Alabama Chanin Wedding Dress Progress
So it seems that I’m getting married very soon. Even though it has been booked for months now, I still feel like it’s snuck up on me. I’ve been frantically working on this and I’m really feeling the panic now as the day looms in front of me.
Dress details: I ordered a custom DIY corset from Alabama Chanin. Tea for both layers, white thread for the reverse applique and construction. Anna’s Garden for the stencil pattern. I had to order extra large, anticipating my increasing girth as my baby grows.
Some detail shots:
Winding Ways progress report
I had thought to discard the 7th row and column making the quilt 6×6 blocks instead. When I thought this, I assumed that this would make the quilt much smaller, so proposed to add a 3″ pieced border to compensate, but after throwing up the blocks on the design wall, I decided that the quilt is already a quite decent size. Plus, with all the stuff that’s going on this end of the year, fussing with the border seems like just too much. So I’m just going to bind it in dark purple.
Winding Ways on impromptu design wall
Here’s my temporary design wall. I could only fit 5 blocks across, but it gives me a good feel for scale and overall effect of the blocks. The Winding Ways block is quite the stunner!
Inklingo Mug Rug Swap 2014
Jillian of Dakota Essence started another Mug Rug Swap way back in January this year, but something must have happened as there haven’t been any updates from her since February. I hope she is okay!
I signed up for this immediately, even though I already had several projects on the boil, because these are fun little projects that have quite a few benefits. They’re fast because they’re small and they offer low-risk opportunities to experiment with new shapes and techniques.
I can’t seem to find my sketch ideas. I remember drawing them, too! But here is my cheat sheet:
Pieces printed and cut, ready to sew:
Quilting in progress. Apparently I didn’t take a photo of the top before I trimmed, sandwiched and basted it. You can see my freehanded quilt markings. Also quilted in the ditch.
I decided to add some embroidery in keeping with the candy theme. Used the same perle 8 thread that I had bought for the Irish Chain Variation quilt. Yes, I used this mug rug to test out that idea here. This my test of stem stitch before I tried, and opted for, the backstitch. I ended up using chain stitch on the big quilt!
The completed mug rug:
My Mug Rug swap partner was the lovely Janet and she sent me this gem:
Appliqué tea and cake
I love the button cherry! And the other side:
Le Moyne Star
And it came wrapped inside this:
One day, I think I’m going to make one of the projects in here!
Starting yet another project
That’s right, I’ve started another project! This one will hopefully not take too long, seeing as how I’ve barely pieced 12 of the 49 blocks of the baby quilt I’m making. This is the start of a pillow case for my back when I’m driving. The old pillow is at least five years old and in pretty shabby shape. So of course, I couldn’t resist! I’ve printed up 12 Combo 1 pieces from the Inklingo Spool collection and combined them accordingly in the above photo. One block is already pieced and I think it’ll be done in a week. We shall see…
I’m done I’m done I’m done!
Hurrah! Another large bed quilt is completed! It’s bound and labeled and drying on the line! Because it is a gift, I’m considering sewing up a bag for it from the leftover scraps. Just need to figure out how big to make it. But really, I’m just thrilled I even labeled it! See!?
UPDATE: The quilt is dry but now I have to wait for it to stop raining long enough for me to take a proper photo of it!
I can see the light!
A little late, but here is a progress report. “Parenthesis” was the last word and the embroidery complete! Not being well-practiced at embroidery, I’d say that this effort has a lot of “character.” I’m really happy with the overall effect.
Sewing the binding on. No pictures of making the bias-binding because, after basting, it’s a step that always confounds me to some degree. And as I was stitching the other side on, I noticed that some of it isn’t actually on the bias. So, oops. I always seem to mess up the continuous binding method and will take this as a lesson to just cut on the bias and sew the strips together.
I decided to cut the excess after sewing on the binding. There are pros and cons to doing this, but it worked out in the end with no issues (like sewing the excess into the seam). But since it didn’t really add any safety into the process, the usual method of cutting the excess and then sewing on the binding will be the way to go.
And here it is, ready to have the other side hand-sewn down. I use a ladder stitch that is quite effective.
As of last night, this is where the binding stands: almost complete! I’ve written the quilt details into the seam allowance and marked the start of it with a little red flower (just in case there is a need to prove the history of the quilt). I’m considering what I’d like to do for the quilt label. In the past, I’ve chickened out and not labelled the quilt, but I’ve made a few now and it’s past time to start! I scoured the net for ideas, browsed Pinterest boards and read through a bunch of tutorials. I think I’m going to create little leaf-shaped patches to applique into the quilted shapes and use the embroidery thread to stitch a border. Not sure about placement yet. The idea is still forming in my mind and I’ll probably sketch it out soon to solidify it.
Embroidery underside
I promised a photo of the underside of the embroidery. I’m working on the third line, almost done! I am loving this font even though it has added so many swirls and flourishes, it’s taking AGES to finish. That, and I’ve been taking a bit of a break from working on this quilt to play video games. Hard to do both at the same time! If I could, I would!
Here are close-up of the embroidery and the quilting. I may not go back to white/cream quilting thread ever again!
And here is the underside of the a pictured above. It does look a bit behind-the-scenes, but I realised when I first started that it couldn’t be done any other way, sandwiched as it was and quilted.
It works for me, though. Makes me think of a marker that’s drying out, fading in and out.
Spool Block travel pillow
I like to use a little pillow for lumbar support in the car. I don’t need it, but boy does my back feel better when i use it! But my current pillow is getting old, so I thought I would take the opportunity to replace it. I couldn’t find a pillow form of the same dimensions, but did eventually find a smaller pillow form that I think will work just fine. Of course, a pillowcase is required! After considering a few ideas, I decided on using the spool block (or x and plus block), because I also wanted to test a minor re-scale for another quilt which uses a similar block that finishes at 6 inches. Linda created her spool block at 7.5 inches which doesn’t quite fit in with the pattern but I’d really prefer to Inklingo it, if possible! (There is a lot of rescaling to achieve this to stay with the exact pattern, so I may just end up machine sewing according to the pattern instructions)
ANYway, I printed the shapes at 80% but they’ve sewn up to 6 inches unfinished, so my calculations were a little off. Good thing this was the test!
I splurged on some fat quarters:
And here is one side basted:
And here is the other side, waiting to be basted:
I’m looking forward to doing some quilting again!
Here are a couple completed blocks that I remembered to take a photo of:
2 weeks ago • Inklingo, Quilting