Slow Sewing: The Making of a Quilt

Hey! I made a quilt.
This has been a looooooong project. The joy of making this has been in the slowness of putting it together. I think if I had rushed it I would have been heartily sick of it by its completion. As it is as I have taken so long over it it has been a joy; completed in short bursts over a long period of time. How Long, you might be wondering? Well over a year!

This is the story of my quilt, and no it's not as long as it took to make.
When I went to my first #sewupnorth event in Leeds TWO years ago I won a couple of fat quarter packs in the raffle. These small pieces of quilting cotton were so smooth and the colours were just stunning I knew that I would have to use them somehow. I'm not a quilter so the thought of cutting and piecing the fabric, let alone quilting it filled me with dread. However, after the fabric had sat in my stash for 6 months I decided to give it a go.

I cut the fabric into wide strips and then stitched the strips together to create very long strips. Then I cut these into narrow strips using my rotary cutter and metal rule. Once cut, I rotated the strips, which meant unpicking a seam or two to create the stepped pattern you can see in my quilt. I sewed with a 6mm seam and pressed as I went along. Once I had completed the top I had a long rest until I could face quilting it.

I did not want to use polyester wadding for this quilt as I have been trying to cut down on waste and my use of plastics and the cotton batting was out of my price range. Instead, I used a couple of old flannel sheets for the wadding and the backing and binding fabric came from an old cotton duvet cover that had a rip on one side where it had become a little threadbare. The other side was fine, so this became my backing. I layered the backing, flannel sheets and quilt top and pinned together using safety pins. I know you can buy special safety pins for quilting, but I found the safety pins I had already were perfectly ok for the job. I rolled the quilt into the middle from the edges and secured the rolls with offcuts of flannel and pins. this gave me a 30cm wide strip to quilt. I gradually unrolled the quilt as I stitched it.

I decided to try free motion quilting and used my trusty Bernina 707 to do this. It's easy to drop the feed dogs on this machine and it has an extension table for the machine which provides a bit more support, as I was working with a large amount of fabric at a time I did most of the quilting at our monthly Crafternoon events as I had access to a larger table to support my work.

Unfortunately, I found it very tricky to keep my stitch length constant and even, but the overall effect is ok and the quilt feels nice and firm. This process has taken a long time and I've put this down for a couple of months before picking it up again. Last week at our Crafternoon session I finally finished the quilting.

During this week, I trimmed the edges of my quilt and cut 10cm wide strips to use for binding. Yesterday I sewed up the binding strips and stitched it to my quilt. Before beginning this I did a bit of research into how to mitre the corners, as on my last quilt this was unsatisfactory. There were loads of tutorials on Youtube and they all had basically the same method for stitching the top. Once I had stitched the binding to the top. I folded it under and finished the underside with tiny fell stitches. This took a couple of hours, but I find hand stitching quite relaxing and meditative (as long as I don't have to do too much of it).

Finally, I have a finished quilt and have saved a couple of flannel sheets and a duvet cover from landfill so I'm happy. Those of you who are expert quilt makers will be able to pick a boatload of mistakes with this. I don't care. It's been an achievement for me and because I've taken my time with it I have actually enjoyed it. It really is worth slowing down sometimes.

Zero Waste Culottes

Happy Easter! I've had two weeks off work and lots of time to be creative. I've helped my daughter with some fundraising and made her prom dress. I've done a fitting for a wedding dress I'm making and I've altered another wedding dress - lots of selfless sewing. So this Easter weekend it was time to refashion the pile of Jeans I've had lingering in the wardrobe.

I used some old jeans and offcuts from previous projects. This pile of denim had been destined for the bin until I decided to reuse some of it. The rest has not gone to waste and I'm in the process of piecing it together to get some usable yardage.

I pulled out my trusty culottes pattern, which is #114 from 03/2016 edition of Burdastyle magazine. This requires just 1.5m of fabric. after harvesting as much of the jeans fabric as I could I pieced the scraps together to make big enough pieces to get the legs out of. I took a pair of back pockets off one of the pairs of jeans I was using and kept them for the back of the culottes. I quite like that you can see the dark patch of denim where one of these pockets was placed originally on the front of the finished pair. I used offcuts of cotton for the pocket bags in order to reduce the bulk.

This pattern is an easy sew. The straight cut of the legs means that it is quite easy to cut from regular fabric with very very little wastage and made them a perfect option for a refashion. The legs are shaped at the waist using a pleat on the trouser front and darts at the back. I cut a size 38 but I increased the back darts by about 1cm each and took off about the same of the CB seam at the waist. It's what I need to do to make sure they fit at the waist and the hip. I also drafted a curved waistband to help with the fit. 

The culottes came together quickly and I used some grey extra strong thread for topstitching as It seemed to fit the faded denim quite well, rather than use a new brashy gold. Most of the topstitching went well but the waistband was problematic. My trusty Bernina struggled to go through all the layers and the tread caught frequently. From the right side, it looks ok, but the inside is a mess, despite hammering the seams and steaming the heck out of them. I really need to do the stitching again, but I think I might leave it until I've washed them a couple of times and the fabric has settled. I think using a bigger sized needle might help too.

I haven't added a button or buttonhole yet. I couldn't find the back to the Jeans button I had and I need to sort out the topstitching thread to get a good finish when I do the buttonhole.

I love the shape of these and I'm sure they will get quite a lot of wear over the summer months.

Wool sweater to cardigan refashion

I just love wool sweaters. Last year I was give a large mans wool sweater. I originally planned to boil it and felt the wool, but on closer inspection it was actually in good contition.
I adore wearing cardigans, they are great for layering and fab for spring when a jacket is too heavy but it's still too cool to go with short sleeves.

I used the pattern from Gertie Sews Vintage Casual. It was my first make from the book, and it won't be the last! I cut a size 6. I kept the original hem and cuffs, but had to find a way of binding the neck edge.

In the end I cut a strip of the sweater and treated it like I would a jersey binding. the results were great.

To prevent the neck and front edges stretching out of shape I applied a thin strip of interfacing. I also used ribbon to form a button band.

Wisely I tested the buttonhole first on a scrap, and it's a good job I did, as the knit fabric jammed and got caught in the button hole foot on two tries. I ended up folding a piece of baking paper around the edge and sewing the button hole over the top. this worked very well. It stabilised the fabric and was easy to tear away afterwards.

It's actually quite a while since I made this and I have worn it LOADS. It's a good basic cardy and great for layering. I need to make more of these.