Santa brings (fabric) organization!

On the first day of Christmas, Sweetie (who I swear was dressed up as Santa at the time) gave to me:

A Way to Organize/Store my Fabric! 
PVC pipe shelving system that is free-standing and holds various sizes of (large) plastic storage bins. This will save me from the "I don't want to move the stacked bins to get to the fabric/lining I need in the bin on the bottom, so I'll just go to the store and buy some more" thinking.  (You don't think that way, do you?  Someone must be more clear-headed than I am on this.)

Almost as sexy as when Nancy Reagan gave Ronald Reagan a manure spreader as a gift.  Y'all just don't know how sexy a practical gift can be...

 
"We" couldn't wait to put together the shelving and see if all my bins fit!

Uh-oh...they didn't actually fit.  Room for 12 bins, and I have at least... seven too many.  (Hanging my head in shame)

Foreground: fabric bin overflow...

However, later in the day, I came to a realization: my fabric fits in 9 bins; it's the UFO's that take up the remaining bins (and that includes t-shirts waiting to become t-shirt quilts).

Close-up of my "labeling" system: Sweetie found an adorable cartoon version of the Chinese/Japanese zodiac.  Since there's twelve years in this zodiac cycle, this seemed like a way to label my twelve bins with whimsical animals (and who doesn't love a bit of whimsy in their practical everyday?)  

So back to my dilemma:

19 bins total - 9 bins of fabric = 10 bins of UFO's???

Hmph!  What to do?  (Oh, I hear you in the back of the room.  "Just finish some UFO's, woman."  This is me giving you the stink eye.)


Oy.  It's that time of year--I'm sputtering and planning my 2019--good to know where I stand with my robust and muscular stash (and equally massive collection of UFOs)

Xmas finish: stockings for my siblings

ONE of my 4 goals for December got checked off:

finished making three Christmas stockings, for me and both of my siblings.  

Made from my own pattern and technique, detailed with a tutorial here.  It had been so long since I sewed up the first of the 3 stockings that I actually referred back to my own tutorial.  Hooray for taking good notes!  (And posting them online where I can find them again.)

Interior: reproduction fabrics (left) vs. back of actual vintage quilt (right)

Raw materials?  One vintage 1930s quilt, well-loved and used by the whole family during our growing-up years; I was so surprised that Mom still had this among her possessions.  
 

Reverse sides

There was no salvaging this quilt.  There wasn't even enough "good" area to make a throw pillow.  So these Christmas stockings are the perfect choice:

• They will be taken out and admired once a year
• They will receive minimal handling
• They might never get washed (have you ever washed a Christmas stocking?)
• Many of my holiday decorations invite nostalgia and strong memories--these will fit right in 

 

Although I had set four December goals, these stockings were my must finish item.  So I'm linking up with One Monthly Goal.  Check out some other finishes there!

Elm Street Quilts - One Monthly Goal December finish link-up

I like that writing down my goals helps me to remain focused--even when I take a detour mid-month.  I should do this more often...

I'd apologize for the mess, but...

"Welcome to my home.  I'd apologize for the mess, but it really always looks this way."

I don't like it when people apologize for the state of their home.  (I came over to visit you, not to run some sort of inspection.)  And for heaven's sake, if it's always a housekeeping disaster, why pretend otherwise by apologizing?  I personally have a running fight at home with the gremlins of disorganization--which may actually live inside of me, so that's a bit tricky.

My messy nature is kept in check by Sweetie, aka the Tidy Fairy.  Thank goodness for this.  No telling what the house would look like without her calming, cleaning, clutter-busting presence.

Exhibit A: this is what a well-organized morning looks like.  The bed is made.  The work backpack, important papers, phone and wallet are all arranged and ready to go.  And the book is sitting there because I've asked to borrow it next.

I'm just posting this here as an aspiration for myself.  Like many others, I have goals of improving my overall organization in 2019.  How about you?

A Beautiful Bouquet

My friend Bianca has made an utterly amazing yo-yo coat.  Which I got to see in person at Quilt Market Houston.  To. Die. For.  Honestly.

As Bianca posted in November about making some mends to her yo-yo's after swishing and sweeping about the Houston convention center, I was inspired to show you my own yo-yo project: the crafty bridal bouquet I made back in 2014.

Ok, you can't really see the yo-yo action in this picture, so I'll have to take some of my own pix, just to highlight the details.

(Wedding photographers are not paid to get detail shots of the DIY elements.  For good reason, I suppose.  Still extremely happy with everything New Morning Photography was able to capture.)

The beginning stages of this process were documented in early 2014, when I started wiring up various buttons, brooches, yo-yos and such; then tried (unsuccessfully) to put them into a bouquet shape; then tried a second construction method by working with a friend (more successfully).  But darn it, in the lead-up to the wedding, I neglected to actually blog the completed project.  Which is just a crying shame.

All crafty finishes deserve their moment in the blogging spotlight.

Basic yo-yo tools, while not absolutely necessary, definitely speed up the process.  And I LOVE the heart-shaped one! (Who wouldn't, I ask you?)

My favorite yo-yo heart, made from scraps of the heavy satin used to make my sister's wedding dress, got given extra oomph from a tiny dark purple silk yo-yo (lighter weight fabrics fared better in the small yo-yos), and a lilac bead.

In fact, for this project, every yo-yo was paired with beads or buttons (or both!), to make more of a statement within the bouquet.

My siblings: we clean up nice!

In the end, it was the event that was special here.  But my amazing, DIY bouquet really was (and is!) beautiful, full of memories associated with the brooches, earrings, buttons and yo-yo's that went into making it. 

Brief construction details

With help from extra hands, I finally got my crafty bridal bouquet all put together.  (See Take 1 and Take 2 posts for how we got to here.)

The big change this time around was twisting groups of stems together into clusters.  Each cluster then worked as a single element to thread through the fake hydrangea bouquet.



I made about 10 clusters, using around two-thirds of the approximately 80 individual stems.

The clusters were then inserted, one at a time, into the fake hydrangea as before.  I had an extra person helping me (mandatory), and we wrapped each cluster around the branches of the hydrangea and then continued wrapping down around the stem area to keep everything secured. 

Under construction: Take 3

Unlike the previous attempt, this version managed to have the brooches/buttons/bling be the star, rather than the hydrangea overtaking and swallowing all the bits I was trying to insert.

View from underneath it all

 Once we had all the stems/clusters arranged, all that remained was to make the "stem" be able to be held in one's hand.  It was already plenty thick, with massive amounts of wire wrapped all along the fake bouquet's original stem.
 

Buttons? No, corsage pins

Still a 2-person job: We wrapped the hefty wired stem with 2 layers of polyester quilt batting, and then wrapped a rectangle of the heavy bridal satin fabric around the whole thing.  The raw edges of the fabric were just folded under (ironed to hold the folds in place).  And the whole shebang was secured with corsage pins--a heavy-duty pin with decorative pearly head, that I had no worries about bending or ruining (I think they came in a package of 100).
 

That's it!  The key to this project being a success was starting early and having plenty of patience for the complexity of what I was trying to accomplish.

Here are links to the things I used/found helpful in making my own crafty bouquet:

Blue Petyl, who wrote the best cautionary tale on the brooch bouquet process, has an eBook, various DIY kits, and sells completed bouquets from their Etsy shop.

My favorite YouTube video, among the many I consulted, was by Jessica Flores, who has the same video plus more info on her own website, Domesticated Me (so I'm including links for both). 

Weddings can be so magical!  And we worked very hard to make ours so personalized.  From the family stash of buttons/brooches/earrings that were included in my bouquet, down to the sand we used in our sand ceremony (mine from Puget Sound, Sweetie's from Virginia Beach).  I wish you all the best as you CRAFT a wedding that makes you feel magical, too.

Merry Christmas (I'm not sewing)

In the Christmas spirit, I thought I'd share...

Holiday-themed sewing ideas that I had taken pictures of:

This was a pillow for sale.  Would be a very easy make--I even have plenty of Xmas-themed fabrics.  Next year? 

 

 Photo taken by me in Sydney, Australia.  I was there for Christmas 2016.  I think I kept this photo because it reminded me of the Bernina & Zen Chic quilt-along that took place in 2017-18.  I have a thing for triangles, sigh.  Must work up something triangle-y for 2019...

Although I'm not sewing today, this is the time of year when I start planning my sewing projects for 2019.  Hope you have some time with family or friends, and that your sewing brings you joy in the New Year!

FQ Pop-up finish

Oops, a project inserted itself into December: the Fat-quarter Pop-up, by Fat Quarter Gypsy.  Like that was in my plans for this month...

Thank goodness it's a quick make.  Plus, I had the added advantage of having already made a couple t-shirt pop-ups--Minecraft, Minions, and hummingbirds (oops, 2 of 3 not blogged)--using the same spring mechanism, so I was well aware of how things went together in general.

Supposed to only use ONE fat quarter for this.  But I just can't resist mixing fabrics--it's what I love most about quilting.  So, maybe a second fabric came into play.  Just for the base, mind you.  Oh, and a peek of contrast on the inside.  Can't help myself.

Done.

Do you whip up some quick projects in December, too?  Were they on your list, or did they just POP into being?  (see what I did there?)



Quick finish deserves a linky party, don'cha think?  Linking up with Thank Goodness It's Finished Friday, being hosted this week by Alycia Quilts.  Go show some love!

How to turn a Quilted Wallhanging into an Advent Calendar

For years, Sweetie has been on the hunt for a crafty/DIY Advent Calendar.  And been thwarted every time.  But not this year!

Charlotte, the long-needled Southern pine (flocked, for modesty)

This year, as we took out the holiday decorations, and put up our gaudy Christmas tree (aka Charlotte), she happened to mention an "advent calendar" that I apparently had put away last year.

I was perplexed.  I had no such advent calendar.

Ah, but I did have a neglected small holiday wallhanging.  Made from scrap fabrics, it was inspired by a project Barbara shared over on her Cat Patches blog.  In 2015 this was a class at the shop, teaching all the different techniques I know for making half-square triangles.  (How many techniques do you know?)  But it had languished in our house since then, not even getting a hanging sleeve put on.

 

So, how does one turn a quilted wallhanging into an Advent calendar?  I quickly rejected the idea of creating pockets, since the wallhanging was quilted and bound and finished.  I settled on buttons.  Twenty-five buttons, nicely spaced, that would hold small "somethings".  (What exactly was to be hung from the buttons was not mine to decide.  Sweetie is excellent at internet research.)

 In addition to a robust fabric stash, I have a surprisingly large button stash as well.  I found 16 identical green buttons, and filled in with red and silver/metal buttons, all from stash.  In order to be able to hang things from the buttons, they needed to be shank style.  Unfortunately, only the metal buttons came with shanks.  So I sewed each red and green button on over an object in order to make a thread shank after the fact.  Do you recognize said object?

It's a bobbin-holder.  I have used a toothpick for this task in the past, but I wanted to raise these buttons pretty far off the surface of the wallhanging.  This gave me uniformity from button to button, and worked like a charm.

Other note: my thread here was YLI Jeans Stitch, a high-quality 30-weight polyester thread that is strong and remarkably lovely to stitch with.  Its heavier weight meant that the shank built up nicely with fewer individual stitches.

Button with thread shank: a thing of beauty

And what, you may ask, is adorning this Advent Calendar?

Umm, would you believe Lego ornaments?  Sweetie managed to find a kit to construct Lego Friends countdown calendar ornaments--make one each day, then hang it on the tree.  And, because Sweetie is secretly still 8 years old (falling easily in the 6-12 age range suggested on the Lego package), this seemed like the perfect thing to make 25 little "somethings" to hang from the buttons.


My favorite ornament so far?  The microscope.  This is in honor of my parents, who were both scientists.  And my brothers, who are both engineers.

I can tell you're jealous.

And thus, after several years of longing, we have our crafty/DIY Advent Calendar.  Turns out, it was (almost) here all along.

Anything you would do differently?  I welcome helpful comments and suggestions.

December progress & Charity Pillowcases

More than halfway through December, time for a quick check-in on

• 31 days of blogging
• December's monthly goals

Hey, only 4 blog posts under my belt in 15 days, so I'm far away from the stated blog-post-a-day challenge.  But, I'm patting myself on the back for not giving up--11 days in a row passed by but I came back!  (Recall: a measly 6 blog posts for the previous 11 months.  I have a lot of bad habits to overcome here.)

Funny story on the December goals...I clearly recall listing FOUR sewing goals for December, and choosing one of these to be my main focus.  Someone was not listening to herself declaring these to be the only December goals.  Alas, dear reader, I have strayed.

There has been some progress on the Xmas stockings.

And then, I went and made a couple pillowcases.

To my credit, these were for my Guild's annual charity donation, and have already left my hands.  Also, they were made from stashed fabrics, so no new purchases.  Finally, the cuffs were both scraps leftover from 2016-17 Circles BOM--even better than stashbusting is finishing off scraps!

Alrighty then: a finish(!) + some progress + more sewing needing to take place.  Sounds about right for a mid-December progress report.

Perfectionism quote of the week

Thanks to my therapist for introducing me to this one:

The perfect is the enemy of the good.

Mmm-hmm

And, in true I-can-complexify-anything fashion, I turned this simple quote into essentially a meme using my new technology best friend, Canva. Is there any irony in this?

Mending in March...and May... and MO-vember?

Saw the hashtag #marchisformending on the Instagram playground, and determined that I wanted to play along.  The mending pile is really no fun, but not having things hemmed and such means that I can't wear them.  So there:  the push-pull between sewing the shiny, exciting things and fixing the forlorn and cast-aside got a bit of a shove this past spring.

I'm right proud of all that got done.  Did I make it to my goal of

mending ten items?

Read on...

Jumper hem: best selfie I've ever taken

1, 2, 3, 4.  Hemming
The most odious of tasks in the mending pile.  However, I managed to hem two pairs of track pants (one was determined to fight my sewing machine, but I vanquished it with walking foot and parchment paper for stabilizer), a jumper whose hem had actually been stapled up at one point, and the sleeves on an eyelet blouse (turning it from matronly to chic).


5, 6.  Elastic
Replaced sagging elastic in one pair of gym shorts and a silk broomstick-pleated skirt.  So happy that I have a stash of various elastics!


7.  Monofilament invisible topstitching
Attended an Earth Day-related sewing event with trained tailors and clothes alterations people on hand to help you #menditdontendit (I blame my children for any hashtags that enter my speech patterns).  One of them helped me use monofilament to invisibly topstitch an unruly facing in a vintage men's shirt.  Ooh, you should feel this polyester!  They just don't make them like this anymore.

8, 9, 10, 11.  Serger for the win
Bought myself a new serger for my birthday, but hadn't taken it out until May.  What was I waiting for?!?!
     Magical serging put new sleeves on a hoodie (original sleeves were too tight, so I carefully replaced them with ones from a long-sleeved T-shirt that I had cut up to use in a T-shirt quilt.    Have worn this several times already--so comfy.
     Technical serging put a lining into a wrap-front t-shirt (where the skimpy manufacturers had only used one layer of fabric), and added some clear elastic along the side seams for a ruched look.
     Rolled hem serging finally finished a summer party-dress.  Too much trouble to hem that bias-cut polyester crepe any other way (I had tried; and cried).
     And finally, serged rolled hems onto the remaining altar cloths for the campus chapel--just in time for the Class of 2018 to have their Baccalaureate service.

I did it!  Wish I could say that this completes all the mending, but alas.  The mending pile is still bursting and threatening to fall over. 

I will just pause here a moment to tell myself, "Well done!"

December goals

I just saw a new sew-along challenge in my social media feed this morning

#transformTsal

Darn it all!  I need my December goals in writing to keep me from going down the rabbit hole of starting a project that has nothing to do with what I was planning to do with my month, sewing-wise.  (Even though I just loooove doing things with T-shirts...)

For fortification, I just listened to an episode of The Organize 365 Podcast on  "Manifesting your organization" where Lisa Woodruff gives more evidence to support the idea that writing down your goals and envisioning them completed is more likely to lead to your success.

Fingers crossed for success here.  Or at least more clarity & impetus to move forward.



 
1.  Cooking with Kaffe BoM block(s)


Need to make at least January's sample block for the Block of the Month that I teach at the shop.  I agonize too much over every fabric choice and all the block alternatives that are swirling around in my head.

Why "Cooking with Kaffe"?  We are teaching techniques from The Quilt Block Cookbook by Amy Gibson; and using fabrics from the turquoise/purple/green end of any of Kaffe Fasset's lines.



2.  Sew Together Bag
Teaching this class again in January--I could really use a new sample.  Two of my sample bags have gone missing... frowny face.

Drama, anyone?

3.  Three blocks for Drama T-shirt Quilt
I think this would be an awesome Xmas gift for the youngest--not that the quilt would be finished, but that she would know I have not forgotten about her and her needs.  (Intended blocks: Arsenic and Old Lace; Marley and Scrooge; and The Nerd.  Feels better just naming which blocks are up next.)

Vintage quilt in mid-refashion

4.  Xmas stockings for the siblings
Umm, I think this was on my list last December?  So sad that I cast it adrift for almost a year without getting done.




Look at me:  only FOUR items on my December goals list!

I am declaring item #4 -- the Xmas stockings, to be my One Monthly Goal for December.  I have linked up over at Elm Street Quilts, in order to hold myself doubly accountable.