Summer Dress

Remember this dress?

I finally finished it up with the bodice from the original pattern.

I like it a lot better now. It is not the best time of year to finish up a summer dress, but the bodice is very wide and it will fit my daughter for sure next year so I'm not too worried about it. 

A couple things--I didn't have enough of the right interfacing so I used muslin instead of interfacing the bodice. I don't know if I would recommend that but it worked out ok for now. I also didn't do the straps exactly as recommended in the pattern, but they turned out just fine as well.


The pattern is from Ottobre Design 3/2006, #22. My daughter likes it, a lot!

Sewing with Mom

Mom and I had some time to sew together last week before she and my dad left to go home.

I had bought a new pack of bar-mop dishtowels and we embellished them with strips of tumblers:

 

We started out with the turquoise/salmon fabrics and then I dumped out my scrap bin looking for the leftover tumblers I'd saved from earlier projects. I found them and we added them into the mix. Mom took two of these home and I kept two.

We also made some more scrap blocks to add to my pile. I got out my bag of pink scraps and mom matched up fabrics and I sewed and pressed. We ended up with 8 blocks.

 

These were fun to make as a team. It's a lot faster that way too, at least for me. I might over think things a little when I make these on my own.

Here's an old blog post showing most of my scrap blocks. I've made a bunch more since then, and it might be time to lay them out and look at my progress again. Maybe it's almost time to make them into a quilt. :)

Japanese X and + blocks

I've wanted to make an x plus quilt for quite a while and I started making my blocks last week. So far I've finished eight of them.

 

I've used a lot of red and yellow so far, and no orange at all. I have a 2009 inspired Brown block coming up soon. (Remember when that was the popular quilting neutral??)

I am following the tutorial (and original measurements) on Badskirt Amy's blog. I made a couple of these blocks for a bee in a larger size, but I like the 8" block better.

Also, I started a Pinterest board with my favorite x + quilts/projects, if you want to check that out.

My parents have been visiting for the past several days and we went north and spent some perfect time at a beach and went on a whale-watching tour. We went over to Pike Place Market with them yesterday and it was a lot of fun. (They ate their first gyro sandwiches, yum.) I am enjoying this summer a lot more than last year when I was having the summer of pain after breaking my finger. Mom and I are going to do a fun little project; I am breaking out the Go! Baby to cut some tumblers....

Triangle Quilt Top--Modern Yardage

A few weeks ago, Modern Yardage contacted me and asked if I would make a project with some of their fabrics to share here on my blog. I decided I'd like to finally make a triangle one-patch quilt and asked for some fat quarters from the Personality line, by Emilie Daly.

 

Here's how the fabric came. Eight fat quarters printed on one piece of fabric, with a little blurb about the fabric designer and some care instructions printed in that extra spot on the bottom right. Pretty cool. 

If you haven't heard about Modern Yardage already, they are a new fabric company that digitally prints their fabrics. You can browse their fabric lines and then choose the scale of your print when you order. In the photo above, the blue and yellow prints on the top row are the same design (different colors, obviously) but I ordered the blue in the smallest size and the yellow in the largest.

Since they print on 58" wide fabric, they are able to print 3 fat quarters across the width of their fabric. If you order regular yardage, there is about 14" of extra fabric that they print with extra things--here's what they said about it on their website:

"We use the additional 14” of fabric to offer fun and creative value-added items. For example, on one order you might find a message from the designer of the print you purchased. On another order you might find an inspirational craft idea or simple sewing pattern. On another order you may find a coupon for your next purchase or pictures of us making fabric. It will always be a surprise!"

For my quilt, I decided to add in some solid fabrics (some Kona cotton and some unknown solids I had on hand) to help calm all the prints down, and I finished up the quilt top last night.

 

I didn't follow a pattern, just laid it out and sewed. It's kind of a baby/toddler size quilt and if I make another one I'd probably make it one row wider and one row shorter. I used my Simpli-EZ 45 degree triangle template to cut the triangles. 

To sum up: I think the idea behind Modern Yardage is pretty cool (environmentally friendly, printed in the US) and they have some great fabric designs with more being added all the time.  Their fabric seems good quality and is just slightly heavier than most traditional quilt shop quilting fabric.

Disclosure: Modern Yardage gave me the printed fabric used in this project.