2 posts tagged “craft”
This week I am learning to quilt. While Mama Hughes and Co. are on holiday I have gone to her sister, "Aunt Lou", to learn how to quilt and help reorganize. Aunt Lou is an amazing quilter with decades of experience, I am very lucky to get this kind of instruction!
So far, I have found the whole process to be very interesting in its approach and its methodology. This craft my be a good one to soothe those OCD moments, in that everything is designed to be very precise and exact. Everything has a template and you use a rotary cutter. All the tools I have encountered are to assist in accuracy.
I've found in garment sewing there is a lot of ambiguity, mostly because fit and style are intended to be variable in the design process. I can't tell you how many times in the process of making a garment it morphs into something different, not that I can't make things look how I intend but that it isn't the nature of the process. At least it's not for me, and I realize that may come from general inexperience, but I'm okay with that.
For my first small project we decided a pillowcase would be good. We also decided that a hexagon would be a good shape for me to start out on since I'm not a super noob who needs to do big squares. Here is it all cut and half way sewn.
I have to tell you about the thing that it is hanging on, it's probably the most useful of all the tools I have encountered. It's called a flannel board, because it is exactly that. The little quilt pieces stick to the fuzzy flannel like nothin! You can move stuff around, play with placement, take a step back and look at it, and you don't have to poke your fabric. It's as easy as pinning a flannel sheet to your wall! (ok, I'm starting to feel like the billy mays of the craft world here!) Pure genius!
More updates as the project progresses!
Things Acomplished
- hem finished on scotch's wedding dress.
- pajama bottoms for Matt.
- pajama bottoms for cousins K1 and K2
- apron for niece
- patch for paul
Things Undone (with excuses)
- pillows for scotch (got materials, just need to do it)
- top for lia (need to alter pattern)
- apron for talia (need to just do it)
- fix pillow case totes (need to just do it)
- t-shirt project with paul (project still in infancy, needs designs)
- something for myself? (i don't make stuff for people i don't like)
How Seattle Stole Christmas
Last night, as i was finishing my x-mas crafting i decided i should do the web-check in for my flight, only to discover that my flight from Oakland to Seattle had been canceled. I can't get a hold of anyone at Alaska/Horizon so i decide to go to the airport anyways. I get there and my options were to wait on standby all day to see if i could get to Seattle, only to be stuck there for two or three days until things cleared up weather wise OR stay here and wait until Friday when things will be better weather wise (maybe) and i don't have to co-habitate in an airport with thousands of other people. So the decision was, where would you rather be stuck, alone, missing Christmas with your family? i picked here instead of the airport. Matt was sweet enough to cancel his plans to go see his dad in Utah to stay with me. So I'm not alone, but I'm definitely not with my family. For the first time in my entire life i am going to be without my family on Christmas eve and christmas day. That was a tough pill to swallow at an emotional 5am after no sleep from an Alaska Air employee who could hardly keep eye contact with me.
Like most of the other shitty things that have happened in my life recently, I am not alone. 4 people i know are stuck at SEA-TAC, and a few who i know are going to try and leave wednesday who might join them. think warm thoughts for Seattle, Christmas depends on it!
