Reversible Little Girl's Apron

Reversible little girl's apron view 2, a photo by HeatherEndearing on Flickr.

Riley has been invited to a birthday party for her friend Anna, and invitation requested no toys for gifts (apparently their house is chock full). Instead, they requested only very small items or a charitable donation.

I decided to make this small apron for Anna out of some scraps I had left from a quilt. It's from an excellent tutorial on Skip To My Lou.

Reversible little girl's apron view 1, a photo by HeatherEndearing on Flickr.

I'm happy with how this turned out.... thinking about scaling it up for an adult size, maybe making a bib for the top to make it a full apron instead of a half one.

I also noticed that the apron challenge at the Creative Stitches Show in March is for a reversible apron.... the wheels are turning.

xo
Heather

New project started!

Hootenanny layout, a photo by HeatherEndearing on Flickr.

So, I cleaned up my sewing room and ended up with 2 dresser drawers FULL to the brim of scraps left over from other projects.

Some of the fabric is so cute, it's a shame to let it go to waste... so I decided to start a scrap quilt. Now, I'm not usually a fan of scrappy quilts, but I did a sort of scrappy baby quilt for my friends Chris and Allison for their son Flynn. It was from Boo Davis' book "Dare To Be Square Quilting" and her patterns seem to lend themselves really well to scrap quilting.

Riley recently moved from a single bed to a queen bed, and so she'll be needing a new light summer quilt for her bed. I adore the owl quilt in Boo's book, so I pulled out a bunch of pink, green and turquoise scraps and started cutting.

I'm pretty happy with this layout and it didn't even make the tiniest dent in my scrap pile.

The fun thing for her is that a good portion of these scraps are left over from sewing clothes for her, so she'll be able to look at it and go, "That piece is from the dress Mom made me to wear to a wedding, and that piece is from my favourite summer dress when I was 3, and that piece is from stuff that was in my room when I was a baby."

Hexagon quilt turned hexagon placemats.

Gosh, I have such a love-hate relationship with this fabric. The VMQG was given free fabric from Freespirit, the new Jay McCarroll fabrics, and we had a guild challenge to complete projects with it. Now individual fabrics I love... like the large flowers with the polka-dot overlay? LOVE. Ditto for the 8-bit looking pixel-y teal one and the acid-sploosh plum one. But some of the others? The orange with random stripes and the orangey balls on green background? Not so much.


The even more puzzling thing is that these fabrics were all from the same line and were intended to go together in a quilt. I can totally see some of them as garment fabric, which I guess maybe shouldn't be surprising as Mr. McCarroll was the first season Project Runway winner.


In any case, I was really excited to get my fabric and doubly excited to try out my as-yet untested hexagon quilting ruler. 


And then this happened.....



Hexagon quilt with Jay McCarroll fabric, a photo by HeatherEndearing on Flickr.


Yikes. I knew after piecing it and seeing it up on my design wall, that there was NO POINT in finishing it into a lap quilt.


So.... I hacked it up into 6 equal rectangles and made placemats!  My thinking being that maybe smaller doses of the fabric would make seem less scattered. Plus, my 6 year old is a very messy eater and if any bunch of fabric would be able to hide stains, this would be it.  


Admittedly, I finished 2 and then the project languished for a few weeks over Christmas. But today I've finished up all 6 and now present you with photos of them deployed on my kitchen table.... and somehow, THEY DON'T LOOK TERRIBLE.  They actually go with the turquoise seats on my chairs and the vintage 60s rosewood table.

Jay McCarroll placemats, a set on Flickr.

Colour me pleased! And having 6 of these, we now have enough to accommodate 2 extra guests, and I can also rotate them through my daughter's place at the table when her mat gets messy and the rest are still ok. 


I'm not sure how this went from ugly potential quilt to funky/retro placemats, but I'm all for salvaging projects that are potentially wadders.


xo
Heather

New Year's Projects

Happy New Year! We had a fairly relaxing Christmas around my house; lots of family time and treats, which made things very enjoyable.

So, the start of another year...twenty-twelve seems so much easier to day than two-thousand-and-eleven, right? I'm hoping that by itemizing my intentions for the next little while, I will be motivated to actually complete some of these projects.

First, two quilt patterns that were purchased last year and really should get made this year:

This pattern was purchased at last year's Vancouver Sewing Show at Tradex. I love Orange Peel or Cathedral Windows quilts but the curved piecing kinda freaks me out.  


This one is done via appliqué, which is probably even more work but somehow seems less scary than curved piecing.  I even have the fabric I think I want to do this one in, and I love the brown background to offset the coloured "peel pieces".


Here's a link to the pattern in case anyone is interested in purchasing it. 










Next up is a pattern that I purchased, along with the required ruler, at Sew Modern on a recent trip to Los Angeles:

This, I think, will be made for Riley in a queen size, to go along with her new queen-size bed. Probably the background will not be black.... as it won't really work in her white/pink/lime bedroom. I'm thinking likely white background fabric and brightly coloured fabrics will work just as nicely. The timeline on this one will be to get it done before warm weather returns to Vancouver.... so, let's say May at the latest.

This is the special ruler required for making Fast Forward.... but see all the other neat things you can do with it? Some interesting ideas right on the label there.

Next...garment sewing. I have so many cute patterns for Riley. They all seem summery so I hope this summer arrives early and stays late so she can get some wear out of these items. This one, from ModKid, is called Nina and makes both an adorable and comfy elastic waist skirt plus 2 different peasant tops. Last summer, Riley lived in tops the style of the one on the right so I'm hoping this pattern is a winner.

Also from ModKid, I have this pattern for Sophie pants. I love these, especially the three different hem finishes. They look so comfy. I sometimes wish kids patterns would scale up to adult size.

More is planned.... the 2nd batch will be posted shortly. I'm also planning a clean and re-organize of my sewing room in the next short while. If I'm feeling brave, I will post the unsightly "before" photos of my small sewing cubby. *shudder*


xo
Heather