Category: Sewing

100 Quilts · Sewing · Tutorial

Lyon Carolings Top Finished!

Elizabeth E.2 Comments

Here it is in all its unquilted glory.  I’m really happy to be at this point.  Of course, I can see about five design changes I’d make right now, but I’m not unpicking another seam.  It will have to be what it is.

I cut the border print slightly away from the red band in order to have a little yellow piece separate and blend with the green initial border.  This has gone through so many iterations that I probably have enough for another quilt with Provence fabrics in my bin.  That will have to wait.  Now on to construct the back–I’m going to try to use some of the leftover border print there.

I’ve developed a few tricks for mitering a corner so it turns out half decent, or even better.

While sewing on the border, this really is be the first step (sorry it is already sewn).  What I want you to notice is where the blue thread on the green fabric begins and ends: at the seam.  Not over the seam. Don’t oversew in this step, or you’ll be picking it out.  You don’t need to sew past the seam because the fabric has to have the smallest bit of wiggle room in that area.

First lay your borders together, folding the quilt corner at a 45-degree angle, folding it out of the way below the borders. Match up the edges–both the sewn and the cut–very carefully.  Put pins if you have to.  Then using the 45-degree line of your favorite ruler, place that at the upper edge of the border and slide it so that the lower edge is at or just a thread’s width past the folded quilt edge.  Draw a line and pin it carefully before moving it at all.  DO NOT TRIM at this point. Stitch on that line (which you can see in the image above).

This is the glory shot: all the lines match up.  A good miter is a thing of beauty forever.  A bad miter hangs out in the back of the closet.

Trimming: Line up the quilt and borders as in the first step, replace the ruler so that you allow a 3/8″ seam allowance past the sewing line (I’m cautious here). 

Again, you are 3/8″ away from your stitched miter (at the green arrows). Slice it off, and try not to have heart failure that you’re cutting the wrong side.  If you fold it this way, you won’t (cut it wrongly, or have heart failure).

 Enjoy!

Sewing

Pillowcases

Elizabeth E.

I’ve been busy today. I made little treats for little people in my life for Valentine’s Day. If the rain lets up (yes, we’re still here and not washed away) I’ll trot over to the Post Office and mail them off. I had already made two little treats for two little boys who lived nearby, and felt like I should finish some for the rest.
The babies, who don’t have pillows yet, will have to wait until the next round.

Sewing · Something to Think About

Blessing Dress for my Granddaughter

Elizabeth E.

I made this dress for my daughter’s blessing many years ago. She asked me to get it ready for this child’s blessing. It had aged some, with the lace turning creamy, and Barbara asked me to get it white again. I’m too old to take it all apart and sew it up with new lace, so I remembered about Rit Dye Remover. One night found me cooking dinner, simultaneously boiling up a dress in a pot on the stove.

It worked! After ten minutes stewing in the solution (which made our kitchen smell like a beauty parlor) everything was crisply white again, better than magic, and I found myself thinking about the idea of being made new again, utilizing the twin blessings of forgiveness and repentance.

I think back to that woman who made the original dress, me–some three decades ago. What was I concerned with then? Certainly raising the children right. My last child hadn’t even happened on the scene and I was ankle–no, knee-deep–in kids and house and home and relationships and fatigue and worry and sickness and health and picnics at the “gun park” (Westpoint, NY) and serving others (a tiny church in Newburgh, four church jobs and 4 other women I was assigned to visit with each month) and chaos (two boys and a baby girl) and isolation (we lived in the hills about 70 minutes away from NYC). Add in a strange marriage, a dog that kept running away, missing my mother and father and family, and probably a lot of wondering about just how it would all turn out.

I remember my parents making the trek out East to see me, bringing me a new set of scriptures in beautiful blue leather. They are still a treasure, although I moved on to a new set some years later. I think about that gift, what was being said in two books on crisp thin paper. Maybe they were saying: this is the best gift. Stand with these and you’ll figure everything else out. All that you’re going through can be made sense of if you apply what’s in here to your life.

Did I understand then about forgiveness/repentance? I thought I did. I thought I had a pretty good handle on things, wobbling as I did through an off-balance life.

But the woman who holds the child’s child in the photo above has a better view of those early years. (It’s certainly not as good as that baby’s great-grandmother, but it will do for now.)

Forgiving others, not withholding that critical component of the Lord’s gospel. Repenting when possible, because I figure I’m always in need of forgiveness. And somewhere between those two, a intense gratitude for these principles of life, a realization that the Lord has given me a chance to be happy, be thankful, in spite of scars, in spite of scarring.

It’s what makes life work. It’s a life’s work.