Thanks to my new job we've been shopping for some new living room furniture, and generally just sprucing the place up. While we sit on thousands of couches [I wish I was exaggerating] I can finally get some progress on a king-size quilt for my bed.
I pulled lots of blues.
And I'm making an Irish Chain! I love the traditional look, but I don't think it's too traditional to go with the modern aesthetic that I love :)
Here's a gratuitous kitties-on-a-quilt picture. They're finally best friends, which means I can claim my sewing room back. We've been quarantining the new kitty in there while we introduced them to each other over the past 2 weeks.
Happy Tuesday folks!
Ok, so this isn't sewing related, beyond the fact that it would make a neat quilt pattern, but I thought I'd share in case anyone was looking for a cheap project!
A couple weeks ago, before I started my new job, my friend at work and I both took a Friday off to have a crafty day! We had hummus and veggies and cookies and creativity :)
I made this cute chevron tray that I LOVE. I've been wanting to make a tray for my coffee table that doubles as a good tray to carry my dinner out to the porch. And I specifically wanted my tray to be white and an aged silver.
I bought a tray at a craft store that was horrifically pink and then I spray painted it flat white. Taping the chevron pattern took a while but other than that it was really easy!
Then I simply sprayed the tray with the darker color and pulled away the tape!
There was some color bleeding, but I love the result anyways.
I bought the tray with a coupon for about $8 [although I know you can find big trays for super cheap at IKEA] and then bought 2 mini cans of spray paint for about $2 each. A custom tray for $12? Yes, please!
And it looks great with my teal teapot! :)
*** I've been training the person who is taking over my job at work, preparing for my last day [today], getting everything squared away for starting my new job on Monday...all last week I kept telling my friends and coworkers that I thought I was forgetting something, but I had everything on my work checklist done. Turns out I forgot to push "Publish" on this post! D'oh!
Ok everyone! Hopefully you have everything all cut out so we can start some chain piecing today.
If you're going scrappy and cutting all your diamonds out individually then I'd recommend laying out your blocks before sewing. That's what I did for my scrappy mini version to get the placement as I desired.
Sew your rows together following the diagram above. You only have diamonds at this point, so you don't have to worry about the corner pieces. Diamonds work the same way as triangles when sewing them together -- you have to offset one of the pieces by 1/4" to account for the seam allowance and have the pieces line up once you press the seam open.
You will have these little handy dog ears after sewing your diamonds together. Don't trim them yet!
Instead you can use them to help you line up your rows of diamonds. How handy :) As you can see, the top strip is offset to the right by 1/4", but the dog ears line up. This will help you sew those rows perfectly! Press those seams open as well.
You will continue sewing four of these units to create a single block. The quilt requires 12 blocks, so you will have 48 of the little diamond "rockets". Or at least I think they look like rockets.
Now on to the next method:
For those of you who are strip piecing, you will arrange your strips as desired [mine are going from light to dark] with the background strip on the outside. Sew together and press seams open.
To cut the diamond strips, align your ruler at a 60 degree angle, or use the 60 degree mark on your cutting mat. Line your ruler up at the very corner to get the most out of your strips. Make sure you start at the corner that is NOT on the strip of your background fabric [so don't be like me, my ruler is lined up opposite]. You'll notice that there will be some fabric waste, but we can use those pieces in a variety of ways!
You will be left with a strip of diamonds! Yay!
This gives you an idea of how this will work out. You will sew your next set of strips using just the medium blue, dark blue, and background fabric. Another set of strips will be just the dark blue and background fabric. So you're doing three sets of strips to accomplish your diamond rows.
You can use the extra pieces that we were considering fabric waste [the pieces of your sets of strips that you can't get a full strip of diamonds out of] and piece them together to create another full strip of diamonds.
In the previous method we were able to use the dog ears to line up our strips when sewing them together, but sadly you just have to be more diligent with your pinning or offsetting the strips. You will be sewing a strip of 4 diamonds, 3 diamonds, 2 diamonds, and a single diamond together. Create 48 of these units for your blocks.
Please let me know if this is confusing...I know that everyone's brain works differently, so this might not click for people. I'm happy to help!
***Alright, we're actually going to push my original schedule back by a week to account for my forgetfulness and crazy schedule right now. So this week will be piecing the "rocket" units and next week we will add in the corner pieces to create the blocks.
See you next week. For realz this time. I promise this on the fluffyness of my brand new baby kitty :) Even though his arrival meant that I had to pack up all my sewing stuff so he can't get into any trouble.
Top row: Megan Nielsen Banksia in a polyester blend, Self-drafted top in coral knit, Sew Liberated Schoolhouse Tunic in cotton seersucker
Bottom row: Self-drafted skirt in pima cotton, Grainline Scout Tee in lace, Grainline Scout Tee in cotton silk
Thoughts about Me-Made-May so far:
1. Actually wearing some of the clothes has reconfirmed some fit issues that some of them have
2. I like making shirts - I have several dresses in the next week though
3. I finished up those two Grainline Scout Tees just so I could wear them, so MMM is helpful for my productivity!
4. I really wanted to take pictures of me actually living my life while wearing my handmade clothes, so my pictures are taken at (1) a farewell work lunch, (2) outside on a lounging day, (3) at a Mexican restaurant for Cinco de Mayo, (4) outside my office, (5) at Tijuana Flats for lunch with coworkers, (6) outside my apartment during a day that I took off to have craft day with friends
5. I find it really hard to wear some of my clothes to work because they sway between too casual or too fancy for some of my workdays. I run youth programs [for the next two weeks, at least] and sometimes I'm outside running around after kids and sometimes I have meetings at City Hall. I've been finding it very hard to plan out my clothes since I don't usually know what might crop up until the day before. That's actually why I made my last Grainline Scout Tee in a cotton silk, because it's casual when worn with shorts, but the fancier fabric dresses it up if I want to wear it to work. I think that was an important realization for me to come to.
6. I don't necessarily want to keep buying so many clothes at Target, but I wish that I had access to cooler prints to make my own clothes. I hardly wear florals, I'm more of a geometric, mod, tribal print, polka dot kind of gal, and there just aren't too many prints out there that I've found that I like. I need to go to NYC! ;)
7. I'm two days behind. That last picture was taken on a Friday, which is technically in the 3rd week of May. However, I'm not going to beat myself up about it, because I'm still adhering to the spirit of MMM, which is just to actually wear your handmade items.
I can't wait to see what the next two weeks bring!
Hello all! Today we're going to tackle the majority of the cutting for the Diamond Chain quilt!
Supplies:
-Your fabric
-A marking tool of your choice
-60 degree diamond template if you have one [for the scrappy cutting version]
-Template plastic or sturdy cardboard
-Scissors
We're actually going to discuss two options for cutting. We will start with the cutting of individual diamonds.
If you are going for a scrappy look [this quilt is great for that because the diamonds aren't too big!] then you can cut your diamonds individually. We are using 3.5" UNfinished diamonds.
One thing to be careful of is if you're using a cardboard template make sure that your shape doesn't start to get warped over time from tracing around the carboard.
You will need:
-192 background diamonds
-108 dark blue diamonds
-96 medium blue diamonds
-48 light blue diamonds
Your next option is if you are using a cohesive fabric scheme. That is, your quilt will look much like the mock-up at the top of the page in that I've used the same fabrics for the rings of diamonds in each block. You can even use this method if you're alternating blocks, like the example above.
We will be strip piecing our fabrics for this method, so you will need to cut all strips to 3.5 x 18".
You will need:
-12 light blue strips
-24 medium blue strips
-36 dark blue strips
-48 background strips
If you want to use 2 dark blue fabrics, for instance, just cut 18 strips of each, and so on.
Note: We are not cutting our corner pieces until that week in the schedule, because they can be a little confusing.
Next week we will be sewing our pieces together to create the triangle pieces for our blocks. Please know that if you cut diamonds this week you will only be sewing next week. If you cut strips, we will be sewing the strips together and then doing additional cutting and then more sewing. So basically, those of you cutting individual diamonds will require more time this week, while the strip cutters will require more time next week. It all balances out :)
See you next week with all your pieces!
I'm so sorry I'm a little late on this, but the Sew, Mama, Sew! Giveaway Day winner is Karen Chatters, who loves the Pow Wow pattern! So I guess that's my next quilt too ;) I've emailed Karen yay!
And because some people mentioned being curious in what kind of advice was given, this is what people said about fitting sewing into the work week:
1. "Work on a little bit at a time because it all adds up eventually"
2. "Sew for 15 minutes a day"
3. "Schedule your time or else it won't end up happening"
4. "Ignore the housework!" [favesies]
5. "I have no idea because I have no time to sew either"
6. "Get up early and sew before the day starts"
I'm trying to make #6 work...so far I've managed to wake up earlier, but I haven't actually managed to make it out of bed yet. Baby steps, right?
In other news, Me-Made-May is trucking along. This was my outfit from today - a lace Grainline Scout Tee with a linen skirt from Target. I'll be doing a mid-month outfit update this weekend.
And I don't know about you all, but I have had a fabulous day. I got a job offer [that I'm accepting!], received payment from Stitch magazine, had free salted caramel truffle ice cream from Haagen Dazs, and had lunch out with friends. It doesn't get much better than that :)
