T-shirt summer Dress and Some Pouches

After my last adventure with t-shirts, I wanted to make use of hardly worn t-shirts. Then came the idea of turning it in to little girls summer dress.  That's when I remembered this post from craftygemini.  In her tutorial, Venessa used knit fabrics. I used t-shirts instead. It came out very well. My daughter (3yr old) never wears the dresses I sew. She likes only knits. She wore this dress for 2 days straight, until some juice spill on it :-)).

 

Here she is in her new avatar!!!!!!

 

A tip while sewing with knits: Use a leader cloth in front of your knit fabric being sewn. That helps to avoid the feed dogs from eating your fabric!!!!!!

I also made some pouches, pouches and pouches :-D.



When I was in college I used to carry a leather purse with 2 zippers. It was very convenient to keep pens/pencils and money separate. I always wanted to make some on my own. Last week,  I stumbled across this youtube channel by Japanese Sewing Books YouTube channel and found a direct and simple way of making the same exact pouch I used to have. Right away I started with it.

 

Only changes I made were adding interfacing to the main fabric and playing with zipper lengths. The pouch gets some body with one interfacing to the outermost piece.  But then my daughter wanted a pouch for herself. She came with a material of her choice and we ended up with this nice pencil pouch :-).



That's all for this week. Hope you had some fun sewing too. THANK YOU for stopping by. Have a great weekend!!!!!!!!!!!!

See you with my next post. Until then be Happy :-)

Love,

Jyothi

Will be linking this post to: http://crazymomquilts.blogspot.com/

 

T-shirt Rug/Potholders

Hello there!!! Hope everyone is enjoying the spring. It's nice to hear the birds chirping after such a long time :-).

I have been sewing dresses and they turned out perfect and stylish. But somehow didn't feel like include it in the blog. Now I realize may be dressmaking is not my passion.

So it was time to go back to some other adventure!!!!!!!!!. Of course sewing a summer beach bag and a big quilt is in the line. But some urges come instantly :-). Don't you agree???

Recently I was spring cleaning my closet and found too many t-shirts, which were not in a condition to donate. But I didn't throw away those and let them sit for months in a landfill. So my very old thought of turning those in to a rug came in to action. I cut and braided 4 adult and 2 child t-shirts and started braiding.



     

I didn't have the proper needle. I used ball point 75/11. But the stitches were skipping. I was in no mood to make a trip to the Joann and continued with the skipped stitches. It was little annoying... but it looked like a good design. But the rug was bubbling a little and started curling at the end. So I stopped the mat when it got 23"x 15" (oval shape). The contours make feet fatigue free and My feet stopped complaining :-).  Using some non-slip strips to the end would make it more user-friendly.



Kitchen Rug

My original idea was a big rug and I had a long stretch of leftover braids. My old potholders were in a pretty bad shape. So I turned the remaining braids in to potholders and here they are:

[caption id="attachment_676" align="alignnone" width="250"] Pot Holders[/caption]

I still have braids enough for one more potholder but I will get a new needle of heavy-duty size (ballpoint needle 90/14)  and give it a try. If I see that stitches are not skipping, I will definitely go tear up some more t-shirts :-).

At the end, I realized there was a pretty good tutorial for this rug making. Here is the link if you are interested in giving it a try.

What a good way to recycle/up-cycle the old t-shirts....don't you think so???? So why wait.........do some adventures!!!!!!!!!

Until next time, have fun :-)

Jyothi

Linking this to:

1. http://confessionsofafabricaddict.blogspot.com/


2. http://crazymomquilts.blogspot.com/

 

 

Sewing Adventures!!!!!!!

Hello there,

Its been a while I blogged. I couldn't blog any of my adventures as everyone in the family was falling sick one after the other.

I needed a white  kid's saree for my daughter's recital at her Sunday school. She got the part of goddess Saraswathi and she was supposed to wear white. Usually most children sarees are colorful and I couldn't find any white sarees online. I had no other option than sewing a saree :-(. I was unable to find any online tutorials on that too (hopefully I will make one soon). So I borrowed someone else's saree and had an idea of what it should look like and then voila!!!!!! the saree was ready in two days. I added some borders and bling to it.

Here is the saree I ended up with:



Here is my little angel with her cute little friends:

[caption id="attachment_667" align="alignnone" width="296"] Little goddesses :-)[/caption]

Lately I'm so much  in to dressmaking. I am learning how to take body measurements and turn them in to patterns. A great youtube channel by Savi helped me a lot. It has all professional tips of dressmaking.

It is fun to experiment!!!!!!!Here is one of the tops I made with my body measurements. I made this top from ONE YARD piece from the Rabert Kauffman bundle, I bought more than a year ago. I had to add some blue fabric as I needed some main fabric for the sleeves. I got to practice piping, bias binding(same as our quilts) in this top. I am very glad that it came out perfect :-).  Please forgive the low quality picture:-).

 

I played around with some decorative stitches too.



My son wanted some other stitches too.



Yeah...he always wants to add some fun elements while I am sewing.

I sewed some pajama pants for my daughter (3yr old) and son (7 yr old).





My daughter was so excited about the "pocket" that she wanted to wear it as soon as I finished it. She was waiting so eagerly for me to finish it that she snatched it off of my hand :-). Feels good to have some fans in the house :-)).

Hope you are also making some sewing adventures like mine :-). Have fun!!!!!!!!!!

See you soon. Till then be good :-)

Jyothi

Linking this to : crazy mom quilts

A wedding present - Big Star Quilt !!!!!!!!!!!

Hello there, how are you doing? Its been a while I posted anything here. I was so involved with setting up the house and working on a very huge quilt. Now that all the work is done, I want to vent it out :-).

My niece is getting married in the beginning of next year. As soon as I heard the wedding was fixed, first question I asked her was if she would use the quilt made by me and she wholeheartedly said definitely she would. What more reasons do I need to start a new project ?????:-)). That is when I found some sales at craftsy and found cotton+steel  fat quarter bundles. They found right away their way to my home :-).



Fabric bundle looked beautiful and I didn't know what design to make with them. I had to plan and pack on our moving too. But somewhere in my head I wanted to play with half square triangles. I wanted to do some modern design but ended up with a classic design!!!!!! Anyway I wanted to make happy the receiving end too :-)). My inspiration for this project was this craftsy blog.

Somewhere I read, when it comes to quilts, its not the end product, which matters but the PROCESS of MAKING IT - The JOURNEY. Indeed it was like a roller coaster journey for me. I used a graph book and cut, cut and re-cut many more fabrics. I tried different color combinations again and again, bothered my husband and son thousand times about color combinations , whined with my sister whether I could finish it or not,  and ended up with the following amazing quilt.



The quilt size is around 76inx86in. I had use the backing fabric to make it bigger. For the backing, I had to use some other fabric from my stash.



 

This time I was very happy with our bigger house as I could baste in our basement!!!!. It was flawless basting and helped me to quilt with ease.



 

For the first time, I came out of my comfort zone and tried free motion quilting. But I had only a few days left before packing to my India Trip. So went with the safest, simplest wavy design and could baste and finish quilting in 2 days.



 

Thanks to these amazing people who co-operated with me to finish the entire process in 3-4 weeks (another one - my hubby hiding behind the quilt).



I don't have any words to describe the the satisfaction I got from this quilt. At the end, I fell in love with it.  For sure I know that my niece-the lovely bride will keep it as a treasure and will take care of it nicely :-). I will be flying to India to attend the wedding...and  off to packing...

Merry X-mas, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to you. Will see you next year with my new post.

Till then be good,

Jyothi

 

Will be linking this post to:

1. Crazy Mom Quilts blog


2. http://confessionsofafabricaddict.blogspot.com/2015/12/can-i-get-whoop-whoop-all-quilts-are.html

Summer Dress

Summer is almost over here in Michigan and I had the urge to sew a summer dress for my little princess !!!!!!. I hope you understand that we all go crazy once in a while....its my turn now ;-).

I have a designer friend, who is preparing for her ramp show. Looking at her beautiful, awesome dresses I thought of sewing some dress. I have a handy model, who is ready to wear whatever I sew for her :-).

I went through this list of Melissa's 30 days of summer dresses tutorials and found a simple pattern from "Stitched by Crystal", which I could easily follow with the materials I had.

I picked some beautiful yet modern fabrics from my stash, which I got from "intrepid thread" a while  ago. I won a gift card for this shop at Happy Quilting Melissa's QAL. Here is the picture of one of the bundles of fat quarters I picked from the shop. Their service and communication is awesome. Fabrics are exactly as shown... Julie(owner of the shop) is awesome to deal with.



I selected three fabrics for the dress and here is the picture of the finished dress.



Here is the picture of the dress with its rightful owner....and the big brother, who wanted to be a part of the picture too :-).

 

She was running around with the dress quite comfortably. hopefully this will fit until next summer :-). If not I will definitely alter it :-). Thank You Crystal for the beautiful pattern :-).

Yesterday was Lord Ganesha Festival for Indians. We celebrated it in a simple way, yet kids had fun!!!!!!!.  May Lord Ganesha blesses and brings good luck to everyone out there :-).



We will be moving to a new home this month end and lots to pack and prepare. So no sewing for almost for a month(hopefully I can resist from touching my machine). ....Will meet you in my next post...till then be good :-).

Love,

Jyothi

Linking this to Crazymom Quilts  and confession of a fabric addict.

 

 

 

Quilted Laptop Cover

This week I got time to go through my "to do" list and the most tempting and needed project was to make a laptop cover. Our laptop was kept on the table without any covers. I was feeling very guilty to keep anything on top of it.  I found this tutorial from "beautiful mess" in my book marks, which I saved a couple of months ago and decided to follow it.

I used Robert Kaufman print for both lining and top and used fleece material for the sandwich.



If you are reading my blog for the first time, I am a beginner (or intermediate I would say) when it comes to sewing or quilting and I am terrified of free motion quilting (FMQ). It was time to start learning FMQ at any cost to call myself a quilter ;-). Fortunately my favorite online tutor Vanessa (craftygemini blog) started weekly FMQ tutorial and I got to experiment it on this project!!!!!!!!



To my surprise, it didn't take that long to get the hang of it and I could do it pretty fast!!!!!!

Well there is my pretty lady, who didn't let me take the picture of the quilted piece alone :-)...



For the first time, I used biased binding. I made my own biased tape. The binding was not perfect, but I could take that.  Finally here is my finished piece.





Only change I would make in this tutorial is not to keep 2 inches space on the sides. It is too roomy....I would go for an inch or so.  Since we don't carry the laptop with this cover, I didn't take the pain to re-do it.



You can modify the tutorial to add straps on the sides if you are planning to carry this bag along with you.

Meanwhile I took a 6 weeks online class on managing the WordPress blog. The class was fabulous and I learnt a lot (of course all in the 12th week...as usual I did the crash course myself and studied everything just before giving the test :-)). I applied whatever I learnt in that class here in this blog. I selected the user/mobile friendly theme and set up navigation bars to make it look more like website. I want to know my readers opinion about it... Please drop in your comments, whether you like my blog or not... What part of it would you liked to be changed....
If you like to read my posts, please feel free to subscribe, for which you don't have to pay (I heard somebody talking about it.....that's why I mentioned it). No one else will see your e-mail, except me. You will get an email update each time I publish a new post. It will save some of your time too:-).

Catch you in my next adventure....till then be good :-)

Love,

Jyothi

Picnic Quilt - Big Finish!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hurray!!!!!!!!!!!Finally with weeks of cutting and sewing, I am done with my new quilt. Both top and backing are made with used jeans/pants/shirts of my 7 year old.

[caption id="attachment_517" align="alignnone" width="300"] Quilt Top[/caption]

Center of the quilt top is made with corduroy material, which is the most unruly material to sew with. Phew!!!....the fabric is so stretchy...I dropped my agenda of matching corners :-). I had to throw away a small stack of cut materials too. Kudos to the people who sew these materials in the garment factories. these materials are too stretchy to quilt with too.

[caption id="attachment_518" align="alignnone" width="300"] corduroy material[/caption]

I was relieved when I finished the quilt top. But a big pile of shorts (all cotton) and shirts were lying  and I thought of doing backing with those. There I was.... again and again sharpening my rotary blade, cutting and sewing, which felt like endless at the time. I cant explain how much I was dreading to finish it off....

[caption id="attachment_514" align="alignnone" width="300"] Quilt Back[/caption]

When it came to quilting, I broke off one needle (90/14) as soon as I started. Then changed the needle to heavy material size (100/16). [These sizes are as per my "Brother" sewing machine manual]. I dropped the idea of free motion quilting as it didn't help me with super stretchy materials. I just went on with my walking foot and selected a random wavy design stitch. I don't believe my eyes how beautifully it came out. I started in the center and had no clue about how would I continue along. I just did what came to my mind at that time. The quilting is simple yet pleasing to the eyes. Sometimes being spontaneous helps a lot :-). This entire quilt is about spontaneity and I had no layout planned. It was set up as I went along.

Love those corners. Aren't they awesome ;-) ?





Long story short, I am very happy of the outcome and my son will always carry a memory of his childhood with him.

As usual...there they are :-)



One last thought: Isn't it funny how human mind works?  Other day looking at my bath room drain gave me some design ideas. No wonder Archimedes ran out from the bath tub :-)). Thank god I am not as eccentric as him ;-).

Hope everyone is enjoying a little bit of summer weather left. This beautiful weather is not letting me sew.....and my kids want to be outside all the time.

Catch you with my next adventure....till then, be good :-).

Jyothi

Linking this post to:1. http://crazymomquilts.blogspot.com/

2. http://quiltingreadersgarden.blogspot.com/2015/08/winners-and-winnings-on-wips-be-gone.html