baby quilt layout

I put the squares for the baby quilt I'm making on our bed this afternoon to make a decision about the "random" pattern. It took me ages to decide and then I asked Douglas for his opinion and we moved things around and swapped squares and moved things around again until we finally ended up with this.

I was trying to get the letters and numbers so that none of them were beside another of the same coloured background. We managed it in the horizontal rows and the vertical columns but not on the diagonals. To be honest, I'm not even sure it would be possible to do it on the diagonals - and I'm not going to try! There is such a thing as "over-thinking". I mean, the baby won't give a hoot whether he/she pees/poops/pukes on matching backgrounds, for heaven's sake! :oD

tutorial - my plain pinny pattern

I've been asked if I had a pattern for a plain pinny - apron - and I do. I've finally managed to get it down on here! I hope it makes sense! :o)

Materials: use cotton fabric.
1 m/1 yd of 140cm/54" wide curtain fabric makes 2 pinnies.

Cut your fabric up the centre so you have 2 pieces of 1 metre/1 yard long by half the width of your fabric. Put one piece aside for now.

Cut off the selvage edge.

Cut 19cm/7½" from the length. Put this piece aside for the straps.

Fold your piece of fabric in half lengthwise and mark 15cm/6" out from the fold at the top edge. Then mark 25cm/10" down from the top side corner. Here's a rough drawing - not to scale - of what that means.

Cut away the piece as shown.

Keeping the waste pieces together, cut a 15cm/6" square from both layers for your pocket.

With right sides together, sew ¼" all the way around leaving a gap in one of the sides or the bottom edge for turning.

Turn your pocket and press. You don't need to sew the gap shut as you'll catch it in when you attach it to the pinny.

Measure down 12.5cm/5" from the top of the side edge and 12.5cm/5" in from the side.

Stitch the pocket to the pinny body keeping close to the pocket edge.

Overlock all around the pinny and sew down a ¼" hem. If you don't have an overlocker do a double ¼" hem - turn under ¼", press, turn under another ¼" and sew.

Straps: Cut your 19cm/7½" piece into 3 pieces along the length. So you'll have 3 pieces half the width of your original piece of fabric which are approx 6.3cm/2½" wide.

Cut one of them to 60cm/24" for the neck tie.

Neck tie:
Press under ¼" on both long edges. Matching the pressed edges, fold with wrong sides together and press again. Stitch close to both long edges.
Overlock short ends - or turn under ¼" - and attach the neck tie close to the sides at the top edge of the pinny.

Waist ties:
Press under ¼" on both long edges. Fold with wrong sides together and press again. Open out one short end and stitch down at an angle like this:

Trim seam - it should look something like this:

Turn and stitch down long edges, across angled end and back down other long edge. Overlock short ends - or turn under ¼" - and attach to the top of the straight sides of the pinny.

That's it. Your pinny will now look like this.

Now, if you can't be bothered messing about with the straps, you could just use some cotton tape instead. To be honest, this is what I usually do as it's much quicker. You'll need about 2m/2yds of cotton tape divided into the 60cm/24" for the neck tie and the approx 70cm/27" for the waist ties. Make sure you finish off the ends of the waist ties:

And here's the pinny I made with the second half of my piece of fabric using cotton tape for the ties. Just as pretty in my humble opinion - and made in less than half the time!

You might also like the following tutorials: flirty frilly pinny, flirty frilly half pinny, double oven gloves, single oven gloves and wee and round oven glove.

sunrise ~ sunset 17 September

Today's figures are:

dawn to dusk = 13 hours and 49 minutes (34 minutes less than last week)

sunrise to sunset = 12 hours and 34 minutes (33 minutes less than last week)

baby quilt - A to Z & 0 - 9 squares

I've finished cutting the letters and numbers out from the panel I showed yesterday and attaching them on to their backing squares. Here they are lying beside their backgrounds waiting to have their outer edges pressed under.

... pinning them on ...

... ready to be sewn on ...

... waiting to have the threads tied in.

I've finished tying in all those threads but it's dark now so no photos of that. Next I just have to lay the 81 squares out to make sure my random choices don't leave too many similar squares together. Then it's on to the sewing them all together. It's coming along nicely. :o)

starting another baby quilt

I did manage to get the buttonholes and buttons done on the 2 blouses today. I haven't taken photos of them as they'd be just the same as yesterday's photos with the addition of 4 white and 4 blue buttons! :oD

I then planned and started cutting fabrics for my next baby quilt. It's going to be another 9 x 9 of 4" squares like the one I made back in March.

So I had 81 4½" squares to cut out on my Go! cutter. Here are some of the fabrics ready for pressing and then cutting.

Here are all 81 in a nice tidy pile.

And here's the alphabet and numbers that I'm going to use. I still need to cut these out but I need to do it by hand (rather than use the Go!) and then I need to sew them on to self-coloured squares to make them 4½" squares too.

I'm hoping this will go together quite quickly as I've already got plans for what I want to make next!

two blouses finished ... nearly!

I did try to get the blouses finished today but my back wasn't having it. However, they're both done up to the button/buttonhole stage and I've got the buttons organised so it really won't take me long to fully finish them tomorrow.

So, because they're nearly finished, I put them on Diana the dummy and you can just imagine that they've got the buttons and buttonholes on them.

Here's the white broderie anglaise one:

And the blue small-gingham-check one.

Half an hour's work tomorrow and they'll be done which will mean I need to find something else to make now. Somehow I don't think that'll be a hard thing to do! :o)

two at a time

I had cut out a couple of blouses about 4 weeks ago and today I finally decided I should do something about making them. They're both cut from the same pattern as I've used many, many times before - McCall's 5359 - so I didn't even need to look at the instructions to see what to do.

If I'd made one blouse and then the other, I might have a completed blouse to show you but I didn't. I decided to make them both at the same time which means I didn't get anything finished today. This is what those blouses look like right now.

So with only the sleeves, side seams, hems and buttons/buttonholes to do, hopefully I'll get them both finished tomorrow. Fingers crossed!

sunrise ~ sunset 10 September

Today's figures are:

dawn to dusk = 14 hours and 23 minutes (34 minutes less than last week)

sunrise to sunset = 13 hours and 7 minutes (32 minutes less than last week)

just one Great Granny square

I didn't get much sewing done today as we were along at Joanna's house trying to get it put back together after the carpet fitters had been. She's gone home to sleep there tonight - I bet she'll love walking about in her bare feet on her new carpets!

I didn't go back in the afternoon to help so I did a little housework - gasp!! - and then sewed another Great Granny square together. This is my favourite so far. I've probably said that about each of the squares I've made already. LOL

Now that Jo has gone home and has vacated the spare room, I don't suppose I have an excuse for not doing the ironing. Drat, drat and double drat! :oD

I don't know if anyone's noticed but I've finally updated my profile avatar. I'd been using the previous one since I set up my blog in 2008 and even then the photo wasn't a recent one. According to Joanna this is a good photo of me and shows me as I really am. I'm not really sure what that means but I'm hoping it's good! :oD

baby quilt and carpets

This has been a busy week - and not much of that busy-ness has been sewing related. Having said that, I did get a baby quilt made.

I love the pictures of the animals especially the piggy in the green wellies -

... and the cow -

The funniest thing about this quilt is I wanted to make the binding for the edge on the bias because I thought the stripes would look cool at an angle. Could I remember how to make bias binding? No I couldn't! What to do? Well, I know someone (that would be me!) had put a tutorial on how to make bias binding so I headed downstairs to the computer to print it out. When I got there I realised I didn't need to print it out - I could take the iPad up to the sewing room and could follow the tute from there. Brilliant!

Here's how the binding looks.

Now all it needs is a wash and then hung on the line to dry so I'll need to wait for a dry day to do that!

Here's the main reason for the busyness this week. Joanna's house went from floors like this:

To floors like this:

And of course, when Rosie sat there looking so cute, I had to take a photo of her on the new carpet! :oD

Last 3 photos are from my phone so they're not very good. But you get the idea, I'm sure.

We spent a l-o-t of time emptying bookshelves and wardrobes and cupboards and moving furniture so the carpet fitters could do their magic. Now it all has to be done in reverse! Joanna has decided that if she ever moves into a house with yucky carpets/bare floors again, she's going to get the carpets fitted *before* she moves in. I second that idea!!