Friday, June 28, 2019

InVESTment

It was over a week late, but I finished making a denim vest for my husband for Father's Day.

He had been shopping around for a vest with an interior pocket for his cell phone and had not been able to find one that didn't look like it was suitable to wear for fishing or the great outdoors, so I volunteered to make one for him.

We took a trip to the nearest JoAnn's store to pick out a pattern and materials.  It was oddly amusing to head to the back of the store and sit at one of the little tables with him while looking through pattern books.  There were not many to choose from, but a basic vest is a basic vest so we chose this one:  

It did not have the inner pockets he was hoping for, but I thought I could engineer a couple of pockets in the lining for him.   We headed to the fabrics and chose a denim for the exterior fabric and a flannel for the lining.  

Initially, I though I would make zippered interior pockets similar to those I had seen in linings of purses, so that's why the zippers are in the photo.  Later,  we thought that maybe the phone might get scratched by the zipper teeth when going in and out of the pocket, so it was on to plan B, which was a pocket with a flap.  Here is my trial pocket:

Looked good, but the extra layer of denim for the flap was awkward and bulky on an inner pocket.  After more consideration, we took a look inside one of his suit jackets and realized there was another option:  a welt pocket.   I had to look that one up to figure out the mechanics of sewing one, but eventually, and with help from this video  I did a trial run and was successful.

Now I felt ready to (finally!) make the vest.   

Two welt pockets?  Check!
 
Two fake welts on the exterior just for show?  Check!

Buttonholes and buttons?  Check!

I think it's done!


Here is my impression of an  L.L. Bean catalog shot.  (Note the calculator in the upper left corner for authenticity.)  😊

No photo of him wearing it, because after he put it on for the last trial fitting, he's still wearing it!


Thursday, June 20, 2019

Meet the Challenge

Every year, our quilt guild issues a challenge to the members to make a quilt following certain guidelines.  This year's challenge was called a "Magazine Challenge", and the idea was to take a page from a magazine and use something on that page to inspire your quilt.  Inspiration could be a pattern, a color palette, a theme, a word, or anything the sparks your imagination. The page had to be submitted along with the quilt.  

Sounded like a fun idea, and so I checked out a few magazines until I came across this page:

I liked the color palette, which was actually somewhat outside my comfort zone, and I also liked the orderly arrangement of horizontal shelves with vertical items, so that was the page I decided to work from as my inspiration.

The first step, of course,  was to choose fabrics:

For a pattern, I immediately thought of Come What May by Julie Herman of Jaybird Quilts.

Here is my first arrangement of blocks on my design board:

The most difficult thing about  following the pattern  was to arrange the blocks so that the white strips would only fall along the horizontal direction, hoping they would mimic the white shelves in the magazine photo.  I liked it, but I wanted to make it bigger, so I added another row and sewed the blocks together:

I added a couple of borders, and quilted across the rows to make them like continuous units that wove in an out and over each other:


For the binding, I went with an orangey-rust batik.

Then I started wondering if I had done enough.  I thought about adding an applique of some kind to really hammer home the "pottery" inspiration.  I made a few sketches, based on the magazine page:

Eventually, I came up with a pitcher and bowl concept:

I chose what I thought were contrasting fabrics and ended up with this:

But, when I put the applique against the quilt, it just disappeared into it:

So I guess my challenge quilt was finished after all.  It would remain unadorned with additional pottery.  I submitted it to the quilt show as is, and no one was more surprised than I was when it ended up earning First Place in the Challenge category!

The finished quilt measures only 24 X 24" and was almost dwarfed by the ribbon.  Winning it was made all the more sweet by the fact that my mom, who had never been able to attend one of our previous quilt shows,  was there with me when my name was announced.  Turns out we never get too old to want to say "Hey Mom, look what I did!" 😀😀😀


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Saturday, June 15, 2019

Blues for June

This month's color for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is BLUE,  and so I have been busily appliqueing my blue hexagon squares to their white background fabrics:

The applique gets done at night while watching TV, and during the day I have been working on  a garment sewing project for my husband for Father's Day.  He asked me if I could make him a vest with inside pockets so that he could keep his phone handy.

We went together to JoAnn's fabrics to try and find a pattern.   Not a lot to choose from in men's vest patterns but we settled on a basic pattern and I told him I would engineer some pockets for it.

The outer fabric will be denim and the inner fabric will be flannel.  Here is a prototype of the pocket I have come up with so far:

It may not be a quilt, but I am working with scraps! And they are even dark blue!

It's always a treat to see what everyone else is creating with their scraps over at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge link up.  Happy Saturday!

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Friday, June 14, 2019

Legally binding


One of the best motivations for me to get a quilt to the finish line is to enter it into my quilt guild's annual show.   I spent a good number of evenings over the past month or so hand sewing the bindings on some quilts that have been patiently waiting for a while.

The first one I finished was my Michigan quilt, which I previously blogged about here and here.

I had this quilt professionally longarmed about 2 years ago, by a local quilter named Laurena who used to quilt for many of the members of our guild before she retired.  Coincidentally,  Laurena happened to come to our show  and she was pleased to see that some of her handiwork was still on display when she saw this quilt hanging there.

Another quilt I finished for the show was my La Vie En Rose quilt which I blogged about here.
 I didn't get a good photo of it hanging in the show, but trust me, it was finished.

It's kind of embarrassing that both Michigan and La Vie En Rose both date back to 2013!  (Sometimes having a blog can expose truths that you just don't want to admit. 😏 )

A third quilt that I finally finished was this one from 2018, which I blogged about here.


I had three other quilts that needed binding to get them ready for the show, but at least they were created in 2019.   The first of the three was  Fierce Ladies,   

The second was my guild's Block of the Month, the  Half Square Triangle Sampler

And the third was a quilt I created for my guild's member's challenge which will get it's own blog post in the near future.

Six quilts may sound like a lot, but these are all fairly small. On the other hand, that was 24 corners of binding that needed to be coached into submission. 


Feels good to get them finished.  Thank goodness for quilt shows! 😁
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