Beginning Sewing June 8 2020

Mona's Projects

     For my first sewing camp during this COVID time I had two girls that are friends that wanted to learn to sew.  We wore masks the whole time inside, kept 6 feet apart as much as possible and used a lot of hand sanitizer.

Nielli's Projects

     I am using the Avery Lane program now with last summer being the first time I used it.  The girls picked up everything so quickly I had to come up with a couple of extra projects.

     The first project was a patchwork pillow.  They had a lot of fun picking fabrics and then arranging them.  I did all the pressing so that I would be the only one touching the iron.  They did all their work at their own table to help prevent any possibility of infection.

     The second project was a drawstring bag.  This was done after learning about seam finishes.  These are just the right size to hold their three ring binders with their sample stitchouts.

     Their third project was a book bag/cross body bag.  For this project they had learned how to sew curves and how to grade the curves so they would lay nicely.

     Then we made pincushions with felt and fancy stitches on the machine.  Lastly I took them up to my sewing area where I showed them an embroidery program and allowed them to type out a name and then to stitch out on my embroidery machine.  They had a great time choosing a font and then a color.  I just stitched them on white felt and they were able to take that home also.  A great four fun filled days.   

Hot Chili Peppers Quilt

In place in the basement

     This is the last of the quilts from my basement.  This one has the red and black but also has purple, not the most usual combination,  I chose the colors based on the colors in the chili peppers of the background fabric.

Blocks and border

     This quilt is from the book Log Cabin Quilts, A Brand New Story by Karen Murphy.  The quilt is One Room Only on page 28.  I made this quilt to teach a class at Barrington Sewing Center.  Kept it simple by using just three fabrics and used the same fabric for the binding as I did for the border.  Nice soft mottled red flannel fabric on the back.

Quilting detail

     The quilting was done by Barrington Sewing Center and uses a chili pepper motif to play up on the border fabric.

Label

     I made a label in my software using some chili pepper designs I had.  I like the shadow stitching on them, gives them a little more depth.

Finished Quilt

     A fun quilt with the blocks set on point and an unusual color combo.  

Colorful Cubes Quilt

Quilt in place

     Another quilt from our basement.  This one again has more colors but still has red, white and black.

Blocks detail

     I took a class at Barrington Sewing Center with Connie.  We used the book Big Book of Building Block Quilts by Sara Nephew.  The quilt used eight hues.  I chose yellow, brown, green, black, blue, purple, pink and red.  This was mostly based on what I had in my stash as you only needed 1/3 yard pieces of each of the 24 fabrics.  I only had to buy 6 pieces of fabric to get my blocks.

Quilting detail

     The three different shades of each color made such really cool three dimensional blocks.  With help from Connie, it really wasn't that hard of a quilt.  I added a black border and colorful backing fabric.  Threadplay, Machine Quilting by Joni did the quilting for me.  She did a border quilt design and then an overall swirly design in the blocks.

Label

     I used the software on my computer to create a stack of cubes embroidery design with different fills to use on my quilt label.

Finished Colorful Cubes Quilt

     

     A fun and colorful quilt to keep warm while watching movies.

Car Crazy Quilt

In place on the recliner

     I am continuing with my basement quilts.  We have several down there because when we go down there to watch movies it can be quite chilly.  This one is Car Crazy, a quilt I made in 2002 while taking a class at Barrington Sewing Center.

Blocks made

    In the class, we learned four different blocks.  I opted to make four of each so I could have a lap quilt instead of a wall hanging.  The car fabric was my focal fabric while the black and white was my 'theme' fabric that appeared in each block.  I also used it for my sashing and binding.  The other fabrics were picked from the car fabric print.

Border details

     The borders were the red and the car print.  For this quilt I opted to add both side borders before adding the top and bottom borders.

Backing

     Since I had quite a bit of the fabrics left, I chose to piece them together for the backing.  It makes for a fun look on the back.

Quilting detail

     I had Lofty Pursuits Quilting do the quilting with just a simple meandering pattern in black thread.

Label

     I made a label with my software and embroidery machine.

Finished Car Crazy quilt

     This quilt has a few more colors than the previous two but still sticks with the red, black and white theme.