Ocean 241 Tote

Julia 1 Comment

When I made my 241 tote more than a year ago, I ended up giving my mom my test purse that I’d made with scrap fabrics. She’s been hinting that she’d like a new one since then, and I finally got around to making one with fabrics I thought she’d love and the little tweaks I made to my own 241 tote.

My mom loves the color blue and most sea-dwelling creatures, so I used this jellyfish print (from Into the Deep by Patty Sloniger) as the main print. I picked out some fish and hearts to go with it, along with this Lizzy House print with a mom and baby whale (for my mom!)

I still love this pattern and it was a fun project to put together. I love the shape of the bag, and the opportunity to put together several prints definitely appeals to the fabric hoarder curator in me.

I did most of the same mods as I did for my bag – I added 1.5″ to the width of the center piece, put a key clip in one of the side pockets, made a longer adjustable strap,  and added a zipper closure to the top of the purse. I also learned that using a mostly-white print for the strap and piping was not a great idea for a frequently used purse – I can not seem to get mine clean.

I tweaked the inner pocket a bit to fit my mom’s phone, and made it in the white version of my very favorite Lizzy House print with one of my Stars and Sunshine tags. I love adding those to my projects!

Bag Specs:
Pattern: 241 tote from Noodlehead.
Modifications: 1.5″ added to width of center panel, included zipper on top, made a longer adjustable strap to convert to cross-body, and added key clip to inside of one of the side pockets.
Size: Roughly 15″ wide and 14″ tall.
Fabric: Main fabric: Into the Deep by Patty Sloniger; :Side pockets – Natural History by Lizzy House; Lining – Charlie Harper
Made for: my Mom’s birthday

 

New FPP Pattern – Fructose (sugar) molecule

Julia 1 Comment

I’d like to introduce my latest Foundation Paper Pieced (FPP) pattern: a fructose molecule! This is the form of sugar found naturally in food like fruit and vegetables. It’s what makes these foods sweet, so I turned it into a geeky twist on the ‘home sweet home’ phrase.

The pattern includes templates for a 12″ finished fructose molecule to use however you wish (perhaps with my serotonin molecule pattern?). It also includes FPP patterns for the letters in ‘home’ sized to go with the 12″ pattern if you want to make a ‘home sweet home’ project like mine. My FPP patterns generally include 1/2″ seam allowance (standard for most quilted pieces), as well as an extra 1/2″ for trimming. This means the fructose pattern makes a 13″ x 9″ piece, which should be trimmed down to 12.5″ before being used with other elements (such as the HOME letters) and will finish at 12″ wide.

Fructose Pillow made by e

The pattern includes instructions for embroidering the chemical components around the molecule. These are required to clearly define what the molecule is for real chemists, but even without them the pattern is fun and science-y (and most of my chemist friends still recognized it as a sugar).

Solids or near solids really let the structure of the molecule shine in this pattern. I used fabric I screen printed myself for the letters, and cotton + steel for the binding. As always, you can find this fructose pattern along other geeky patterns in my craftsy pattern shop. What other molecules would you like to see?

Graduation Dress

Julia Leave a comment

Back in may, we went back to Texas for graduation. Of course I made a new dress (and a matching now tie for Eddie!). I’ve said for a while that my favorite sewing projects are making dresses and foundation paper piecing (FPP), so I finally got around to making an FPP project part of a dress!

Let me back up a minute. If you haven’t been following along with me long, you may not know that my husband and I have been in engineering graduate school at Texas A&M for the past several years. We defended our research in the fall, but didn’t have our graduation ceremony until May. We both started new jobs in Ohio in January so had been up here for a while, but went back to Texas for graduation, to see family, and to eat all of the tex-mex.

The main bones of this dress are yet another Emery dress, but with a rounded collar, pleated skirt, and some tweaks I’ve made to the bodice over my last several versions including lengthening the bodice and adjusting the arm scythes to fit me a bit better. And, you know, a giant paper pieced Texas A&M logo on the back. More info on making that pattern at the end, if you’re interested!

The fabrics are both Lizzy House quilting cotton fabrics – Dinosaurs from Natural History in a maroon color and the Scheherazade print from her new whisper palette line of low volume fabrics. The timing of this dress worked out really conveniently to be an entry in the Lizzy House dress contest – check out the hashtag on instagram to see some other amazing clothing with her fabrics.

This is the third dress I’ve made with this dinosaur print in different colors – check out my purple dino dress and my knit aqua dino dress! I’ve also made a series of dinosaur paper piecing patterns some of which were inspired by dinos in this print – feel free to also check out my recent jurassic park pillow and the quilt pattern featuring all 9 dinosaurs.

While undergraduates are sorted alphabetically by last name but separated by departments, the doctoral graduates in the college of engineering are all together by last name – so Eddie and I were able to sit next to each other during the ceremony even though we’re in different departments. My dress was hidden under our gowns during the ceremony, but Eddie’s bow tie peeked out over his perfectly until we put on our hoods.

Making the FPP pattern: I make lots of FPP patterns, but this one was a new challenge since it needed to include space for darts and a zipper. I printed out an image of the block ATM logo, then traced it onto a copy of my back bodice Emery dress pattern on freezer paper. The logo was fairly convenient in that I was able to pick a good size such that the ‘T’ fit under the back neck darts, and the back waist darts only needed to be moved a slight bit to fit in the middle of the ‘A’ & ‘M’. I traced the ‘T’ and inner sides of the ‘A’ & ‘M’, then angled the logo I was tracing across the center of the waist darts for the outer sides of the ‘A’ & ‘M’. I then drew out my paper piecing pattern, and copied the templates to additional pieces of freezer paper for the actual piecing. I paper pieced the center sections, then traditionally pieced the outer sections with rough templates for angles and lots of extra room for trimming. Finally, I lined up the bodice patterns with the original FPP patterns on top of the fabric making sure the design lined up and cut out the back bodice pieces. Sewing the darts was a little tricky with all those seam allowances, but it turned out really well!

Dress Specs:

Pattern: Emery Dress by Christine Haynes
Modifications: rounded collar, pleated skirt, paper pieced logo on back bodice, and minor adjustments included lengthening bodice and adjusting armscythe.
Size: 6.
Fabric: Lizzy House Dino Exhibit in Red and Scheherazade in Cloud.

Clever Girl Pillow

Julia Leave a comment

Today (11 June) is the 23rd anniversary of the original Jurassic Park movie coming out in theaters! You’ve seen it, right? There’s a scene where Muldoon is hunting the Velociraptors, locks his sights on one, only to see another come out of the bush to his side. He has just enough time to say ‘clever girl’ before she bites his head off. It’s become kind of an expression of rueful admiration of intelligence. Ever since I designed my paper pieced dinosaur patterns, I’ve been wanting to make a pillow with the Velociraptor and Muldoon’s famous last words.

I got it made in time to take it to an evening event we were going to this weekend at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh to take photos with the dinosaurs. Unfortunately not all the dinosaurs were well lit, but we had a great time. It was an Indiana Jones themed night, with a whip show, giant snakes to touch, photo ops with a giant boulder, a scavenger hunt, a symphony playing Indiana Jones theme music, themed cocktails, and all kinds of other activities. It’s part of a quarterly event they have for adults called ‘after dark’ which I’m sure we’ll check out again.

The patterns for the letters to go with the 12″ pattern are now included with the Veronica Velociraptor FPP pattern in my shop – if you’ve bought the pattern before you should be able to download a new version with the letters included. As always, contact me at if you have any problems. I still haven’t finished my own version of my dinosaur quilt pattern, but when I do this will be a great companion!

Our favorite part though: dinosaurs everywhere. Did you know that actual Velociraptors are feathered and only really the size of a large turkey? The dinosaurs in the movie look more like they were modeled on a close relative, Deinonychus, which is a much less appealing name. We went on a docent-led tour around their dinosaur area while we were there and learned all kinds of interesting things, including that there had been a dinosaur named Draconus Hogwartsia (‘dragon king of hogwarts’), but then they found out it was just the juvenile form of an already named dinosaur, so there is no longer a hogwarts dinosaur.

We also wore our matching dinosaur dress and bowtie, which got more compliments than usual. Our only kind of picture of the two of us was this one from the scavenger hunt of digging for fossils – usually it’s a kids activity, but since this was an adults only event we finally got our chance to play.

And I made a little embroidery in one of my necklaces for the event – this color is now available in my 3D printed embroidery hoop shop and glows in the dark!

Pillow Details:

Pattern: Foundation paper pieced Veronica Velociraptor (letters now included!)
Fabric: Background is Twinkle from Lizzy House Constellations, letters and body are asterisk in metallic sky from Lizzy House Whisper Palette.

Unicorn Dress

Julia 4 Comments

Quilt Market is a bi-annual sewing and quilting trade show, and I’ve been lucky enough to make dresses and other goodies for the Andover Fabrics booths for the past few markets. For spring market this year, I made a dress with the new Lizzy House double gauze.

This andover double gauze is a dream to sew with and to wear. It feels amazing, and the colors are really saturated and bright which can be hard to find on double gauze. I of course made a coordinating necklace with one of my mini embroidery hoops with one of the other critters from this line of Lizzy House fabric.

The dress pattern is view C from Butterick 6582. I had two pieces of sample yardage for the dress instead of continuous yardage and with the combination of the print being super directional with a wide repeat and my inability to not fussy cut cute critters, I had a really tough time getting all the pattern pieces to fit. I ended up moving a wedge of the pattern from the front skirt piece to the back skirt piece, making each back skirt piece several inches wider, and cutting the front skirt on the fold rather than two separate pieces. This moved the side seams of the skirt and the pockets (not in the original pattern – I added my modified Emery dress pockets) towards the center front of the dress a few inches. I ended up really liking how the pocket placement turned out! I might have to try this again with some yoke pockets. I’ve made several dresses at this point, and I did not find the instructions for this dress especially easy to follow. I’m pretty sure the pattern is missing a few steps, although I was pretty easily able to figure them out. It’s also not the simplest dress pattern with the front bodice details, so I would definitely recommend the pattern to someone with some experience sewing dresses/garments or a friend to help with the pattern.

A few comments on working with double gauze: this was my first double gauze project, so I used some double gauze I’d purchased on sale previously to make several muslins of just the bodice. When making big-box store pattern dresses, I always end up making a smaller size than prescribed by the envelope measurements. The double gauze has more give to it than normal quilting cotton, so because I wanted a fitted bodice I ended up making an even smaller size than usual. All that to say – if you’re making a fitted garment with double gauze, I’d really suggest you make a bodice muslin. I’d also highly recommend using an interfaced facing and interfacing for the zipper. I used Pellon ShirTailor 950F interfacing for my first muslin. It worked well, but I wanted something less stiff so ended up switching to Pellon Shape-Flex SF101 for the final dress. This dress is incredibly comfortable and flattering (if I do say so myself), and the double gauze is so worth the extra effort to get used to a new substrate if you haven’t tried it.

I used the Lizzy House unicorn tapestry print for this dress, which has lovely unicorns, as well as greyhounds, pheasants, and rabbits. The colors and florals in this print are beautiful, but I really wanted to feature the critters. The unicorn is centered on the front bodice, but the greyhounds are also featured on the back.

The bunny is maybe my favorite (I have a paper piecing pattern of him in my craftsy shop). While he doesn’t get any special appearances on the outside of the dress, I love that I put my dress tag right under this little guy on the inside even if no one usually sees it. I’m wearing a crinoline in the previous photos for some extra poofiness, but below you can see how it sits on its own.

Dress Specs:

Pattern: Butterick 6582
Modifications: Moved a wedge of pattern from front skirt pattern to back skirt pattern to fit on the fabric I had and cut front skirt on the fold to eliminate a seam. I also added pockets.
Size: 12.
Fabric: Lizzy House tapestry double gauze in green