Category Archives: quilting

WIP: Adding Blue

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I made some quilt progress this weekend with lots and lots of half square triangles.  I bought a special template to help speed up the making of all those half square triangles, a skinny little tool called the “Quilter’s Magic Wand”.

Quilter's Magic Wand Tool

Tracing from corner to corner will give you lines to follow for perfect quarter inch seams.  There’s a little line etched into the template to help you match the corners.  Here’s a close up so you can see it better.

Quilter's Magic Wand Tool Macro

I bought mine from Donellefritz on Etsy.

Kim's Quilt Progress Blue

This quilt will be for my best friend who is engaged, and I’m hoping it will make her think of the blending of two hearts, two families and two lives.  I think she’ll understand.

sarahsigres

A Quick Way to Check Color Value – The Lack of Color

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I’m starting on a new quilt that will rely heavily on color value and wanted to sort my stack of fabrics into dark, medium and light piles.  Sometimes it’s hard to tell if you have it quite right when looking at the colors.  The hues and color saturation can fool the eye, so to double check, I take a photo.  In this case, a horribly grainy phone pic in the dim pre-dawn light.  (Ugh, sorry.)

Untitled

And yes, Diego is still a “helpful” assistant.

Then I used a phone app to remove the color from the photo, which makes the value easier to see.

Untitled

With this view, I grabbed the fourth from the left in the medium section and moved it to the lights.  The one to the very far right might have gone better in the mediums, but I left it.

Now to start cutting!

sarahsigres

Sewing Handmade Shoes

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Mickey Mouse Shoes

I made shoes!  The pair of Mickey Mouse shoes above was my first “test” pair, just to see if I really could do it and if the fit would need adjusting.  I’m pleased with them and wear them around the house constantly.  Since they have a simple fabric sole, I think of them more like slippers.

But when you love to sew, it’s rarely enough to make something just once, without throwing in your own little changes. If you think about it, there’s really a lot you can do with that little area of fabric that becomes a shoe upper.  I decided to try a mismatched pair, using the quilt-as-you-go method with fabric strips.

Quilted Shoe Construction

Quilted Shoes Uppers

If you’d like to try it, you can buy a great How to Make Shoes PDF pattern from Shoeology.  Shoeology also sells a very nice waterproof soling material with a nice grip, if you’d like to wear your shoes out into the world.  There are instructions for making insoles included in the detailed pattern, but since I’ll likely end up with several pairs of homemade shoes I thought I’d try an insole I could easily switch out, something with a little more arch support.  So far, these are very comfy and they only cost about $6.

Handmade Quilted Shoes Inserts

And the finished shoes:

Handmade Quilted Shoes

Handmade Quilted Shoes Right

Handmade Quilted Shoes Left

Forrest Gump knew, “Momma always says there’s an awful lot you could tell about a person by their shoes.“

I may have ended up with shoes only a quilter could love, but since I am a quilter, I’m OK with that.  :)

sarahsigres

WIP: Seams

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Seams

I’m still working on Dad’s Parson Gray “Samurai-ish” quilt. This is the back of a strip of 300 squares that will be the middle section of his quilt.   The finished squares are about 3″.  Lots of pressing involved here, but I’m loving the results.

So far, I have 720 of the 960 squares sewn into larger blocks.  The end is in sight!

sarahsigres