W.i.P. - My Hen Night Dress and More EPP

A W.i.P. post on Wednesday! With a little less than two months until the wedding and only a little more than a month until the hen night, I had to get a start on my hen night dress. Both pattern and fabric have been in my stash since my birthday in March!

I've chosen the Jamie Dress by Sis Boom because I like fitted bodices and wide skirts. I've sewn a couple of skirts before but have so far been too lazy-stressed-scared to try a dress. At 1,76 m (nearly 5'10'') and a D-E cup most patterns require alterations and I did not feel up to it in the past. The Jamie Dress shouldn't require too many alterations - at least the measurements are a lot closer to my own without glaring discrepancies between bust and waist. I assume that I'll have to add some length to the bodice, though. Fingers crossed. (I will be less scared and lazy and learn to do FBAs once this project is under my belt. Promised.)

Everything cut out for the mock-up.

The fabric is Indigo Vines from the Katagami collection by RJR fabrics. No fashion fabric but too pretty to pass up. You can still find it here or here should it take your fancy.

Bodice parts weren't the only things cut out on Sunday.

EPP has got me in its grip! I pulled some fabric scraps and did a little basting.

Added one more hexie flower to the pile.

Stats for the Week

Finished Projects - 1
Echo pillows

New Projects -2
Chair cushions for my sister
EPP parallelograms/stars

Ongoing Projects - 3
EPP hexies
Polaroid blocks
Hen Night dress

Planning Stage - 5
Wedding Anniversary quilt
Wedding clutch
ET Phone Home EPP project
Moe Moe's Star quilt
Repurpose last year's scalloped skirt dress to a skirt

Happy sewing!

Pillow Parade

Finally, here they are.

The weather's back to bleary and grey so it's nice to have something more cheerful inside. Unfortunately, I'm suffering from a serious lack of pillow inserts which needs to be remedied soon. For the moment I had to make do taking pictures of one pillowcase at a time. The measurements are 40 cm x 40 cm (or slightly less than 16'').

The insert really isn't plush enough, luckily it has a zipper so I think I'll just add some filling. One more snap of one of the (un-ironed) backs with the bound edges.

Yep, that brown fabric is the same as the background fabric of the flowers. Told you the lighting is truly terrible today.

How do you like them? The fiancé's favourite is still the yellow sunflower whereas I couldn't pick a favourite amongst the flowers. I like them all but am head over heels for the HSTs.

Happy sewing and don't forget, one of these will be given away soon!

Linking up to Manic Monday at SewHappyGeek.

Pillow Progress

My pillow fronts are all quilted and trimmed now and ready to be turned into proper pillows.

Here are a few pics of them, still untrimmed and before erasing the water soluble pen lines I drew on for orientation, detailing the quilting. First off, my triangles.

 

Second, my sunflowers. I told you that I wanted to add interest to the brown sunflower so I echoed the applique line at 0.5/1.5/3 and 4.5 cm (roughly 2/5, 3/5, 1 1/5, and 1 4/5 inch) and also added a second line to the circle at 0.5 cm / 2/5 inch. I fell in love with the texture created by the dense quilting and had to do the same with the yellow sunflower.

 

 

Because I didn't want yellow thread showing on brown fabric and vice versa, I chose a different approach for my multicoloured sunflower and echoed each petal's outline.

 

I'm more than happy with each of these. They've been a long time coming but I'm awfully glad not to have rushed decisions. Back with a ton of pictures tomorrow when these babies are finished, off for some lunch and sunshine now.

Just to emphasise my love and for the sake of circularity, let's have another look at the lot of them.

Happy weekend sewing!

Triangle Time

I simply had to sew today and it felt so good! Remember these?

I basted them a while ago but couldn't decide just how to quilt them. Well, I finally went with my idea of highlighting the triangle shape of the darker shades and I'm so glad I did. Below is a shot of the back with the millions of knots I'll have to bury. Okay, not millions, but 56 of them nevertheless. TV time, methinks.

I started with lines that are 1cm/less than 1/4 inch away from the seams but added another line to the yellow triangles, either within (diagonal from top left to bottom right) or outside of the first line (bottom left and top right triangle). I really love the look and the tactile effect on the right side. As soon as these beauties are finished you'll get a better look of them. Promised.

After that I decided that my brown sunflower pillow..

..just wasn't quite finished yet. It was in dire need of more interest. No picture of what I did just yet, such a tease, but I'm tremendously happy to have returned to it with a simple idea and how it's turned out. I'm very much looking forward to show you all of them this weekend - yes, that's right, I'm set to finish them. Finally.

Happy sewing!

Sew Little Time - Sew Many Plans

Here's a little something I already made two weeks ago for my future sil. (Speaking of her, I've finally placed an order on solids for those Polaroid blocks.) She's rather talented with the lens and wanted something to get children to focus during a shooting. She showed me a picture of a scrunchie turned into an Elmo look-a-like and I promised to whip up something similar. As there was no scrunchie to be found I made my own. I never thought I'd make a scrunchie. Or use math on making a scrunchie - circle circumference anyone? Can't wait to hear reports on this "lens animal" in action.

Do you remember the squares I cut to try out quarter square triangles? I made them give and take two weeks ago. They require much more accuracy than HSTs. Who knew? *cough* Well, I had to unpick and resew three before cutting them apart because their points were off just a little too much for my liking. Afterwards I put them away for a bit, waiting for inspiration to strike me, which must sound familiar to you by now. Do I ever make something knowing what it'll become straight away, you ask? As a matter of fact, I do and one day I might prove it to you. For the moment we'll have to make do with my procrastinating streak.

Anyhow, some of my QSTs have been turned into tiny pincushions. I turned the triangles by 90 degrees on the backside. The one featuring the brown button was my first and I thought only, but then my sister came along and tried to talk me into giving it to her because she thinks it's darn cute. I was reluctant - she already pilfered some needles and thread on that visit - but gave in in so far as I told her I'd make her her own. Lacking another brown button I decided to use a covered button. I like the look a lot but wish I'd opted for the brown fabric as somehow the brown button seems to pull everything together a smidgen better. Spilt milk, though. It looks lovely and my sister will be happy.

 

My pillows will have to wait another week or so before they'll be completed, I'm way too pressed for time at the moment. I think, however, that I've decided to go with my idea of quilting triangles in the darker triangles. Boy, it's all about triangles these days, isn't it?

No, not quite! Hexies are the vogue, too. Originally looking for something else, her Hexie Caddy Tutorial, I saw something incredibly enticing on Penny's Hands on Friday. 

Moe Moe's Stars - hexies with a star-like opening. Instant love. Instant yearning. Instant flashes of what I could do with such an awesome block. Penny's tutorial is highly recommendable and I urge you to have a look. I will certainly use it once I make a light cuddly blanket using this adorable block because that's what I totally plan on doing. Penny's use of three layers of fabric make it a great quilt as your go project because each unit is self-contained without open seams. It's a hand sewing project on top of all that cuteness! Love.

Despite being head over heels I wanted to try this block first, however, and that with as little waste of fabric as possible. Therefore I opted to treat it like a piece of applique, meaning I skipped the backing fabric. I also didn't sew the flower shape by hand (and to be honest probably never will) as I had only 10 minutes to spare, but I will sew down the petals by hand later. 

I think the photos will serve as a quick run down on what I did, but you should really have a look at Penny's site to make sure you know how she makes the self-contained units.

 

Carefully turned and pressed.

Pinned down, ready to be sewn by hand.

I finished the block later at night whilst the fiancé watched the rest of the game and photographed it this morning which has more light than yesterday's rainy afternoon.

Love love love it. Wouldn't this look fab with Liberty prints? I'm already so excited about this! Can you tell? Thanks to Penny for letting me re-post her picture.

Stats for this Week (those that I can think of right now)


Finished Projects - 1
Pincushions

New Projects - 1
Moe Moe's Stars quilt

Ongoing Projects - 3
Echo pillows
EPP hexies
Polaroid blocks

Back burner/Planning Stage - 4
Hen night dress
Wedding Anniversary quilt
Wedding clutch
ET Phone Home EPP project

Whoa, epically long post. Hope you didn't mind reading through all that. Hoping your weekend contained less rain and more sewing than mine, too.

Linking up to Manic Monday and W.i.P Wednesday.

Quick Update

Not really much to report on the sewing front but considering the amount of positive feedback these have got so far, I thought I'd keep you updated nonetheless. I've finally appliqued the Dresdens to the pillow fronts.

Appliqueing the middle one was a bit of a pain because the dark print and the solid are so close in colour and I was working by artificial light late in the evening. Forced me to go very slowly.

Anyhow, do you have a favourite? The fiancé has uttered preferences which are reflected by the order of the photographs. Looks like we'll keep the sunflower. The other two, I'm considering to maybe sell one and give the other up to adoption to one of you. Final decisions won't be made before all five pillows are completed, though.

And to you, I turn, being stuck on the HSTs pillows.

I'm fretting how to quilt them. Echoing the diagonal seams with straight lines for some reason doesn't appeal to me but stitching in the ditch appears slightly too boring. Further, I'm not ready to try FMQ with them. Some project less dear to me will have to serve as a first.

Do you reckon it'd look good if I opted for triangles? What I've got in mind specifically is to echo the triangle shape of the dark brown and dark yellow triangles about 1 cm inside of the seams. Maybe once, maybe with two rows less than 1 cm apart. Can you see that work? I don't want to quilt the border because it's already rather busy with the irregular grid print.

Looking forward to your take on things!
Will be linking up to W.i.P. Wednesday over at Freshly Pieced.

W.i.P. - Flowers, Flowers, Flowers

My pillows are slowly coming together. Yesterday evening I found a little time to cut fabric and batting and today I spent about two hours working assembly line style. I hemmed, retrospectively bound, the pieces for the envelope style pillow backs, put labels on, sewed Dresden plate circles, and finally I put together the fabric-batting-fabric sandwiches for the pillow fronts using temporary adhesive spray. I love that stuff. I began centring the Dresdens, then secured the fabric squares. Unfortunately I ran out of spray when I took care of the "invisible" fabric inside. So I had to finish basting two sandwiches with pins. Don't worry, though, I'll survive.

 

 

 

 

It was satisfying to see how quickly multiples of the same came together and will have saved me a lot of time once the pillows are all done. Next time I can applique/quilt the fronts and maybe even assemble the pillows. Until then I need to decide whether to stitch in the ditch on my HSTs, echo the seams, or try something more fancy? Either way, I'm definitely learning to make the most out of my limited time.

These past weeks I've also made some progress on my EEP. I love these little flowers.

My sewing utensils are already packed away and I must return to my reading. Sigh. Hoping you all had a lovely weekend. UK folks, enjoy your bank holiday!

Linking up to W.i.P. Wednesday later.