So many bags

I almost titled this "sew many bags," but I managed to refrain.  You're welcome.

I have probably made more bags in the last year than anything else.  For one thing, they were simple and fast to whip up.  Also, they are one of the only useful things I've come up with to do with the million mis-matched upholstery fabric pieces that I scored.

I've made several basic totes for carrying groceries, then I moved on to a new shoulder bag/purse:

Linen with pieced flap and shoulder strap

I used that bag for a few months, but in the end I decided to make a new one.  The top was open under the front flap and lots of times when I picked it up without looking I would accidentally grab it by the bottom and dump everything out.  I also sized down a little, to something that just mostly just fits my cell phone, wallet, and keys:

Made from a free upholstery sample with Tula Pink as a lining.

Also from free upholstery samples.  I like this one more but use it less.  Black just matches everything, you know?

These guys are much more secure, but on the other hand I have no flexibility if I need to bring along a few more things.  On days when I have a lot of stuff, I use one of these smaller totes and then throw my main purse inside:

Smallish tote bag for groceries, taking lunch to work, etc

Open top purse just big enough for my regular purse plus a book and a container of tea.  You know - the necessities. 

Anyone else been making bags?

Meet me at the Picnic

I'll bet you've seen the new Fat Quarter Idol contest on Sew, Mama Sew.  If not, go check it out!

I love love love my entry for the "Meet me at the picnic" round this week, so I thought I would share.  It's called "Dressed for the Picnic":

1. Village Path Lilac - Little Folks Voile by Anna Maria Horner
2. Eyelet Grey - Flea Market Fancy by Denyse Schmidt
3. Pastry Line Lilac - Little Folks Voile by Anna Maria Horner
4. Honeycomb Dot Yellow - Kei
5. Grey - Essex Linen/Cotton Blend
6. Susanna Sorbet Lawn - London Calling 2
7. Slate 1336 - Kona Cotton
8. Square Dance Dusk - Little Folks Voile by Anna Maria Horner
9. Cailtin Sorbet Lawn - London Calling 2
10. Four Square New Day - Hope Valley by Denyse Schmidt
11. Wind Flowers Stainless - Gypsy Caravan by Amy Butler
12. Liv Stone - Cocoon by Valori Wells

I think it would give an interesting and textured result to use this pack for a quilt because only half of the bunch is quilting cotton and the rest is voiles, lawns, and linen/cotton blend.  I've mixed voiles and linen blends with quilting cotton before and heard of people (crazymomquilts & a few more) using the cotton lawns, so I'm itching to try this mix!

Pillow Swap

A few months ago, Amanda, the BAM* swap coordinator, organized a fabulous swap for us all, filled with scrappy pillowy goodness.  We each brought in an un-labeled brown paper bag containing our scraps, then she swapped them around among us.  We each took home a mystery bag of scraps that we were responsible for turning into a throw pillow. 

EEEEEK my first pillow!  I got a bag of dyed solids scraps that turned out to be from Leslie.  I have been interested in dyeing my own fabric, so I was excited to play with them.  But at the same time, I had never used something like that before OR made a pillow, and I was a little terrified.  After staring around like a deer in headlights for two days, I finally decided to bust out my own scraps and see if I came up with anything based on combining my scraps with hers. 

Success!  In fact, the fabric that I ultimately added was right there on top of my scrap bin; medium grey strips that I had cut for another quilt and then decided not to use.  I elected to do a checkerboard pattern using my grey scraps with the dyed scraps from Leslie.  The squares are 1" finished, and I hand quilted a second square inside of each colored square.

The pillow shell is about 15" across, but I put in a 16" pillow form because I like them looking a little overstuffed. 

And in the background is the back of the picnic quilt I made for my sister.  Yes, I am still holding it hostage.

The edges of the front are bordered out in the same grey, with machine quilted concentric squares. Originally I planned to do a plain envelope back, with a strip of her scraps pieced together next to the envelope edge.  It turned out that I didn't have enough of my grey fabric left to do an envelope back, so instead I pieced a back (slash "other front") and did some simple and minimal quilting:

Of course, no envelope closure meant that I needed to put in a zipper.  Eeek again! 

Whew.  That went in just fine.  That's probably thanks to all the zipper practice I got when we made goodie bags for the quilt retreat back in February.  Thanks Kelly for getting that pattern together and training us all on zippers! 

Leslie sent me a sweet little thank you message after the meeting.  I'm really glad that she likes it! 


*Bay Area Modern, our local modern quilt guild.  The acronym BAM is catching on, amidst a lot of Emeril jokes. 

Watermelon Squares Finished

Watermelon squares is finished!

 

I quilted it with horizontal and vertical lines various shades of pink and green. 

The quilting is intended to look like a plaid. It has a spectrum of pink threads in wide horizontal and vertical stripes, with a pair of lime green stitching lines between the wide stripes. 

The backing is cute little ballerina mice that I had in my stash. 

And the binding is pieced from some of the extra scraps. 

Can I tell you a secret?  I didn't hand stitch the binding.  I say this like it's a confession because in the past I may have internally been a little bit judgy about quilts that have machine finished bindings. 

I had planned to finish it by hand, but then it sat by my chair for about a week, waiting for stitching.  During that week, I read a discussion on Flickr that got into machine finished bindings v. hand finished bindings from the perspective of longevity.  Hmmm.  Honestly, I don't enjoy hand sewing bindings, so I don't sew them very closely (about 1/4" stitches.)  That discussion got me worried about how my hand sewn bindings will hold up.  I decided that in the future I will machine finish bindings on the quilts that will be leaving my house, and hand finish bindings that will be sticking around.  I figure that I can always fix them if they start coming undone, but I don't want gift recipients to have to do the same thing.  Also, I don't want to hand sew bindings, so basically the Flickr discussion was the excuse I needed to let myself stop doing it. 

Hitched, part 4 - Dresses

I decided to make dresses for five bridesmaids.  It sounds pretty Insane-O Bride with all the other stuff I was doing, but they were actually really easy.  A front piece, a back piece, and some straps.

The pattern is drafted loosely based on a dress from my closet.  It's the same idea as the "infinity dress" that is all over the blog world, but the base dress pattern is shift instead of a circle dress.  I used knit fabrics and sewed dresses that did not need to last forever, so I skipped treating the seam allowances, strap edges, and hem.  Actually, I think the Infinity dress is the same.  I treated the upper back edge by folding & sewing it over a length of elastic, which also prevented the back from stretching out and sagging.  The front bodice was lined to just under the bust, which takes care of the raw edge at the neckline

My little sisters live nearby, so we had a styling session to generate ideas.  My other bridesmaids needed help figuring out the weird fabric contraptions that had come in the mail.  I guess it worked because two of them had infants-in-arms at the wedding, and they even managed to find dress configurations that were accessible for feeding the little ones. 

Sorry for the poor pictures, we were using an iPhone for quick shots to capture each concept

In the end, this is how each of my bridesmaids turned out:

Chief Bridal Dressing Assistant (lil sis) pulled her wide straps up over her shoulders and spread them out to create mock-sleeves, while taking her skinny straps and wrapping them around her neck several times to make a drapey necklace detail.  CBDA's dress fabric was shining shimmering splendid and did not photograph particularly well because of the fabric's reflectivity.

Head of DIY (lil sis) covered her skinny straps with her wide straps, bunched together over her shoulders.  She wore the dress lower and covered the bodice with the ends of her straps, wrapped around to create a square neckline.

Champion of Raspberry Sauce and Other Late-Night Projects (bff) also bunched her wide straps over the shoulders and covered her skinny straps.  She wrapped the strap ends around her waist and tied them at the side.  Well, actually everyone did that...

Queen of Embarrassing Toasts (big sis) did mock-sleeves and artfully draped her straps in the back before bringing them around over the bodice and tying them just below it.  She pulled the small straps up and tied them behind her neck.

Prime Minister of Waterworks (big sis) also did mock-sleeves and then wrapped her straps at the waist.  Her small straps were crossed in front, an eye-catching detail that also altered the dress's neckline to be narrower with a sharper V shape.

PS that is me in my wedding dress!

If anyone is interested, I can post my "pattern" for these dresses, just let me know in the comments.

Lily for spring

Have you seen the spring releases from Colette?  So pretty!

I bought the digital version of the Lily pattern yesterday:

Image from coletterie.com

I printed & taped the pattern all up right away.  I resisted digital patterns at first, but with the printed patterns from Colette still a week away, plus a 25% discount on the digital version... I decided to try it out.   I have to say, I'm a convert.  I know that some people find the printing & assembling really annoying, but I don't like to work with tissue paper patterns.  I think it's the same amount of work to trace from tissue onto thicker paper vs. printing & taping the digital version.  Besides, now I don't have to worry about keeping the original pattern, since it is saved on my computer and I can also download it again later from my login on the Colette website. The digital edition pattern is very well done, and I didn't have any hesitation about how it was supposed to go together (maybe that's the norm... I dunno).

After I finished preparing the pattern, I actually managed to squeak out my first muslin before heading to bed.  This will be my third Colette pattern, and I think I need to get with the program and start cutting one size smaller.  I cut the size that my measurements indicate, but I end up shaving off excess pretty much everywhere.  I guess I just like my clothes without much ease.   

I am planning to make this dress, sans pockets, for a June wedding.  I just picked out this turquoise linen for it:

European linen on fabric.com

I've mocked it up on the lovely Colette model (mentally paste-ify the skin and enlarge the.. um... well, enlarge pretty much everywhere to envision it on me): 

Colette clearly should have made a sample in teal linen.

And then of course I started browsing at the fabric store...

Sunshine Linen Blend Gardenia White from Free Spirit via fabric.com

Bisou Stretch Mini Ruffle Knit Dark Grey via fabric.com

And then I accidentally bought more fabric (those plus some others too).  I was just testing out how they looked in my shopping cart when my finger slipped and I clicked "buy."  Honestly, it's looking a little rough right now on the resolution front.  Fabric purchases and new projects are cropping up left and right.  So here's me saying that I'm definitely going to buckle down again - sometime real soon.

Hitched part 3 - Invitations

This one really should have gone first, eh?  It would have been a nice parallel. - you know, I invite you to come along on a mini blog journey remembering my wedding, or some such nonsense.  Truth is, I refreshed my memory of all the projects by browsing through my wedding photos.  For some reason,  nobody carried their invitation to my wedding and walked around with it tucked under their arm.  So inconsiderate of them.

Anyway,  I've remembered about the invitations now.  A very good friend of mine designed the invitations, fo freeee.  In case you are wondering, the way to arrange this for yourself is to tell your perfectionist art-inclined friend that you are working on designing your own invitations, then send her a hot mess like this:

After that you just have to sit back and wait for your friend to ask if you would like her to help (i.e. take care of it).*  You might be saying that you would never do something like this, but that's probably because you haven't planned a wedding yet.  Soon-to-be-brides are desperate, desperate people.  Avoid them if you can. 

My friend drew quite a lot of jasmine vines and send them to me in various potential layouts, then I picked my favorites and she massaged the text to fit it around the design in a pleasing manner.  The final invites:

These designs belongs to G. Humphreys.  We both ask that you not copy or distribute them.

Aren't they preeeeetty?  I printed the invitations at home on white card stock, then fixed them to more card stock in different shades of teal.  DH and I had decided to keep things simple, so we requested reply via email or phone and left out the mail-in reply cards & envelopes.  Instead, I centered our reply cards on the back of each invitation, since I didn't want the small card to get missed in the envelope. 

I love how they turned out looking elegant, but not stuffy.  We hand-carried many of our invites, so I was able to see firsthand that people really liked them.  Yay!  

And there you have it.  Stay tuned, because my next post is the finale of the wedding saga, and even includes some actual wedding pictures.  (!)


*This is a humorous portrayal of the actual events.  Gema helped me out because she is a sweetheart, not because of weird psychological manipulations.  I think.  I really did send her that first picture...