Sewing Assistants

Our weekend was pretty boring.  David decided to tackle the moss problem, which I’ll discuss at a later date.  (It can be summed up by saying “Moss Sucks”.)  While David was busy being moss’s worst enemy, I continued my work on Kat’s blanket.

I was upstairs alone for a while because Steve and Kat were busy watching out the front window.  Apparently Kat got bored with the window and quietly came upstairs because while I was busy working, facing the wall, all of the sudden there was a sharp bark behind me that scared me to death!  I jumped and exclaimed, “Oh Kat!  I didn’t know you were up here.”  Of course, then she came over and started climbing on me to say she was sorry.  I know I should probably discourage the climbing, but it’s hard because it’s so cute.  Sometimes she climbs on me and just sits in my lap.  I don’t think she realizes that at 47 pounds, she’s not exactly sized for being a lap dog!

Usually when I am upstairs working on something, Kat stays up there with me, Steve stays downstairs, looking out the window, and Wilbur is somewhere else.  My two “c(k)ats” (Wilbur (a cat) and Kat (a Kat)) don’t like each other, so they usually don’t stay in the same room unless I’m actively separating them (like when Wilbur sits on me on the couch or lays next to me on the bed).  This weekend was different.  Wilbur and Kat were upstairs with me almost the whole time.  It made me realize that having Kat around is much different than having Wilbur around.

When Kat is upstairs, she naps on the floor.  (Notice she had the entire floor she could have slept on, but she chose to nap on the one strip of her blanket that was available.  Hurray!)

Wilbur chooses to nap where he is in the way.  He’s either on my lap, or laying on the fabric I have spread out on the table,

or blocking the sewing machine.

I considered kicking Wilbur out of the room, but he so rarely is actually nice.  So since he didn’t try to bite me, I just worked around him.  I managed to get most of the blocks sewn together and now I just need to finish the borders and sew everything together and then I’ll be done!

(Photos from my iPhone, please excuse the quality.)

Fit for a (canine) queen

I’ve been working on a blanket for Kat. I am almost ready to start sewing the blocks together, so I thought it was time to actually post some pictures.

The blanket is made out of a jelly roll. I had no idea jelly rolls existed outside of a bakery, but they do and using them seems like a great shortcut for lazy people, like me. I didn’t have to think about finding coordinating fabrics because the jelly roll was already color coordinated and I didn’t have to cut the fabric up. Score!

Kat’s quilt is teals, pinks, and chocolate brown.

I found a book at JoAnn’s that had all sorts of ideas for making quilts with jelly rolls. I picked the first quilt in the book because it looked like it would be pretty simple. Here’s the example from the book.

So far, it’s been easy going. I have just sewn the jelly roll strips into groups of five length-wise.

I’m going to use chocolate brown fabric for the border and backing. I just bought that on Sunday, so I can finish the quilt now. Last week I had a realization that I had no idea how I was going to actually quilt the blanket. Luckily, through the magic of blogging, I have a friend who is a very talented quilter and she gave me some good ideas.

Hopefully in a couple weeks I’ll have some more progress to post. Next I’m going to work on one for Steve. I’d like his to also have the chocolate brown border so his blanket coordinates with Kat’s but is more boy colors than teal and pink. If you have any ideas for him, send them my way!

Project #1: Small Sewing Container

In my quest to somehow become a domestic goddess, I have completed another sewing project, albeit a small one. (I titled this project #1 since it’s the first project I’m posting on this blog.)

A few weeks ago when I was working on the dogs’ crate cover, my trusty sewing machine decided that it couldn’t handle sewing together panels of the cover, each composed of multiple layers of heavy home decor fabrics. Despite my quest to become a domestic goddess, I refuse to sew by hand, so my quest to figure out how to finish the crate cover began. To make a long story short, my quest ended at a sewing machine store where, after first being shown a Pfaff machine that, while quite lovely, cost well over $1000 and my meager sewing projects do not justify that expense. I ended up taking home this cute Baby Lock machine, Grace.

I actually really like it. It handled my crate cover panels without a problem and does several handy things like threads it’s own needle and knows to start and stop a row of stitching with the reinforcement stitches.

Once the crate cover was complete, I felt like I should make something else since I had just spent $400 on Grace, and if all I used it for was a crate cover, that would be one very expensive crate cover. So I decided to make a little fabric container to help keep my sewing table organized.

I forgot to take pictures during the process, but here is the finished result.


I wish I had used more of the fusible webbing stuff because the sides are a bit floppy. After I took the picture, I decided it would never work for scissors and instead filled it with thread.

Next up, I’m going to work in a blanket for Kat so when she sits on the couch, I can pretend that the blanket is keeping all the fur off the couch. I am certain that the blanket will take longer than this little container, so I will take pictures along the way. I also haven’t figured out how I am going to quilt it, so suggest away!