Scrappy Notary Pouch

Clockwise from top left: 1) Finished pouch, 2) As inspired by Elizabeth Hartman I used the quilt-as-you-go technique inspired by Suzuko Koseki’s work, 3) backside of finished pouch, 4) and 5) show basting stitches used to mark seam line.

I’ve been wanting to remake the pouch for my notary seal for ages and finally kicked it in gear and got it done today.  My old pouch is around 25 years old and in pretty bad shape.  I used it to mark my pattern which, I’m happy to say, worked really well.  The finished version was the perfect size and shape.

I used the quilt-as-you-go style that I first saw on Elizabeth Hartman’s blog.  Post can be found here.  I want to say I saw an actual tutorial on this but now can’t find it.  But it’s pretty simple.  I took a piece of muslin and cut it about 1/2″ larger than I needed.  That was lined with ShapeFlex cut the size of the pattern and then with a batting cut just over the pattern size.  Basically, this gives you some room for error when quilting.

At this point you can use scraps to piece onto the pattern/batting base.  Place a starting piece of fabric and quilt (in my case, straight line quilting).  Add another piece much like paper piecing, finger press flat onto the batting and quilt.

It’s fun and easy and a great way to use those small odd sized scraps.

When you’re finished quilting your pattern base, trim to correct size.  In this case, I baste stitched the seam line since this is sewn wrong sides together and I needed the guideline.  Once I stitched together, I trimmed and finished with binding.

If you’ve used this method, I would love see what you’ve done.  Leave me a link.

Happy Thanksgiving and Happy Sewing,

Ramona

Fun with dying fabric

I have such a blast with the Craftsy classes.  Today I was working again on dying fabric using tips by Malka Dubrawsky in her class.

I couldn’t find Pima cotton locally, so I looked through my white stash and found the finest 100% cotton I could find.  I started with two half yard pieces.  I knew I wanted to start with two colors that would both work with a third so I could use one dye bath on the second process.  I decided to start with a yellow and a dark orange, then move to turquoise.  The intension was to end with a green and yellow, and to discharge the orange and have a turquoise and orange.

1. Started with Dark Orange, 2. Discharged and dyed Turquoise, Didn’t discharge as much as I wanted and it is now more gray, but I do like it. 3. First dyed Yellow, next dyed Turquoise. Used a lot of wax tools for the Yellow dye (just to see what the effect was) and used the potato masher all over for the Turquoise., 4. Tools used to transfer wax. 5. Still had some small wash ‘crumbs’ on the fabric after removing the wax.

For the first piece, I was using almost every tool I had pulled just to see what they would look like.  My favorite tool was a toilet paper roll …how crazy.  One end was perfectly round and the other had gotten a little pinched and was a great egg shape.  I really liked overlapping them two or three times.  On this first piece I dyed yellow and then turquoise.  Since it’s so crazy with all the patterns, I will cut it and use in a charm or 2.5″ square type situation.

One tool I was excited about was some old wooden spools I had.  I pulled a really small and another larger spool, glued them to wine corks and tried them as wax tools.  I was really disappointed.  They didn’t transfer wax well at all.  I was hoping to see the spool end and small opening, but I usually just got blobs.  Not good.

On the second piece, I loved the initial orange.  It was a great rich color.  When I moved to discharge, I didn’t review instructions and started with 1 cup clorox and 1 cup vinegar in their respective bath buckets.  The orange didn’t discharge hardly any at all!  Says something for the colorfastness of the dye.  After about 45 minutes and little color change, I double checked the instructions and upped the bleach.  I was out of patience at that point and really didn’t allow the fabric to discharge as much as I had planned.  The background color turned more gray than I intended, but I do like it.  It had been a week since the original dye and I believe the original wax had gotten broken up and allowed the turquoise into the original white sections, so I did get some good turquoise after all.   Lucky accident.

Humphrey

I wanted to introduce you to Humphrey the Bonzo Hound

 

Now, honestly, I’m not sure what a Bonzo Hound is, but that’s the name the pattern gave him so that’s what I’m going with.  I picked this up on the Bustle & Sew site and made him up in Malka Dubrawsky’s Stitch in Color fabric.  Unfortunately, the photo doesn’t do him justice and the colors are not coming through as well as they should.

Humphrey is going to one of the best little boys in the whole wide world.  My nine month old grandson, Paxton, will have tubes put in his ears tomorrow and I thought he would love a friend for the occasion.  Paxton loves colors and patterns and I think he and Humphrey will get along fine.

This photo really shows the glare, but I thought you might like to see the underside of his (brown) ear.  This fabric is an awesome orange and pink fabric that goes great with Stitch in Color.

I recently finished a Craftsy class by Malka Dubrawsky and can’t wait to try dying my own fabric.  I’m sure if you check back, you will see some of the results.  If you haven’t seen what Craftsy has to offer, you really need to check them out.  They have some truly awesome online learning opportunities.