry it's a little blurry! I took it with a phone.  Like I said, better versions will appear in the future. 

I tried many methods to make these and finally settled on the one that got me those.  I used the royal icing recipe on the side of the meringue powder and added the extra 1/2 cup of powdered sugar to make it pretty stiff.  (Heads up, that recipe makes a crazy amount of these! I only used about half of it and I have 3 full cookie sheets of bones drying on my dining room table.)

I used the #1 tip (a little circle) and a medium-sized pastry bag.  I always put the pastry bag in a pint glass and roll the sides over it, to make filling easy.  Remember not to overfill the bag! (I totally forgot this and had  icing all over my right hand by the time I was done.)  Twist the end of the bag, push the icing down, push a little out to get the air gone, and you're ready to go!

Essentially, you make this shape with royal icing:

:--:

Here's how:

First, make the two dots on each end, touching each other so the icing meets in the middle.

To Make Dots: hold the tip a tiny bit above the board (between 1/8-1/16 of inch worked for me).  Gently squeeze the bag without moving the tip and the icing will pool into a little dot.  When it's the size you want, stop squeezing and lift the bag away.

Then, place the tip where the dots meet on one end and slowly (while squeezing gently) make a wide line until your tip is touching the other two dots.  Stop squeezing and lift up the bag.

Amazingly, that's it!  I tried for a bit to not have the little peaks on the dots, but decided in the end that I kinda liked them.  I suspect if my icing had been a little less stiff, I would not have seen them as much.

I also made these in a bunch of sizes, ranging from itty bitty mini dog bones that look more like they should be sprinkles to 2 inch long ones that I'll put on top of cupcakes.

Hope they entertain you as much as they do me! 

A

Spring at last!

Apparently I went into hibernation for the winter, but now I'm back and feel like writing again. I do this every winter. Maybe a sun lamp would help? Ah well. Life is no fun if you're predictably happy.

Let's see. This is more a collection of the things running through my head, but we'll see where it goes.

1) There have been sirens everywhere these past two weeks. It sounds like the city is a grumpy teen repeatedly hitting snooze on the wailing alarms. You hear them at night, echoing off the buildings and they are the first thing I hear most mornings. I don't live near a hospital. It's strange and a little unnerving.

2) I have discovered a data analysis program and I'm having way to much fun. I am contemplating making questionnaires to give my friends, just to see what strange results I get. It's too easy to hunt for patterns if the software makes it simple. I can't help thinking I'll eventually find a pattern I don't want to see.

3) As another round of classes ends, I find myself wondering how the people around can be satisfied with their own thought processes. It has never occurred to me that failure is an option, not in grad school, and it seems strange that it has to them. If I'm doing that badly, I just assume I need to work harder. Don't you?

That's it for now. Someday I'll post something more coherent. Promise.

Welcome

Well, it looks like I've finally caught the blogging bug, but I'll try to keep under control for now.

This is truly a test, so there will be a better post in my future, probably tonight.

For now, welcome!