Wedding Quilt and Bedskirt

I have a personal rule for internet equanimity: don't read the comments. If I want to continue happily about my day I do not want to know what the random strangers on the internet think, it's why I rarely solicit comments on my blog (even though I know inviting discussion helps grow readership), because in my experience, usually, random strangers are cruel. A wonderful exception to that rule is ravelry.com where I participate in the Sew Obsessed forum. That is a wonderful group of people who always make me feel so good about my projects.

My most recently compleated project is a queen size quilt. I'm not really much of a quilter and I was feeling a little self-conscious about some of the mistakes on my quilt, so I wasn't sure I wanted to post it, but I did. I prefaced it by saying is was only mediocre and I've received nothing but positivity and support about it. People said things like I must use a different definition of mediocre then them and that there never was a quilt made with perfectly straight lines. Thanks to the support of random internet strangers I am feeling much happier with my finished object so I wanted to share it with you also. I wish the rest of the internet was as pleasant as that group.

When I got married my goal was to make as much that was reusable as possible and to spend as little money as I could get away with (I'm pleased with my success on both counts). One of the ways I did that was making bunting to hang from the ceiling of my venue. 

All of the fabric used in that bunting came from my grandmother, my mom, my mother-in-law or my own stash of fabric. That alone gives me a glowy, happy, peaceful feeling. I thought the bunting was a sweet touch and a nice way to bring in some color and it didn't take too long to make, all things considered. And when I was done with it all that fabric became the triangles in my quilt. Now being wrapped in that quilt is like getting a warm hug from all the crafty women in my family.

Like I said, I'm not really much of a quilter. I've never attempted anything that big before, but I pieced the top together, sandwiched batting between it and a giant piece of white cotton, slapped the walking foot on my machine and I stitched about 1/4" away from each seam on the triangles in nice long diagonal lines. 

I really like the pattern that the quilting made on the backing too. 

I know white on white is hard to see, but it makes a cute little Star of David. 

I used a bright white 100% cotton batting. I like cotton for batting because it's still thin, but it has more weight to it than poly or blends. I like a quilt to be a bit heavy, but not too stiff. I stuck to minimal quilting partly because it was less intimidating and partly because the less you quilt it the less stiff the finished quilt it. This particular batting only had to be quilted every 10" so my 6.5" triangles fit the bill just fine. 

The other fabric you may have noticed in the shot of my venue was the burlap runners on all the tables. 

I was going to just use burlap table clothes, but Husband was convinced that it would be scratchy. I kept saying no one was going to be rolling naked on the tables, but he was adamant. Fortunatly, my mother-in-law had white table cloths so I bought 20 yds of burlap and cut it in half and hemmed it to make table runners instead. At the time I was grumbling about the extra work but now I'm happy about it because the tables looked cute and the runners were easy to reuse. I turned them into a bed skirt.

The finished length of my table runners was 2.5 yds and I used 8 of them (so 20 yds of fabric, but the yardage is cut in half, you would need to buy 10 yds of burlap to replicate this). I sewed them to the remains of an old fitted sheet I got from my mom. I didn't want the pleats to look too even and mechanical so I just did them randomly by hand as I was feeding the fabric through the machine. Since I had already hemmed the fabric it only took about 2 hours to finish this project. 

And I think it looks great with the quilt. Now the bed just needs like 6 or 8 more pillows (I love pillows, Husband thinks they are stupid, but I think he is going to lose this battle) and a headboard and it will be perfect! When Husband and I first started dating more than 6 years ago I made him buy a mattress but I bought the sheets and comforter. We've had the same one since then and I am totally sick of it now. I'm really glad that I was able to repurpose wedding items into a nice update for our bedroom decor. The comforter is still under there, the quilt isn't warm enough for winter all on its own, but at least I don't have to look at it anymore and I've still got some burlap left, so I might make it into pillows, or curtains, or something, I'm not sure yet, but for the moment I am pleased. 

Burlap Curtains

As I've said before Fiance and I had an anniversary party in August. I am not a fan of single use items so when Mom insisted that we had table coverings I said we absolutely could not use those nasty plastic ones from Party City, they are far too wasteful. If that's what you are into fine, but I like natural materials and I like reusing and repurposing. I wanted natural burlap, but Mom insisted on red as it matched our decor better. So red burlap it was. Fine with me, I will use the natural burlap that I wanted at our wedding instead.

I repurposed that red burlap into new curtains to cover our closet. Fiance got home from work, walked into the bedroom and said "Wow. That is very red." He is not wrong.

I do think they would look cuter if they were natural colored. On the upside, the fabric was cheap and it took no time at all to make them. I used the selvedge edges, but I did fold them over and sew them down, then I hemmed the bottom and finally I folded about 4 inches of the top down to make a channel for the curtain rod. I didn't bother to measure the length for the curtains I just held it up and roughly cut it at the bottom. I also did not bothering tugging everything on grain. They are pretty sloppy, all things considered, but it only took half an hour and they cover up our clothes so I say mission accomplished.

The same day I made the curtains I also cleaned my sewing machine. It was making a slightly funny sound, and I realized that I had been neglecting to do some important maintenance. I clean lint out every time I change bobbin thread, but I rarely remove the needle plate.

I took the needle plate off so I could clean the hook race and feed dogs. 

I meant to take a picture of the ball of lint I got out (it was about the size of my pinky nail), but I got distracted. When I finished cleaning everything I sewed the curtains and got little red threads all over everything and I had to take it all apart and clean it again. Oh well. Lesson learned: sew with burlap, then clean your machine. Order of operation sometimes matters. 

Project Hiatus and my Burlap Bag

I am just so frustrated right now y'all. I've got so many projects that I want to be working on. I'm a sleeve and a half away from finishing a new cardigan and I've got enough fabric for two new slips, two new tanks, three new skirts and three new button up shirts, two new nightgowns, and a really cute sundress, plus some undies (Jo-Ann's was having a great sale/coupon combo and if my boyfriend asks I saved more than I spent and that's the important part). I've also got the yarn for a third cardigan and a pair of socks, all waiting, eagerly, for me to use them. And I am getting nothing done because I've got an "acute muscle spasm" (according to my doctor) in my neck. All I know is that it hurts like heck unless I'm all doped up on muscle relaxers, and so I've been stuck laying in bed. I am not good at not getting things done.

I mean, I have almost finished reading the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter series, so I guess I haven't accomplished /nothing/ but I am still feeling the lack of tangible results for my time spent.

Until today, I couldn't even really catch up here because I couldn't hold my head up long enough to type this. But I am also only one project behind on this blog at the moment, so without further a due and only about a month after I made it I present my sewing bag:

Originally I made this bag because I was taking a sewing class at a local community college. I was considering trying to get into their Apparel Design programme. Unfortunately, I ended up having to drop the class due to a combination of lost paperwork on their end and then work conflicts on my end. So I ended up finishing my lovely bag custom made for holding my class supplies the same week I dropped the class. Oops. 

But it did hold everything perfectly. And I thought the lining fabric was totally darling for a sewing bag. It's still a useful burlap tote and I totally don't regret making it because it allowed me to practise several new things. For example, I got to match the patterns for the pockets on the lining of the bag. I know it's hard to tell in the photo, but there are four small pockets (for bobbins, tailors chalk, embroidery scissors and safety pins on one piece and one larger pockets for my shears and pins/sharpies on the other lining piece. 

This bag was my first time working with burlap too. Holy Moly it likes to pull itself off grain. Cutting the pieces was good practice for cutting fabric on grain and then pulling it all nice and straight. It also taught me to cut the pieces bigger than I needed than trim down once it was straightened because otherwise you might end up with less fabric than you thought you would. 

All in all, I like the bag and even though I don't need it for carrying class supplies it will still be useful for carrying projects, which I'm sure will happen again in the future.