In late January my pal Cher at Marathon Quilter ( featured in yesterday's group and honored in the top 2 of the day---woohoo!) had told me about the hop when we were chatting online. I jumped at the chance to try Amy's pattern and Cher suggested I see if there were any openings. No harm in asking! I adore Amy Bradley Designs, (more about that after I show what I did with the "ME"). The pattern was designed especially for the blog hoppers at the request our fearless leader Madam Samm of Sew We Quilt. Big thanks to her and our cheerleader Marlene who blogs at StitchinByTheLake for letting me join at the last minute! I had a ball on my first blog hop participation!
Here are the day's participants---thanks for hanging with me for a bit and I hope you enjoy seeing what we have been up to!
Cherry Blossoms
Hill Valley Quilter
Dachsies With Moxie
I Like To Quilt
Quilt Smiles
More Stars in Comanche
Tea Time Creations
Shedding the Wolf
Life, Quilts and a Cat Too --- YOU ARE HERE!
Judy at That Other Blog not up yet?
Madame Samm
Moving on------
I'm afraid that I didn't get too "out there" or change the design much. I missed the memo about making this look like a "future" me. My figure is already there, unfortunately. Hands on the ample hips?? Oh that IS me. Frequent postural pose there. The glasses could have been dark ones, the wrap around variety, as I have been recuperating the last 6 weeks from bilateral cataract surgeries. I was wearing those puppies quite a bit not only outside but inside to keep the steam out when cooking and sometimes eating. Don't think that didn't look a little ridiculous! Heck, I could have put an eye shield on her, er ME and it would have still fit! Still, I went with a reader version since the lens implants reversed my almost life time nearsightedness to far sightedness. Brand new world.
Changing the word "Biased"? Did not even occur to me! First, I thought I had to use Amy's choice. Second, it fits. I am opinionated and it probably comes with the fact that I am an oldest child (of 6) of an oldest child of an oldest child. A little bossy, I admit. They have done studies about birth order and I resemble some of these traits. I do not suffer fools gladly and it gets worse as I have entered my sixth decade and deal with a cranky husband in his seventh. Enough psychoanalysis of motivation there! I don't want to scare you all off!
I decided fairly early on that I wanted to make a sewing machine cover for this and incorporate my ME design into the cover. Practical and needed. I had won the machine in a guild fund raising auction for about a 4 buck investment and using an old pillowcase to cover it. Or alternately, borrowing the cover from whatever machine was set up in the sewing table at the time. It deserved better!
The process
Armed with a basic pattern for making a fitted cover from Spool Sewing, and a great video from The Crafty Gemini plus a whole lot of looking around on Pinterest, I drug out the quadrille paper to make the applique placement printout work for my needs. Why quadrile paper? It is the biggest sheet of paper I have and it is gridded. Math is not my strong suit.
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First she/me needed to have the lettering switched around just to be sure it didn't disappear at the bottom! Like a lot of the gals, I have bobbed hair about to my shoulders so I tried to lengthen it a bit. I taped that to my base printout. The pincushion would go to the wrist area. That gave me a centered motif position with some idea of what the borders would need to be cut. Amazingly, it was square once I tinkered with the border widths.
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Measurements of the machine height, length and width were taken, re- taken and taken again, I finally cut out the tops and sides for my pattern pieces. I knew I wanted a pocket at least on one side to hold the machine cord. ( This machine has a collapsible, hinged foot so it stows under the free arm which is pretty cool.) I had messed up a machine cover for another machine by making a math mistake and I wanted this one more fitted. (Picture of it at the end)
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As far as fabrics went, I like about anything but dark and muddy. I didn't have a whole lot of stripes in my stash, or at least enough of it. All we have in a 20 miles radius of my home is Wal-mart and Hobby Lobby. I love dots and paisleys so I found stuff that would work at Hobby Lobby. I love bright colors and any leftovers will work on my pro bono quilts. I know where to find more!
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And here she/I am, ready for the closeup
How she/I came to be:
- That dress is loud but something I probably would wear, LOL though I am a jeans and t-shirt girl primarily. I thought I had to use stripes for the hair since I had switched out the background making me look sort of brunette while I am truly a graying red head.
- The pink is border is actually a Connecting Thread Christmas print printed as a diagonal. Good plan there as at least I was not dealing with bias on what needed to be straight of grain borders. I toned it down the slightly wrong shade color by using the reverse side. Same with the glasses when I could not find a pale blue or gray in the stash. Paid for both sides, right?
- Pearl like beads were used on the pincushion and floral beads for earrings. That was a design opportunity. I had not captured the hair quite right leaving a gap at her/mine neck/shoulder area. Does she even HAVE shoulders, LOL?
- I would like to say that the upside down S was the rebel in me coming out but I would be lying since I didn't realize it was not a symmetrical letter------till it was stitched down! Our little secret---I'm a rebel.
- I used a different stripe print for biased, a bit of it for the pin cushion and later covered buttons too. I do not believe you should match every color in a quilt exactly especially when you can't see it from 10 foot away! Well, I might be able to now that my eye refraction was switched, LOL.
- The whole deal is bound with the same stripe as the dress, including the top flaps and pocket.
Showing the pocket area for the machine cord.
Using an idea I got from Pinterest and specifically from Georgiana Life: I made an overlapping flap area on top so there would be a space to grab the handle when needed for carrying but I wanted it conceal the opening when not in use. Monday evening I decided to add some covered buttons and an elastic loop to keep the flap area closed. It would have been easier to do those loops BEFORE the binding went on. I had "stitch witchery-ed" it down so that stuff was not going to let me loosen it up to do this the "right" way. They barely show up in the paisley fabric so no picture of that!
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It is lined, with that brown/aqua dot I used in the pocket, but the quilting part left exposed seams inside. Oh maybe if I had wanted to just quilt the top to batting it would have been "seamtress optimal" but who is going to be looking at the interior?? I had to do the appliance covers in the kitchen in much the same manner. The pocket and top flaps are just interfaced with medium to heavyweight interfacing while I used a craft batt in the remaining sections to give it a bit more body. I even drug out the old dress makers pressing ham and roll to sharpen up the creases. This will stand up by itself!
It is diagonally quilted on paisley parts of the cover with a YLI variegated machine quilting thread (Carnival or Rio de Janiero or something like that). The front part, I used monofilament as I didn't want to distract from the motif. I am pleased that my "honey" of a machine will be protected and it makes a nice bright addition to my sewing room.
Past Amy Projects:
Having made both Amy Bradley's "Kitty City" and all the blocks for "Dazzling Dogs", I knew what to expect in her designs. Bright fabric choices, fun subject material and well written patterns. My completed Dazzling Dog examples HERE, HERE, one HERE (below the embroidery---keep scrolling, LOL). I haven't unearthed them all but you get the idea anyway!! Below, a few shots of my version of "Kitty City"
..... with my actual kitty, Skyler. He was hoping he could run off with the buttons.
I have all the fabrics to make her "Quilt Diva" -- I would love that on my sewing room door! I also have plans to do her "Seasonal Quilter" designs which are in my pattern library. I did do the "Boo" block that goes on one of the interchangeable mini quilts for a friend's pass around row quilt, slightly re-sized. This was the practice block but I plan on putting it into my own Halloween row quilt at some point. Debora got the better of the two attempts.
Then there are the 3 Happy Halloween pieces I made from a Bradley pattern in Quilter's World magazine in October 2003. I made three, two as birthday gifts. This one just plain makes me smile, even if I am a cat person! Thanks again to Amy for the wonderful designs and inspiration over the years!
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Oh and here is the other machine cover---made with the help of my friend Pam who bailed me out on the math and piping. It goes on the old Singer that once belonged to one of my quilting friend's mom. Cute than the dickens, but not as fitted, thanks to my boo-boos and thinking I needed it wider than I did. Not blaming Cotton Ginny for my mistakes.
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