Skirt for Cheryl

This is a bad picture of a gift I took up to my daughter's home for Thanksgiving yesterday. It actually looked way better than this picture. I just had the hem basted at the point I took the picture.

The evening before Thanksgiving I had finished this skirt that was a promised birthday gift for my eldest daughter. I had given her the pattern, fabric, thread and zipper in a gift box at her birthday celebration. I wanted her to approve of it before I went ahead and made a skirt for her. She had been complaining that she couldn't find a "pencil skirt" for work similar to what I appeared to be wearing in a lot of her old baby pictures. Back then we just called these "straight skirts" and even the skirts on most of my dresses were cut straight.

Do you know how LONG it's been since I made any clothing? It has been 15 years at least I think because that's when I stopped making clothes for my 2 eldest granddaughters who are now almost 19 and 21. While I can't recall what I had for lunch yesterday, it appears I haven't forgotten how to sew clothes. The hardest thing was remembering to use 5/8" seams and not 1/4 inch! I do have to admit to leaving the pattern pinned on the fabric for a day or so, just in case I would discover I had messed it up somehow.

The fabric is a polyblend from JoAnn Fabrics and it raveled something fierce, so I had to machine zigzag over all the seam allowance to make sure the skirt wouldn't ravel away! I liked the pattern (McCall's 3830) because there was no waistband to deal with, just a facing. And I put in a zipper! I'm so proud of myself.

However, I feel very dumb for not getting a picture taken of her in the skirt after we determined the hem was okay. Duh......

But she said she loved it and it looked cute on her!

I'm almost done with all my "promised projects". I just have one more pillow to put together and then I can get busy on Christmas gift things. The grands like to get gift cards, but this year I am trying to make them each some little thing to go along with the gift card.

Stay tuned!

Tone On Tone - Beige to Brown

Tone On Tone - Beige to Brown
Originally uploaded by lasassone

While searching for something else the other day I ran across this 8 inch block that I made a few years ago. Actually I never quite finished embellishing it. It was made for a project in our local crazy quilt stitching group and when that project never quite materialized I stopped working on the block. At that time I had thought of a project for myself in which I could use it.

Tone on tone blocks are fun to piece and stitch on and I thought perhaps I'd do a few more colors in that scheme and maybe eventually have a color wheel wallhanging of sorts. So I put it away with that intention and then forgot about it until I found it this past weekend.

Last night I finished the spider and his web and did the featherstitching on the bottom middle seam while I was watching tv. I also beaded some of the stitches which I think you can see better in the two pictures below this post.

I may do a white on white block next before I move on to blocks in yellow, green, aqua, blue, purple, burgundy, red and finally orange. Upon completion of the orange or last block, I would have 10 blocks which would make a nice wallhanging. I may not do the blocks in that particular color order because sometimes working in a particular color is set by my mood at the time.

At present I am working on a large white on white block for Leslie Erlich's Breast Cancer Project quilt. Leslie pieced the block for me to embellish and she and I are calling it "the tornado block" because she actually pieced it the afternoon a tornado ripped through her town of Windsor, Colorado.

I think I'll piece an 8" block to work on along with Leslie's block and perhaps I can try out a few stitches on my little block before I do them on the big block.

Stitch On!

Brown Spider and web

Brown Spider and web
Originally uploaded by lasassone