Sewing Chair Questions...

What are you all sitting on while you sew? I have a very ugly office chair that I have had for years. My husbands family owned and operated a magnificent fine dining restaurant in Cassadaga, New York, many years ago. When they closed the restaurant the chair from the office was about to be rolled out to the dumpster. I grabbed it because I knew it had good bones and it was fabulously comfortable. It just looked horrible and, well, smelled a bit like garlic. Time fixed the garlic smell and I fixed the ugly blue tweedy fabric by recovering it with a fine tan canvas. Then to finish the chair off, I tied a big bow around the back of it to match the sewing room decor at that time (I KNOW! But honest, it really did look good when I did it!) and have happily used it for about the last 8 years. The photo below is the front view. Yes, it gets worse. Funny how we don't notice sometimes how awful some elements of our decor actually look.... I do remember the day the seat cushion got the apple juice stain on it, though. My granddaughter and I were having such fun - she sits on my lap and pushes the buttons, lifts the presser foot, and chooses the stitches, etc., while we sew. I was surprised that the canvas stained like that... Anyway, what did I do to hide the juice stain that looked mighty suspicious? I covered it with a towel. Really, I did. In the interest of full disclosure I took the towel off the chair for the photograph so you could see how really terrible this chair actually looks!

So, the reason for the post? Really, what are YOU sitting on while you sew? Does it need a face lift like mine did? Currently I am making a quilted cover for the seat cushion. I am stipple quilting it right now and will finish it off in the same way I do the Quilted Toddler Bibs and Quilted Toddler Jackets. I will show you the process in the next post. I can't believe how easy it is to do... although it isn't done quite yet... but we shall see...

Ann the Gran picked up my patterns!

I woke up this morning to find the most wonderful of emails! Ann the Gran confirmed that they have picked up, and listed for sale, my patterns on their website! This is a wonderful website that is very well established and offers a wide selection of machine embroidery designs, as well as sewing and quilting related products. They also have a tremendous amount of software, tips and techniques, thread charts, and free stuff. Prior to them carrying my patterns I had purchased many designs from them and love their website. It's needless to say that today I am one very happy quilter!

Sewing Out Samples

I have been very busy sewing up a Quilted Toddler Jacket and Hat pattern and a new Quilted Toddler Bib pattern for this wonderful quilting and embroidery site, Ann The Gran. They are going to sell my patterns and asked if I would sew up a few items using their machine embroidery designs. So that's what I have been doing. The bib pattern was a tremendous amount of fun to create. I used their Jacobean Style embroidery designs and let me tell you, they sew out beautifully! It was especially fun for me to make that bib since I have a new granddaughter named Lucy. She was born on December 8th and we just got back from spending nearly two weeks up in New York with Lucy, her big sister, Madelyn, and their parents.

Here is the jacket I made for a little boy using Ann The Grans Zoom Zoom design pack. I was nearly knocked out of my chair at the detail and precision that these designs sew out with. They are amazing and I couldn't have been more pleased to put these on a finished jacket.

The font is Arabesque from Ann The Grans web site as well. It happens to be my favorite embroidery font and I use it all the time. I actually bought this font months ago, long before we were in talks about them selling my patterns on their site. It is fabulous!

I would also like to point out the condition of my lawn. I am sure that if you have read this far down the blog, you are saying, "What is wrong with these people. Their lawn looks like a hay field." Well, let me tell you what's wrong with "these people." My husband decided to "go green" and buy an electric lawn mower that you plug in and charge, then you unplug it and mow. Well, you can see by the height of our lawn just how reliable this "green" lawn mower is. Since day one it hasn't had enough charge to mow all of our incredibly small yard. Our lot is only 50 feet wide and 100 feet deep. On that is our house, a shed, a double driveway and flower beds. That doesn't leave much lawn space. So, suffice it to say that when you "go green" and buy an electric lawn mower, you literally "go green" because in no time at all you have a hay field!

Penny Pinching Patchwork Post ~ Re-Purposing Clothes!

The house dress you see above has been hanging in my closet for more than a year. It was a gift from my wonderful mother-in-law and well, I just never wore it. She bought it for me at Neiman Marcus and it was a fabulously soft cotton fabric and even she said when she gave it to me, "I don't know what I was thinking..." It seemed such a shame to never use it so my creative quilter's brain got busy. You will not believe how many useful items and gifts I made from this one article of clothing!

First off, I made the Quilted Toddler Jacket and Hat that is shown above.

Then I made TWO Quilted Toddler Bibs!

And this photo shows you the the entire clothes line full of booty that I got out of ONE unused article of clothing! I was able to make ELEVEN quilted, and very useful, articles of clothing for babies and toddlers. The baby bibs would make darling baby shower gifts and no one would ever know you made them out of re-purposed clothing! A good movie on the TV, a seam ripper in one hand and a hot cup of tea in the other, and before long you have fabric just waiting for a new career! I pieced together the batting from scraps and used old yardage for the backing before I quilted the pieces, and made my own bias binding from stash fabrics. The entire clothes line was made from fabrics that literally were just laying around my house!

If you don't have anything laying about your house that you are not wearing, one trip to the SA Boutique (Salvation Army Thrift Store) and you could have for less than $3.00 enough fabric to outfit a baby's layette. I went there this past week and found several BRAND NEW floor length flannel nightgowns for $1.50 each that would make perfect burp cloths, bibs, changing pads, and jackets. During these difficult financial times it seems to make incredibly good sense to use our creative brains to re-purpose that which isn't being used. Buying from the Salvation Army is also giving to a good cause!

The Importance of Keeping up with Current Events

Well, this was certainly a few weeks full of lessons for me. As I had mentioned, I will be teaching a Quilted Toddler Jacket class in a few weeks at Country Quilts and Bears. I have been a busy beaver sewing up samples for the shop that illustrate the many methods that one could use to create this jacket. I wanted to show a variety hoping to encourage quilters to sign up and take my class. I had made a bunch of jackets but I gave them all to my beautiful granddaughter like any good Grandma would, so my "jacket stash" was depleted. They were her size, after all. So, in my infinite wisdom I decided that I needed to make a jacket that was suitable for a boy, and another one for a girl. Hmmmmmm, what do little boys like? BASEBALL! Not thinking much farther than that, I decided almost immediately on making a Boston Red Sox jacket because their socks are just so darn cute (and I already had an outline of socks from a prior project) and what a wonderful way to show off my applique skills, right? WRONG!

I worked on this Sox jacket hours and hours before my husband noticed and says in the sweetest voice, "Honey, do you really think that a quilt shop in Tampa Bay is going to want to put a Red Sox jacket on display in their shop? Especially since there is a very good chance that Tampa Bay will actually be playing the Red Sox in the playoffs?" WHO KNEW??? Let's think about those odds for a few moments... I could have died. Cut ahead one week, and guess who's playing who in the playoffs? Yep, you guessed it. It's the Tampa Bay Rays vs. Boston Red Sox.

This past Friday I go marching into Country Quilts and Bears with my Boston Red Sox jacket in my tote bag and showed it to the wonderful owner, Marilyn. Oh, the look on her face. It was priceless. "Oh, my," she says. You see, as luck would have it, her husband and partner in the shop, John, is a die hard Rays fan and understandably this just isn't going to work. So home I go, humbled and laughing, with teal and yellow fabric under my arm, because after all, where do I live? TAMPA BAY! I really must start reading something other than quilting magazines.

So long story longer, here is the Tampa Bay Rays Quilted Toddler Jacket that is now prominently displayed on the counter in the quilt shop in Tampa Bay.....

Quilted Toddler Jackets

Here is my little darling modeling her new hat and jacket that Grandma made for her! The quilted fabric I put into the previous post became this entire ensemble - quilted jacket and hat. It is a pattern I designed that makes the jacket out of a one piece pattern. It is sooooo very simple and what a scrap buster it can be! You piece (or go "whole cloth") a small quilt, cut out the pattern, bind it and this is the final result. If anyone is interested, the pattern is copyrighted and available at my website, Quilty Indulgence.
Madelyn Mary seems to take the modeling very seriously by all indications in these photos that were taken in western New York last weekend during a Grandma visit up there, but that really wasn't the case. She kept bolting for the hills - it was very comical and reminded me of when her own Mommy would run through the house (away from me!) with pieces of Halloween costumes or new outfits on her that I was trying to fit. Two year olds are simply not natural models or patient mannequins!
Here is another example of the jacket pattern. The one with the monkey applique was pieced. The citrus one is a "whole cloth" jacket. Either way, it is a simple quilting project and the scraps make the hat (pattern and instructions are included for that as well) so there is no waste!

Here is the pattern cover.