A friend of mine will be having her second child in the not-too-distant future.  For her first, I crocheted her a baby blanket in white and pastel yarn in my favorite blanket pattern. For her second, I thought I’d try a quilt.  I didn’t realize this until I started getting interested in quilting, but the companies that specialize in quilting cotton fabric sometimes make fabric panels…that is, a larger piece of fabric that has a picture or pattern on it, and is meant to be used in one piece, instead of being cut up and pieced back together like usual.

As with many of my projects, this one started with a YouTube video.  This one, to be precise. The YouTuber presents these little square pouches as “packing cubes.” They could be used for anything, obviously, but I was delighted with the idea of packing cubes.

I’d like to introduce a new member of the household.  World, meet Hester.  Hester, world. Hester and I have not yet formed what I’d like to describe as an “operational relationship.”  Translation:  I haven’t used her yet, being still caught up in YouTube and internet research.  But soon…

As with many of my projects, this week’s offering started with a YouTube video.  I took inspiration from the video but decided to go about my own construction, which I will share with you now.  First of all…what are we making?  Well, I don’t really have a good name for it, I’ll just describe the situation it addresses.

I don’t wear dresses (or any kind of fancy clothing, really) with any regularity at all.  My lifestyle doesn’t require it.  However, even in a casual lifestyle like mine, there are occasional events which call for a dress.  For example, my oldest nephew’s recent high school graduation ceremony.  I had no dress that fit.  I made do with a stretchy long tunic and pretended it was a dress, but it was makeshift at best.  I decided I’d quite like to try making a few articles of clothing that properly fit me and looked reasonably nice.  To that end, I decided to first try Sewing Inspiration’s Tie Dress.

When I finished my recent QAYG quilt, I had bits of the jelly roll strips left over.  Enough, I thought (hoped), to make a cover for my new sewing machine (which I have named Henrietta).  A hat for Henrietta, if you will.  I cut down the remnants of the jelly rolls into 2.5” squares, hoped I had enough, and began.

I don’t like buying certain things.  Clothing.  I just hate shopping for (and spending money on) clothes.  My mother and I were laughing about this the other day during a phone conversation and we agreed that if it weren’t for her and my dear friend Jane, I wouldn’t have any decent clothes at all.  Between the two of them, they have managed to force me to purchase enough pieces of clothing that I don’t go naked.  I’m very grateful.  Truly, I am, even though I’m a serious pain in the tush when the forced shopping is in progress…Jane, I’m very sorry about biting you.

You’ll want to read Part 1 first, naturally.

Okay, I know I said in a recent post that if I never saw another quilt, it would be too soon.  Well, I’m allowed to change my mind, right?  This is still America, right?

I believe I might have mentioned once or twice that I watch a lot of YouTube.  At the moment, I’ve been watching a lot of quilting videos, which got me to thinking about small projects that use up scraps.  Why not coasters?  They’re quite small, done quickly, are pretty and useful, and make lovely gifts.  Oh, and they’re fun to make.  So today, two different methods of doing patchwork and quilting to make a set of four coasters.

Part 2 won’t make much sense if you haven’t read Part 1, which you can find here.

I’ve never made a quilt.  I’ve done very small quilting projects (placemats and the like) but never a proper big blanket.  But this did not stop me from volunteering my sewing “skills” when my favorite sister-in-law mentioned that she’d been saving up my oldest nephew’s T-shirts and wanted to make him a T-shirt quilt for his high school graduation.  How hard could it be?  Well…the answer to that is lengthy but the simple version is…harder than I thought.

One of the big requirements for a wrist pincushion is that there is something present which prevents the wearer from jabbing a pin all the way through the pincushion and into their wrist. 

I was FaceTiming with my mother recently, and we were knitting while we chatted.  Every time my mother needed some knitting notion (an extra needle, a stitch marker, a darning needle, a longer cable, a cable cap, the little key for interchangeable needles, scissors, etc), she had to get up from her work table, trot off to retrieve it, and then come back.  Then, when she was done with whatever little tool she’d most recently used, she’d lay it on the work surface and promptly lose it.  “It was right here a second ago!”

People who sew need pincushions.  Yes, pincushions plural.

My mother is fond of sending me emails with links to articles she thinks I might enjoy.  One recent such email included a link to the Connecting Threads website, about a project one could make to use up left-over strips from a jelly roll.

When I am in my studio messing around with mixed media ingredients, it’s messy.  Glues and pastes and paints and sprays and…very messy.  So I’ve been thinking that I need some sort of smock or apron to help keep my clothes clean.  And having seen several YouTube videos on the virtues of the Japanese crossback apron, I decided I’d make one of those.

Regardless of anyone’s opinion of COVID (leftist conspiracy theory, “bad cold,” world-threatening pandemic, etc), I think that no one can deny that the winter of 2020 when we were all wearing masks was a winter where fewer of us caught colds and flu…and COVID.

In my modest fabric stash (if by “modest” you understand that I mean it is not overflowing the containers I put it in), I recently found a jelly roll I’d forgotten about.

My family loves to play Rummy-O.  If you’ve never played, it’s similar to the card game Rummy, only played with tiles.