May Morning Make 2021

May is commonly known as Me Made May in sewing circles. The goal of which is for people to both showcase their hand made clothing and reflect on ready to wear/fast fashion clothing in their closets. Really, it is an opportunity to show off your sewing and styling.

While I am far away from a handmade wardrobe, I do have a few things that I wear consistently. It’s been years since I sewed any clothing of my own though. So instead of showcasing a handmade wardrobe for Me Made May I decided to work on building mine through my Morning Make Practice. Each day I woke up and spent a little time working on clothing items from start to finish. Some days I only cut fabric or sewed just a couple of seams, some days I spent an hour or more moving from step to step. On the weekends I often found myself spending the afternoon making a lot of progress. The pandemic is certainly good for this extra, quiet time at home.

In the end I made 6 garments. Three for me, one I will give away because it ended up being way too small, and one each for my girls.

The Gallery Tunic by Liesl and Co. I’ve made this a couple of times before and like the fit. It was a good one to start with for it’s familiarity. I was wearing it to work by May 4.

The Charlie Caftan was a pattern I’d admired for a while. I liked that I saw it on many different body types with a lot of different design and fabric options. This was my wearable muslin. I bought a gorgeous rayon to make another version with but I need to make some adjustments to the pattern. For now, the whole house agrees I made a very lovely hospital gown.

The Lark by Grainline Studio has been sitting in my sewing room for years. I made a few Linden sweatshirts years ago and liked the pattern. I loved the idea of making a basic tee. And I really wanted to sort out sewing with knits on my machine. Well, my fabric did not have enough stretch and this DOES NOT fit. Bummed because I really liked this fabric. It was a discouraging experience and stopped me from using knits for the rest of the month. But I forged ahead with the finish to learn more about my machine and sewing with knits. Then a friend claimed the shirt, no matter what.

Another Closet Core Pattern, like the Charlie Caftan, this is the Kalle Shirt Dress. I’ve had the pattern and this fabric for it since a visit to Patch Halifax in 2018. This shirt was a huge learning curve of techniques, but between the pattern and the sew along everything was well explained. Which is more than I can say for how to do buttonholes on my Bernina. This will definitely get worn out of the house.

The Ogden Cami by True Bias was the perfect match for this fabric my oldest, The Monster, has been hoarding. We picked it up in 2019 at the Contextural show in town and it is a hand painted fabric by Caroline Forde. Cropped, because she is 14, and with the lining made longer based on pattern reviews, it is perfect all around. Not a pattern for a large buster 46 year old, but perfect for her.

Finally, the Fiore Skirt, also by Closet Core patterns for my newly minted teen, The Evil Genius. She came with me at the beginning of the month to by thread at Rick Rack Textiles, spotted the pattern, and convinced me to make it for her. I’m not sure if it was bribery on her part to pick fabric of my own design. If so, well played. The pattern came together very well and I am tempted to make a linen version for myself.

Unlike quilts, I felt a very strong need to finish each of these garments before moving on to the next. So much so that I felt them as a bit of a weight at times. I’m not sure I will be as focused on one thing of this magnitude again for Morning Make again! It was a lot of thinking for first thing in the morning too. Quite often I found myself needing to come back in the afternoon or evening just so I could have my brain be really awake for the task at hand.

It was really good to get back to garment sewing again. With the new techniques I’ve picked up I am even more motivated to keep going. Just maybe not at quite the same pace. I have a few more things I would like to make for summer. And, of course, my son has requested I make him something now. As for Morning Make, I’ve moved on to something entirely different for June, something a lot less taxing first thing in the morning.

Checkboard

Checkerboard

60” x 60”

This, by far, was not the oldest UFO in the quilt closet, but it is getting up there. Finished the quilt top in 2014, but I’m guessing it was started a year or two before that. Now, however, it is done! Taking advantage of the girls being home more and a clean floor I got a couple of quilts basted and this was one of them. I won’t lie, I picked it because I knew it would be an easy finish. Nothing wrong with that.

The pattern is from my book Sunday Morning Quilts, co-authored with Amanda Jean Nyberg. It’s actually one of the patterns Amanda Jean wrote. We both had grand plans of making all of each other’s patterns. Obviously, that did not come to pass. But I did make this one, and now I finished it.

Some of the fabrics in this quilt are old! That purple floral? From my 3rd quilt ever, sewn in 1999. That purple with the little white dots? Something vintage I was gifted. The grey with the dots? That was background on Nap Like an Egyptian, also from Sunday Morning Quilts. This is the true joy of scrap quilts, or scrappy ones even, giving more life to fabric that’s already lived! It’s like the fabric had a near death experience and now it is back and living better than ever.

The quilting was simple. With 2’ squares this simple diagonal was easy, fast, and gives the best scrunchiness to the quilt. I actually quilted most of it while watching a few episodes of Mad Men and Brooklyn 99, our recent pandemic viewing. Thread used was an Aurifil 50W, colour 5006.

For years I hoarded this backing fabric. Not exactly sure where or when I bought it, but I bought it specifically for this quilt. Many times I’ve had to stop myself from using it on something else though. It comes from an old collection designed by Jessica Levitt. As you can see, it is just perfect for this quilt.

While I’ve been working my way through stash and supplies as I work my way through UFOs, I did have to go shopping for the binding. When I was ready for it I decided it had to be this exact shade of magenta, found on that backing fabric, and I had nothing remotely close in my stash. So I made an appointment and masked up to shop one of my local stores, Out of Hand. Dierdre, the owner, was there and found this perfect fabric within minutes. I may have shopped a little more, but I did indeed walk out with her choice. As you can see, I did the binding a bit different than normal for me. It was attached by machine to the back and brought around to the front. Then I stitched it down with a big, obvious, running stitch in an 8W thread. Conveniently, I had the matching thread in Valdani. I thought I had a turquoise colour, which would have popped nicely but no. For the record, this kind of binding goes quickly! Thanks for Shannon Fraser for reminding me about this technique.

While this finishing kick is great, it does result in more quilts leaving the sewing room for the outside world. Truth be told, my husband would like some more outside the house too. Bah! You can never have too many quilts.

Wish Upon a Star

Wish Upon a Star

48” x 48”

For a little baby boy, born to parents raised across the country , a quilt to make all the wishes. Or, just to spit up, poop, and play on. And hopefully keep you warm. Heading your way soon.

This quilt is a slight adaptation of a pattern by Kristyne Czepuryk in her recent book, Perfectly Pretty Patchwork. The only change I made was to skip the outside round of stars, thus reducing the overall size of the quilt. It was a definite change in making for me - using templates and all that precision piecing! Changing things up can be good though! Keeps you on your toes.

Most of Kristyne’s work is soft, pastel, and oh so pretty. It’s gorgeous stuff but not necessarily what I am drawn to for my own quilts. Not wanting to go shopping I decided to see what I could do with what was on hand. I’d been saving this Carolyn Friedlander print for a totally different project. It had been sitting long enough, however, and deserved to see some glory. The rest of the colours came from an Ikat butterfly print by Tula Pink. You can see it there in that corner star, and again on the back (below). The nice thing about this pattern is that I could dig through my stash and scrap bins to cut the diamonds for the stars. It meant a lot of variety; scrappy all the way. The prints used are a combination of old and newer, modern and boring, bright and simple. All together I think they balance nicely and create so much visual interest.

To quilt it I simply did an edge to edge wave, varying the thickness of the lines as I went. It was nice to have the change in texture from the points on the pattern. With a pattern like this I think you can really emphasize all those points with ditch or echo quilting, or you can contrast it. Bonus: contrasting it is easier. My thread choice was a dark turquoise Aurifil in my stash. It doesn’t stand out too much anywhere but doesn’t quite blend in. I rather love it.

Binding was an unexpected choice. I didn’t have enough of any green or yellow that worked to make it around all 4 sides. I debated using the same dominant blue print. Grey seems boring too. Then I spied this other Tula Pink in the stash. It’s a really cool pixelated print of tigers. (Both the binding and the inspiration/backing fabric are from her Eden line.) Cut for binding it looks totally different! I rather like the change and I think it frames the quilt nicely.

Again, because I couldn’t pop out to the store and wanting a backing done when I wanted it done I got creative with my stash. There wasn’t enough of the butterfly print to make it so I added these big blue dots (a leftover piece of Lotta Jansdotter fabric from our collaborative Lilla quilt) as a frame. This might be one of my favourite quilt backs ever.

Thank you for pushing me out of my box a little here Kristyne! I won’t lie, I’m a little sad to send this one out the door but a certain baby boy will surely appreciate it.

Morning Make - April 2020

Did you know that if you make one 12.5” square quilt block each day that you will have a quilt top at the end of the month? A lovely, cuddly size, perfect for couch snuggles. Also, perfect for mental health in the making of and finished product!

For Morning Make in the month of April I made one X Plus block each morning. It was actually quite nice to not have to think about anything but fabric selection. That’s one of the best parts, anyway! From start to finish - from picking fabrics to a sewn block - it took me about 30 minutes.

Let me tell you, I absolutely loved having a complete block at the end of each session. To have something tangible, something that marked the passage of the days, and something that gave me nothing but joy was EXACTLY what I needed this month. It’s probably what all of us needed this month! Covid Isolation is HARD, but we are doing all we can to keep our community safe and that means staying home. And for me, having this 30 minutes to sew before dealing with schooling and meltdowns (all of us) and keeping our business going was lifesaving.

Now when you make these blocks you cut off some decent sized triangles to be thrown in the scrap pile. Rather than be indiscriminate with these scraps I sewed the offcuts together as they came from the block. I was left with a pile of half square triangles. After doing some math and some sketching I decided to turn these HSTs into Sawtooth Stars. From 30 X Plus blocks I could make 30 Stars.

Two quilts for the price of one!

All the fabrics for these quilts came from my stash. Yes, I have a very, very deep stash. Quarantine is a great time to be able to shop from your stash, let me tell you. About halfway through I was worried I wouldn’t have enough light and low volume fabrics to get through but I dug through all the bins and was able to come up with some really great fabric combinations. Some fabrics are brighter than others, some even get a little bossy. I only chose fabric one block at a time and didn’t think about whether they would go together at all. Because my overall feel was low volume it comes together. Besides, the most successful of these X Plus quilts are scrappy and full of unexpected fabric delights!

Now if I did this for Morning Make every month I would have a great collection of quilt tops. Just the tops though because nothing would get quilted! Of course, that kind of thing has never stopped me before! And right now I am totally wishing I had access to a long arm because I would love to get these quilted right now. As it stands, I have 2 basted tops waited for their turn under the needle. I also think part of that may just be me wanting the change after nearly 8 weeks of social distancing. Let me go play in the quilt store! So I wish, but I am still happy to do my part and stay home (and shop online for curbside pick up).

My plan for May was to embrace Me Made May and tackle some clothing projects I’ve had on the list. But this happened toward the and of April. It seems 2/3 children are suddenly wanting to sew with the machine. While I am lucky enough to have a dedicated sewing room, it is not big enough to be set up for that many people with different sewing needs.

For those wondering, the X Plus blocks can be found as a free pattern all over the place. I believe the original block comes from the 1930s but it really peaked in popularity a few years back when we were all on Flickr. I used the 12.5” measurements in my Creative Live class on working with low volume fabrics. Indeed, I had 10 blocks leftover from samples from filming that I intended to use in this quilt, then decided to let April 2019 stand on its own. If anything needs to be defined it is these times.