On a Lark » quilting

Reward for a job….done

Emily — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 23:44:32 +0000

When I first started my tee shirt quilt project I decided that, knowing myself, I needed some incentive to finish the job. So I only bought the fabric needed for the top and the batting. I left the binding, quilting materials, and backing as a reward for at least partially completing the project. And here we are, many many months later and I finally completed the top and bought myself some new fabric. I went with silver broadcloth for the binding and this beautiful fabric from Amy Butler’s new line Soul Blossoms:

I ALSO bought new embroidery floss and a giant embroidery hoop. Anna Maria Horner inspired me to try out hand quilting. Now, I completed enough sewing projects at this point to know that I will regret the choice to hand quilt my first quilt at some point during this project. Who are we kidding, I will probably regret it at many points. But it looks so lovely when Anna Maria Horner does it.

And finally, I know this is a little overdue, but some pictures from New Years. We stayed in this year, made a great dinner, and drank champagne. We even made it until midnight. The dogs were not as excited:

Happy New Year!!!

Because I might be needing a new hobby soon

Emily — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 00:05:23 +0000

Once I’m done with school (in only a few weeks!) I might have a little more free time. And I’ve really been wanting to try out making a quilt. My Grammy Meigs made amazing quilts, but my favorite were her t-shirt quilts. She made one for a bunch of the grand kids with all of our favorite old shirts. Here are a few shots of mine:

These are my favorite squares. For some reason I always loved the Acadia National Park and the navy blue Field Day shirt:

And of course, I had to include this shot, courtesy of the Maine State Prosecutors Association. Those jokesters . I should say that this isn’t even the most ridiculous t-shirt I have from this group. The one I plan to put on my quilt so “Middle Aged Mutant Ninja Prosecutors” and it has a lawyer moose on it. Amazing.

I have quite a collection of t-shirts from college and assorted other adventures, so hopefully a t-shirt quilt is in my future. But I also LOVE this one from A Common Place Life. Here’s a photo from her website:

It might be a little advanced for my first try. But I like how she chooses all different types of fabric, because I have all kinds of random fabric in my stash that needs a home. Does anyone have any good quilting tips they’ve picked up over the years? Has anyone made a t-shirt quilt before?

Zippers can’t get me down- Part 2

Emily — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 21:20:07 +0000

So, the previous post is all about my first clutch making experience. Once I made it, and discovered that I needed some improvement in my zippers and the general design, I started doing some research. So, first things first, I needed to learn to properly install a zipper in a small pouch. I found tons of great tutorials on installing zippers in clothing or for zippered pockets, like this one from J. Caroline Creative.
But I still couldn’t find one for a small zippered bag until I found THE GREATEST ZIPPER TUTORIAL IN THE WORLD! Ok, that may be an exaggeration, but I would say that my level of excitement when I found this site was equal to when I find a bar that has Boddington’s on draft. So I was pretty excited.
Before I started I made a little pattern to make it easier to modify in the future:

Then I applied interfacing to both exterior fabrics and quilted the neon green fabric. I also double interfaced the pockets and put fusible fleece on the interior panels:

After putting in the zipper, I was really happy with the weight of the clutch. There are four credit card slots and a bill pocket:

I think I’ve conquered the zipper.

Zippers can’t get me down

Emily — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 23:59:01 +0000

This is the first of two posts about making zippered clutches. For the first one, I used some thin and inexpensive fabric and only batting, no fusible fleece or interfacing. It was my first try with quilting. Thankfully no one was watching while I struggled with a ruler on the sewing machine. It’s a work in progress.

I also decided to install a zipper for the first time. I basically just sewed it in there. Very classy.

I’m using this as my wallet right now because it goes nicely with Carhartts and winter boots. But I discovered that I needed to learn how to properly install a zipper, more on that later. Also, fusible fleece and interfacing are necessities because a floppy bag leads to cell phones and credit cards falling out of your wallet. I’m talking from experience here. So this is my first effort. You don’t want to start off too good, because then the expectations are really high for number 2.