I sewed the sashing between the rows. My rows ended up with two at 39.5" and two at 39.75". According to the directions, they were supposed to measure 40.5". At this point I realized I could either adjust the next two sets of borders to get to the correct size for the pieced border or I could just finish sewing the sashing, add a few straight borders, and call it good. I am leaning toward the second option because 1. it's easier and 2. some of the borders prior to the pieced one had to be different widths to make the pieced border fit and I think that would drive me crazy. Stay tuned.
My daughter was home over the weekend. We decided to make her a shirt. While we were in my fabric closet choosing which fabric to use, she saw my pumpkin pillow top version one that I set aside because the quilting on it wasn't good enough to enter in the fair. She liked it, so we looked through my couple of pieces of Halloween fabric and picked one for the backing. Ta-da. It's done!
She chose a Debbie Mumm fabric for the back. I'm fairly certain this dates to the late 1990s.
Moving along to the shirt, we chose to use Love Notions' classic t-shirt pattern. I didn't have this one printed in A0 format, so I had to print it out and cut and assemble it at home. Luckily she is an extra-small/small. The pattern changes required were shortening the bodice front and back one inch, shortening the hem length, grading between sizes, and adjusting the sleeve by both grading and shortening.
Things were progressing well until I got to the neckband. I sewed it on the wrong side of the shirt on my first try and had to rip it out. Unfortunately I had sewn a stretch stitch on my sewing machine, so it took quite some time to remove. The second time I used a straight stitch in a long length, not quite basting, but closer. 
Next I had to figure out how to change my serger over to coverstitch mode. That took me a bit. I put in the bottom hem and I did okay other than I didn't quite get my start and stop lined up. I switched over to the clear foot and put in the sleeve hems. I got better with the lining up on each one. 
I had to coverstitch the neckband in place. I tried to glue-baste the curly seam allowances down, but it didn't fully work. I ended up with some extra fabric that I thought I'd trim away. Unfortunately I nipped a hole in the back of the shirt while doing this. Luckily the hole is covered by her hair, so I fused a piece of fabric under it. Ugh. I was so mad at myself. 
I learned quite a bit and I think I'm ready to try a shirt for myself. I'll use a different pattern for mine, but if I do make a classic tee for myself I will attach the neckband in a different way, maybe more like a binding instead of a stitch and press the seam down. It still looks cute on her despite the imperfections in my sewing. I feel like the sleeves look a little twisty. Not sure what causes that.
This project, which the free video class said could be sewn in around an hour, took me about five hours.
Meanwhile, I've worked on a few more quilts. It's kinda funny that I'll go for a few weeks without having to do the binding and then I'll receive a bunch that all want binding all at once. Right now I'm entering a binding cycle.
The first quilt is made by grad student Katherine. She hand-dyed the fabrics and was planning to hand quilt it, but we all know how that goes. We decided to do hand-guided so that I could avoid all the thick seam intersections. She had me do the binding because she doesn't have her machine with her while she's at school. Seeing the look on her face when she picked up her completed quilt was so gratifying.
I quilted Sara's quilt with Shooting Star. 
Next I worked on two of Tina's quilts. She requested Soho for the first quilt. I bound this quilt. 
The second one is quite a large quilt. She'd spray basted it so that she could quilt it on her domestic and wasn't happy with the results she was getting (the backing is a minky/cuddle). I've received quite a few requests where this was the scenario, so I agreed to take it on. Most of the time I can easily separate the layers, but this time I couldn't remove the batting from the backing, so I had to wrap the whole sticky thing on my frame. Obviously this isn't the ideal scenario, but I got it done. I'm also binding this one. Oh, the design is A Fishy Tail.
Outside, we have experienced several outstanding natural events. First, we were able to see the northern lights right from our driveway last Thursday! I went out to check and couldn't see anything with my naked eye, but captured a bit of color in my phone, so I ran back inside to get my family. We stayed outside from 9:45 pm - 10:10 pm. The color got much more intense and was visible without the aid of a camera. Wow! Here is a collection of thumbnails that show the progression. I was turning in circles, so some have more color than others since they were more visible to the north than south.
Sunday night I wanted to look for the Tsuchinshan-ATLAS comet. The article I read said it would be most visible about 45 minutes after sunset, which I figured would be during our evening walk. I wasn't finding anything, so when we got back I grabbed my phone, opened up my SkyView Lite app to find Venus and Arcturus, then looked up from my phone and there it was! My son had come back out with me. I sent him to fetch my husband because this comet is visible only every 80,000 years! I tried to take a picture, which didn't turn out that great. My son grabbed my phone and captured the image below. In the time it took to open up the photo and air-drop it to his phone the comet had lightened so much we could barely see it. So the timing worked out perfectly!
Come back next week to see if I've managed to sew anything besides binding for others. I'll have my regular post on Wednesday and the OMG finish link up on Friday next week. By the way, my OMG is to sew one piece of clothing. Technically I've done that, but the intent was to sew clothing for myself. I've got some work to do!
Linking with Quiltery, My Quilt Infatuation, and Alycia Quilts.
Love the finished t-shirt, Anne-Marie!!! Despite the obstacles you faced, it looks fabulous on her! What cool sky photos! And you know I always enjoy seeing what quilt designs you're up to!
ReplyDeleteThe T-shirt turned out great. I have used 1/4" strips of lightweight fusible knit interfacing to control that curling raw edge prior to cover stitching. I learned that from Debbie Cook who has the best serger and coverstitch tutorials on her blog Stitches and Seams here: https://stitchesandseams.blogspot.com/2001/01/coverstitch-all-stuff.html. She's not a brand ambassador or a teacher, doesn't work for any sewing machine company, just is awesome at sewing knits with sergers and shares her knowledge with the rest of us! :-)
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