Sew Distracted

Crib set Finished

I finished the dust ruffle for the crib today, which means the nursery set is finally completed and ready to wend its way to Tennessee.

The dust ruffle is on top of the stack, a closer look below:

This actually took me 2 hours or better, although this might have been because I worked on it in bits and pieces.  Sunday I spent a half an hour turning up and stitching hems.  Monday I spent another half hour finishing the same.  Today I gathered the skrit and attached it to the box spring cover.  That last step took me an hour.  But of course the first time I pinned it incorrectly, probably because I was totally distracted and had to keep peering out the window watching the concrete being poured around the pool and deck foundations.

I hadn't planned on sewing today.  The concrete crew would not allow me in the kitchen, which is right under the area where the giant spider-like arm carrying the concrete was perched over the house.  I suppse it was a safety issue in case things went wrong.  Still, old friend Wool E. Bear came right after the concrete pour and I managed to pull dinner together, a little later than originally planned while we all chattted and noshed and drank well.  What a lovely evening, filled with good friends, laughter, and good food.

Bumper Progress

When you are the world's slowest sewist, and you are terribly distracted, promising to make things for other people is probably not a good idea.  It gets done, but it gets done in "Mardel time" not in "other people time".

In short, I am still working on the crib set.  No surprise really.  I had hoped to sew a good bit on the weekend, but that was a naive hope at best, if not completely delusional.  Weekends are not my best sewing time.  Although the weekdays are often filled with work and other "tasks that must be done", weekends bring distractions of their own, and can go through periods bordering on constant bedevilment.

Oh well.

I have actually made progress though, and good progress at that.  When I suggested this I had no idea how many details were involved in making a crib bumper.  I am consoled by the thought that mine, although plain and not covered with cutesy animal appliques, is turning out quite nice, nicer than the many bumpers we examined in Babies"R"Us .

Sunday, due to the bedevilment issue, I was probably not in the mood to sew, and found that although the sewing was not difficult, sewing batting onto the twelve pieces of the bumper, and most annoyingly, trimming said batting out of the seam allowances, while it stuck to my hands, the fabric, and everything else, shredding in the process, did not make for the most relaxing of sewing projects.

Monday evening was better.  The next stage of construction consisted of making ties to attach the bumpers to the crib.  This required 16 strips of fabric which must first be sewed into tubes, right sides together:

A gap was left in the middle of each tube to allow for turning:

I broke the process into batches, just to avoid having to turn everything at once.   After all the tubes were turned, the openings were stitched closed:

which was actually more enjoyable than trimming and turning all the tubes. 

And then, finally, late last night I sewed on the 32 pieces of Velcro.

This portion of the project gave me considerable pause before I started just because I found the directions in the pattern somewhat confusing, and knowing my own natural inclination to do things backwards, I was terribly afraid of messing it up.   I'm the kind of person who tries to push doors that are supposed to be pulled, and the woman who filed all the books in the house alphabetically from right to left even though I know perfectly well that everyone else does it the other way.  I have also been known to write in notebooks from back to front as well, but that is neither here nor there.

So what was the problem?   

My problem was the way in which the instructions for applying the Velcro were written in the pattern, McCall's 4328:

The instructions do not use the standard terms "hook" and "loop" to describe the different sides of the Velcro tape, but instead use the terms "soft" and "hard" as in "Cut sixteen sections from soft side of VELCRO, each 3 1/2" (9cm) long" and then continues to instruct the hapless sewist to then cut the shorter sixteen pieces from the stiff section. This may be standard sewing terminology, but it was not familiar to me.

Hook and Loop I understand. Soft and Stiff???

I picked up the pieces of Velcro, each side of the tape seemed equally stiff to me, one was not more flexible than the other, my interpretation of soft and stiff.  What to do?  I really didn't want to mess this up.  I finally decided that by "soft" they must mean the "loop" side of the Velcro because it is kind of soft and fuzzy looking, although it doesn't really feel soft to me.  I would have understood "fuzzy" or "curly" more easily than soft.  Therefore stiff must mean the "hook" side, which I would have called "prickly" or even "smooth" comparatively speaking.

And so they are done and the bumpers are ready for final assembly.  If I got the Velcro thing backwards, I really don't want to know.

A quilt for Owen

Today was a working day, albeit a light one. My car is in the shop for two days getting a broken axle repaired so I was working from home, and although some clients were open and wanting their materials ASAP, many were closed.

I took advantage of the slow day to get to finally start a little sewing between the interruptions:

The quilt is made of the three fabrics to be used for the crib set,  The lime green border surrounds the two blue fabrics that are used in the rest of the room.  I have been hoping that the green can be used to tie the two blues together, and unify the set.   It is reversible, blue on one side, blue-violet on the other side.  The colors are all pretty, and they are pretty with the green, but I don't like the blues together.

This is one of the reasons that I don't usually like sewing for other people.  I get all excited about the idea, and I love making things for my grandson, but I dislike making things that someone else wants but I don't like.

Selfish, selfish I know. 

But I enjoyed sewing the quilt.  I should finish the rest of the crib set in the next day or two. 

But first I have a new computer to install.  Yeah that's right, the old computer died a slow death.  I could have resurrected it, but I my heart wasn't really in it, this was the third of fourth equipment failure on this computer, all under warranty, but each time the computer is harder and harder to get going again with different generations of hardware that are incompatible.  There comes a time when throwing in the towel is the best recourse. 

A little sewing

The itch to sew something, anything actually, but preferably clothes for me really soon has gotten stronger and stronger.  Oh I have been in the sewing room occasionally with a few minutes here or there, but not enough time to proof a pattern, alter it and cut anything out, or just late at night when I am so tired that just trying to figure out how lining up the pattern paper seems like a major challenge.

These are not good conditions for perfect sewing.  So I have played. I did a little messing around with coat pattern.  I still need bigger shoulders and haven't finished.  I suppose my heart has not been in it, but time has been an issue as well. 

I set up the embroidery unit on the Bernina and played with that too, trying different techniques.  It was fun, but I wasn't making something that I wanted to be making so it didn't have the thrill.  Perhaps I should find something I really want to do and start playing with that goal in mind, working my way up to the perfect garment. 

Perhaps my brain has just boiled into mush.

So last night I decided I had to make something, and it had to be something easy.  I want to make a couple of skirts.  I showed you the fabric back in June.  No progress yet.  But skirts require measuring and proofing the patterns.  I don't have a TNT skirt pattern right now.  Last winter's skirt pattern is miles to big.  Last summer's skirt pattern is almost right;  I can fit into it but it will be more comfortable in about two weeks.  That is probalby close enough that I can probably use it as a base.  In that sense it is probably good that I dilly dallied a bit on the cutting out.  Now I will be cutting smaller than I would have been a month ago.

But back to last night.  What to sew?  Well, I could sew the baby blanket.  The fabric was prequilted, all I needed was the binding. 

Of course your realize that sewing the binding on the quilt took far less time than cutting the strips, turning up the hem edge and pressing everything so it was perfect don't you?  I got the cutting, hem pressing and pinning all done before dinner and dinner was a little late as G went to the gym after work.  All I had to do after dinner was sew it up, but I didn't finish.  I was too tired  I got about half way around and the corners were starting to get difficult so I thought it best to go to bed.

Instead it was finished this morning.

I can't get the whole thing in a photo, but you get the idea.  That stripy fabric is quite puckered, like a stretch seersucker, and it pulls up at that point.  The blanket is square and holds for a few minutes after pressing, but then the stretchy parts pull up again.

Here is a detail shot of a corner.

I'll ship the whole thing down to Knoxville today along with some more baby clothes.  And then I think I will cut that skirt.

But first I have another picnic and concert to get ready for.  Tonight we are hearing Mendelssohn's Elijah and I am really looking forward to it.

Baby Colors

One of the projects Miriam and I worked on last week in Knoxville was clearing out the nursery to be, and picking out paint colors and fabric for a crib set.   I did not think to get my own copies of the paint samples when we were at Lowe's so I had to do it once we got home.  I did remember to write down the color numbers though.   Since we went shopping Miriam has met with the painter and there has been a slight alteration in the color scheme, same colors, different arrangement, it was too dark and too monochromatic to begin with, and I agree.

Here are the colors, or at least as close as I seem to be able to get them with my camera and Photoshop on my computer:

The blue on top will be the ceilings.  The nursery is under the eaves and there is a lot of steeply sloping ceiling space.  The light lime green will be the walls, which I think will be wonderful (although I did not consult with the painter).  I think the parents are more anxious but they trust their painter.  The other blue and the purple are accents and will be used on painted furniture and trim, as well as picked up in the fabric colors.

These are the fabrics for dust ruffle, bumpers and other crib paraphernalia, as well as for cushions for Miriam's rocking chair.  I hadn't really planned on chair cushions, but truthfully I just didn't think about it.  Somehow when the subject came up I didn't say anything about it and so here I am, making cushions as well.  I got so flustered that I miscalculated the yardage, adding in the cushions but forgetting yardage for the bumpers, so Miriam had to go back to the store and get more of the green, which is on its way to me now.  The colors do actually blend better than they do in these photos.

I AM looking forward to making this, but I will, admittedly, grumble.  Home dec sewing does not thrill me -- all those big rectangles.  Shiver.  Well apparently the thought of a cute little grand baby does strange things to my brain waves.

We also bought this fabric:

(not the purple).  It is really a pre-quilted patchwork in blues and greens and purples and it just looks so cheerful and goes so well with our colors.  This kind of quilting I can easily handle.  The purple dotted fabric is from my stash; I am thinking of using it for the binding around the quilt -- the only part of this quilt that I actually have to sew.

Colorful Stitching

I've been pulling out piles of fabric from the cotton stash for a few upcoming projects:

These are all for sewing related to the arrival of impending grandchild.  I have had fun looking at bright cheerful prints and these all make me quite happy.   

Since this photo was taken the fabrics have all been washed and pressed and are now waiting for a happy woman with scissors to have at them.

More to come.