Monthly Archives: December 2013

It Was a Very Good Year

partridge canstockphoto7458339As 2013 draws to a close, I am reminded how lucky I am to have my health, family and friends I treasure, a home that I love, and time to create lovely things with needle and thread. I am also grateful to you, my loyal readers, who keep me inspired to document my sewing and quilting life. Thank you for adding firstlightdesigns.com to your list of must read blogs!

I’ve been reviewing what I accomplished on the sewing/quilting front this year. Not as many quilts as I had hoped — nine, including baby quilts — but that’s because I was making other things: table runners, sewing machine dust covers, iPad mini cases, iron caddies, valances, pillowcases, little fabric boxes, and a partridge in a pear tree. Okay, just kidding about that last one.

If you’ve been reading my posts over the last year, you’ve probably seen most of the items mentioned above (except for the partridge in a pear tree). I’ve updated the sections of my Gallery to include photos of my 2013 projects.

Happy New Year, everyone! Please stop by in 2014.

 

 

 

Posted in family, update | 3 Comments

Honeymoon in Paris

Finis!

My quilt Honeymoon in Paris is back from the quilter, bound, and labeled. Here’s a look at the front . . .

2013-12, Honeymoon in Paris
Honeymoon in Paris, 56″ x 75″ (2013)

. . . and the back . . .

2013-12, Honeymoon in Paris, back
Leftover Blocks on the Back


Honeymoon in Paris
was quilted by longarmer Debbie Scroggy of All Quilted, LLC. I saw samples of Debbie’s work at a recent Portland Modern Quilt Guild meeting and decided to give her a try. I’m so happy I did! She offers a very fast turnaround time and does beautiful work.

I wanted a spacious airy edge-to-edge design for this quilt. Debbie gave me lots of options. As soon as I spotted the fleur-de-lis element in this quilting design, I knew that was what I wanted. Here’s a close-up of the quilting:

2013-12, Honeymoon in Paris quilting detail
See the Fleur-de-Lis?


Honeymoon in Paris
gets its name from the Paris-themed fabric (two prints on the front and the Eiffel tower on the back) and the double wedding ring block design. The fleur-de-lis motif in the quilting adds a bit more French flavor.

The pattern is Metro Rings by of Sew Kind of Wonderful. I really enjoyed making this quilt, which may be my last finish of 2013. The best thing about finishing a quilt? Starting a new one!

 

 

 

Posted in Portland Modern Quilt Guild, update | 9 Comments

Curves Ahead

Sewing around curves on three-dimensional objects like bags and sewing machine covers can be tricky. There’s a lot of bulk to be distributed, and if the object is lined and/or interfaced, the reinforced fabric may not be as pliable. I’ve devised a method of pinning and sewing that works for me, so I thought you might like to see how I do it.

My example is a sewing machine dust cover I just finished for my friend Vickie S.’s birthday. The cover has three main pieces: the main body, which is a rectangular shape that goes from front to back over the sewing machine, and side panels that are curved at the top. The pieces are sewn wrong sides together and then bound with double-fold bias binding.

Here’s what the finished dust cover looks like:

2013-12, Vickie's sewing machine cover

On the right side of the main body piece, I make marks in the seam allowance at the middle and corners. (The corner marks are determined by the finished depth measurement of the sewing machine.) I staystitch a scant 1/4″ where the main body will curve around the rounded top edges of the side panels. My stitching line is about 3″ long, meaning it extends 1½” on each side of the corner mark. (You can see this 3″ line of stitching on the photo below. I also stitched 1/8″ from the edge all around the main body after attaching the lining.) Then I clip to the stitching line, making my cuts 1/8″ to 1/4″ apart.

The staystitching step is important because it 1) reinforces the area where the fabric was clipped, and 2) gives me a line to follow when I am ready to sew around the curve.

Starting in the center of one long edge, wrong sides together, and working from the right side of the main body, I pin one side panel to the main body piece, turning the clipped edges of the main body to follow the curve of the side panel:

2013-12, dust cover corners 2

The clipped edge of the main body is easily shaped into a curve, matching the curved edge of the side panel underneath. See how the excess fabric of the main body piece forms a funnel? At the corner I angle a pin on either side of the funnel. The rest of the pins are perpendicular to the raw edges.

The second curve is ready to be pinned:

2013-12, Vickie's cover 8

At the sewing machine, I maintain the funnel shape as I start sewing the first side. As I near the first rounded corner, I flatten the funnel with my left hand, making sure the folds in the funnel don’t interfere with the stitching line. I stitch directly on top of the staystitching, turning the fabric as I go to maintain the curve :

2013-12, dust cover corners 5

Note that this row of stitching is still a scant 1/4″ from the raw edges. When the bias binding strip is sewn on, it will be a full 1/4″ seam, covering the previous line of stitching.

Now I am ready to attach the bias binding. No pinning needed for this part. As I approach the curve I flatten the funnel again:

2013-12, Vickie's dust cover 6

Then I position the binding. Because the binding is bias, it’s easy to shape it around the curve. In the photo below you can see that I have drawn a light pencil line on the 1/4″ seamline. This helps me maintain the right shape of the curve as I am sewing around the corner.

2013-12, Vickie's dust cover 7

I can feel as I go around the curve that the fabric directly under the needle is flat because the fullness from the main body has been pushed to the left, away from the stitching line.

Now all I need to do is fold the binding over the seam and fuse it with 1/4″-wide Steam-a-Seam 2. I could stitch it down by hand but I find that the fusible web does a great job of holding the binding in place, and it’s much faster than sewing it by hand.

Here’s a closer look at the bound edges, first from the top . . .

2013-12, Vickie's sewing cover 8

. . . and now from one side:

2013-12, Vickie's cover, side

And here’s a peek at the lining fabric inside:

2013-12, Vickie's sewing machine cover, inside
Vickie’s birthday was at the end of November so I’m a wee bit late with her gift. I hope she thinks the wait was worth it!

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in update | 1 Comment

A Mighty Distraction

She’s tiny (under 6 pounds) but she’s mighty. I’m talking about my cat Theodora. Night and day, her demands for attention are endless.

Theo is a frequent visitor in my sewing room, where she is either stealing my chair when my back is turned (see post here) or prowling around on my sewing table while I am trying to sew:

2013-12, Theo on my sewing table

The older she gets (she’s 16 now), the more vocal she gets. Impossible to ignore!

 

 

 

 

Posted in cats, update | 1 Comment

Lyra’s Quilt

Hydrangea Kaleidoscopes, 47" x 54"
Hydrangea Kaleido quilt top, 47″ x 54″

Remember this quilt? I was working on it back in February (you can read about it here) when I learned that my brother’s son and his wife were expecting their first child, due in August. They didn’t want to know the sex of the baby until it arrived. In the back of my mind I was thinking that if the baby were a girl, this might become her quilt.

At the end of August, their daughter was born. I was still considering this quilt for her but didn’t decide for sure until it came back from long-arm quilter Nancy Stovall of Just Quilting. Then I knew it would be perfect for a sweet little girl. Nancy quilted a sunburst motif in the center of each kaleidoscope block and a tessellating clamshell design in the background. Take a look:

2013-11, Lyra's quilt
44″ x 51″ After Quilting

 

On the back I put a big strip of the hydrangea focus fabric and converted a leftover kaleido block into a circle:

2013-11, Lyra's quilt, back
44″ x 51″ After Quilting

 

On this detail photo of the back you can get a better look at the quilted sunburst:

2013-11, Lyra's quilt, detail of quilting
Quilting Detail

 

The label was made using a compact disc (described in my tutorial here):

2013-11, Lyra's quilt label 1

The photo above, which gives you a better look at the tessellating clamshell motif, was taken after the quilt was washed, giving it that soft puckery look.

Lyra’s quilt — #7 in my series of kaleidoscope quilts — will soon be on its way to her. I hope she likes it!

 

 

 

 

Posted in baby quilt, family, kaleidoscope quilts, quilt labels, update | 4 Comments

Un Deux Troix . . .

Step One:  make a quilt top. In this case it’s my version of Sew Kind of Wonderful’s Metro Rings pattern:

2013-11, Metro Rings horizontal

 

 

Step Two:  make a back for it. I incorporated some leftover blocks and used Michael Miller’s Eiffel Tower fabric:

2013-12, Honeymoon in Paris, back

 

I had to piece two widths of Eiffel Tower fabric for the back. To match the design, I used a tip I learned from Elizabeth Hartman in her free class, Creative Quilt Backs, on Craftsy.com. In Lesson 4, Elizabeth demonstrates her technique for matching large-scale prints. Even though the print on my quilt back isn’t large-scale, her technique worked just fine.

See if you can find the seam in this close-up of the back:

2013-12, Metro Rings back, detail 1

Even if you spotted it, I think it will be virtually invisible by the time the quilt is quilted and washed.

Step Three:  send it off to be quilted. It’s at the longarmer now, and I can’t wait to get it back!

By the way, when I chose the fabric for the backing, the name of this quilt suddenly came to me: Honeymoon in Paris. Why? Three reasons. One:  two of the fabrics I used in the rings on the front are Paris-themed. Two:  the pattern is based on the traditional wedding ring block. Three:  there are Eiffel Towers all over the back. Choosing a name was as easy as . . . un deux troix!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in update | 6 Comments

Back Home Again

“Hey, it’s good to be Back Home Again.” Do you remember the song by John Denver? It came out in 1974, so you have to be Of a Certain Age to know it. We are indeed home after a delightful two-week stay in Atlanta with my sister Diane and her husband, made even more delightful by the arrival of our sister Reigh and her husband a couple days before Thanksgiving.

I managed to squeeze in a couple of little sewing projects for my sisters the last week I was there. Reigh said she would love to have a runner for the pub table in the dining area off her kitchen, and Diane said she would love a new set of pillowcases for the guest room on the main floor. My arm didn’t have to be twisted:  it meant a trip to a local quilt shop!

Off we went to InTown Quilters in Decatur, Georgia, where both Diane and Reigh selected batiks for their projects. Reigh has a lot of brown and blue in her kitchen and dining area, with touches of yellow and gold. The colors in this simple table runner should go very well with her décor:

Reigh's table runner and napkins

Reigh bought enough fabric for me to make two sets of napkins, four in each set.

Because the design of the runner is so simple — just a rectangle of fabric with four borders — I mitered the corners to give it a little something extra:

Reigh's table runner, detail

I used low-loft batting and did some very basic topstitching to finish it. Reigh has promised to send me a photo of the table runner when she gets back home so I can show you how it looks in its designated spot.

Here are the pillowcases I made for Diane’s guest room:

Diane's new pillowcases

Here’s another view that includes the pleated bedskirt I made last year during my annual Thanksgiving visit:

Diane's new pillowcases en suite

I love the way the gold fabric in the pillowcase picks up the gold in the bedskirt.

Reigh and Diane joke about shackling me to the sewing machine when we are all together but the truth is I am in my element when creating something with fabric.

 

 

 

Posted in bedskirt, family, home dec, mitered corners, roll-it-up pillowcases, table napkins, update | 6 Comments