I finally did manage to get the sewing room under control yesterday. I was vacuuming it when my husband showed up for lunch. My comment to him was "I must be crazy to have a sewing room with carpeting in it." His response was that he was not especially in love with the carpeting so keep your fingers crossed that some fine rainy day he decides to rip it up and put in some sort of tile, linoleum, floating floor...I am not fussy as long as I can use a swifter on it...YES! While cleaning up I found where ALL the pens and pencils had gone off too (sewing room floor) and I unearthed a block that I had forgotten about (that might give rise to the question, how often does this person clean the sewing room?) It was just sitting there waiting to be made into a hot pad. I managed to control myself until today to make the hot pad and realized, even better, it has a matching apron (see apron gallery, From the Heart)......cool beans!
I realized that I had not posted a picture of the finished vest. I took it in to the Shelburne Arts Cooperative to put it on display this past weekend. The person who was working that day was definitely a size small so I had her try it on. I could see by the way it fit her that it would also fit a size medium.
Today is clean-up day....cleaning up the sewing room and cleaning up my blog. Seems like I missed the class where they tell you "don't post your new blog entries in comments!!!" So for those of you who visited my site last week and took a look at my blog and thought WTF.....sorry about that. Today is a new day and Wichita Webmasters has HOPEFULLY gotten me back on track so now the comment area is indeed just for visitor's comments, not the blogger!
As I mentioned in my previous blog entry I was not happy with the way the tabs themselves were coming out....they were not uniform and the angles were not correct. They were definitely wonkie. I would rotary cut them out, come in 1/4" from the edge and sew. The next one I would cut it out and then would draw the sewing lines on it 1/4" from the edge thinking they were wonkie because I was not maintaining a 1/4" seam allowance.....none of this worked. Sometimes when I sleep on a problem, a solution will present itself the next morning. What I saw the next morning is that I obviously was not cutting it out properly, the angles were off so what I needed to do was NOT cut out the tab until AFTER I sewed it together, to draw the sewing lines on the fabric, sew it, and then cut it out. I knew the tab was to be an inch wide, how long it needed to be and there were 45 degree points on each side so I took my square ruler and a white colored pencil and did the lay out (see photo). I carefully stitched it leaving an opening to turn it right side out through, THEN I cut it out and turned it right side out and though it was not perfect, it was defiantly better. This is the method I used for cutting out the other 4 tabs I would need.
Yesterday I assembled the vest. Since all my aprons and bibs are reversible it would stand to reason that I would make a reversible vest. Once the top shoulder seams were sewn and pressed open it was time to attach side A to side B. It is more important to have the two sides laying completely flat against each other than it is to line up the edges exactly since one side might be a tad bit smaller than the other. I always have the smaller side facing up when stitching so that the sewing goes thorough both fabrics.
Yesterday I finished assembling the crazy quilt blocks for the patchwork side of the vest. When I am sewing together a large number of blocks that need to be in a specific order I find it t best to approach it as an assemblyman working on the line. I always work from top to bottom and from left to right. I put little stickers on the row vertically (in this case, 1-6) and then I chain stitch the top block to the next block or in this case 1 to 2, 3 to 4, and then 5 to 6. I then clip them and then attach the pairs to each other. I put a pin through the top block. Many times I have gotte
I managed to get 40 of the crazy quilt blocks made yesterday and was down to making the last four and did not have a large enough scrap of the main fabric to cut a 7" block out of. Know how you feel when you get to the bottom of the popcorn bowl and all that is left are the duds and no fluffies? Not that the other fabrics are duds, they aren't, what I am talking about here is the feeling of disappointment but I did manage to cut 2 corner pieces out of the main fabric scraps and layered them on top of my stack of 7" squares ot the 4 other fabrics (see photo on the left) and then cut along
As I mentioned above, I planned on using a crazy quilt design for my next vest. I Like crazy quilt blocks because they lend themselves to whimsy and also getting rid of scrapes. The single most important decision on any project is what fabrics are chosen. My crazy quilt block will have 4 segments so only 4 fabrics are required but I will use more to give the blocks a random feel and visual interest.
Recently I tried my hand at designing and making a garment. With the idea of simplicity in mind, what better than a reversible vest. I made it a Med./Large so that in case it didn't sell, I would have myself a brand spanking new vest. I named the vest "peacocks" since the main fabric has these little orange eyes and swrils that remind me of peacocks.
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As I mentioned in my previous blog entry I was not happy with the way the tabs themselves were coming out....they were not uniform and the angles were not correct. They were definitely wonkie. I would rotary cut them out, come in 1/4" from the edge and sew. The next one I would cut it out and then would draw the sewing lines on it 1/4" from the edge thinking they were wonkie because I was not maintaining a 1/4" seam allowance.....none of this worked. Sometimes when I sleep on a problem, a solution will present itself the next morning. What I saw the next morning is that I obviously was not cutting it out properly, the angles were off so what I needed to do was NOT cut out the tab until AFTER I sewed it together, to draw the sewing lines on the fabric, sew it, and then cut it out. I knew the tab was to be an inch wide, how long it needed to be and there were 45 degree points on each side so I took my square ruler and a white colored pencil and did the lay out (see photo). I carefully stitched it leaving an opening to turn it right side out through, THEN I cut it out and turned it right side out and though it was not perfect, it was defiantly better. This is the method I used for cutting out the other 4 tabs I would need. 
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