Monthly Archive for October, 2011

STYLISH DRESS BOOK 2 : DRESS ‘S’ IN EBS

Published on October 30, 2011 in clothing, japanese dress/craft and textiles. 13 Comments Tags: ebs, Liberty of London, sewing summit, shirring, Stylish Dress Book.

Stylish Dress Book 2 : available at the workroom
Liberty of London : Ebs

What can I say, I love this pattern. This is version #3. Version #1 & #2 get tons of use and I was feeling like I should add another version into the rotation. The only change I made was to add side seam pockets to this version.

This Liberty of London print is called ‘Ebs’. This soft colour palette is so incredible and the print looks like it was coloured in with pencil crayon. It has been sitting in my stash for way too long. I’m pretty happy it’s now hanging on my closet and joining me on adventures like the Sewing Summit.

SIMPLICITY 2215 : PURPLE DROP CLOTH

Published on October 24, 2011 in clothing and stitchery. 23 Comments Tags: cynthia rowley, drop cloth, habitat, jay mccarroll, Simplicity 2215.

I love this dress so much!

I have been holding onto a couple metres of Jay McCarroll’s Purple Drop Cloth fabric from his Habitat collection. I knew it would make a really special dress once I found the right pattern. I saw this Cynthia Rowley pattern online and when I couldn’t find it here in Toronto, Amanda picked up a copy for me and mailed it to me. It was very easy to follow and I love that I can also make a separate skirt or top using the same pattern. I’m keeping my eye out for a skirt fabric to use next. The pockets in the skirt are brilliant.

I wore this dress on our first day of classes at the Sewing Summit. We had a long break after lunch before our afternoon classes started, so Katherine, Amanda and I went to our room to hang out and relax. Of course, I noticed how lovely the light was in our room and promptly started moving furniture around to take photos of this dress, my new fabric, Amanda’s mini quilts, etc. If you ever wondered what the other side of my camera looks like, Amanda caught me in action here. I get pretty resourceful when taking photos. I stacked boxes of cookies to make a ‘tripod’ on our last day to get these group photos.

The prints from Habitat really seem to suit clothing. This drop cloth fabric is GENIUS. I made a skirt from the Grey Multi Coloured Polka Dot Habitat fabric a few months ago that I adore and I’m REALLY wishing I had more than a metre of the grey Birch fabric. What was I thinking?! Perhaps I can squeak out a tiny tank top from it.

SEWING SUMMIT MINI

Published on October 23, 2011 in patchwork, scraps and traveling. 7 Comments Tags: free motion, improv patchwork, Lizzy House, mini quilt, outfoxed, sewing summit.

Here’s my improv patchwork from Sewing Summit. Half the scraps for this came from Amanda and the other half came from Lizzy, who let me & Katherine dip into her collection for some bits we wanted for our stash. I really like sewing with other people’s fabrics. It’s fun to sew with fabric that I might not normally use.

I’ve been a bit afraid of free motion quilting. Okay, ALOT afraid. So far all the machine quilting that I’ve done has been straight lines, using a walking foot. I mean, after all the time that I’ve spent putting together a quilt, the last thing I want to do is ruin it with some bad quilting. This is why I knew I had to sign up for the Free Motion Quilting class at the Sewing Summit.

Our teacher, Alison, showed us lots of examples of different styles of quilting and quilts that she had done. She gave us some tips and gave demos on her technique. Then we just had to go for it. We had quilt sandwiches to practice on. This is definitely the best way to learn. Practice on little fake mini quilt sandwiches! There was a lot of wonky stitching on my practice mini, but I really liked the look of the overlapping square pattern, so I kept practicing that pattern over and over. Finally, I just decided to just go for it. SCARY! If you look really closely, this quilting is hardly perfect. But it was really exciting to finally let go and stop worrying about how perfect my little squares are. From a distance, it looks pretty good. Of course, now I want to do all kinds of free motion. I’m going to stick to mini quilts for now, but I can’t wait til I am ready to tackle a larger quilt. Bring it on FREE MOTION!

SEWING SUMMIT

Published on October 22, 2011 in stitchery, textiles and traveling. 8 Comments Tags: Lizzy House, mrsmcporkchop, salt lake city, sewing summit.

This year was the inaugural year for the Sewing Summit in Salt Lake City, Utah. Sewing Summit is a two day sewing & blogging conference that was held at the Little America Hotel. Since Katherine and I had such a great time at The Makerie in the spring, we knew we had to be a part of the Sewing Summit, too. It was also a chance to meet up with lots of friends IN REAL LIFE that I’ve made on the internet. Most specifically, Amanda aka Ms Mcporkchop! Amanda and I have been chatting pretty much every day for well over a year. We’ve worked on projects together, sent each other packages in the mail and video skyped with each other. You can imagine how amazing it was to meet up with her at the SLC airport and room with her & Katherine for five whole days. It was the best!!

We had flown down a few days early so that we could spend time with Lizzy House and have a chance to explore Salt Lake City. This was one lesson we learned from our Makerie trip. We didn’t schedule in time to really check out Boulder and Denver. Thursday was our shopping day. Armed with a list of local quilt and yarn shops, we headed out in our rented SUV. We took a short drive outside the city to visit Material Girls and Quilt, Etc. Both were huge shops with so many great fabrics. We had a lot of fun scouring the shelves and picking out fat quarters for ourselves. Back in SLC, we visited Piper’s Quilts, which sells both fabric and yarn. This shop is in an adorable house with quilts hanging out on the porch and a classroom upstairs. The last stop on our craft tour was Blazing Needles. It’s been a really long time since I’ve knit anything, but I always love to check out the colourful skeins of yarn. Something about this wonderful shop inspired Katherine & I to buy yarn and start knitting a cozy cowl. The owner, Cynthia, spent a lot of time with us making sure we got everything we needed and giving us advice. We left the shop feeling really inspired. I think everyone who visited that shop felt the same thing because at night huge groups of gals were huddled together in our room or the lobby knitting away.

Friday was another exploring day. This time with Lizzy and her sister, Melissa. We drove out to Sundance Resort, which is located in a gorgeous canyon surrounded by mountains. It was actually snowing in the mountains, which made them even more breathtaking. We also drove out to Park City, which is actually the setting for the Sundance Film Festival. In our wandering around we happened upon a Banksy, which totally made my day.

The Sewing Summit started early on Saturday and wrapped up Sunday afternoon. We took Handbags 101 with Bari J, Free Motion Quilting with Alison of Cluck Cluck Sew, Creative Fabric Selection with Jeni B of In Color Order, Marvelous Minis with Amanda of MsMcPorkchop Quilts, Photographing Your Creations with Vanessa of V and Co and Improv Piecing with Jessica of Urban Patchwork. That’s a lot to jam into a couple days, but I learned a lot and felt really inspired.

In particular, Jeni & Amanda’s classes were totally energized and informative. Jeni gave a really thorough presentation on how to choose dynamic colour palettes and surprised the entire class with Kona colour cards. Such a useful tool for selecting colour. Amanda brought so many examples of her minis and they were all incredible. My favourite all time mini is her Oregon Star. I felt like I was in the presence of the Mona Lisa, seeing this mini quilt in person. Incredible. Also, you have never seen anyone as passionate about getting you excited to make mini quilts and be creative. I am pretty sure everyone in her class went straight home after the weekend and made a mini quilt. I know I did.

There were so many friends that I met at the Summit that were so fun to hang out with. I’m so happy that I made sure to take lots of ‘people’ photos on this trip. Amanda J, Amanda Hall, Jeni B, Kait, Lindsay, Angela, Deedrie & Jessica – I had so much fun with you ladies! Saying goodbye to everyone on the last day was really hard, but I hope we’ll meet up again soon!

Check out my 100+ photos from Salt Lake City and the Sewing Summit here!