Doll dress

I made this dress as a little birthday gift for one of H's preschool friends. "New Doll" is shown modeling it.

I used the free Popover Doll Sundress pattern from Oliver & S, and I like how it turned out.

First patchwork

For Elyse - well actually for her new baby Wyatt. I used scraps of
fabric that matched her big picnic blanket.

I've never pieced anything before. I just winged it. Not too hard I
suppose when you use big squares.

Teacher appreciation

My last-minute, cheap(!), project.

Wall decor

We are up to our ears in origami. Specifically, bey blades, or origami
spinning tops. More than half the fun is folding and decorating them,
which left us with a huge pile of finished ones.

So, we've made them into wall decor. Stuck on with loops of masking
tape. Though they are pretty cool individually, I think they are
spectacular in multiples...

Wardrobe refashion 2

Frank "helpfully" did my laundry a few weeks ago which resulted in a
big snag on the front of my cardigan.

So I've added a little patch.

Wardrobe refashion

I'm starting a ruthless culling of clothes from my closet that I don't

wear. But first, I'm going to see if I can salvage them. I'm pretty thrilled

with the results of my first attempt!

The "before" is this lime green top - I've acquired many of my clothes
by random methods, but this I actually bought new (not a thrift store)
myself (not a gift) many years ago. Not sure why I ever liked the
color.

I didn't have any fabric dye lying around, so I thought I'd get
creative. First, I tried watered down acrylic paint. Too late I
realized that my paint was pretty old, so it didn't mix well with
water. I ended up with painty spots on parts of the shirt, and
nothing on the other. Luckily, most of it rinsed out.

Then I tried food coloring. Mostly because I have a huge bottle of it
in the kitchen. Turns out, it doesn't stain fabric at all. So, night
one ended in failure. A really messy bathroom and a drippy, paint
stained shirt hanging in the shower.

Next day I bit the bullet and actually bought a bottle of RIT dye.
Had I known it would cost less than $3, I probably would have started
here first :)

There are two methods - one which tells you to add salt and one which
tells you to add vinegar depending upon what type of fabric you have.
I had torn out the itchy tag years ago, so just guessed it might be
rayon and added salt. The result:

I liked how it turned out so much, I threw another lime green item (I
have no idea why I had two VERY similar tops) in the dye. This still
had the tag on it which said it was silk, so I added vinegar to the
remaining dye (yes it already had salt in it, but I figured it
couldn't matter that much).

And the result:

I love that they both started out the same color and even though I used the same dye (denim blue) on each, they came out so different.  I've already worn them both, so I count it as a success!

Sweater blanket

Finally finished!  Not sure I'd really recommend this project, or if I'm up for doing another. Though I love how it finally turned out, it was one of those projects that was quite frustrating at times.  Mainly because I wanted it to look tailored and sleek at the end, and mismatched bits of felted knit fabric apparently don't lend themselves to that look.

But for you brave souls, here's how I made it:

1. Acquire a stash of shrunken felted wool sweaters.  Its pretty critical that they are all of similar weights.  Cut into strips - I used a rotary cutter and made my strips around 4" wide.

2.  Sew your strips short end to short end to make long strips.  I used a zigzag stitch and contrasting thread and butted the fabric next to each other (did not overlap).  This is not particularly strong, but you'll reinforce later.

3.  Arrange your long strips into a pleasing arrangement, then sew the long strips to each other along their long ends also using a zigzag stitch.  I sewed them all into groups of three, and then combined the groups of three.  This is the VERY fiddly part.  One of my strips had much more stretch than the others and ended up pulling the whole thing out of square.  I ended up taking that one out in the end.

4.  A steam iron is your friend.  Once I had sewed all the strips together, I pressed it with a steam iron.  It really helped to flatten out the wavy seams and I could pull and stretch it until it was square again.

5.  Next, you are going to reinforce your seams with iron-on seam tape.  Lay the seam tape along the seams on the wrong side of your blanket and then cover with parchment paper and iron it.  It will melt the seam tape onto your seam and strengthen it. Apparently some of these tapes come with a peel-off backing.  Mine did not, so I used parchment paper so I didn't iron the seam tape TO my iron...

6.  Now add your backing fabric.  I used flannel.  Lay your fabrics on the floor, wrong sides together.  Then pin with safety pins down the center of your strips, not the seams.  Use lots of pins.  You may want to use your steam iron again to flatten out your blanket - I did (I really wanted mine to be square).

7.  Now you're going to quilt it.  Which means sew over your seams again with a zigzag stitch, through both layers of fabric.  This stitch will also sew through your iron-on seam tape, further strengthening your blanket.

8.  Last step is to bind your edges.  I had left extra length on my flannel side, so was able to just fold it over and stitch it down.  The other method would be to bind with separate strips of fabric.  No need to use bias cut fabric, it doesn't need to stretch.

I was inspired by this tutorial, and followed much of their instructions:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Cashmere-Patchwork-Quilt/