My Little Quilting Apprentice

As mentioned in my last post, I made a patchwork quilt as a (belated) wedding gift for a couple friends. To start, I just cut out a ton of fabric squares. For big undertakings like this, I often like to work on the floor, which aroused the interest of my cat Neeti.

Neeti helps with the tedious square cutting process

I had a bunch of light blue fabric, which I used as the sort of "base," i.e. every other square. For the rest, I used squares from random fabric scraps that I had accumulated and tried to arrange them in a pretty pattern. When I was laying out all the squares on the ground to figure out the pattern, Neeti came over to investigate and see if she could lend a paw.

Taking stock of the plans

I eventually decided on a rainbow-ombre pattern, fading from green to blue on one side, and then picking up the blue and fading through purple and pink to red on the other. While I was pleased with this plan, Neeti remained unconvinced.

Taking matters into her own paws

Luckily, we eventually reached agreement!

Lavender Sachet

Two of my best friends got married this past June, and I had big plans to make them a wedding quilt. The idea was inspired by the love of the Canadian children's book series Anne of Green Gables that I share with the bride - in one of the books a gossipy but beloved neighbor makes a quilt as a wedding gift for Anne's best friend.

Unfortunately, I can be a pretty big procrastinator when it comes to crafting - a procraftinator, if you will - so I was months behind on giving them the quilt and wanted to send a small holdover gift in the meantime. I had some lavender that I'd bought at the farmer's market a few weeks earlier that had dried nicely, and decided to make them a quick little sachet as a teaser gift, using a couple spare squares from the quilt materials. For an extra touch, I sewed on a little bow using some ribbon and a button I had lying around.

Completed sachet

Before I got around to mailing it, my mom came over to our apartment for dinner and I showed her the sachet because she loves the smell of lavender. In a moment of confusion, she thought I was giving her the sachet as a little gift, and I couldn't bear to take it back - sorry Ben and Erika! Thankfully you guys finally have your quilt now.

Patchwork Aprons

As a first step for this blog, I'm going through photos of old sewing projects that I made as gifts for family and friends. A few years ago, my sister asked for kitchen/cooking stuff for Christmas. My parents got her a nice food processor and sharp knife, and I made my first patchwork apron.

Cooking-themed Christmas presents

Part of the joy of sewing crafts for me is how you can turn scraps of material into something beautiful and functional. My sister and I have both been sewing since we were kids, so there was a ton of leftover fabric for the taking at my parents' house. 

This apron is when I really discovered how great patchwork can be, especially when working with fabric scraps. It doesn't matter if a piece of fabric is small or weirdly shaped - as long as you can get a 5-inch square out of it, you can use it. I had a bigger piece of white fabric with a dark blue floral pattern leftover from a dress project, which I used to make a uniform lining in the back as well as the waist ties.

Full view of the apron with a peek of the reverse side

I finished a couple days before Christmas and showed the apron to my grandmother. She loved it and asked if I would make her one at some point. I thought it would be fun to make her one in time for Christmas, so I scrambled over to the fabric store to get some more materials (I was out of pretty scraps by this point).

Isn't she stylish!

For hers, I worked out a few kinks from the original apron design. The big one was realizing that I could attach the waist ties and neck strap without any visible seams by sewing them in at the same time I sewed the front and back together. This way I only ended up with one small visible seam at the bottom from where I turned the whole thing right-side out. For fun, I made the reverse side vertical stripes instead of a uniform piece of fabric. She also likes pockets for her handkerchiefs and such, so that was another addition.

Striped reverse side

Welcome!

Welcome to my craft blog! I'll post pictures and descriptions here of my various creative pursuits. Most of them will probably be sewing projects - crafting for gifts, making and altering clothes, etc.

I'll also sprinkle in other miscellaneous projects here and there, like this set of animal pun stickers I made in MS Paint back in 2009. I saved each picture as an image file, and inserted it into a Word document using the pre-set format for printing on Avery address labels. That way, they print perfectly onto the address labels to make goofy stickers.