So Miss Sewing

A little while ago, I tugged Knut’s heart strings when I called him from work and told him I wanted to go home and sew.

I really miss sewing and it’s not something I’ve been able to do much lately. In fact, right now I’m wearing pants that I’ve been meaning to remove the pockets from since I bought them!

For one thing, it’s hard to judge colors correctly under artificial light. Purples can look brown, navy can look black. And when you’re tired you make mistakes. It’s also a more expensive hobby that playing with polymer clay or shrinky dinks! People don’t understand that once you’ve bought all the materials necessary to sew something by hand, it’s often more expensive than buying a Chinese made mass produced item. If you’re a non sewing person, that's why a person might wrinkle their nose when you say “$40! You could make that!”

What I love doing is making these luxurious patchwork lap quilts. I used leftover bits of all the gorgeous materials my mother has used over the years. They contain silks, velvets, satins, high quality polyesters (which can be as fine as silk and more expensive!), wools, brocades, and anything else we have lying around. Some of the fabric is more than 50 years old.

Normally, I sewed the patchwork, added the borders (I like to use nice velveteen for this. It’s sturdy, turns great corners, and feels good), layered the backing and batting, tie it, and then bind the edges.

The particular quilt in the photo is one I made for my mom for Christmas one year. This turned a little different. I chose a beautiful rust panne velvet for the borders and turned the patchwork into a diamond pattern to make it a little more special.

Yikes!

This was a challenge. The velvet was super slippery and the pattern meant I really couldn’t machine sew it easily. Welcome to Baste City. I had to do it all by hand. And when you’re trying to do something like that by laying it out on the floor, naturally a fluffy little dog find it the nicest place to have a little nap. He seems to prefer good quality fabrics.

Ahhh.. memories. One day soon I'll whip out that little machine :)