All quiet now the feed-dogs are down

I mentioned in my last post that I'm busy quilting.  It's not where I feel my real home is (I miss you, dressmaking), but I'm making good on past investments.

Behold the plan I drew on the computer when I was purchasing the fabric way back in 2008/09:

Each of the heart/nine squares is 6" x 6".  I'd seen the design made on an site selling Amish quilts.  Since I <3 arithmetic, there seems no point to purchase a quilt pattern when you can calculate the fabric amounts yourself.  My parents bought the coloured fabric for my birthday that year.

I used a template cut from an ice-cream carton to trace 144 freezer-paper hearts, ironed them to the coloured fabric and laboriously hand-stitched them invisibly to the cream squares.

Past Alice did all the machine patchwork and made the quilt sandwich.  Many hours were spent listening to vinyl and hand-basting it all together on my parents' floor.  Many more hours were spent quilting in-the-ditch between all the large 6" squares, and diagonally over the smaller squares.  Even longer was spent watching television while burying all the cut thread ends into the quilt layers.

When I picked it back up this year (several house-moves later), I have this:

Sorry for the poor flash-photography indoors at night

All that remains to do (ha ha) is the quilting on the heart squares, the border quilting, then finally binding the beast.  I decided to do free-motion "wiggles" over the hearts, but I'm new to machine quilting.  However, I'm in position of a darning foot, not enough quilting needles, and I've dropped my machine feed dogs.  This makes the machine much quieter*.  I've done quite a few squares now, but sadly my free-hand pattern is bigger and sparser at one end of the quilt than the other: gah!  I'm really upset, and it's almost impossible to unpick.  Still, at least this side will be the other side of the bed from the doorway of our room.

So.  Not many blog posts from me, and not much exciting sewing until I've finished my machine quilting.  Ah well.

* My machine needs a service after its first 12 years of faithful stitchery.  However, I'm not forking out £70 at my local shop for this, so I'll be doing it myself on the dining room table when the quilt is finished.  If you're lucky, I'll post some exciting photos of the guts of my Janome.  What's the worst that could happen?!

Slowly knitting custard pullover

I finally finished the cabled top I was making for Toddler Button!  Hooray!

The pattern is called Poseidon and it was my first effort at cabling and provisional cast-on.  I'm a huge fan of the construction method; it's completely seamless thanks to the provisional cast-on and circular knitting needles.  I don't think I ever want to seam knitting again!

Behold: I can cable, apparently!

The yarn is soft and bouncy and such a fun colour.  It was a custom dye-job from my friend Mrs Fleece Cottage Yarns.  She managed to create the just colour I was describing to her and it's called "Slowly Eating Custard Pudding".  I still have 1 1/2 skeins left for more custardy knitting.  I have just cast on for an adorable baby cardigan with the remainder.

No photo of the top on TButton as it's still too big for him (phew), so you'll have to make do with the "before" shot:

In other news:  Mrs Button Ship in sudden quilting enthusiasm shocker!!!  I've just got out my quilt from hibernation in a bid to finish free-motion quilting the last 112 squares.  I should note that this is motivated by us starting to decorate our bedroom, where the quilt will live.  Pleasingly, I appear to have improved in my quilting skills since I last attempted it 18 months - 2 years ago, despite no practice during that time.  No photos of that, either, as I don't have the space yet to unfurl the beast in all its enormous glory.

Little Soldier Shirt... again!

I mentioned last post that I had an 18-24 month pattern that I was happy with.  I made a little soldier shirt in Laura Ashley fabric using the pattern.  Sadly, Toddler Button continues to grow at an alarming rate.  Something must be done!

I graded my pattern bigger into a size 2-3 years, which is now the size that TButton prefers on his top half.  Then I drafted a new shirt!  This is most exciting:

I made several thrilling (to me) pattern alterations.  I was having some issues with the collar points turning up, so I made two changes in this area.  Firstly, I fused my interfacing to the upper collar, instead of the lower one.  Secondly, I drafted a different upper-collar pattern, allowing an extra 2mm on the outside edges for the turn of cloth.  I then had to ease it up as I constructed it.  It works a treat!

I used a different method for drafting the collar stand, which I think I prefer.  I also changed the hem to a shaped line, but it still needs a few tweaks.

I changed the aspect ratio of the pocket which is much more pleasing.  Please ignore that my pattern almost matches, but not quite.  I need to mark my pocket placement on the pattern itself, so that I can nail the pattern matching at cutting out time.  Instead of my current method of: nah, wing it.

Unfortunately, when I was cutting my front pieces from a double-thickness of fabric, the under-layer must have twisted slightly because my pattern does not match across the centre front.  It matches perfectly at the sides, though.  Bummer!  Don't mention it to TButton if you see him wearing it: I know he'll look embarrassed... ;-)

Skewer'd!  Oof.

Finally, I found these pleasingly red buttons in my jar.  Every one is slightly different, but you'd have to look pretty closely to be able to tell.  A bonus effect is that some soldiers look sadly injured by the placement of the buttons.  Ooops!

***

In other news, I drafted a t-shirt pattern but it turns out that all my old t-shirts are too small to be able to cut up for TButton.  I'll have to order him some actual new fabric to test it out.  I'm also nearing the end of my custard-yellow knitting, and I designed some fabric for a competition regarding whales.  Look out for more posts soon!

Little town shirt again!

Once upon a time, I made a little shirt with a town on it.  I was delighted with many aspects of the pattern (which was made by someone else), but not so delighted with others.  In particular, it happened that when baby Button grew into it, he did so by stretching lengthways, making it more of a crop-top.  (Which I just mistyped as "crap-top", coincidence?  I think not.)  I'm sure the patten would be fine on more normally proportioned children though.  He was wearing size 12 months at age 6 months, so probably this was part of the problem.

Not so long ago, I made another shirt with soldiers on it.  This was a pattern I drafted myself and I was pretty chuffed with it.  I lowered the sleeve cap a little more after making that shirt, so now I have a 18-24month pattern that I'm happy with.

The next chapter of the story is here:

I used up the rest of my town fabric (I had half-a-metre) to make another little shirt from my own pattern.

Unfortunate house on wheels.

Behold!  It has a pocket!  However, there was so little fabric that I couldn't fussy-cut the pocket and as a result it looks like the house is on wheels.  I can't get too sad about this though: I thought I'd have to make the inside of the collar stand and the under-collar from plain cream fabric, but I did at least have enough to make everything match.  Just.

I had to wait almost 2 whole weeks for a day dry and bright enough to photograph this shirt.  I seem to gravitate towards photographs on my garden gate with the cute heart cut-outs.  Big thank-yous to my father-in-law who made the gate and acquiesced to cut the "silly hearts" into his handiwork.  I know you read this blog sometimes: now you have your own mention!  :-)

This shirt is a birthday gift for a very cute little man who is 1 year old this weekend.  Happy birthday, little one! x

Playing with fabric design

I've been toying with the idea of producing "make your own shirt" packs, where the pieces are pre-printed onto the fabric.  To that end, I've been fiddling with some fabric designs, although now that I'm faced with infinite possibilities I really can't decide what I want!

(All images below at 5"x5" swatch size.)

Firstly, we have the giraffe option.   I really can't decide what background colour is best, and I'm not too happy with the green.  I was thinking pale blue, but then the contrast is poor with the yellow.

There's also a herd of cattle:

The design I got the furthest with is the toadstools.  I've actually laid out a yard of fabric for a shirt in this fabric, with with the underside of the collar and the inside of the collar stand, sleeve turnings and plackets in a matching red dot fabric.

Too much?  All a bit bright?  Or would you buy it?

Little Solider Shirt

I can't remember if I wrote about this (I think I didn't), but last year I got fed up with Winifred Aldrich's "Metric pattern cutting for children's wear and baby wear".  Or rather, I didn't understand what I was doing and the blocks were too boxy.  A nice person over at the sewing forum suggested I get Natalie Bray's books, which I did.  Nice and cheap and second-hand.  See here and here.  I read the first one cover-to-cover, and in the second one I read the children's wear chapter.

This is my first attempt at a shirt from her blocks.  I'm pretty pleased!  The bodice block for aged 2-3 actually fits my (pretty giant) 14 month-old like a glove.

Behold: Toddler Button in his fancy new threads:

The fabric is a cute Laura Ashley print of soldiers with a background of blue pin-dots and red diamonds.  It was a kind gift from a family friend.  (Thank you, Sue!)  Sadly, since I made the shirt in a windowless room (no jokes) and mostly during the dark evenings, I failed to notice the fabric was light cream, rather than the white I had supposed when picking out my thread.  Whoops, although I suspect I'll be the only one scrutinising the top-stitching enough to notice.  I modified the armcye in my pattern a bit after making this, as it was still an effort to get the sleeve caps to set flat like in his other casual shirts.

TButton wore his shirt to Ikea (this seems like it's becoming a tradition: I don't always go there, honest).  It's a relief to return from Ikea and still like the hand-sewn clothes we went in!  Note he is smiling in the above photo: that's because it's taken before the flat-pack-hell-hole, hence also the newly-pressed-new-shirt look he's sporting.

Are you wondering how I got him to pose like a menswear model while holding a little teddy by his paw all cute-like?  Do you want to know my secret?  The answer is... fluke.  All the rest look blurry and manic like this:

New vest/bodysuit extenders

There be fun new vest extender packs in the shop: hoorah!  (If you come upon this post later and the shop seems to be sold out, send me an e-mail and tell me to get on with it.  There will be another set in a different cute fabric within another week or so.

Outside putting poppers in extenders, I have been mostly knitting in yellow wool and sewing a toddler shirt.  I guess I'll post about that when it's done.

In other news, only 500 page views to go before this blog becomes more widely read than my other blog which details solutions to various dull linux/fortran related computing problems.  You clearly have odd taste, Mr Internets.