Finding new goodies!

Okay, so this past week I've been putting in a lot of hours over at Cool Cottons. Unfortunately it's because Marie injured her knee and has been holed up with a full leg brace and crutches since last Thursday :-( Hopefully she'll be mobile again (maybe even sans crutches??) before the end of the week.

This does mean that I've had the unique pleasure of unpacking boxes of fabric and finding homes for some fun new stuff! I almost feel as though I should offer to do a guest post on the Cool Cottons blog so that Marie and Alyssa can see some of the goodies we have here.

My FAVORITE so far is:

"Eerie Alley" from Robert Kaufman (designed by Karen Foster Designs, Inc... is this just a coincidence or is there a career I don't know about, Karen??)

And for those of you who have heard me talk about and/or promote my brother's S.O. Glenn who is in the horror film and entertainment industry, you'll understand my wanting to make pillow cases or something along those lines for them!

The other new project I just couldn't resist (and this isn't so new to Cool Cottons, but something I've been eyeing and could put off no longer) is to make a sundress. I was thinking about my wardrobe the other day and the fact that I never wear any of my dresses - and then I remembered that all of my dresses are semi or entirely formal! I have ONE go-to cotton sundress that has been my fallback for the past several years and I think it is time to add to that! So today I picked up one of the many cute dress patterns that Marie caries and picked out some fabric to start with.

The pattern is from Jamie Christina, called "Sunny Day Dress & Skirt". The photo is super cute, and the pattern appears to be relatively simple, the hardest looking part being a heavy gather or smocking along the back. We'll see how it works out. I'm hoping to get this sewn up before my trip east next month! Not that I have ANYTHING to finish up in the mean time...

Post-holiday deadline post

It feels as though I have hardly been in the sewing room at all in the last month, since returning home from my Thanksgiving travels, but I know that is not the case. However, my projects have been on short term, short turn-around time tables. Those projects are all now done.

The last week or so was dedicated to some presents, which are on their way to the recipients (if not already arrived). I'll post photos after Christmas ;-) But NOW I get to concentrate on new things! Yahoo! (of course there will always be UFOs hanging around, ready to be completed, but the new stuff is always more fun to think about!)

I've been eyeing this Alexander Henry fabric for months now... I finally succumbed today.

In 2012 I'll be participating in 2 new bees, continuing with one, plus I'm planning on taking part in Round 2 of the For the Love of Solids sewing swap on Flickr, hosted by my do.Good Stitches Bliss hive mates Megan and Elizabeth. With all of these great new adventures on the horizon, I've begun thinking about my inspirations for these various groups, and seem to have fallen in love with the color palette within that fabric. I've also started noticing other people's projects with those deep, wintery, somewhat earthy jewel tones (how's THAT for a contradiction in terms??). A couple of my favorites, found on Flickr are this quilt by Shelley Brooks and this one by rainyday*knitter.

I'm not sure yet how I hope to use this fabric, but while at work today (at the stellar Cool Cottons, of course!) I've been playing around with possible combinations...

Matched with Shot Cottons

Matched with Kona Solids

I decided to start out with a combination of the two, plus a couple of prints thrown in for good measure:

Oh, the possibilities!

Sunday - let's reflect

It can sometimes be difficult to get back into the swing of things after taking a little break. I'm finding that to be the case with my sewing, not just the blog, but things are beginning to roll again. I only have one NEW item to show for the last couple of weeks, but have been trying to photograph other things and update my Etsy page.

And yesterday I went to a baby shower for a good friend, for which I went to my standard shower gift - the Amy Butler Nappy Bag. It amazes me what a great response this bag gets, but I'm glad it works!

I used a twill from the MoMo collection "It's a Hoot" for the outside of the bag.

(love that owl!)

For the lining and pockets I kind of pieced together some coordinates I had already in the stash - since I didn't actually have the pattern with me when I bought the lining fabric, so I bought short - it ended up being the lining on the back of all of the pockets. But thankfully, I had a bunch of that Robert Kaufman Metro Living in green, which I had passed up on a previous project, and it just happens to work with the MoMo. Yay!

And it's nice how well the Valori Wells "Nest" and Joel Dewberry "Modern Meadow" coordinates fit perfectly as accents in the pockets.

a new skirt!

A few weeks ago I posted an entry about a skirt pattern that my mom picked up for me, and the fabrics I had found to make it up. Then I got distracted.

Then I sat down and actually started looking through the pattern and reading it thoroughly.

As a brief recap, the pattern itself is called "Fashion Formula Skirts" from Serendipity Studios. It actually includes 3 distinctly different skirts, with at least 2 or 3 variations of each featured. I chose to do the Penelope Panel Skirt, the one fabric, shirred version. And though I bought the fabric requirements for the middle of the 3 lengths, when I actually measured myself, I decided to go with the shortest one, being that I am pretty short anyhow. It still hangs a couple of inches below my knee, which is perfect!

Then I started cutting into the fabrics...

... and piecing the panels

Then there was the waistband channel, with buttonholes for the drawstring. This was actually my first attempt at buttonholes on the Bernina my mom handed down to me last fall. Though many other aspects of this machine are taking me a while to adjust to (and in several cases I do still prefer my lovely little Viking Lily!), once I took a look at the manual, the buttonhole feature went like a DREAM!! Granted, it helped that she had an automatic buttonhole foot already for the machine, but oh my goodness!! I've always struggled with keeping those things even on my other machine, but after just 2 initial test runs on extra fabric I was able to get the lovely set of buttonholes you see pictured above!

Then came the gathering stitches, pulling on the bobbin threads and evening the whole thing out (as best I could!). Add the hem fabric and the drawstring and *voila*!
Now, this photo was taken before putting the whole thing through the washer, which did help to relax the gathers a bit and it seems to fall a little more naturally now.

All in all, a fun little skirt. I'm thinking the Fiona Faux-Wrap skirt is next...

(P.S. I absolutely LOVED working with the Robert Kaufman Pure Organics fabric. Yay!)