sea(each)side quilt

Don’t worry, I have not suddenly changed focus in terms of sewing output. But special occasions warrant extra care and attention. So when a very good friend told me she was expecting, the opportunity to venture in to the realms of decorative fabric was irresistible. My maths is fairly basic when it comes to making quilts, so I must have tried the patience of the poor shop assistant whose job it was to work out how much fabric I needed for the baby quilt I had in mind.

A few weeks later, and after much time spent on hands and knees arranging said purchased fabric and also deciding on the layout I am pretty proud of the end result. I have quilted around every dinosaur and palm tree, used two types of variable coloured thread and vacuumed the house repeatedly. All that cutting sure does make a mess.

This creation is roughly 1.5 meters by 1 meter and is fully reversible. I used cotton curtain interfacing as batting (convenient width, locally available and also inexpensive) which is nice and light weight. My favourite bit is the border showing a coastal seaside view. I fell in love instantly and the rest of the quilt was based around it.

let’s slip this out of the stash

Have you ever bought any fabric for a planned project, had second thoughts, and its languished at the back of your stash pile for years? This next item was made from fabric bought in my naive innocent beginner dressmaking days when I did not have a clue about what was a good idea or what was very foolish. Like my idea to use habatoi silk for the lining of my very first dress making project.

This was originally going to be a PJ. Then I made the same pattern out of cotton and decided I had really been rather deluded to think this would work in silk. A rather flimsy one at that. Roll on the years (4 to be precise) and it finally gets a proper pattern to go with, a slip from Kwiksew (2325). Replacing the recommended lace with bias tape worked well, until the neckline flipped out. Two small darts later and its behaving better but I also learned some lessons. Like not letting your iron slide whilst working with bias cut fabric.

The yoke is made out of silk organza leftover from my self drafted dress for the city and guilds course. You may recognise the colour, which is an exact match to the yellow on the fabric. I had to take a 3cm scoop out of the back centre seam to improve the fit, but otherwise it was perfect.

So, some photos!

I have also used up some more stash to make another PJ set for my friend’s daughter – Newlook 6170. Nice to use up the scraps on a cute little project. Learning point for future reference, don’t try appliqué for stars on flannel. It really didn’t like all the shifting about.