Category: sewing

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My Sewing Room

I’m starting to outgrow my space again. With plans to get another machine and a big project coming up, I need to get organized. In the past, I was keeping all my fabric down the hall in a separate closet, but it really needs to be in front of me. Now I have a lot of jumbled piles on various shelving. At some point, I need to face the fact that my fabric will not be in neat little stacks, so maybe storage with doors? The two photos above left show what the room looked like before I wrote 1, 2, 3 Sew. I had just painted and gotten it all organized for the Craft Spaces feature over on CRAFT. And then on the right is a photo taken last spring, with a quilt top draped on the mantel. And what to do with the mantel, which totally impedes my space.

Now I’ve asked you folks over on Twitter for some storage advice and this seems to be a pretty hot topic! So, let’s hear some more ideas. What is your best advice for getting organized?

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Betz White’s Project Upcycle

Betz White invited me to preview her new Craftsy video class, Project Upcycle. So much fun! I love the idea of online classes that you can watch at your own pace, and revisit as often as you like. In this class, Betz focuses once again on upcycling vintage materials into something new with five easy projects. You can also ask Betz questions and interact with her and other class viewers. Then you can upload your finished project photos and share them with the Craftsy community.

I tried out her reversible wrap skirt pattern. Of course I can never completely follow directions, so I modified the wrap skirt pattern to make a girl’s skirt with solids and one of my new Quilt Blocks prints, as you can see below. Betz’s instructions were clear and easy to follow and it was great to sew with a friend!

 

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Playing with Blocks

It’s always when I have a million other things to do that I get distracted doing something unproductive but fun. Last night I played with the solid strike-offs from Moda and made these paper-pieced blocks. Yeah, I know I need a new iron. The top two are totally 80s! And I would love to frame them in white and make a quilt. But not today.

These represent the colorways in my Quilt Blocks collection. The top two are from the spectrum colorway and the bottom two from the shade and marine colorways, respectively. Not all of these will be available as solids in the Bella collection, but some will. Speaking of Quilt Blocks, Kim over at True Up did a nice feature, so go check it out!

Anyway, I have included these 8″x8″ blocks in a printable .pdf if you need a distraction too. If you’ve never worked with the paper piecing technique, you can watch some videos on YouTube and experiment until you get the gist of it.

 

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Actual Fabric

It’s been a rough few days around here, but there was a brief bright spot over the weekend when some of my Quilt Blocks fabric arrived in the mail yesterday from Moda. These two prints will be the only prints available for Quilt Market and the rest will be shown on paper. But I’m looking forward to making some things. And these are definitely two of my favorite prints: Wedding Rings and Flying Geese. The Wedding Rings pattern is available in four color options. Now, what should I make? Really, I have no idea where to start.

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Pintuck Clutch Pattern at BurdaStyle

Remember this Pintuck Clutch from 1, 2, 3 Sew? You can now get the free, downloadable pattern over at BurdaStyle.

I made an even simpler version over the weekend (below), smaller and without the pleats, using some Anna Maria Horner fabric and the pink cotton sateen for a lining again. This bag comes together very quickly, especially after you’ve made a few of them. And it’s a nice gift or a simple way to spruce up an outfit. Since I used quilting cottons (rather than twill as used in the book) for these two bags, I added fusible fleece to the lining to make it a bit sturdier.

And here it is in the book in a green twill, along with the other two bags from the handbag chapter. You can see what a difference fabric choice makes in the overall look of the bag.

 

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