Christmas 2019 Sews

Here are my Christmas 2019 sewing projects! Earlier that year, I got lucky and spotted some knit Christmas print fabric (Santas!) for a couple of bucks and snatched it up. I washed it and saved it in my fabric stash until December rolled around. I made a raglan top (there's lots of free raglan top patterns floating around on the internet, but here is the one I used) for the little guy and a simple dress using the Talula pattern from VFT for girlie. Other than making the neckband a bit too tight, I think they both turned out great! It was fun that the kids matched: 

Eesa had an ugly sweat contest day at school. She told me last minute of course, but luckily raglan top patterns are a pretty quick sew (at least relatively). I used the same raglan pattern and we had lots of fun decorating the shirt. We used felt, buttons, those round blingy things, fabric paint, and lots and lots of glitter glue. I also sewed on a bunch of bells which made the shirt fun and jingly, but unfortunately Eesa came home with only one bell remaining on the shirt. Turns out it had nothing to do with my sewing them on, rather the metal from the bell cut into the thread and then they fell off. I will have to try something else next time I want to sew on bells!

 

Mario Quilt

My first quilt! When I tell people I sew clothes, they say "huh, wow, cool". But when I tell people I made a quilt...now that gets them going. It seems there is an entire quilting community that I didn't realize existed before completing my very first quilt. So I am now and henceforth a quilter. Okay I still like sewing clothes better, but I did have a fun time making my first quilt. Well not "my" quilt, I made it for my oldest son who loves Mario.

So this quilt took me a three-month span to complete start to finish. Not that I worked on it every single day. And I did get a few other articles of clothing sewn up in the meantime, but I worked on this quilt from October 2019 to December 2019.  I don't recall the exact reason I started this quilt. The pattern I followed was simple enough, just blocks sewn together in rows and columns. I used hundreds of 2X2" squares and multiple trips to Walmart for more fat quarters. For future reference: I calculated that 1 fat quarter equals 80 2-inch squares. Good thing for a rotary cutter and a clear ruler! It did take so, so long to sew up all those squares, even though it wasn't exactly "hard" work. The pixilated Mario Bros. characters work nicely in quilt made of squares. I am sorry I do not know much quilting jargon. Maybe someday I will. Anyway, once I got all the characters made, it was time for the construction of the quilt. I didn't have much trouble until I noticed that some of the completed figures were getting wonky/wavy. I've come to the realization that grainline does matter, or at least consistency in following grainlines does, in a blocked quilt such as this. I cut the squares for Mario first, not bothering with which way the grainline went, and it is noticeably wonky compared to the other figures in which I did pay attention to the grainline (all going the same way). Another future reference/tip: the spacing strips need to be cut lengthwise (with the grainline) so there's minimal stretching/warping and more stability. That could be another reason this quilt turned out slightly wonky--I paid no attention to how I cut my spacing strips. 

One of my biggest mistakes in making this quilting was using a fabric that not only was too stretchy to use in a quilt, but also to heavy. I chose to use it because it was wide enough that I didn't need to piece it but mostly because it was super cheap (only $4) and I didn't want to spend any more money than I already had. Hindsight, I should have because using the inexpensive fabric made for one heavy, wonky quilt. As for the actual quilting part, I did it all by machine. My machine has tons of quilting stiches. I choose a large loopy stitch using clear thread. It turned out just okay, the quilt was really heavy so it didn't pull through the machine easily, and not all my loops were even. Okay, not even close to being even haha. But it worked. I sewed the binding on by machine too. I guess that is not the "proper" way to do it. Well I ended up with a very imperfect, heavy quilt, but my son liked it enough. Besides it is still a cool quilt. I like it ok and I learned a lot. 

My inspiration/ guide. I think either my squares were bigger or this is a bigger quilt. 

All finished. I hate the wavyness at the bottom and lets not even look at the backside. I like the bold colors and pixelated characters.

 

Blue Striped Crossover Dress

 Here is another cute dress I made (Sept. 2019), using the Kennedy Dress from Violette Field Threads. I bought the pattern because it was unique and something I've never sewn before. And definitely a pattern that I would have a tricky time figuring out on my own! I used some fabric from a stash of fabric a friend gave to me, so it was mostly free to make, yay! I like using striped fabric for crossover dresses and the likes, all the lines give it so much more interest. Eesa liked this dress well enough. I like it too, and I like that she doesn't have another dress quite like it! The only thing I wish I would have done differently when sewing up this dress is using a matching blue liner instead of a stark white, but this particular shade of blue would have been hard to find even if I had planned better. The contrasting lining is not noticeable when worn so no matter. It was a very cute dress on her while it fit!