I hope that all of you in the Los Angeles area can make it out to my book signing next Saturday the 3rd!
QuiltCon!
Did you see?? The Modern Quilt Guild is organizing QuiltCon! Its first international convention and quilt show!
Very exiting stuff! It’s happening Feb. 21st-24th, 2013 so there’s loads of time to plan ahead and make sure you’re there! Check out all of the details and information at www.quiltcon.com!!
New Flea Market Fancy!
Look at what I was lucky enough to get a bit of from Westminster in the mail!
How exciting that they are reprinting Denyse Schmidt‘s great line! I even scored and got some of the beloved gray seeds!
Hope you all have a fantastic weekend. By the way, there’s BIG news coming from The Modern Quilt Guild on Monday so keep your eyes open for it!
List of Boy Sewing Resources!
Ok – here they all are. There were so many replies to my post that they had to be organized and listed! Thank you everyone for your input. What a great resource to have all in one place. If you’d like anything added to the list, just leave me a comment here and I’ll add it to the post.
Free tutorials:
The jackpot is really the Celebrate the Boy archives:
From there…
Kids Small Messenger Bag
Hoodie into Cowl Neck Pullover
Halloween Jack-O-Lantern Shirt Stencils
Print:
Ottobre Magazine
Handmade Beginnings by Anna Maria Horner
Simple Sewing for Baby by Lotta Jansdotter
Little Stitches for Little Ones by Amy Butler
Sewing for Boys by Shelly Figueroa and Karin LePage
Patterns:
Oliver + S
Wee Wonderfuls Space Boy and Robot
Online resources/Blogs with lots of boy stuff:
All for the Boys
Love in the Mommyhood
Handmade Crafts for Boys flickr group
The Brothers Trimm
Sew Liberated
The Boy Trifecta
I Am Momma Hear Me Roar
Happy surfing!!
Busy!
First thank you so much for all of your congrats on the fact that I’m having a boy! And your feedback on boy sewing patterns was so great. So many replies that I’ll be certain to put together a list and post it in the next few days. Other people must want that info too!
It’s been a busy week over here! The LAMQG’s retreat was a ball.
Aside from doing loads and loads of quilting, I made teeny tiny pants!
I used the quick change trousers pattern from Anna Maria Horner’s book “Handmade Beginnings.” They sewed up so quickly and are so cute with little yoke on the butt.
And it worked out well that it was Anna Maria’s pattern I was sewing with because she came to speak to the LAMQG early this week.
What an inspirational woman she is! So filled with passion, talent and a love for what she does. And she does so much! It was very motivating and encouraging to see someone who clearly loves her work and is so driven. Plus she’s just downright nice.
I’m back to my day job on Monday. The new schedule is going to take some getting used to but I’m certainly going to try to keep up with the sewing and blogging.
Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!
Boy!
So! I found out that we’re having a boy! I’ll admit that I was thrown for a serious loop because for a number of reasons I’ve had nothing but girls on the brain the whole time I’ve been pregnant. But the surprise made finding out much more exciting than I’d expected it to be. I was just (stupidly) pretty certain it was a girl so it really was a huge surprise!
Of course I instantly had to pull some fabric for a baby quilt for MY baby!
I’m off the the 2nd annual LAMQG retreat today (four days of sewing with friends! What could be better??) and I hope to get something started. I’ve got lots of other projects to work on too…
And otherwise, I did some blog/pinterest/google searching and there just aren’t that many cute boy tutorials out there, are there? I’ve heard this from lots of moms but hadn’t experienced it first hand. So tell me, what’s your favorite pattern or tutorial for boy stuff? I wanna make this kid more than quilts!
A thrill…
There’s no denying that holding your book in your hands for the first time is just that. A huge thrill!
I’m gonna hold off on showing you the inside for now but you’ll all see it plenty in the future…
The beautiful style photography in the book was done by Bethany Nauert and I had such a good time working with her to style all of the shots. I also hit up every single friend I have with a beautiful home (I’m lucky to have so many!) so it’s fun to see their spaces featured in the book along with the quilts!
I can’t wait to show you more!!
Partial seams
Thanks for all of your kind comments about the quilt top I just finished. After Googling around a bit I realized that I was using the wrong term – I didn’t use a lot of Y seams (you can see what those are here), I used a lot of partial seams. Meaning that I had to inset pieced portions into other pieced portions.
I put together a straight forward little tutorial to explain what I mean. A lot of you might already know how this works, but in case some of you don’t…
One thing before we get started – it’s key that you use a uniform 1/4″ seam allowance for all of this piecing or else it won’t all line up correctly.
So let’s say you want to piece together this little bit of plaid:
It’s pretty clear how you sew together most of it…
But what to do with the center bit that falls right in the middle of all four portions?
First sew it onto the lower corner of the upper left portion – but leave the top of the seam unsewn (hence partial seams!)
Then sew on the bottom left portion and then the bottom right portion. Three portions are now sewn to the center piece and now you’ll use that unsewn part of the seam to sew on the final portion.
With the top right portion placed on the lower right portion, right sides together, sew them together. (BTW – think that it’s time for me to get myself a new cutting mat?!?)
When you’re done, your piecing will look like this.
Finally, finish up by folding your piecing down the middle, right sides together, and sew the remaining seam until you get down to the already sewn part of the seam. You’re all done!
See? Easy enough! It gets more involved when you have a ton of these partial seams in your quilt top (there were a LOT in the top I just finished), but I find that having all the cut out pieces displayed on my design wall, thinking it through, assembling it piece by piece, and then portion by portion, works well for me. I don’t think I could think it through if I didn’t have it all laid out in front of me though. I’m a visual person. I need to see it to get it. This is just one more reason I think that a design wall is one of the most valuable things you can have in your sewing space!
I sew on a Janome Horizon Memory Craft 7700 QCP.
MY BOOKS:
