Sept - Oct - Nov - Dec

I didn't get back into sewing so much in September after the kids went back to school, because that's when I was asked to take on a major leadership role in our church ... one of these days ...

But I did SOME sewing through the end of the year!

SEPTEMBER
September is National Sewing Month and I set a goal to sew every day. I got 10 of 30. Sigh. Of course, on the 15th, I got the leadership assignment at church so that definitely threw things off.

mending: 3

quilt blocks: 4. I made four letter blocks to start working on RG's Extreme Reader quilt (even though I'm still not done with Night Sky).

a skirt for ME!: this was a long time coming. I even assigned it to myself as my last Faith in God pass-off - the children's church goal program that I was the leader for (so I did it myself with the girls, to encourage them along). When we wrapped up the program in September because of transitioning to a lot of new things, I had one week to just do it - park my butt down and make my skirt.

It's brown linen, made with the Anywhere Skirt instructions from Made Everyday. (This is the second time I've used this pattern - the first was for SM's theater costume in 6th grade.) It suggests you use twice your waist-measurement for a full skirt - I did about a quarter more than my waist because I wanted it pretty toned down. I ordered painted wood buttons specifically to go with this fabric, and they're my favorite thing about it.

OCTOBER
Night Sky quilt: the top is 100% done! And pinned in its batting/backing sandwich! HOORAY! It's 60 by 80 inches, so a scaled down twin bed size. And then I set it aside for another month to take care of some other things on a deadline ... sigh ...

other quilt blocks: while finishing the Night Sky top, which took some Tetris skills to get all the differently sized pieces together, I needed to just sew something fast. We had a bunch of cut 4-inch squares left from the "A Doll Like Me" doll quilt project in February, and someone had contributed a bunch of brown. They were just laying around on my table - I think one of the kids got them out - so I mixed the brown with other colors to make what I'm calling a "chocolate checkerboard." To get it big enough for a 48x48-inch back for a jeans picnic blanket, I need more brown ... Checking the scrap bins, and then I'll send out a request to quilting friends to raid their scrap bins. I have 28 4x4 blocks so far. Laid out for the photo, I like it even more than I thought I would!

NOVEMBER
mending: 2

quilt repair: Adam's mom made a quilt for him incorporating his baby blanket. We let RG have it on her bed because it's quite heavy and it acts as a sort of weighted blanket for her. Unfortunately, her autism fidget issue is that she shreds things - paper and ... fabric ... and she was rather extensively destroying the baby blanket section literally one thread at a time before we caught on. So I confiscated it from her and got some large flannel pieces from my stash. They had been intended to be made into baby blankets if we'd had a boy, but obviously that didn't happen so the fabric has just been sitting here all this time. What's left of Adam's baby blanket is now entirely enclosed and quilted under Dr. Seuss flannel and some flannel pieces left from making Adam's pajama pants - it looks kind of new but it's not really. Just a new piece added to an older quilt with some additional quilting.

baptism dress: TA was baptized on November 30, and per our family tradition (let's be honest - Adam insisted on this one), I made another baptism dress. It was down to the wire - I finished it the day before. The pattern was the Oliver and S Pinwheel dress, because of the flounces on the bottom. It's actually two pieces - an under-dress with the lower flounce, and a tunic over the top with the upper flounce. I made the under-dress out of lining rather than cotton because TA likes silky fabrics against her skin. The pattern idea is that the two pieces can be worn separately if the child wishes - this one can't because the lining is somewhat sheer. But that's okay. I can make her another.

It's also TOTALLY typical of this girl to insist that she wear sneakers. She hasn't worn "church shoes" in ... I don't know when she ever did. So Daddy took her to get some new white ones to wear with her white dress. The only thing missing was that she wanted white leggings to wear with it too, because that's her style - dress or t-shirt, a hoodie, leggings, sneakers. I need to get a picture of how she has styled this dress to church since her baptism: the white dress with black leggings, the white sneakers, and a black/silver zip-front puffy vest over the dress with the ruffles sticking out underneath. It actually looks pretty cool.

DECEMBER
I still have A LOT of church work (it's at least three years in this position), and even some editing work ... but WAY less than last year. Just a couple of hours here and there - not rewriting an entire freaking book in two months.

I did no sewing at all this month until Christmas day, when I spent the entire afternoon quilting the Night Sky quilt. And then some more the next day, and I got the diagonal lines done in one direction. I thought about leaving it like that because it looks kind of cool, but Mindy said that she was told that if you quilt only one direction, the quilt will eventually warp. Sigh. So I will go the other direction for the criss-cross. Then fold the backing around to the front to be the binding.

June - July - August

Since May, when my sewing momentum was completely shut down, I haven't done much at all. The busy-level of the summer felt a lot more hectic this year, even though last year was had the exact same pattern: 17-day vacation followed by summer theater followed by two camps, and then back to school. I'm getting old ... anyway ...

JUNE
mending: 6

zip totes: 4 for teacher gifts at the elementary school, made literally the day before school year ended. But they were done, and they were gift-wrapped and ready to go when the girls left for school on the last day!

quilt blocks: 1 - the cake block from the Spelling Bee book. My intention is to make a "Happy Birthday" banner to hang up for birthday parties and include this block, but this is as far as it's gotten.

crafting: lots and lots of "tornado streamers" for the summer theater production of The Wizard of Oz. The choreography was that Dorothy and Toto spun in circles while the Munchkins ran in circles around them, first with the dark colored streamers for the storm, and then switching to the colored ones to indicate her travel to Oz. I came up with how to do the streamers - I bought the plastic-y tablecloths from the dollar store, cut them into strips, and hot-glued them to craft sticks. We made about 150 of these (total, both sets combined) and each one had 3 to 8 streamers. It was a lot of cutting and a lot of glue, and a lot of time. But only about 10 bucks.

JULY
mending: 1

quilt blocks: 4, put together in a quilt-as-you-go small project. I did this at my friend Sarah's house in Utah so she could teach me the technique. I took a bunch of photos with the intention of posting a tutorial here, but obviously we haven't gotten to that yet.

summer theater: I am such a glutton for punishment. I still agreed to be the costume manager again, even though our family wasn't even IN the show this year. On the morning of THE SHOW - not the THREE dress rehearsals - Adam helped me figure out the Tin Man costume, and that gave me fits all the way through the show. Every break, I was pinning it somewhere just to keep it on the guy. We were both happy to take it apart and throw it in the trash within an hour of the final curtain!

- I'm most proud of our Yellow Brick Road - it was a PERSON! She danced, and Dorothy and crew followed her. I made the cape, and this cute girl was so excited when I told her she could keep it when the show was over. I hope she dresses up as the Yellow Brick Road for Halloween.

- a lot more tornado streamers
- elastic waist/knotted tulle skirts for the Munchkins
- I altered the dress for Glinda - I had to take in the bodice of a formal gown so it didn't fall off her.


AUGUST
- mending: 1
- zip tote: 1 for a birthday party gift
- fabric shopping bag: 1. A new state law in Connecticut requires you to pay for any store plastic bags you use, to try to encourage people to use fabric bags. Yay for the environment and less plastic! Really, I support this. Now I just need to get my bag supply up to speed.

No photos of anything in August.

May nothing

Oy. This month, life happened, and it happened HARD. I sewed one quilt block for Night Sky, and that's it. No mending, no nothing. My goal was to finish Night Sky entirely for SM's birthday, but in the first couple of days of the month, I got a Facebook message from a friend in Australia whose college-age daughter is in the US ... and everything went down the tubes while I dealt with her passport issues.

So here's the Night Sky status ... A few weeks ago, my little girls helped me lay out the finished blocks to see how they can fit together. My mistake with this quilt is that I made things of all kinds of different sizes without planning how they would fit together, so I'm kind of scrambling now. It looks really neat, but it's a rather painful Tetris game to put it together.

Left side of this shot - finished section. Center - a newly finished section that was actually done/mentioned in April, but I'm just now getting pictures of it. I need a third section for the bottom to get it to 80 inches long. It's 60 inches wide.

Twin-sized quilts are typically 90x70 inches but I cleared 10 inches off because this is going on a bunkbed. I don't want lots of overhang at the edges of the bed - the slightly smaller quilt works better for us.

April finishes

- the doll quilt project was finished up with the last of the labels being attached, and shipped out to Wisconsin.

- JE's birthday dress

- a pair of knit shorts for pajamas. The Kid Shorts pattern from Made only goes up to a size 10, and three of my five have outgrown that largest size in the past few months. So I attempted to scale it up to a 12-ish size, and this was my test run. I need to make a slight adjustment on the height of the rise to the waistband, but mostly it turned out fine.

- I gave myself a deadline to finish the Night Sky quilt: SM's birthday in 8 days. I made 7 more blocks and got the second section of three done. I was trying to entirely finish the pieced top today, but got sidetracked by an emergency visit to the orthodontist. It will be done by this weekend, and then I'll have Mon/Tues/Wed next week to quilt it. The binding will be easy - the backing is HUGE because I bought super-wide flannel (120 inches instead of 60), so I'm going to flip it around to the front and enclose the edges with it. 

March notes

1 - A Doll Like Me doll quilts: I quilted the 7 I had pinned, pinned the other 6, and quilted all of them. In three days. I was on a roll. I took them to a friend who showed me how to do binding. While she did 12, I did one. In the same amount of time. Yeah. I'm a rookie and she's super experienced.

I am now handstitching on the "Made by kids for kids" labels. 4 done, 9 to go.

2 - Night Sky blocks: 2 more.

3 - six bean bags for hopscotch

4 - "thread drawing" on a skirt to "decorate" it for my I-hate-plain-clothes girls.

5 - costume pieces for JK's birthday party: no-sew fleece dragon wings for JK and TA, a big stuffed dragon tail for JK, and a glittery top with a high-low hem for JE. I used the Girl-on-the-Go pattern from Oliver+S for the top.

JK's dragon wings and tail. I didn't get a picture of TA's wings, but they were the same scallops only in orange. They were dragons from Dragons Love Tacos, and we had tacos at the party.

Vega from Star Darlings. The costumes were to dress as your favorite book character.

6 - Mending: 5

February's list

Quilting
1 - Squared Away: the last 4 blocks are DONE!! Hooray! I did the final two sets - dark green and purple, and got everything boxed up and into the mail for Mindy. I was apparently so excited to get them done and out the door, I didn't even take pictures of the last block. Ha! I just got her last two blocks a couple of days ago, so as soon as I get the doll quilts done and on their way, I can lay out this quilt and start putting the full top together. Hooray!

2 - Night Sky: 5 more blocks made, and section 2 of the quilt put together. So the entire top section is now done, and it's 60 inches across. The plan is to make it 80 inches long - right now, it's at 33. I was running out of the gray in the top center spinner, so in the bottom left Hunter Star, I used the gray scraps from SM's apron from last year's theater costume. It will be fun for her to have that memory incorporated into her quilt.

3 - Letter blocks: one so far, for a new mini quilt project. I got this quilting book called Spelling Bee by Lori Holt and it literally is the instructions to make every letter of the alphabet, both upper and lower case, plus a bunch of punctuation marks and some fun extra bonus blocks. The globe was the one that got me to buy the book. I have so. many. ideas. of what to do with the letters.

4 - 15 doll quilts to be sent to A Doll Like Me: the two TA and I made a year ago, the star one that JE started in January, AND 12 more made this month by our church activity group. My part of the 13 made in the past 60 days:

• organized all the adults for the evening activity, plus some other adults helped with the fabric 
• cut 230 squares, other people brought more and we had probably around 1000
• made the "Made by kids for kids" labels
• after the activity, I finished 4 of the quilts at home
• made 7 quilt sandwiches, 6 to go but I ran out of pins

Another woman from church, who donated some of the fabric, has agreed to do the bindings. Bless her forever!


Other sewing
1 -  two more scripture tote bags ... I made the ten in January for the church activity girls and had a little fabric left over. So I made two more for my girls who didn't have bags for church items. For our family, the "quiet" materials are sketchbooks and writing utensils (pens, pencils, markers, etc).

2 - more service sewing, this time for Days For Girls. My church's women's organization is part of an interfaith group that makes fabric reusable menstruation products to be taken to developing countries, where the women and girls don't have hygiene items during their cycles. The original intention was to give girls these products so they don't have to miss school during their period, but I'm sure it's spread further than that. Our local group is getting a shipment ready to send to Senegal this spring and I went to a Saturday sewing day this month. I have a schedule conflict for the Saturday in March, so I brought home 25 shields to finish here, and a friend will take them back. They're done and ready to go.

SM goes with me - she and her friend JM put snaps on one of the pieces, and they're knocking out quite a few service hours!


Mending: 8

January in Connecticut

I'm finally sewing a lot again! Hooray! I missed it. Now I need to get back into blogging too, so things get their own posts throughout the month instead of a big photo dump at intervals.

Clothing
1 - circle skirt for SM - I watched the video from Made Everyday and used her instructions. It was pretty intimidating at first because of the curve, and sewing directly to the elastic. And ... yeah, don't look too closely at that part. Good thing her shirt covers the top! But it's sufficiently twirly for her, so she's happy.

2 - peasant top for RG - tutorial from Things of Cloth. It's the same pattern that SM is wearing in the above picture, that I made last spring (yep, these are two different shirts in the pictures!). Now RG has one as well, but she's worn it only the one time. ???? Maybe because she has deemed it a spring shirt? Or maybe it will end up in SM's drawer. The peasant top I made for SM last year has been worn SO much that it's becoming very, very thin.

Quilts
8 blocks for 3 different quilts ... 4 for Squared Away - I'm FINALLY getting back to it! Just two more colors left - dark green and dark purple.

JE and TA wanted to try their hand at machine sewing, and they worked with me on 2 blocks each. I did all the cutting (I don't trust kids yet with the rotary cutter - I gashed my own finger with it a few months ago), and I helped them with the machine. JE learned chain-stitching, which she thought was nifty.

JE made two of these star blocks with her own selection of fabric, to be put into a doll quilt. She did the chain piecing for all the half-square-triangles (HST), and was excited to put them all together into one star.

TA has plans for her own twin-sized quilt for her bed, which obviously I've not made yet ... happy to have her assistance! She did two blocks as well. We're using the house block pattern from Intrepid Thread.


Crafting
1 - Ten canvas tote bags for a church activity. The 10 girls in my group decorated them with fabric markers, and hot-gluing ribbon and fabric flowers and "jewel" sparkle thingies to them. Yes, I could have bought them. But buying 10 would have cost $45, and the fabric cost only $15. I had the time to make them, and I have other ideas for blowing my budget money this year.

2 - While I had the craft supplies out, JK found some leftover fabric circle flower things kicking around, and decided one needed to be a hair clip. Sure, why not!

3. Edge stitching on a large piece of fleece to make into a throw blanket for the TV couch.

Mending: 5

2019 To-Do / 2018 Ta-Da!

I know this sort of post isn't required, but I really like to see my to-do list become a Ta-Da! List.  2018 was full of fabric and sewing.  It was wonderful!  My posting dropped off those last few months (my personal blog is at least six months behind!), but I was still very busy - my sister got married and I made four dresses for the flower girls!  And the twin quilts (or Twilts and I've started to call them) that I talk about below...

QUILTING

• Maple Mission: My own design!  My parents love it.
• 2 Doll Quilts: Made for and donated to A Doll Like Me.
• String Bean: My first Project Quilting challenge, and the string piecing I wanted to do.
• Mini Pink: Little doesn't always mean faster. 
• 2 Narwhal Quilts: Started and finished in time for two new nieces!
• Christmas Cake Quilt: All the blocks finished. Hoping to finish in 2019.  I also started a table runner with the scraps!
• Block of the Month Twilts: This is probably where I put in my most sewing hours, and yet I haven't posted about it at all.  Trina suggested we do the Squared Away Block of the Month on Academic Quilter and then share blocks with each other.  I've made 44 10" blocks - two identical sets of 22, half for me and half for her.  So much work!!  We haven't gotten the last of the blocks sorted out so I can't finish it yet, but I've been cutting even MORE little squares to make a scrappy border for it.  Countless hours of work, but I love it!

As for my non-quilty sewing, I actually accomplished most of what I had hoped to.  My color challenge fizzled out, since I didn't give myself any rules.  And I never made jackets - which I should do soon before Cupcake grows out of the pattern!

• two sets of pajamas and a sleep sack
• six towel baby bibs
• two Mckenzies
• 
• two baby peasant dresses
• four baby crinkle toys
• two Ishi dresses for Easter
• four Alder skirts for me
• Maggie Mae sheepy top
• matching My Little Pony outfits for me and my daughters
• MLP purple top
• Strawberry top x4 (two for my girls, two for a friend - they wore them for family photos!)
• 
• four TMNT drawstring bags, plus four Christmas ones
• six eye patches
• 
• Quilt-As-You-Go placemat for a church activity (and helped with many others)
• Sailor Mercury costume pieces
• six Garden Party dresses (two for Christmas)
• 
• four Everyday Necktie (two for Christmas)
• and mended 49 items.

This year I hope to work on Christmas projects (including at least one [maybe three!] quilts) throughout the year, so I can give more homemade, meaningful gifts. (I'm so over the commercial aspect of the holidays it isn't even funny.)  I've got ideas for ornaments and a few other surprises, so I hope the week after Christmas is full of project posts.  I want another skirt and I've already got some Ravenclaw flannel set aside.  Cupcake will be needing more pajamas.  For quilting: paper piecing and hexagons are still on my list, and I've added economy blocks (unicorn fabric?), perhaps as a pin cushion.  Lots of ideas but I also want to be flexible enough to join in on Sew Alongs as I am inspired (I've already got my eye on a few blocks from this Harry Potter one).  Happy sewing to you!

December journal

This month was the closest I came to no sewing at all. I've been working on a book project all fall - ghost-writing a memoir for someone else. The manuscript deadline was dropped on me out of nowhere, and I had only 10 days to get it done, reviewed, and submitted to the publisher. After being so completely furious that I cussed out the author for destroying Christmas for my family, I worked nonstop for a week (my kids ate a lot of store-bought pizza) until it was submitted at 1 a.m. on a Friday night. Mr. Author went with me to the school to pick up my kids that day, in the middle of our 15-hour marathon push to the end, and my 5-year-old wouldn't even look at him, much less give him a high-five. She had informed me that morning, "After today, I don't want you to work with him anymore, Mommy." Noted. 

So, with all of THAT, there went all my Christmas energy, any Christmas activities, and any Christmas sewing.

What I did instead was I took my DC map embroidery project with me on our Christmas break trip to Tennessee and Virginia, and worked on that while at my husband's sister's house. It was nice to have something productive to do instead of watching TV. I didn't quite finish the entire bottom section of the quilt, but I came awfully close! The whole project still has a LONG way to go and I doubt it will be finished in 2019, but I hope I can get a lot closer to that.   

And that concludes my 2018 year of sewing! I'm not going to do an entire review post like I have before, because I've done all the monthly journal posts. Just click on "review" in the index and you'll see my 2018 months all neatly in a row. I didn't finish any quilts this year, which is my one disappointment - I did want to do that. Other than that, I'm happy with what I did! 

For 2019, I have no new projects I'm adding - I still have a huge list I wrote out last summer that needs to be done! Mainly the four quilts for my kiddos. I have 5 kids, and I finished JE's quilt ages ago ... 2 years? I started on SM's quilt right away after that, but 2 years later, the pieced top is nowhere near being done. I'm making the Squared Away for JK. RG and TA are planned but nothing is started. It's way past time to get ALL my kids their quilts. I also have fabric that I bought to make myself a skirt AGES ago, seriously, I think 6 years ago. It's way past time to make that skirt too. 

November journal

1. Loads of fabric pumpkins. I lost count, but there were more than 30.

2. Two more Squared Away quilt blocks - I did make two of this block, but when I went to take the picture, I realized I'd put one of them together wrong. Fortunately, I just need to take one of the side rows off to turn it around.

3. And it's not sewing, but I made my Christmas letter blocks ...

I'm excited to do a lot more sewing this month! I spent the summer traveling and doing theater and camps. This entire fall has been totally sucked up with editing a book. Ya know what? It's December tomorrow. I'm self-employed, and I don't work during Christmas! I'm doing service, and baking cookies, and sewing for my kids!

If anyone needs me, I'll be in the kitchen. See ya.

October journal

- RG's Gryffindor robe. My only Halloween sewing this year, and she was Hermione of course.

- Letter Z for zig-zag stitching - my rope purse! It's actually kind of heavy because of the amount of rope, and I'm terrified the handles are going to rip right off if I put anything more in it besides my wallet and phone. They're only glued - it's too thick to sew.

It only took me an entire four years to do the Sew All 26 Challenge, but I have persevered and completed it!

- one 10-inch block for the Night Sky quilt, for the first time in months. I have the second section of the quilt top almost together - just a hole of 10 or 11 inches. I'm debating about another 10-inch block (there are already four in that section), or a group of 4-inch blocks.

September journal

At the beginning of the month, I wanted to get back into my quilts after a crazy summer, and it's fall! It's quilt season! But there was a bunch of random stuff all over my sewing table, and all these unfinished little projects annoyed me. So that's what I started with.

1. Zip pouches for TA and JK - my last two girlies who didn't have their own bags. They chose the fabric forever ago and have been waiting so patiently, and I finally just sat down and made them. They were SO excited, and immediately put their markers in the bags. TA calls her's the "everything bag."

2. Squared Away quilt blocks: 4 pink (2 of each fabric set) and 2 aqua.

That's it. Didn't even take pictures of the zip bags. I meant to do a lot more, but I've been editing a book this month. I really want to get it done so I can get back to sewing!