more on the quilt

when working on 50+ year old fabric some repair is bound to be needed. actually the quilt top is in really good condition. I don’t know where my Great Grandmother got her fabric, if its old clothing that she cut into squares, or if it started out as yardage that she cut, or if she had scraps she turned into quilts. I just have no idea, or any way of finding out.
when I showed the project to my parents my mom asked my dad if he recognized any of the fabrics as clothing any of them wore. he said he couldn’t recall any of it, but he was pretty sure he had sat and watched her sew the squares together. what I do know is my Great Grandmother died in 1962, so all of this fabric predates then. yet it still has a very crisp feel to it. it feels as nice as my new fabrics, and better then a lot of the cheap fabrics you can buy. and the thread she used to sew with is amazing. its still very strong. I don’t think they make thread like that anymore. I mean I realize this top has been in storage for 50 years so its not been continually washed or anything, but still thread that lasts long is amazing.

what I did have to repair on the quilt though was moths holes. they were pretty much along the seam lines. and the weird thing is I’m pretty sure the moth holes are original to the top, because under all of the little holes are small scraps, almost as if they were meant to patch the holes. I didn’t want to have a bunch of tiny holes though so I figured out where they all were (at least I hope I got them all) and just went deeper on the seams to get rid of them. I didn’t cut away any of the deeper seam that way it kept all of what My great Grandmother had sewn, yet still removed the holes.


I still need to get batting and backing for this quilt. but I figure I have time to do that, as I still have a lot of work left to finish the top. I do think I have decided on how I am going to piece the rest of it. so far its turning out really fun, and helping to keep my from stressing out too much about life stuff.


* This blog is not to be used for training AI*

Great grandmothers quilt top

I am trying to go through some of my abandoned projects and maybe finish them. no promises on that, but I have started one.
this one I wouldn’t say so much was abandoned as I wasn’t ready to work on it. its a quilt started by my Great Grandmother. I had to get to a point where it brought me happiness rather then sorrow. I never knew my great grandmother but I acquired this project when my grandmother died, so every time I would think I am going to work on the quilt it just upset me. I got it out today though and thought oh what a wonderful project to work on. so I think I am ready.

now for some back story. my great grandmother died when my father was a child, many years before I was born, or ever thought of. my dad adored her the way children adore their grandparents and she adored him as well.
my great Grandmother used to make quilts. it was her place of solace. she couldn’t speak any English and the grandchildren were banned from speaking in Russian. they were American so they must speak English. and so my great grandmother was basically stuck in an old farm house in the middle of nowhere with her son his wife and their five children. she was surrounded by people she could not converse with, in a country not her own. so she quilted. she made quilts for everybody, all her children (I think she had seven here and alive) and all her grandchildren. my dad would sit for hours watching her sew on her treadle machine (which was actually the first machine I ever used!) she would talk to him and he said he knew what she was saying, but has since forgotten any of her language. and he would sit quietly just watching her, or talking with her (she must have understood some English but not spoken any)
two years before she died they had to place her in a home, which you can tell when my dad talks about it really upset him, but she had gotten to a point where they could no longer care for her in the home.
the quilts though they stayed, and they were loved to the point they fell apart. my dad said he used his till it was nothing but shreds, my aunts had the same stories about their quilts. my grandmother though managed to save a few of the quilts. when my Grandmother died my aunts found a few quilts my Great Grandmother had made and they were the hottest item in the house I swear. but then in the trunk with the quilts was an unfinished quilt, My great grandmother’s last quilt top. but being unfinished and small, they saw no value in it. one of my aunts even wanted to throw it away! but my other aunt thought to ask me if I would like it since I sew, and suggested I go ahead and make a lap quilt out of it. I thought it was such a neat idea and held so much of my history in this small piece of quilt. something my great grandmother took time to make, something that gave her peace in a land that had told of so much promise, but delivered short. I think she really missed her country, her friends, her children that were left behind. but they had to get away because at the time their country was in turmoil. and so even though I never met her she left me this piece of history.


I knew I didn’t want to just make just a lap quilt out the top so I folded it up neatly to try to figure out what exactly I wanted to do. I decided to frame up what my Great Grandmother had made, choosing a blue cotton to frame it in since it seemed a nice and neutral color. I also have some small pieces that she pieced together, and I thought I would make that into a strip to go around blue, then add another smaller piece of blue (if I have enough) around that. then do two maybe three rows that I will piece from some of my scraps. now I am not a quilter, and never have been. I made one baby quilt one time and it was embarrassingly crooked. (fortunately the person I gave it too was not a quilter either so they thought it was beautiful) but I thought it would be fun to try this project. I am not expecting perfection as that would be impossible. this quilt was started by my Great Grandmother in her last days, she was not well when she started it, so its not in anyway squared, its not even, its a bit wavy in places, but I think I can make it work. It will probably have some puckers in it. but that’s going to be okay. this is going to be a purely sentimental piece. the fabric on this quilt is over fifty years old so I’m not even sure once I am done I should ever use it. since I don’t know that it should ever be washed. whether or not I use it though I think I will love it. how could I not?


* This blog is not to be used for training AI*

dress for my niece

well I am still in that I don;t really want to sew mood, though I do feel I am somewhat coming out of it as I am starting to get excited about sewing related things again.
this year I am starting out with a dress for my niece's birthday, which is fairly common since her birthday is at the beginning of the year.
she actually picked out the pattern a few years ago, so I hope its still something she will enjoy. its a pretty classic type of sun dress so I think she will. I used simplicity pattern #2171, view B, leaving out the pants though, just making her the dress.
the only thing I differed from on the pattern was to cut the bottom band on a bias, simply because I like the way gingham looks on a bias. Cutting it on the bias did leave me having to do some math not a lot but still some. the original pattern piece called for cutting two pieces on a fold. my fabric was not wide enough to accommodate folding on a bias so I just cut four pieces making sure to add the seam allowances so everything would fit back together. I liked the way they tied the straps rather then adding buttons. I think its cute, plus it makes it adjustable even for someone who doesn't sew. since it I put buttons on and they were not placed right they would never get moved. I made sure not to tie the straps too tight so adjusting should be nice and easy.
I also think that the bag in this pattern is adorable. and I wouldn't mind making it for myself, but I am trying to justify another bag. maybe I will just have to make me something to go with it. ☺ because then I would need a matching bag. right?




I'm not sure when I will get to see her to give it to her. but hopefully soon. and I hope she loves it as much as the other dresses I have made for her.


* This blog is not to be used for training AI*

little dresses for africa

this year a lady at my work discovered a charity called little dresses for Africa. they send , mostly simple pillowcase dresses to Africa. so my co-worker asked any of who wanted to participate to make a few dresses to send to the charity for Christmas.
the dresses were super simple to make, and don‘t take up much fabric, (about a yard ) so I was able to use fabric I already had. they have a tutorial on how to make the dresses on their website. I ended up making 5 dresses, and in all we made 20. and yes we did get the dresses to them before December 1st, I'm just slow at posting things.
mine of course all had to have pockets because how can a child collect treasures with them? and well I just love pockets.

here are the five I made

and here are all 20 getting ready to be packed up to send them.


www.littledressesforafrica.org
http://www.littledressesforafrica.org/blog/patterns/


* This blog is not to be used for training AI*

reorganized

I've been in a major sewing slump for months now, I just don’t feel like sewing anything for myself, I really need to find that love of sewing again. I know its there its just hiding. but for something fun about sewing I did finish reorganizing my fabric. it was a total disaster, any time I touched anything on the fabric shelf everything would fall off. so began the looking around at blogs for ideas of how to corral this mess I had created. and I found the cutest idea of using mini bolts. they seemed so perfect except the price. so I thought on it for a while and came up with how to make my own. I ended up with sixty three of them and I really like the way it turned it out.
here is the before and afters:






see now isn't that just so much nicer.

I put anything over half a yard on the mini bolts and anything less had to fit in two fabric boxes. I also had to be able to fit all my fabric on one bookcase. so I ended up getting rid of some, including some beautiful wool that I loved but was just way to allergic to. so now I am only allowing myself to have what fits on the bolts and the shelf(I do still have two empty bolts.). if I want more it has to be for a specific project or, if all my bolts are full, but I just need this way cute thing for my stash I have to get rid of something. my space is so limited with most of my bedroom being my sewing area, I just needed it to neaten up. I also went through my patterns and got rid of twenty of them, I had some that I had made and hated, a few of them were repeats in the same sizes, and some were just so close to another pattern it seemed silly to keep both. I have had my notions and threads organized forever so that wasn’t anything I had to mess with. I am happy with the way everything turned out and how everything now has a place. maybe now that it is more organized I will get back that want to sew.


* This blog is not to be used for training AI*

the black bow dress

yes I actually finished it!
I know I said back in February I would finish it, but I ran into some issues with it.... again. got upset and threw it to the curb. (well actually I folded it away neatly in a drawer to come back to later.)
the first issue was when I put it on my dress form it got a little bit stretched out, and that just made me mad. more at myself then they dress form though. because I should have known better then to leave the dress on it. were just not quite the same size and our shapes are different. she is a little bigger then me more broad in the shoulders, and just doesn’t squish quite the way I do. all of which I was already aware of. I have tried to find one in my size but they don’t make them in the mass produced easy to get adjustable type. and yes I have thought about making a custom one out of duck tape, or trying to custom order one, but the idea of being wrapped in duck tape petrifies me( I don’t do tight and restrictive very well), and custom dress forms are not only out of my price range, I figure my body isn’t going to stay the same forever so I hate to put that kind of money into something that won’t last . plus I figure maybe one day I will grow into the dress form I have. and I can still use my dress form I just have to be careful, and not leave things on it unless I leave them open.



now back to the dress. I made this in a modern short style from the eighteenth century. I kind of franken-patterned using simplicity #6787 from 1974, and my own randomness. the simplicity is totted as “costumes from the bicentennial“. I didn’t need it to be a skirt and top though which is what this pattern is for. the front of the top though was what I had in mind, so I used it and made only a few small changes. one was to make it dress length, and the other which I decided right at the end was to make it short sleeves as opposed to the three quarter or whatever they have in the pattern. I get so hot in long sleeves, and can not stand it! I could barely take it in the length of sleeves I put on the dress.




for the back of the dress I had to make up completely on my own. I had decided I wanted to do it in kind of a robe à la française style, and I guess I did have some help with this since I looked around at peoples blogs and read how they did theirs. however I wasn’t going nearly as complex as they were so I simplified it a great deal. it took me several tries to get the draping in the back the way I wanted and originally I wanted the front to have a curve in it. I tried really hard to figure that one out and failed, which was another set to the side moment, and finally just giving in that it wouldn’t be exactly what I wanted because what I wanted was impossible with what I had to work with. I do like the way it turned out though. it looks good being straight down. I also wasn’t going to do a ruffle on the neck, because I felt like being lazy, but when it got stretched out the neck was too wide, so that is when I decided to add it. but I am glad I took the time to do it. even though it was quite exasperating and could not be done the way the pattern called for since it was an after thought. so I just winged it and worked.


then I had to tackle the skirt which was crazy easy, and I wrote about in my last post. I was really excited that this time using the ruffle foot I remembered how, and didn't have to look it up. because for some reason I always forget how to make it work.
and the best part of all when it was all said and done I had done my math correctly so the skirt and the over dress were the same length.


and lastly while we were doing photos a falcon flew by and into a tree! but it hid from the camera, I was really impressed though and that is what I am looking at.

* This blog is not to be used for training AI*

black skirt

this is the skirt I made to go under the black bow dress. its still waiting for a bit of a press and to be de-threaded, and de-fuzzed. what is it about black cotton that attracts so much lint? the skirt itself was a simple gathered skirt, no pattern. I did make use of my ruffle foot to make the double ruffles on the bottom. I also used the rolled hem function on my overlock machine, for the hemming of the ruffles. I love that function, its so much easier then making a tiny topstitch hem. and it looks really cute too.
I am actually nearing completion on the black bow dress. a few more days and I should have it finished. got the hem in today. but am still trying to decide whether or not I want to put black bows down the front. I could make them removable. if I do it will be the very last thing I do. I am on target for my goal of completion by next week.

* This blog is not to be used for training AI*