Fabric Basket

I needed a birthday gift for a friend and found a tutorial for fabric baskets. To make one basket, I used two of my favorite fabrics from my stash, and broke open a new package of Hobbs Thermore polyester batting. (I keep a LOT of batting on hand!)

This project was fun to make. It used 2 16″ squares of fabric and one 16″ square of batting, plus four buttons. I free-motion-quilted the joined squares and batting before turning them into a basket. Polyester batting makes for a lightweight basket. If you prefer something sturdier, to put heavy things in, you might want to use thicker batting. But the polyester batting worked fine for this project. (I put a couple of bars of gift-shop soap and a bottle of hand lotion nestled in tissue paper in it for my friend.)

Grand Canal Table Runner/Wall Hanging

I saw a table runner online that someone made by taking a pack of 5” charm squares, dividing them into darks and lights, cutting them all in half diagonally, sewing the light triangles to the dark triangles, and then piecing them back together. It looked really cute. (I’d share the link if I could find the bookmark!)

But when I tried it with a charm pack from a very pretty fabric line, Grand Canal by Kate Spain for Moda

… it didn’t turn out so well. It looked like chaos to me:

What to do? After some thought, I decided to try salvaging the project by putting sashing in between the squares made up of light/dark triangles, and some cornerstones using a lovely light green from my stash. And it completely changed it! Now I love it:

This was made from one charm pack, 1 1/2”-wide strips of white cotton scraps for the sashing, and part of a fat quarter for the cornerstones. I was surprised to find that just one charm pack plus sashing makes a table runner that’s 17″ wide and 70” long. Since that’s much longer than my table, I decided to turn it into a very long wall hanging in my sewing room. It looks really pretty there, and no one will ever spill gravy on it  🙂

T-Shirt Quilts

A year after my daughter had her first baby, she decided that many of the craft projects she’d been working on pre-baby were never going to get finished, so she cleared them out, but not before offering them to me. I felt bad letting the many t-shirt squares she had cut up so carefully go to waste, so I offered to finish the quilt she had intended to make.

T-shirt quilts are easy but time-consuming. In this case, I was working with 6” squares and one big rectangle. I paired up the squares with a 5” scrap of batting in the middle (I had tons of batting scraps from previous quilts I’d made) and sewed an X across each pair.

Once all 250+ squares were stitched, I sewed them together in rows using a ½” seam allowance, making sure to keep all seam allowances to the front. I cut the rectangle to fit, paired it with batting and backing of the same size, and arranged the squares around it.

I also cut the edges so that they will ruffle nicely once the quilt is washed. This is very time-consuming and, if you don’t want your hand to get very sore, requires the use of a certain kind of scissors.

Here’s what the quilt looks like on the back: 

I had enough squares for an ample-sized quilt for my daughter and son-in-law, and a little one so Baby can have her own:

I hate waste, so it felt good to make something warm and useful out of those squares. And now I have more room for fabric in my sewing area since I used up all my excess batting scraps on these quilts. 🙂

Tale of Two Tote Bags

I have an enormous file of patterns, torn out of magazines or photocopied out of library books, that I’ve been accumulating for many years . One of them is for a tote bag that I’ve always wanted to make.

I chose to make it for someone’s birthday, but thought I should make a test tote bag first, in case the pattern was wonky. I followed the directions, but the fat quarters I used were on the skimpy side, so when the tote bag came out long and skinny instead of almost square (as the photo of the tote bag on the pattern looked), I figured it was because the fat quarters were a little smaller than normal:

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No worries, I can always use another tote bag, even if it’s so long it looks like you could store wine bottles in it (hmmm, there’s an idea….). Anyways, I chose some fat quarters for the birthday-gift tote bag, and was pleased to discover that they were the exact size they should be (18″ X 22″). I followed the pattern to the letter (it only had one illustration, so I had to read and re-read it), and here’s how it turned out:

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Better, but still not square or even almost square. So I went over the pattern instructions very carefully, and came to the conclusion that there’s an error in it; there’s no way you’re going to get anything but a long rectangular tote bag out of that pattern. Lesson learned: never assume that a pattern’s directions will be right, even though most of them are. Fortunately, the recipient seemed pleased, and that’s all that counts!

A Love Affair with Fabric

IMG_20170125_145914_hdrIsn’t this gorgeous? I bought it not long ago from Hancock’s of Paducah, one of my current favorite sources of fabric. I haven’t decided what to do with it, but I suspect I won’t be able to make myself cut into it, so it’ll probably become the backing on a table runner. That way I can see it on my kitchen table every day.

My love affair with fabric began when I was a girl. I took a park district sewing class where I made myself a corduroy jumper, and then Home Economics in junior high, both of which required my mother to take me to a fabric store. It was love at first sight! All those rows of fabric bolts made me swoon.

After seeing my interest in sewing, my grandmother took me on the bus to Marshall Field’s downtown, where she bought me my first pattern, for making doll clothes, which I still have:

IMG_20170125_155556_hdrDuring one of my regular visits to Anna, Illinois, where my other grandmother lived, I discovered a small fabric store in town where bags of fabric remnants cost a quarter. I’d save up my allowance (a dime a week) so that I could buy some bags to take home. I used the remnants to make doll clothes for my sisters and me. I discovered that once you get good at making doll clothes, making people clothes becomes easier, because they’re so much larger.

Meanwhile, my Chicago grandmother, who lived in a brick bungalow on the South side of Chicago, decided to move to the suburbs, so she no longer needed the gorgeous pink cabbage rose curtains that had graced the windows of her bedroom in the old house. Guess who got them? I made my sisters and I maxi skirts out of them. We’d wear them around the house after school and think we were really cool 🙂

All through high school, I sewed for the fun of it. I took my sewing machine with me to college; when I became stressed from studying, I’d take a sewing break. Bliss!

I got married while I was in college; after we graduated, we moved back to the suburbs and bought a house. Now my love of fabric kicked into overdrive. We needed towels, sheets and curtains. I’d stop by TJ Maxx or Marshall’s on my way home from work and come out loaded down with gorgeous bed and bath linens. I also made window treatments for most of our windows. It was so much fun, and back then, it seemed like there were endless gorgeous designs.

These days most towels, sheets and decorator fabric bore me:

Curtains

There is little charm or originality in today’s designs. Much of it looks the same wherever I go. But when I shop in quilt stores or on quilt fabric websites, I find gorgeous fabric with all kinds of designs. There are even reproductions from different eras.

I’ve also found that estate sales are a good source of vintage fabric. When I find a lovely piece of fabric, sturdy Made-in-the-USA stuff from the mid-20th century, it’s like finding a treasure. I’ve made things for my grandchildren out of vintage fabric; it’s a joy to work with, and wears like iron. I just made my newest grandchild a crib sheet out of a lovely vintage sheet. So pretty!

Each spring, the Salvation Army in my town holds a fabric sale. Picture a large vacant storefront filled with donated fabric and craft supplies (all proceeds go to the Salvation Army). On the first day of the sale, there’s a very long line of women waiting to get in. Hundreds of women attend this sale every year, and I’m one of them. It’s so much fun, and I always come home with bags and bags of treasures to play with.

If it weren’t for vintage and quilt fabric, I might have fallen out of love with fabric (heaven forbid!) Instead, the love affair continues.