After seeing Debbie’s quilt and this one from Film in the Fridge, I decided to make this plus block blanket.  Assorted greys, whites, and a bit of pink work for the background, and the pluses are primarily orange, teal, blue, or pink.  I really love how this turned out!

And for the back?  My mother-in-law asked if I’d be able to find Pi symbol fabric for these engineers.  Of course!  I framed a yard of the Pi fabric with green and a splash of orange.  The binding is a teensy bit scrappy, with grey and pink and orange.

Thanks for stopping by!

Tucked-in Voile Tova!

I’ve gained my share of inches around the hips in the past 5 years.  I blame babies, beer, and the general annoyance of aging.  So I’ve got lots of shorts laying around, but not enough that fit.  Now that is officially the temperature of molten lava, time to increase my warm-weather wardrobe!

Read on for a full tutorial…

Supplies: Use a jeans needle and a walking foot if you have them.

Tutorial: Here are my small shorts.  SIGH.

Cut along the inner-leg-seam.  Up one leg, through the crotch, down the other leg.  Then lay the shorts like this:

No more inseam.

Groovy.  Now you need to smooth out these curves.  Taper to a straight line below the zipper in the front to avoid a poof in the center of the skirt that might look like a wiener.

No more crotch and butt points.

In the back, it’s easiest to just go ahead and cut through the waist band, removing any belt loops and as much of the excess fabric as you can (like the tags).

Sew along these lines with a half-inch seam allowance.  For the front, taper your stitches from as close to the zipper as you can down to the hem.  Just do a basting stitch to start.

Super skinny pencil skirt!

Depending on how close your original shorts were to fitting your waist, these may fit now.  With a back-slit to allow movement, you could stop here and have a skinny little pencil-mini.  If so, go over your basting stitches with an overlock or dense zig-zag stitch.  You’re done!

If you’re like me, this skirt is still way too small.  We need more fabric! Here’s how to add side panels to the skirt.   For the side panels, I recommend using a fabric as close in weight to the shorts fabric as possible.  I happened to have some stretch glitter denim in my stash for reasons I no longer remember or can rationalize.  However, it’s perfect for this project.

Before going to the next step, I recommend sewing down the pocket holes and cutting out the pocket fabric.  You’re sacrificing pockets for a cleaner look.

Go ahead and cut through the side seams of your skirt, removing as much excess fabric as possible, such as belt loops.

Cut two trapezoids, one for each hip.  The top edge should be considerably more narrow than the bottom.   When drafting these shapes, consider how many total inches you need to add to the skirt, plus 1 inch seam allowance for each side.

I needed to add 6 inches total to my skirt – that’s 3 inches per side.  So my trapezoids needed to have one side be 4″ and the bottom to be 7″ to allow for movement. .  The height of the trapezoid should be the same as the height of your skirt’s side seam, plus one inch!  Fold the top edge under and hem 1/2″ and fold the bottom edge under and hem 1/2″.

Sew these panels to your skirt sides, always keeping right-sides together.  Again, first do a straight basting stitch, then once the fit is correct, go over with an overlock stitch.

Rump!

Yay!  Comfort! Style! Grace!

The organizers have already received over 600 flags (!!!!)  which will be on display at The Museum of Fine Arts Boston from May 25th through July 7th.

So here are the flags I made!  Two simple plus blocks that were from a WIP I’ve got cooking:

You can see more flags here!

Here’s my entry!  A bias-tape, machine-appliquéd design representing a gentle, loopy gear:

The quilting represents the spark with free-motion star shapes.

It all started off with this doodle:

I used a bias-tape applique method.

Check out the rest of the amazing entries from the A2MQG HERE.

Today we’re looking at Cubism – hello, Picasso!

The style of Cubism was popular from 1907 – 1922.  Cubist artists worked to depict objects as they really were in the world – not as we perceive them.

To better understand this movement, let’s start by considering a glass.  A drinking glass has a circular opening.  However, when we view the glass from an angle at the side, the opening appears to be oval-shaped.  The glass has not changed, but our new position has changed the visual representation of the glass.  In order to depict a glass as it really is, a cubist painter would break the image of the glass into geometric shapes, and arrange them across a field so that multiple perspectives can be seen at once.

You can see this example in action here, in this small excerpt of Picasso’s Still Life with Compote and Glass, 1914-15:

We see a goblet from the side – noticing the height and shape of the glass’s silhouette, but we also see the circular nature of the cup opening due to its flipped and elevated placement above the goblet body.  By tossing aside notions of one-perspective and allowing multiple views to exist on the same canvas, we are able to achieve a fuller understanding for the true nature of the glass.   This style of multiple viewpoints is sometimes called simultaneity.

Another prominent Cubist artist was Georges Braque.  I love this piece where he takes the basic shapes of a violin, separates them into individual geometric pieces, and spreads them out so we can fully gather his impression of the instrument.

Still life with a violin, 1912, Georges Braque

See the works of : Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque

The concept of taking an object and breaking it down into it’s basic geometric shape is very familiar to us quilters!  And it should be noted that the cubist movement has been a very prominent source of inspiration for art quilters, who respond to the realism aspect and create a portrait of an object through fabric piecing, applique, and yes- sometimes glue!

But one modern quilt that comes to mind when I think of Cubism is the popular, intricate, lovely “Space Dust” quilt pattern from Tula Pink.  Here we gather the full impression of a cratered moon through the artful arrangement of triangles. 

Space Dust Quilt Pattern by Tula Pink available HERE

Key Sources: theartstory.org, metmuseum.org

They said, “What are you thinking??”  They said, “What’s this from – a muumuu?” and I said, “I know- this fabric is ugly… but I love it.”

Like the suiting fabric from my Peplum Dress, this material was found in my husband’s grandfather’s attic.  I think it’s like FROM the 70s.  It’s a cotton, as far as I can tell.  And man – it’s brilliant.  The gold leafing actually has a bit of shine to it… amazing.

I used this tutorial from The Big Oak Tree as a launching point (I ended up cutting the rectangular pieces into A-line shapes, and I didn’t make a bow).

One alternative to making traditional binding is to make a quilt-back big enough to fold over to the front of the quilt and sew in place.  That’s right, you can use the backing for the binding!  I’ve had a tutorial for this process up on the blog – it was one of my very first posts back in 2010!  But that tutorial needed some updates – here we go!

After basting your backing fabric (with a safe 2″ excess around the perimeter of the quilt-top), batting, and the quilt top, go ahead and do the quilting.  IMPORTANT NOTE #1: DO NOT QUILT PAST THE BORDER OF YOUR QUILT TOP.  If you go over your quilt-top, onto overhanging batting and backing, you will have to pull out your seam ripper and pull out those stitches before being able to square-up your quilt and fold over your binding.  Major annoyance – don’t do it!

Okay so once you’ve quilted your blanket, square-up your quilt-top and overhanging batting.  I do this by marking my 90 degree corners directly onto my quilt-top with a water-soluble marking pen.  Then you’ll cut out the rectangle shape with scissors cutting ONLY the batting and the quilt top.  IMPORTANT NOTE #2: DO NOT CUT YOUR BACKING FABRIC WHILE SQUARING UP YOUR QUILT-TOP AND BATTING.  You are only cutting the batting and a small portion of your quilt-top during this squaring-up process. You may find it best to fold your quilt-backing safely out of the way, under your quilt, and pin it in place.

Once your quilt-top and binding are squared, use that border as a guide for squaring up your backing fabric.

• Perimeter necessary = 2 x desired width of binding
• Want 1/2″ binding?  Trim the backing fabric to a 1″ perimeter. 
• Want 1/4 ” binding? Trim the backing fabric to a 1/2″ perimeter.

Here is a diagram where the light green is the wrong side of the backing fabric, and the grey is the quilt-top.  You cannot see the batting because it is perfectly squared-up underneath the quilt-top.

Iron the backing perimeter in half and then open it back up.  The dotted line below signifies the resulting crease.

Fold one side down along the crease, so the edge touches the edge of the quilt-top:

Fold the corner over at a 45 degree angle:

Fold the top edge of the backing down along the crease:

And then fold it over again so it covers the quilt-top and a perfect mitered corner is created.   Use lots of pins to keep everything in place. Once you’ve done this to all the corners and pin, pin, pinned – sew along the edge of the binding at a scant 1/8″ using a straight stitch.  Use a thread that matches the binding/backing fabric.

But here’s a little tank I made for the Spring Sew-Along hosted by Made by Rae!

It’s solid navy jersey in the back.  Bright, crazy striped jersey in the front!

I used a tank I had as a launching point, started sketching and adjusting on my Swedish Tracing Paper, and this is what I’ve got !  And I love using piping for the edge finishes – like on my Laurels!…

Here’s my first Laurel blouse!  I made it with some red polka-dot fabric that was handed over to me from a friend.  I think it’s rayon?  It goes swish-swish when you rub it against itself, it doesn’t wrinkle, it pretty transparent, doesn’t fray, and it holds its shape.

Adjustments to the pattern included dropping the armhole down an inch, reducing the shoulder ease, adding about three inches to the waist and another to the hem (!! am I really that stretched out!?!?) and I moved the back darts down an inch.

Also – instead of bias tape binding for the raw edges, I did piping!!!!!  I am so happy with this choice.  I think the edges look super sharp and it was SO EASY (especially since I just used ready-made piping binding from the store).

Yay new blouse! Clap clap.