Grrrrr, having a bad sewing day

"I know, I'll just whip up a dress for work" I thought.  After all, the Passport dress that I made from a sheet came together so very nicely (wonky zip issues aside)  so what could go wrong with using the exact same pattern?

Ugly.  Very ugly.

As it turns out, quite a lot.  First of all  I'd lost the back facing pattern piece so I had to draft my own and not really knowing what I was doing I think I cut it too big.  The  wool suiting fabric that I chose was really fray-ey (is that a word?) and much harder to work with than cotton (although it was a total bargain at $4 a metre.)   And I forgot to add interfacing to the facing so it didn't sit well.   And let's not mention the binding on the armholes.  I used bias binding as per the pattern instructions (last time I made my own from the same fabric.  The bias binding looked awful - it was really stiff , the fabric was too thick (and did I mention fray-ey?) and to top it off I only had black thread and instead of waiting to get some matching thread I just went ahead, so now I have a wonky black line of stitching around the chunky misshapen arm holes. Oh, and see that black line at the back? that's where I accidently pulled a thread in the fabric when I was furiously unpicking the bias binding for the second time *sigh*.

It might be salvageable. I'm thinking of ripping out the bias binding and replacing it with some cotton binding, and buying matching thread, or I could just start all over again. I'm definitely not feeling as enthusiastic about this project as I was a few days ago.  Maybe I should put it aside and come back to it when I'm feeling the love again.   What do you do when your sewing projects don't go to plan?

Harvest Monday Feb 20th

It's interesting how the harvests change. The beans tomatoes are still coming, but not as many but there are more eggplant and capsicum.  Zucchini still appear daily.  Lots of zucchini. We've started giving them away now.

We picked the uber- capsicum today. Not only was it huge, weighing in at  380g (LittleFB is modelling it for scale) but it was also delicious! We at it roasted with home grown butternut pumpkin, potatoes, eggplant and shallots.   Mmmmm,mmmmm. For more harvests, head to Daphne's./

Five favourite garden things

Volunteer dill, pumpkins hanging off the chicken coop, raspberries, black cherry tomatoes - within easy reach for little people, the uber-capsicum.

What do you  like best in your garden right now?

My creative space: Robot shorts and mosaic patchwork

I haven't posted for a week so it's back to back creative spaces on the blog at the moment.

Here are some new shorts for LittleFB  made from op-shopped blue linen using Burda 9641- the same pattern that I used for the cargo pants; view C this time. The pockets are much easier in this version so they came together in a couple of hours, and I couldn't resist a few more robots.  He loves them and modelled them for me. Well, when I say modelled, I mean  jumped around ninja style while I tried to aim the camera at him,. 

So that you can see them properly here they are  hanging up.

I had every intention on starting on another pair but I got sidetracked by a pile of blue and grey fabric and this tutorial from Oh Fransson. A lot of sewing, cutting and arranging later these three mod mosaic blocks emerged.  I had fun doing these. There is no measuring (apart from the sashing) and it's fun to see each block develop.  I wasn't sure what I was going to do with these when I started but I think I'm going to make some more and turn them into 'floating' blocks in a quilt.

Although the cat will have to get off them first.

See what others have been getting up to in their creative spaces here.

My creative space - LittleFB's quilt, finished!

I am very pleased to say that I finally finished LittleFB's quilt that I started back in June last year  It is the  Lemon squares pattern from Fresh Lemon Quilts.  The finished top has been sitting around since July while I got on with other projects and looked at it from time to time thinking "I really must finish that".

I think the main problem was that having spent so long on the top I didn't want to stuff it up by quilting it badly so it stayed on the UFO (that's unfinished objects in the sewing world. I just learnt that recently!) pile for a looooong time.  When LittleFB went on a trip to Europe with his Dad I promised him that I would finish it before he got back.  A deadline. It was just what I needed.
 

As I was a bit stuck on how to quilt it I emailed Faith at Fresh Lemon Quilts, asking for some suggestions on how I could quilt it and she emailed me back the next day with some ideas.  I went with straight line quilting about 1/4 inch from each block horizontally and vertically and a diagonal line through each block from corner to corner in one direction only.

I'm really pleased with the finished product (thanks to MMSTL for doing the holding-up quilt thing in the garden). I love the colours of these fabrics, most of which were bought as a bundle from Fabricworm. The robots in particular are very cute. I used linen as the neutral and although it was a bit slippery to work with it feels really lovely and soft. The back is linen-coloured quilting cotton with a band of fabrics from the quilt in random widths.

The binding is a striped navy cotton that I found in Spotlight, attached following the instructions in Elizabeth Hartmans book  The practical guide to patchwork. If you are new to quilting this book is an excellent resource, with really clear and easy to follow instructions and beautiful projects.  The binding is machine-stitched to the front and hand sewn to the back.  I liked sewing with the stripy binding because it was easy to space the stitches by sewing on each white line.  It was also nice to finish off the quilt this way; somehow it felt that I was putting a little love into it with every stitch.

And because I wanted it to look nice on his bed, I made a matching pillowcase in linen with an off-centre  stripe of some of the quilt fabrics.  It feels lovely and soft to sleep on.

I'm pleased to say that LittleFB loves his new quilt and looks very cute snuggled up under it!

 For more creative spaces have a look here.