Saturday, June 20, 2020

For My Father

I was blessed to have a wonderful father.  He has been gone four years now and I still miss him every day, especially on Father's Day.    A few years ago, I made a quilt for my mother using his flannel plaid shirts , and this past year I decided to make a quilt for myself using his cotton summer shirts.

Dad's favorite color was blue, and it was reflected in the clothing he chose.  I had 12 different summer plaid shirts to work with, and most of them were blue so they played together nicely.

The pattern I chose was called "Cool Summer Porch" by Eleanor Burns.  The title alone seemed to make it the perfect pattern choice.

To start, I deconstructed the shirts and ironed the pieces flat.

Each shirt sleeve yielded two squares of fabric which I then subcut on the diagonal.  I cut them all individually so that I could be sure to line up the plaids with the straight edge of the ruler.

One triangle was sewn to each side of a white strip of fabric:

The resulting quilt was supposed to look something like this, according to my Electric Quilt software:

In the end, I eliminated the horizontal and vertical white sashing because it competed visually with the lines in the plaids, and I rearranged the direction of the white stripe.

The final result is this:

Of the 12 shirts I used, I was able to find a photos of my Dad wearing 9 of them.  I will be adding a pocket to the back of the quilt with copies of the photos as a keepsake.

Happy Father's Day to all the dads.  💗

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Saturday, June 6, 2020

A new life for an old bag

After many good years of service, my wood frame knitting bag looked like this:

The fabric at the corners was shredding:

The silky fabric interior was falling apart:

And the faded little ruffled accent just wasn't cutting it anymore:

I had a pretty blue printed panel that was given to me for free.  It was intended to be used to make pillows, but it would make a nice knitting bag too.  I figured that even if I goofed up, I had nothing to lose.

The only way to remove the old fabric bag was to cut it off from the wooden frame.   That would be easy enough, but how to attach a replacement bag?  I decided to try velcro.

I made the bag similar to any tote bag with a lining, but instead of handles, I made sleeves with velcro:

For the bottom of the bag, where the expandable legs are housed, I added another velcro sleeve:
View showing bottom of the bag.

And for the interior, I had just enough of a pale blue floral to make a lining with a pocket.

This is what the bag looked like before being attached to the wooden frame:

Here is what it looks like after!


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