Lily Ashbury

Holy crap, everyone.  Could it be another blog post?

One thing that happened this year that I'm really excited about is some new work I've taken on.  For the past 6 months, I've been sewing samples, writing and editing patterns, and even doing a little design work for Lily Ashbury!  Lily Ashbury is the name of a Moda fabric line designed by the amazing Stephanie Carter, who works right here in Vancouver.  You can read the Lily Ashbury blog and find yourself some cool tutorials and projects.

I'm beyond thrilled to be her helper, and one of the perks of this job is getting to see the new fabric lines waaaaaaay before they hit the stores.  The most recent collection, called High Street, was released in May of this year.  The next one is called Folk Lore and I completely adore it; it's partially inspired by Mexican folk art prints.  I cannot wait to get started on projects.

With the High Street line, Stephanie asked me to write/edit the patterns and sew up samples for a sweet ruffle-pocket apron, a travel sewing kit, and an appliqué quilt.

Me modelling the Chelsea Apron in very terrible lighting.

The High Street quilt sample, nearly done (unbound).

Printed patterns! Exciting!

Patterns, Travel Sewing Kit sample, High Street Quilt sample,
 and fabrics on display at the Cloth Shop on Granville Island.

Stephanie and I also worked on some block designs for submission to a 100 quilt blocks magazine.  I don't think we've heard yet which block(s?) have been selected for publication but the three below are what we came up with.

The first two blocks are pieced, and the third is appliqué.  I must admit, I haven't done a ton of appliqué in the past but I think I'm managing it well.  The pieced blocks have an interesting secondary pattern when put together into a quilt top.

Coming soon will be a pattern for the Bon Voyage Cosmetics Tote. I pretty much designed this from the ground up -- with a number of samples made and a lot of feedback and tweaking from Stephanie, of course. The pattern has been submitted to Moda and I believe the final pattern sample will be made of the yet-unreleased Folk Lore line.  The image below shows the final prototype; it includes a pouch pocket on the exterior, a zip pocket on one side of the inside, and a set of 5 expandable pockets on the other side of the inside.  These expandable pockets are perfectly sized to hold your travel-sized bottles of shampoo, conditioner, bodywash, cream, etc.  There is plenty of additional interior space to hold other necessary toiletries or even a small zippy pouch full of makeup.

I wish I could give you a sneak peek of the Folk Lore line -- the colours and designs are so fabulous.  Perhaps soon!

xo

Heather

Stuff I've made recently.

Of course, there's been about eleventy-million things I've made since I last updated this poor, neglected blog.  Some very significant life changes have been happening and I'm totally sticking with that as my excuse for not blogging.  Yep.  So I'm just going to post a few things that I've made in... say... the past 3 months.

First, a new advent calendar.  I'm tired of either (a) spending a ton of money on a cool Lego or Playmobil one or (b) getting some crappy thing filled with crappy chocolate.

This advent calendar, which I didn't finish until December 6th (good thing Riley was away with her dad in Hawaii until the 9th!) is from Pretty in Patchwork Holidays, a super cute book curated by QuiltDad. I still need to find some nice, flat candies to put in the pockets but at least it's done.  That hexi Christmas tree is also the first, and likely the last, hand-done english paper piecing I've done.   I'm happy with how it turned out but good grief, so fussy to do!

The original pattern calls for using permanent ink and stamping the numbers onto the advent pockets, but I've been doing a lot of cross stitch over the past year and I thought I'd try using waste canvas to stitch the numbers on. It worked but waste canvas is a total pain to remove, I've discovered.

The VMQG and the LMQG also did a needlebook swap this past month.  This is what I sent across the pond.  I'm excited to receive a needlebook in exchange at our December VMQG meeting!

At the end of October, the VMQG also ran a 241 Tote Bag workshop, taught by our own Krista Hennebury.  It was a totally fun day.  The black and white dotty print is some sort of mystery poly fabric from the clearance section, which I paired with some turquoise quilting cotton and black twill.  I love this bag and I really want to try the Noodlehead SuperTote now.

Riley's bedroom has the apartment's breaker box in it.  Apparently, according to new building code, the box cannot be inside a closet (I guess for access-related reasons?).  Anyhow, she was pretty bummed about it and, truth be told, it's gunmetal grey and pretty ugly.

The VMQG had a Michael Miller Cotton Couture challenge a few months back where we were given bundles of bright, citrus-y solids.  I added in the turquoise and the navy blue from my stash and made this wall hanging to be exactly the right size to cover up the horrible breaker box.  She was beyond thrilled with it.

Ah, cross-stitch.  My new crafting love.  I blame Holly.  Way back over a year ago, I think, she showed off a cross stitch she'd done from Canadian designer wee little stitches at a VMQG guild meeting.  I want to say it was a Star Wars one but I can't remember clearly (see her finished Buffy the Vampire Slayer one).  I do remember thinking, "That is the coolest thing ever and I want to make one."  And then there was a pattern sale at the wee little stitches store and I was off to the races.  I've made a bunch of these and most have been given as gifts. 

This one, though, is just for me.  Sherlock.  Possibly the best thing to ever grace Netflix.  I'm a huge Sherlock Holmes nerd in general and I think the new series is absolutely BRILLIANT.  This one is now framed and hanging in the living room.

The one below is from a different pattern designer called PixelPower.  I made this for a friend who recently started working as a high-school english teacher, and it's the Stark children from Game of Thrones and their respective dire wolves.  You can buy this pattern on their Craftsy store.  Like wee little stitches, they have lots and lots of amazing pop culture and nerdy designs.  Jon and Ghost are my favourite :)  I stitched it on light blue Aida because I thought it would make the dire wolves pop out more than on white or natural.

I think that's enough for today.... man, I really hope I can do a better job of keeping up with this thing.

xo

Heather

Seems to be a thing I do around this time every year... promise to update my damn blog and then never do it.  

It's actually been so long that I had to figure out how to add my gmail account as an owner to the blog... so much blog-guilt.

And there's this new-fangled thing called Bloglovin!  Yep:

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

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