Nighty Night

This young lady was dying to learn how to sew.  She came over one afternoon and we made a pillowcase.  I let her pick fabrics from my stash, which aren't the most teen friendly fabrics.  She's an amazing anime artist but I've got absolutely no anime fabric.  It does exist though, but I think she should design her own and submit it to Spoonflower.  Anyway, she also likes music and was able to find some sheet music.  Ha!

Making a pillowcase is a great beginner project.  She learned how to used a rotary cutter, how to pin, how to sew a straight line, how to stop before the pins and not sew over them, and how to keep a steady speed.  She did a great job for her first time ever.  She's a natural!  I was really happy that she didn't slice an artery or sew through a finger.  Phew!

There are lots of beautiful blog tutorials and free pillowcase patterns out there, but for me, this one was the most informational.

Sew, to all my nieces out there who want to learn to sew.  I'm thinking about teaching you online.  What do you think?  Is that something you're interested in?  I know that GG already knows how to make a pillowcase and has moved on to more advanced things, but what about the rest of you?

How to Name and Label a Quilt

How do you name a quilt?  I've never done it before, but I like the idea - in case it becomes famous some day or something.  Yea, right!  There are lots of ideas on how to come up with a name,  but I've discovered it's not that easy.

Here's the quilt that needed a name.  It's for a baby.  (Well, when I started the quilt, he was a cooing baby and now he's a talking toddler.)  Some people might name a quilt after the fabrics or the pattern they use, but 'Used Denim and Plaids' or 'Old Denim and Plaids' were too literal and too boring.

Since it's made out of some old denim dresses and hubby's old Levi's, the name 'Family Scraps' might have worked.  But then you might envision a brawling family or a family digging through the trash can for dinner.  I could have named it for the recipient and called it 'James' Quilt' or 'Scraps for James'.  Again, too literal and not quirky enough for my taste.

The truth is, every time I see this quilt I think of Roseanne.  Awhile ago Hubs discovered all nine 'play now' seasons of Roseanne on Netflix.  Yes, that would be Roseanne Barr.  (I know, it's hard to imagine us watching that show, especially Hubs, but it was pretty comical to us as newlyweds.)  Anyway, I had a Roseanne marathon while piecing this quilt.  I'm sorry James, but the name of your quilt is:

I've given away a lot of label-less quilts.  But I couldn't pass up using this pocket for the label.  After researching the topic of labeling quilts, I've decided that putting labels on quilts is not only important, but it's another fun and creative component of quilt making.

By the way, we stopped watching Roseanne in 1995 so we missed the last couple of seasons.  I have to say that the last two seasons were the worst!  The plots got too wacky, DJ wasn't a cute kid anymore, just when you got used to Becky #2 they brought back Becky #1, and John Goodman wasn't even in several of the final episodes - a fatal error in my humble opinion.

There you have it - more than you ever wanted to know about Roseanne and about naming and labeling quilts.

Ottoman Empire

While walking past the ottomans in Target, my friend Lynette said something like, "If you had a bunch of these, you'd have an Ottoman Empire."

Like so many of my projects, this ottoman reminds me of different places.  I remember buying the once dirty gold velvet ottoman at a thrift store in San Diego for $8.  I paid way too much for the fabric to recover it.  Even 12 years later it still seems like way too much.  We hauled the ottoman and the fabric across the country in our move to La Crosse, Wisconsin.

When I see this ottoman, I think of a 40-minute drive on narrow country roads that wound through stark wintery farmland.  I think of Delilah who, with her calm and soothing voice, always kept me company during the drive.  I remember Jerry's upholstery shop that was located next to her house on her 120 acres of land.  I remember being so in love with the idea of having her life - at least what I saw of it.

Here's what I learned in upholstery class:

• A seemingly simple ottoman is full of surprises when you start taking it apart - like a diagonal zipper between the pillow top and the base.
• It takes approximately a gazillion staples and tacks to attach the different fabrics to the wood frame.
• Even though Jerry says you shouldn't worry about matching the fabric pattern on the side of the ottoman, you should if you're a Gwin.
• Industrial upholstery sewing machines can easily sew through like 27 layers of fabric.
• Lots of piping means there will be lots of sewing.
• People who teach upholstery classes get a lot of business from the students who can't hack the class. 

 

Here's a closer view of the ottoman - the unmatched pattern on the sides always drove me crazy.  By the way, I took these photos so I could sell this stuff on craigslist before our move to California.  There was no way this huge furniture was going to fit in our itty bitty living space in California.

Postscript:  Today, January 20th, I was looking through some old Wisconsin pictures and came across a quasi "before" picture of the ottoman.

School Kits

My church has an amazing humanitarian aid program that is involved in many efforts to help those in need around the world.  There are lots of kids in the world who don't have the supplies they need for school.  One of the humanitarian projects is to make school kits.  Here's a brief article about some excited kids receiving school supplies in Guatemala.

Over the last ten years, I've enjoyed making a few dozen school kits.  Here's how you do it.  First you need some school supplies.

Then you make some school bags.  Here is a written description of how to make the school bags or go here to find a pattern in pdf format.  Here are some of the bags I made this time.

I made six flowery 'girl' bags.  It was fun and liberating to free-motion the petals and flower center onto the denim background.  I sewed the big petals on first, then the smaller ones over the bigger ones, then sewed the round center over all the the messy edges.  Here's a close up of one of my favorite flowers.

It was more challenging to come up with six 'boy' bags.  I love the lizard but it was too labor intensive.  The soccer ball was fun but I didn't want to mass produce that one either.

I enlisted the help of some superheroes to finish up the rest of the 'boy' bags.

Oh, and if you think I just whipped these up, think again.  In true 'Kathy fashion' the cut (but not sewn) denim bags and school supplies (including 72 spiral bound notebooks) moved with us from California to Tennessee a year ago.  This is the year to finish unfinished business!