make something

MOD BLOCKS QUILT TOP

Published on February 12, 2013 in patchwork and the workroom. 8 Comments Tags: johanna masko, mod blocks, quilt.

My first totally new quilt project of the year is Johanna’s Mod Blocks pattern. I’ve been wanting to make it for ages and I finally pulled together all my fabrics in January. The quilt top is simple to make. I think the thing that took me the longest was figuring out my final layout and keeping it all organized while I was sewing it together.

Right now it feels like I’m on a kick to start as many new projects as possible. I’m running with this feeling and I’ll worry about finishing them later. I’ve got a few more of Johanna’s patterns lined up, starting with Trapezoids. I have this crazy idea that I want to make 12 quilt tops this year. Let’s see what happens.

LOVE & RUMMAGE 5

Published on February 8, 2013 in local and the workroom. 0 Comments Tags: city of craft, love & rummage trunk show.

It almost didn’t happen, but I’m so happy that our tradition of having a Valentines Trunk show is continuing this year. It’s been 5 years since we first teamed up with City of Craft to host the very first Trunk Show. It’s become a bright spot in the middle of winter to look forward to seeing lots of good friends, treating ourselves to special crafts, scooping up cool vintage finds and eating delicious snacks.

We’ve been sorting through our rummage for the show. We’ve got a new box of vintage patterns to share and all kinds of vintage fabric yardage & remnants. Most of our rummage is priced at $2! There are some serious deals here!

We also have lots of new fabrics & books on our shelves. Take a look here to see what’s new at the workroom.

The Junction Flea is also happening on Sunday from 10-5pm, just down the street from us. So much fun for a wintery day!

PERFECT ZIP BAG IN SKINNY LAMINX

Published on February 4, 2013 in scraps and stitchery. 4 Comments Tags: elizabeth hartman, perfect zip bag, scraps, skinny laminx.

I love to try out new zip bag patterns. I will NEVER have enough of them and they are always quick and satisfying to sew. I decided to try out the Elizabeth Hartman Perfect Zip Bag pattern over the holidays to make as a gift. The pattern includes 3 different styles and I especially loved Style A, which is more like a little clutch.

Elizabeth offers lots of variation within the pattern to either make the bags from one fabric or do do some patchwork. You can also add a handle/strap, which I thought was pretty cute. I’ve been saving my little bundles of Skinny laMinx canvas scraps and I knew this would be a fun place to use some. For the lining, I went with a colourful Liberty of London Bloomsbury print. It’s pretty cheery when you peek inside this bag.

The pattern is excellent, very easy to follow and I loved the details, like the darts at the bottom and the contrast tabs at the end of the zippers. It was simple to make and I’ve already started to make another one of this version for myself. This one went to Andrew’s mom for Christmas and I slipped a little 5 year Journal inside that fit perfectly!

COUNTY FAIR BIRDIE SLING

Published on January 29, 2013 in stitchery. 2 Comments Tags: Amy Butler, Birdie Sling, tula pink.

This is the second Birdie Sling that I’ve made for my mom. (Here’s the last one) She put in a special request this year for Christmas for a new version with darker colours. I looked through my stash and found a generous piece of this dark County Fair home dec fabric by Denyse Schmidt. It went perfectly with the coral prints from Tula Pink’s Salt Water collection that I used for the bands, handles and the lining.

365 : 2012

Published on January 26, 2013 in 365 and photography. 3 Comments

I’m definitely happy that 2012 is now behind us and I’m also happy to have completed another year’s worth of daily photos. Although I miss having a daily collection of DSLR photos, this year it was so much easier to keep up with the project by using my iphone, instagram & the app ‘project 365′.

This year, I’m hoping to find more time to sew (it’s never enough), to learn how to bake bread, to send more mail, to take more photographs, to finish more quilts and start even more quilts. I have a good feeling about 2013.

NATHAN’S BABY QUILT

Published on January 4, 2013 in patchwork. 7 Comments Tags: center city, FMQ, free motion quilting, jay mccarroll, quilt.

As simple as this baby quilt is, I really love how it turned out. Baby Nathan is the first baby among Andrew’s cousins. I wanted to make him a quilt but worried about making something complicated that wouldn’t get done for a while or even while he was still a baby. It’s happened before. Ambitious quilt projects that get derailed for way too long. A hard habit to break, but I’m going to try.

I remembered this simple quilted playmat that just used four squares of fabric. I thought this was the perfect opportunity to choose fabrics that speak for themselves and naturally ended up with Jay McCarroll’s Center City. Jay’s fabrics seem to work their way into a lot of the things I make – this dress, this skirt, this tank. His latest collection is no exception. You’ll see more of it popping up in some upcoming projects. The four prints I chose are both fun and boyish. For the back, I chose a Cloud9 organic flannel. It’s so soft!! Within a few hours, I had stitched the top and basted it. Amazing!

For the quilting, I wanted to try something new. I wanted to try free motion. Kinda scary. I’ve only quilted a mini quilt with free motion, but I’m never going to learn if I don’t start trying. For some reason, I find that a squarish pattern is easier than a loopy pattern. Luckily, that went perfectly with the design of the quilt.

I used my Bernina Stitch Regulator for this. What an incredible invention! The optical eye in the attachment adjusts the speed of the stitching to match how fast you are moving the fabric. This results in more even looking stitches. I’ll have to do a post on just this attachment alone.

The free motion quilting was so liberating! I was able to quilt the entire quilt in just a couple hours and I love how it looks!

The label was done using the embroidery stitches on my machine and then hand stitched onto the back. The last part was the binding, which maybe took the longest. I chose the cute hexagon print from Tula Pink’s Saltwater collection.

I had the quilt finished just in time for getting to meet little Nathan for the first time.

STAR-Y LOG CABIN QUILT

Published on January 1, 2013 in patchwork. 7 Comments Tags: mrsmcporkchop, quilt, star-y log cabin.

Star-y Log Cabin Quilt
Design by Amanda Woodward Jennings
Made for Heather & Liam Brown
Started February 2011
Finished December 30, 2012

Looking back, I started this quilt just a couple months after Heather & Liam announced their engagement at our family holiday party. I was pretty proud of myself for being so ahead of the game. There was no wedding date set yet and surely with a head start I would finish on time. Even with the best of intentions, 2012 had other plans for me. Heather & Liam’s wedding was in June and I needed more time. Six months later at Christmas was the next best thing. (Still within the one year gift rule!)

I blogged about starting this project here and then a bit more progress here. Heather & Liam met at school for architecture, so I was happy to use that as a starting point for my fabric & even the design choice. Star-y represented nature & woodsy aspects and Log Cabin represented the city and buildings. It seemed pretty perfect to me, exactly how I think of Heather & Liam. Working on a project for so long, I was able to keep adding new fabrics to the mix from my original selection. I tried to keep the navy’s very dark, almost black. I wanted to really have a lot of contrast within the design, something I’m not known for.

There are only four blocks in this quilt, but they are quite large. Each block is about 35″ square and the finished quilt is around 70″ square. A good size to snuggle under on the couch together, I hope. The star centres are my all time favourite fabric called City Limits. The top two stars feature the building tops, including a water tower. The bottom stars feature the brownstone stoops and streetview. Working around the log cabin, I mixed in my favourite Japanese text prints and textures.

For the back of the quilt, I used a large piece of Martha Negley’s navy forest fabric along with a dark navy star fabric. The back is like a star-y night in the woods to me. I paper pieced their initials into the back and hand embroidered the year and my name. My new goal is to work the label into the quilt before it gets basted. This way when I finish sewing the binding, the quilt is complete. This is a lesson learned from the 3 complete gift quilts I have on a shelf that are just waiting on labels!

I machine quilted the whole quilt in two long nights. Nothing complicated, just in the ditch around the stars and then an echo around the stars. After that I just echoed the logs in concentric squares. For the binding I chose to do a scrappy look, so I could add in a few more fabrics that I loved but hadn’t fit into the main part of the quilt. A mini anchor fabric especially needed to make an appearance. Since I was so pressed for time at the end I really considered machine sewing the binding in full, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. The final hand stitching of the binding is something that really completes the project for me and I love getting to spend those last hours underneath the quilt. But a quilt binding can often take me DAYS to finish and I had one night. Luckily I consulted with Amanda who recommended using Audible.com and getting an audio book. This saved my life!! I have never hand stitched binding so quickly in my life. All together it took about four hours, not even a full book to get the binding done.

The quilt went home with Heather & Liam the other day. I’m not going to lie, it is my most favourite quilt I’ve made so far. I was especially inspired while making this quilt. Every decision and stitch reflected the two amazing people I was making it for which made this a truly vibrant piece. Yesterday I cut out pieces to make myself a little replica block, so I can have it as a mini quilt for myself.

Congratulations Heather & Liam! xoxox

PRE-INVENTORY SALE

Published on December 30, 2012 in the workroom. 0 Comments

Wow. Where on earth did this year go? To celebrate the last few days of 2012 and to get ready for our inventory count on January 2nd, the workroom is having a big sale! We have so much new fabric right now, it’s the perfect chance to replenish your stash after holiday gift making. As a bonus, today is also Quilt Sunday!

I’ve got some fun things up my sleeve for 2013, including getting back to posting here more often. I’ll be sharing some of my holiday projects in the next few days!

Happy Holidays & New Years!!

FABRIC SCRAP BUNDLES

Published on December 7, 2012 in scraps and the workroom. 3 Comments Tags: city of craft, fabric scrap bundle, scrap, scraps.

When is a scrap bundle more than just a scrap bundle? At the workroom, these are more than just leftover fabrics that are stuffed into a bag. They are little time capsules of the workroom’s history.

For the past month we’ve been working on preparing as many scrap bundles as we can for this weekend’s City of Craft show. Elisa has been diligently going through our boxes of colour sorted scraps, cutting them up into sizable pieces. Ayalah, Rosalyn and I have been folding all the scraps into stacks that will surprise you as you peel away each layer to discover the treasures inside. As we’ve been folding, I feel like we are also re-living all the memories associated with different prints. We’ve put a lot of work & love into these bundles and unfortunately there is only a limited quantity. I wish we could have made more, especially since at the Spring City of Craft show we sold out of 100 bags within the first hour.

To sweeten the deal, each bag contains at least one, if not two scraps of Liberty of London. These are scraps we received from a local designer and we’ve never had these prints in the shop. I’ve also reached into my secret stash to divide up a half metre of Heather Ross’ VW Vans print. 8 lucky people will find a piece hidden inside their bundle. Even though this print is blue, it might be hiding in any of the other colour bundles!

We will try to reserve a few of the bundles for Sunday, but the majority will be available, first come, first serve on Saturday. There are only 150. Scrap bundles will be cash only.

We’ll have lots of other great items at our table too! Our wooden cross stitch pendants, fat quarter sets, patterns, floss palettes, needle minders, mini scissors, Soak Boxes, coloured baker’s twine, and more!

This is by far our favourite show of the entire year. We’re super excited that this is our first year having a table. To preview some of what’s in store – take a look at the beautiful look book designed by Arounna here. Can’t wait to see you there!

City of Craft
1087 Queen Street West at Dovercourt
Saturday December 8, 11am-6pm
Sunday December 9, 11am-5pm
$2 admission

SIMPLICITY 2215 SKIRT : NANI IRO

Published on November 2, 2012 in clothing, stitchery, textiles, the workroom and traveling. 13 Comments Tags: Italy, nani IRO, Simplicity 2215.

Simplicity 2215 Skirt Pattern
nani IRO canvas
photos taken at the NH Excelsior Hotel in Siena, Italy

Our trip to Italy was almost a month ago now and I’ve yet to post any photos from my DSLR. There are SO MANY! I really just need to spend one entire day going through and editing them before too much time passes by. I thought I’d post up some smaller bits to start.

This simplicity skirt pattern is one of my favourites! I have a few other pieces of fabric set aside to make this pattern in again. I just can’t resist the uneven pleats and the pockets.

This fabric might look familiar. Yes, it’s true. I already have a Birdie Sling in this same nani IRO fabric, but I really love it and felt like I also needed to make a piece of clothing with it. I laid out the pattern so that the hem of the skirt is actually the selvedge of the fabric so that I could include all the lovely text and the fringe.

Siena was one of my favourite parts of our trip. I promise more photos of the actual city soon!