So Much Sewing

>> Sunday, June 1, 2014

I know it's been forever and a day since I last posted, and much of that period stemmed directly from the lack of sewing time. Between February and early May, I'm not sure if I sewed a stitch. Finishing a dissertation will do that to you. But the dissertation is done and defended, and I've enjoyed a nice chunk of relatively open-ended time. Thus May has been, err, was (it's June today, woah), a wonderfully sewing-filled month.

One of the first things I did was make a long-planned wedding gift for Joel and Sibyl. They got married in September which was a lot of months ago, but I had zero time to make things back then. I did have time to purchase fabric, however, and I picked out some fun fabric for cloth napkins that also formed the basis of the color scheme and aesthetic of a table runner. At one point, my mom wondered what I was going to make for them, since I had already given Joel a quilt.

Joel and I were roommates back in the day, including the days in which he began dating Sibyl, and we spent a lot of time enjoying good food (not to mention our stunning ability to polish off whle jars of pickles and olives in one setting). Quality napkins and a table runner for Joel's super awesome craftsman-style table (which he found at a yard sale and was already in the apartment when I arrived) fit the bill.
 
Handily, Joel was in Ann Arbor for work this week, which meant that I not only got to give his wedding present to him in person but we got to take some fantastic parking lot pictures. Who doesn't need a few cars in their crafty photos? As it turns out, one of the awesome things about making gifts for people with whom you lived is that it's pretty easy to nail their aesthetic -- a task made even easier when you have quite similar taste. So the table runner has two sides, the little bits and bobs side and the chunks of cool fabric side. Both are intended to work well in the neat green kitchen J+S have in Seattle.

Initially I was a little uncertain about how to quilt this, given those tiny bits and a lot of negative space. I opted for undulating free-hand echo curves which I love. I used several shades of gray, blue/aqua, and black. While I could pretend that this was a design decision, made to reflect nature and the Pacific Northwest, the truth of the matter is that I ran out of both the medium gray and aqua while quilting and thus needed to add in more and more colors. Happenstance for the win.

Read more...

  © Blogger template Autumn Leaves by Ourblogtemplates.com 2008

Back to TOP