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My Fabric Focus article for February is now up at Sew, Mama, Sew! The featured fabric this month is Jay McCarroll's Woodland Wonderland.
The tutorial is for simple Ponytail Scarves from fat quarters.
Thank you to Margaret and Lily for modeling!
Because the scarves only took a portion of each fat quarter, I also made this little mat, inspired by Alissa's awesome doll quilt tutorial.
I was working with bits and pieces, so the back and binding are both pieced.
Remember those spiderwebs I started last week? After looking at them on the design wall for several days, I came to the conclusion that I really didn't like them. I wanted to make a quilt with this fabric though, and I already had a bunch of strips cut, so I decided yesterday that I would just start sewing without a plan.
The result is these blocks. I haven't decided yet whether I'm going to use white or natural linen sashing, but I'm happy with the blocks.
Now I just have to figure out what fabric I want to use for my spiderweb quilt!
Here's one of my favorites.
And another.
I also wanted to thank everyone for all of your wonderful comments about my sewing closet and pillowcase quilt posts. Thank you!
Several of you mentioned that it seemed strange that my ironing board was in the closet. I don't actually use my ironing board for sewing. I have a small table with a pressing board that I use instead. I press continually as I work and I like the harder, sturdier surface, so the table and board works a lot better for me. I have a small sleeve board that I use for bags and small projects though.
ETA: People have been e-mailing to ask how to make this quilt with fat quarters. Unfortunately, to make a quilt just like this, you need nine entire pillowcases. Fat quarters just aren't large enough! I'll post about this more when I finish the pattern (which is coming!).
I made this quilt for a book, but it appears it didn't make the cut. I still love it though and wanted to show some photos.
Apart from the white linen sashing, all of the fabric is from vintage pillowcases.
I used nine pillowcases and made nine large blocks, each made up of nine smaller nine-patch blocks.
The back is one big nine patch. . .
. . . and the binding is pieced from the pillowcase hems.
At the center of each larger block is a white pom-pom. I just thought they looked kind of fun on there.
The pom-poms made this one a big hit with George-Michael and Maeby. (The only reason they're not attacking them in this photo is because I opened the window to distract them.)
Anyway, I thought it was a pretty cool way to use nine old pillowcases!
I cut out some strips today to start a spiderweb quilt of my own. This one is going to use mainly Cake Rock Beach fabric and a darker natural linen/cotton blend.
Here's a shot of my little sketch of the quilt. I laid it out first and numbered each triangle so I can keep the spiderwebs monochromatic. (And, yes, my husband and I get takeout from Nice Rice far too often. That's why we have so many of those white plastic bowls.)
Here's what I have so far. Instead of paper piecing, I'm piecing directly onto the background fabric. I made a cardboard "kite" template that I'm tracing onto each triangle with a water-erasable marker. I'm also drawing sewing lines for the solid bands running around each spiderweb, so i can make sure they match up. These blocks are quilt a bit larger than the ones I made for Ashley -- about seventeen inches.
I was also over at my sister, Margaret's, house tonight and had a chance to see the quilts I made for Lily and Elliot in action, which was pretty cool.
As part of Sew, Mama, Sew!'s fat quarter month, they're asking bloggers to share photos of their fabric supplies. Since my fabric closet is freshly cleaned, I thought I would play along. Find out more here.
So, here's my fabric closet. My sewing room is the second master suite in our house, so my room has its own closet (and bathroom!). I took out the closet doors and hanging rod and put in some sets of shelves. They're just bookcases left over from my old apartment, which is why they don't match.
That white thing behind the chair is my design wall, which I made out of a piece of drywall and some cotton batting. I used drywall because it's sturdy, can hold pins and can stand on its own.
I store most of my fabric in little plastic tubs. I find it easier to keep organized since, if I'm in a hurry, I can just stuff the fabric back in the tub and close the lid. I also like being able to bring a tub over to my work table to browse. The bins are labeled because I'm a messy sewer and my fabrics often find their way into the wrong bins. This makes cleaning them up a little faster.
These smaller bins hold cuts of half a yard or less (which is almost all of my fabric) and are organized by color. I love to buy monochromatic prints, since I find that I use them the most. When I really fall in love with a collection, I buy small cuts of a bunch (or all) of the prints and give it it's own bin. Right now, I have bins of Erin Michael's Lush, Heather Ross' Mendocino, Joelle Hoverson's Cake Rock Beach, and Etsuko Furuya's Echino. I also have separate bins for reproduction-look fabrics, madras plaids and shirting fabrics. I keep a larger bin for what I call "picture prints" like owls, sushi, etc.
Here's a look inside one of the bins.
And another.
I prewash everything as soon as it comes into my room. Luckily for me, our laundry closet is right outside the door to my sewing room! I try to press everything when it comes out of the dryer, but I'm not always great about it, so some of the fabric looks a little wrinkly. I'm quite the steam iron enthusiast though, so this problem is usually solved pretty quickly as soon as I start working on a project.
Seeing the Flea Market Fancy fabric in these last couple of shots is making me wistful. I'm very, very close to running out of the tiny scraps I have left!
Of course, not all prints are monochromatic, so I keep slightly larger bins for those. I have them divided into Cool, Bright, Deep and Light, which seems to work nicely for the prints I have. That laundry basket is full of interfacing, white flannel, canvas, fusible webbing, iron-on vinyl, fiberfill, freezer paper and batting scraps.
I recently switched the shelves on this bookcase to try to thwart my cats' continuing efforts to climb behind the stacks of fabric and push them off the shelves. So far it's been successful. These larger bins have less then half yard cuts of solids and vintage sheets and linens. I store these by temperature. I also keep a little basket to collect selvedge because, one day, I'm going to finish my selvedge quilt.
These shelves house cuts of fabric larger than a half yard. Most are two yards or less. Linen and linen blends are on the top shelf. Cotton prints are on the next two. (You can really see here how few cuts, in relation the hundreds I have, are larger than a half yard!) The lower shelf has solids, including denim and what I think of an "fancy' cottons like Amy Butler Quilting Solids, Kaffe Fassett Shot Cotton or Kaufman Carolina Chambray. I stack the solids by temperature. The top shelf of the closet was recently cleared of bins of other kinds of fabric (wool, silk, etc.) that I don't use very often. I'm now using that space to store finished and in-progress quilts, as well as batting. If you go back to the first picture, you can see a black plastic tray. I have two of these and use them to keep in-progress quilt tops organized while they're being pieced.
I also keep a lamp in here, so I can see everything.
The SMS post also asks about favorite prints. I've noticed that lots of collections have a token stripe print to set off the typical florals, dots, scrolls, etc. I like this idea, but love finding alternatives to the standard stripe. It may sound odd, but I really have a soft spot for animal prints. Jennifer Paganelli had an awesome zebra print in her Mod Girls collection (it looks like it will also be a part of Flower Power, which I can hardly wait for!). Alexander Henry has a great cheetah print that you can see in the above photo. I also adore the faux-bois fabric we've seen in Joel Dewberry's Aviary and Ginseng and in Erin Michael's Lush.
Anyway, that's my fabric collection . . . and that was a really long post!
February is Ashley's month and she had us make her spiderweb blocks using this tutorial.
The "kites" are natural linen and, among the prints used, are some fussy cut pieces of Alexander Henry's Starling print that Ashley asked us to use in each block.
I had a lot of fun making these and am definitely going to try some of my own!
Just a quick post today to share another cookie recipe. These are Urban Legends, a ground oat, chocolate and butterscotch chip cookie based on the old e-mail forward classic, the "Neiman Marcus Cookie."
Enjoy!
