Pink Lemonade

  

Melissa of Happy Quilting is hosting a Starburst Quilt Along that ends in a few short weeks. That this quilt has been challenging for me would be an understatement.  Melissa’s tutorials and directions have been clear and well written.  I think this is just my first quilt that I’ve had to follow the directions exactly and that’s where I have a little trouble…and of course picking the appropriate fabrics is always hard.

I ended up having to go with scrappy star centers because I made a few mistakes sewing pieces together.  I was short enough fabric to fix the problem, so I just decided to go scrappy.  It worked out to my advantage though because I had cut 3 green stars and 1 pink, so I was able to balance them out  and make it 2 and 2.

Then the adventure began when I put the blocks together and I realized the burst points were unbalanced, too. So I scrapped one of the blocks and remade it.  The top is complete and once the weather cooperates, I’ll take some photos.

If you have a moment, you should check out the Starburst gallery on Flickr.  There are some real beauties!

Starburst Quilt Along Week 1

I didn’t get a chance to do any sewing the past week because we went on a family vacation to Disney World.  I’m not complaining!  Tonight is the first night since we got back that I got a chance to sit down in my sewing room.  I did want to share this photo I made my husband take of the set on the ride “It’s a Small World.”  I thought the resemblance to Hello Pilgrim by Lizzie House was uncanny!

So, have you ever heard of the term “goat rope?”   That’s what cutting my fabric for the Starburst QAL was like.  I started with the wrong size fabric, cut some pieces, then realized I didn’t have enough and had to start over picking my fabrics.  It was a downer because I actually did the black-and-white photo value trick when I picked my first set of fabric.

I was pretty happy that I had a couple different values included in my selection.  I tried to make the top row dark, the middle row medium, and the bottom row light.

A few fabrics even surprised me!  But when I had to start over and pick new fabric, I just cut without taking the time to do the black-and-white comparison.  So here are my final pieces.

And now let’s see how I did picking different values.

It looks like there’s too much dark in the second starburst, so I’ll be switching it up a little before starting to sew it together.  But overall I’m happy how it turned out.  Now I’m pretty much caught up to Week 2. 

Have a great night!

Read Across America Dress

One of the reasons I wanted to learn to sew was to make my kids’ clothes.  After I bought my first couple of Simplicity and McCalls patterns, though, I put that dream to rest because I had  NO IDEA how to read and follow the patterns.  They were simply too complicated for me!

Then last week when I was volunteering at my daughter’s school, there was an announcement about the Dr. Seuss-inspired Read Across America week and I knew I needed to make Bea an appropriate dress for the celebration.  She’s only in kindergarten and not too old for dresses-made-by-mom yet. 

I bought the Reese Peasant Dress pattern on Etsy because it promised lots of photos and many reviewers said it was easy to make.  And it was!   I whipped this dress out in about 2 hours from cutting to finish, and it fits perfectly. 

Last year I traded some DS Quilts fabric on Etsy (probably not officially allowed) for a dress from Wild Olive Kids.  I asked the owner for any advice to learn to sew dresses, and she said to pick a good pattern and practice.  So I picked the Reese pattern specifically for its versatility with sleeves, ruffles, different fabrics, etc.  I am so happy I did!  I also bought two other dress patterns and plan to put them to use when it gets a little warmer out since they are summer styles.

Here is Bea posing next to the dress I traded for.  She hasn’t had a chance to wear the Christmas dress yet because although it’s a size 6, it probably fits more like a size 7 or 8. 

I happened to pick up some of that Michael Miller deer fabric on sale after Christmas and hope to make my other girls similar dresses because I didn’t have three daughters for no reason!  I am linking up this dress to Melissa at Happy Quilting’s Trying New Things Thursday.  This project was so much fun and I see lots of dresses in the future, as soon as I learn how to use my serger.