what I'm up to

Mask life.

Making this thing took me way longer than it should have.

1. I haven't sewn on my machine in a long while, so I was a wee bit rusty.
2. Somehow during that interim my machine broke. *shrugs* Now it won't switch between types of stitches. Boo.
3. I'm kind of bad at following video tutorials. I watched it once and then got all cocky thinking I know what I'm doing. Had to throw out my first one. (This mask features a nose wire, replaceable elastic, and a filter pocket, so it's a bit more involved than some.)
4. If you are curious what pattern I used, my superhero quilter sister recommended this one. She and a bunch of her sewing friends are making up huge numbers of these for hospitals per their request. And also of course for friends and family, since it's recommended we all wear something to cover our faces while we are out.
5. There are a LOT of free patterns to choose from out there right now, like this one and this one and this one.

The one I made feels pretty comfortable on. Note: The elastic allowed for the ears was too small for my husband's face, so keep that in mind if you are making it for a guy. I added 2 inches or so to the elastic for him.

Let's all look forward to a time when we can put these things in a drawer and forget about 'em. Stupid virus. Die, virus, die.

baby name banner for Teddy Graham

A blessing in the form of a tiny baby boy will soon be joining my extended family. Theodore Graham will no doubt be super cute just because of his parents, but I'm also crossing my fingers for some curly red hair. Please oh please! See what you can do, Lindsey. :-)

This wool felt teddy bear banner was designed to coordinate with human Teddy's nursery in muted and manly shades of gray, maroon, navy blue, and brown. Since Theodore is quite a long name, I did this banner at half the size I did for the previous two banners. The finished length is just right, I
think.

The banner was constructed basically in the same way as the others, with nice wool felts for the flags, stiffened white acrylic felt for the backings, and grosgrain ribbon. The letters are also backed with the stiffened felt. (It's really inexpensive and can be found in most big craft/hobby stores located near the acrylic craft felts.)

The fun part was making the bears. I designed the two affable fellows at the ends to be spiffed up in fabric bow ties and collars. Their look was a bit trial and error and involved a lot of squinting. (I squint when I test out colors and arrangements. I don't know why.) I could have done them completely as applique, but I wanted them to have some dimension. Their ears and noses are craft store pom poms. The bow ties are two layers of quilting fabric adhered together with Heat n Bond® (a really great iron-on adhesive), which gives the fabric the right amount of stiffness and will prevent the edges from raveling. The eyes and collar are stiffened craft felt.

I designed the whole banner on my Mac first, then output it directly to my old 'bad' batch of Sulky Sticky Fabri-Solvy (see this old post for more on that). As I've mentioned, I'd use even the good stuff for this because it really streamlines the whole process. You just print each flag once on the Sulky and use it four times over to cut the backing, flag, letter backing and letter. It's so easy. Then I used my usual method of glue basting everything together and then sewing it down.

I did attach the ribbon differently this time. I usually thread an entire long piece through the sewn channels on the backs of the flags, space the flags as I like, then secure them in place. It occurred to me that is a waste of good ribbon. So this time I glued on short, measured pieces of ribbon between the flags on the backs, then hot glued the back flaps in place. Tada. It looks the same but uses less ribbon, and it's less frustrating to do. (Unless like a complete numpty you find you've glued the flags in the wrong order and have to puzzle out how to fix this after the flaps were already hot glued down over the ribbon. *loud clearing of throat*)

I did manage to fix that without having to start over, so it's all good. There were some pretty negative comments made about myself to myself, I'm afraid. But all's well that ends well. I'm so pleased with this banner, and I can't wait to welcome little Theo to our family, no matter what color his hair turns out to be. :-)

baby name banner for wee Noah

I designed this wool felt name banner for my sweet friend Holley who is welcoming her 5th child very soon. Little Noah doesn't realize this yet, but he is such a lucky kid to have Colby and Holley for parents! You'll never meet nicer, more loving folks. I'm a big fan of their four other kids too. In short, I love them.

While photographing this, it came to my attention that I'm running out of blank walls at my house. Blank walls are kinda boring from a decor standpoint but they are shazam for photographing baby banners you want to blog. Luckily I have this one bare wall left in our room, but it doesn't give much contrast between the wall and the white felt backing. Use your imaginaaaaation to add color to the wall. *Makes rainbow shape with fingers*

I've made one other felt name banner. It was for a sweet little girl baby, so it was flowery and pretty and right in my wheelhouse. I took what I learned from that first one and used it to improve the construction of this one. First of all, instead of regular felt, I used cheap, craft store stiffened white felt as the base for the banner. It's right there next to the stacks of craft felt. It rocks for this. So easy to cut, keeps it's shape, takes glue and hot glue well, and you can sew through it. Did I mention it's cheap? OK. Also no stretching out of shape like the felt I used to back the first banner. It adds just the right amount of stiffness and body to the pennants. I used it to back the lettering too. (And I had an epiphany while using it -- it would make a great substitute for the stiff Pellon stabilizer in my Twelve Days patterns. I'm not sure it's actually cheaper than the Pellon per sq inch, but it might be easier to find.)

The construction was similar to my first one. I designed the banner in Illustrator, and then I output the flags with letters in place on my faulty batch of Sulky Sticky Fabri-Solvy. Since I can't use it with my felt ornaments, this is a bang-up way to make it so useful -- and to be honest, even if it wasn't the 'bad' stuff I'd still use it like this because it's just makes construction so easy.

There's a way to do it so you only have to use up one sheet of the Sulky per flag. Cut from the outside in and re-use it until you've cut everything out. So:
1) I cut the backing outline out of the stiffened felt, peeled off the stabilizer, then applied it to
2) cut the flag color felt, peeled off the stabilizer, then applied it to
3) cut the stiffened backing for the letter, peeled off the stabilizer, then applied it to
4) cut out the letter itself.

I used a selection of felt colors from my vast, embarrassing stash of wool felts to match the colors that Holley would like for Noah's room. They are a mix of wool-blend and 100% wool felts. (Benzie Design and Felt On The Fly colors.) I don't sweat mixing these two types of wool felts. I always have mixed them because getting the colors I want trumps being fussy about matching fiber content. And I already have the stiffened felt thrown in there that's made from plastic or something, so it's all a smorgasbord.

I wanted to add interest by giving the animals some 3D elements. This meant using small amounts of stuffing and some of my prodigious pom pom stash. I have a thing for poms. Like three gallon-sized jars, a half gallon jar, and two small jars for the mini poms kind of thing.

As you can see, the animals (I still say aminals in my head because two kids) are a mix of machine sewing and hand sewing. One thing that did not improve from last time: I had like a month and a half to make this thing and I was still up to 2 AM on the night before the shower sewing it together. I've come to accept this about myself, but still hoping to magically wake up one day as a motivated non-procrastinator.

I used Tacky Glue to baste the parts together before sewing and I used hot glue to add the poms and some of the felt elements to the banner, as well as to secure the folded flaps on the back for the ribbon (last time I sewed that but didn't like the seam showing) and also to secure the loops in the ends of the ribbon for hanging. I only burned myself a couple of times. *thumbs up*

If I had to do it over again I might add more animals? Maybe use the same gray for the end flag as the beginning flag? I'm not sure I'm completely happy with the overall design in terms of balancing the animals and colors. (Don't worry, I feel this way after making everything.) But that doesn't keep me from being happy with this baby boy banner. I got to use some of my favorite materials and favorite animals. It was a fun project!

Early Bird/Night Owl reversible pillow pattern is in the shop!

Yay! At long last. This fun, reversible design I came up with for my daughter's birthday has been made into a sewing pattern for the shop. (There's a nicer video clip of this in my Instagram feed.)

Many thanks to my intrepid pattern testers for helping me to make this the best pattern I can! I will be showing off their pillows in a later post!

The early bird gets the worm and the night owl is staying up late! Flip it to whatever side you are feeling that day, or flip it according to the time of day. My daughter uses hers as an accent pillow on her bed and flips it twice a day.

Here are the other two samples I've made, but the color possibilities are endless and of course you can make it look more boyish or girlish as needed:

This pattern is an intermediate level because it has a lot of steps and requires precision in cutting and placing of trims. Machine and hand sewing techniques are used.

I have worked for a good while to make this sewing and applique project come together in the easiest, fastest and most accurate way possible, so I think you are going to enjoy it!

The trims are really the star of the show here. It's a nice project to showcase your favorite ribbons, buttons, rick racks and mini-pom trims. And of course any project that includes pom-poms is aces in my book! The other main ingredients in the pillow are medium weight cottons or tickings and wool felts. And of course, stuffing. And love.

You can find more details in the shop listing. I hope you enjoy the pattern! I've had a lot of fun making these Early Bird/Night Owls! I'm definitely a Night Owl. How about you?

done with Early Bird/Night Owl prototyping

A growing collection of Early Bird/Night Owls. (Yes, my fabric shelves are a disgrace. I own it.) [You should see the pile on the floor.] The last prototype is just finished {Mr Second From Right} so after more rounds of tweaks than I was anticipating in January, I'm finally happy with the design and sequence of steps!

Now on to the diagramming! Beta pattern will be ready soonish.

branch and berry applique pillow covers for people I love

Handmade gifts. I sewed these two pillow covers over the course of the last month for beloved people Robyn and Leigh. And they were mailed embarrassingly late for their September birthdays. Sorry, guys.

That's what they look like stuffed with pillows. This grey one is Robyn's, shown flat:

The colors were chosen to match her decor. So if it clashes, Robyn, please feel completely free to never tell me.

While I'm showing Robyn's cover I'll throw in the other handmade item in her package (but not made by me): this pretty embroidered necklace by Skrynka. Natalka is really so friendly and handles custom orders with ease. I got one for myself a few months ago and love it. Her work is so neatly done and I dig the antiqued finish on the chain and settings.

The orangey browny cover is Leigh's, made with her family room in mind:

Covers are much easier to mail than actual pillows, you know. All this goes on the assumption that they already have handy an 18 inch pillow that needs a fall makeover. Fingers crossed, ears plugged.

Both covers were made with the same pattern. I sketched the original design small on paper (I work much better with thumbnail size) and then scanned it and scaled it way up to actual size. I printed it out and traced a cleaner copy over it with freezer paper and punched holes for placement guides.

The fabric is heavyweight canvas. The leaves were appliquéd with a zig zag and the stems were done by many passes of straight stitch machine sewing while I re-watched Dr Who series 5. (My favorite is the first episode. "You're Scottish, fry something." Prisoner zero. Fish custard!) The berries are cut from wool felt and sewn on by hand.

I always wonder when I'm in the middle of sewing these stems if there is a heavier weight of thread that I can use (like jean thread) that wont mess up my machine in the process. I'll have to look into that.

I finished the covers with the envelope backs and piping method from my pillow cover tutorial of yore. Tacky glue sure beats pins.

stinkface pillow for my new teenager(!)

I'm not sure how my oldest daughter managed to turn thirteen. THIRTEEN. There have clearly not been enough years between when she was a wee baby and right now, but she insists this is correct. We have a teenager. Great gophers. But back to the pillow. You may have already seen the genesis of the idea at the bottom of this post, or the fur selection here.

Now it's a reality! Why, yes, it is reversible! So she can display whichever side she is hyper-feeling at the moment:

You STINK. Go 'way.

Or...

Best day EVER! Hug me!

The eyes and mouth on both sides are wool felt applique and the noses are large pom poms. I used a 16 inch round pillow insert I bought at JoAnn so I didn't have to stuff it myself. Easy. The Mr Stinkface side is actually two pieces so that the lowered brow could overlap the eyes.

It's hard to tell, but the back (Mr Happyface) is actually an envelope opening, so it's two pieces also. The overlap edge runs just under the pom pom nose. It's hard to tell it's there, which is just the way I'd hoped. I intended for the lower half to overlap the eyes a bit, but it likes to pull away. I tacked it under the nose but I'll probably sew it all the way across.

During the making, long tufts of fur flew everywhere. I will no doubt continue finding it stuck to my socks and pulling tiny, invisible filaments out of my eyeballs for months. But this faux fur is the softest, bestest feeling fur and such a pretty color! It makes the pillow irresistable. You find you simply must squeeze it, pet it and finger comb its face. It's like an oversized tribble.

I improved muchly on my fur cutting technique this time by reading up on some tips on how you should slide your blades under the fur to only cut the backing instead of just scissoring away at it like you would regular fabric. This keeps it from having uneven, chopped looking fur at the edges and seams (much like my unfortunate mom-trimmed bangs in a long ago school picture.) Excellent.

I had some trouble attaching the eyes and mouth because even though I glue basted the pieces, they kept shifting around on the fur. My softie support group suggested I trim the fur underneath the felt pieces (thank you, makes perfect sense) but I was too afraid to do that because I might want to adjust the placement (the glue was washable). I ended up just gluing the heck out of the pieces all around and then hand sewing the edges instead of trying to wrestle them through the machine. Turned out fine.

I think my thirteen year old turned out fine too. I love you more! (x infinity squared)

testing, testing

Very first try at custom printing at Spoonflower for the quick-sew version of the Early Bird Night Owl pillow. The colors came out better than I thought from the screen preview, though some patterns are darker than anticipated.

This is a big experiment with both the method and the cost effectiveness. So far I really don't like the results that I get sewing together the small pieces like the beak and eyebrows. Those would look much better in felt, IMO. The small size makes them kind of a pain to turn and the stuffed shape doesn't look smooth even when I carefully clip the allowances. I'm rethinking those parts.

I'm considering having the large pieces pre-printed (front and back of the bird) and then just adding felt and pom accents. That would sure be a lot cuter and easier. And you could also embellish with trims and embroidery if you wanted to. And maybe that way it would fit on a fat quarter. I'll have to check that. That would bring the cost down.

And no worries, I'm also working on the traditional sewing pattern for this in woven cottons with applique, felt accents, and poms!

wiksten based tunic top with pockets

I've been doing some sewing for myself lately. This Nani IRO print has been burning a hole in my fabric shelf and I finally formed a concrete plan for this tunic. The fabric is one of my favorite prints ever and I didn't want to waste it on a top I wouldn't like. I made a muslin from an old sheet before I made this one.

The fabric is a lightweight double gauze. I started with the top of my Wiksten tank pattern and cut it off just under the bust. Then I drafted a gathered skirt and big pockets to make a comfy tunic. I'd prefer it just a bit longer but I didn't have enough fabric and even ended up having to add a hem facing to keep as much length as possible. This tunic would make a nice casual dress too by lengthening it even more.

I kept the fit loose so I could slip it on over my head but the back ended up looking a little too roomy. I added some shirring to make the fit more flattering but not too tight.

I have a thing about big pockets. They make me happy. I considered adding buttons to the pockets as a decorative touch but decided it was better without them in the end.

Actually, the accidental hem facing makes a nicer looking hem on double gauze than a folded up hem does, IMO. It's very hard for me not to pull or distort the hem if it is folded because the double gauze has such a loose weave. For the facing I just cut a bias strip and finished one edge with an overlock. Then I sewed the other edge to the hem RST, ironed it toward the wrong side, and secured it with a blind stitch by hand.

If you have the Wiksten tank pattern you could make this mod pretty easily. (Assuming you have already made any adjustments to the tank for a good fit first.)

Specifics
Just in case you have the pattern and also have fabric that is burning a hole in your shelf: