Quilt #4: Log Cabin

Posted on July 15, 2011 by Mabel

Quilt #4: Log Cabin
Width | Approx 200 cm
Length | Approx 150 cm
Pattern details | Cotton strips from fabric from Cotton & Colour & Spotlight
Batting | None
Backing | 100% broadwidth cotton fabric from Spotlight
Binding | None

My project from when I was pregnant with Eva is finally done and as predicted, it is a lovely single sized quilt. Yes, they are definitely getting bigger although I might go back to making baby or children-sized blankets for Noah and Eva (she loves her Red & Pink Cuddly and will roll around on it, in it, etc) since we’re heading back to Europe and just in time for winter too!

Initially, I had planned for the quilt to have a “lighter” look to it with a pale border instead of the royal blue which Nil insisted that we try. He also pointed out that white or anything pale wasn’t exactly great since it would get dirty more easily that dark colours. So I decided to go for blue…again. (I will definitely opt for a green-blue-white blanket next time around – am getting tired of the whole dark-colourful combo!) For the back, I chose a printed fabric instead of plain because I wanted to give it some variety; a big plain piece on its own, I figured, didn’t really look nice at all.

For the finishing, I decided to do a pillow-case styled edge by sewing both right sides facing each other and turning it inside out before topstitching around the edge for reinforcement. Initially I toyed with the idea of a zigzag around the edge but after inspecting my machine, I thought I’d play around with some of the untested stitch designs. It turned out to be quite pretty but ate up a lot of thread and I ran out halfway around the edge only to find myself carefully positioning my needle in order to start on the right spot. It took about 30 minutes to finish the topstitching.

The result is a simple, not-too-fancy quilt which we’ll probably use as a sofa cover-blanket. I’m still not very convinced about the colour combination and would have preferred to see it in something other than blue like cream-beige or a very pale latte colour. O’well…next time, *I* must have dibs on the colours for the border and backing! In the meantime, it’s back to more packing and trucker gps software assignments.

My army of piggies!

Posted on August 8, 2010 by Mabel

Army of Piggies
Fabric | 100% cotton (remnants)
Pattern | Lenny the Guinea Pig from Bit of Whimsy Dolls

These are actually made for the give-away which I held recently for the shop. Three will be going out to the winners together with some booties which I’ve been struggling to crochet up (it’ll be a month since the draw OMG) because of my crazy schedule – me falling ill (and am still recovering – I got hit by a double dose of flu back-to-back) didn’t help at all. The fourth piggie – seen above and called Winnie – will be heading off to a lovely home in Lyon to Nil’s friend who just recently became a dad to a very cute baby boy.

I’m actually thinking of including some soft toys into the inventory and phasing our baby bibs & burpies for the store – a few people have asked if I’d like to sell these. I’ve always felt that sewing is way more faster in terms of product gratification so it’s left to be seen if I’d like to continue on with the booties. Apart from guinea pigs, I’m thinking of adding the usual repertoire of creatures like the dog, cat and lamb to the list and a newbie – the hedgehog for that added twist of texture.

Trouble now is that I just need some extra time to squeeze in the sewing on top of the stuff that I’ll be doing and oh, the move. Yes, did I mention that we’ll be moving to our new place at the end of this month? Talk coping with a crazy schedule! ARGH!

Eva’s first DIY dress

Posted on July 9, 2010 by Mabel

The Reversible Pinafore
Fabric | 100% cotton (Spotlight and Etsy)
Pattern | The Reversible Pinafore from MakeMePrettyDesigns

For a while, I’m been tempted to make something other than blankets, bibs and small items but I always held myself back because I wasn’t too sure how the quality would turn out. But after a while, I decided to try anyway; after all, you’ll never know until you try. So think of this more as a prototype (did you know that even wrinkle creams have them, eg prototype 37c?).

After hunting around the Internet for a few patterns, I settled for one by the above Etsy seller since they looked pretty lovely and simple. She had a bundle set option so I got that and after shopping around for some fabric combinations, I started work on it. It was a pretty fast pattern to work on – I was done in under three hours from cut to finish.

I opted for a snap finish instead of buttons because I haven’t quite mastered sewing buttonholes using my sewing machine; the last time I tried it, it was a disaster so I wasn’t really up to the task again. I used the KAM snaps I bought last year for the shop and it turned out awesome! I let Eva try it on the next day and while it was a little roomy, as expected since it’s size 12 months, it looks nice on her, especially when she has pants on. (I should take an “action” shot soon!)

Now that this is done, I’m quite tempted to sew up more designs in the other fabrics that I’ve purchased. In a way, I’m glad that I did this – my mum made a few dresses for me when I was growing up and it’s something that I would like to do for my own daughter now that I think about it. So yes, do look forward to more outfit-related goodies!

My first DIY mei tai!

Posted on April 16, 2010 by Mabel

DIY Mei Tai
Fabric | Cotton drill (Spotlight), regular cotton fabric (IKEA), fleece (for padding)
Pattern | Mei Tai tutorial

I was supposed to blog about this earlier but got caught up with a lot of other things, namely housechores, groceries, picking Eva up from the babysitter, house-hunting and so forth. Still, I surprised myself by finishing this quite quickly once I sat down to it. I had been slowly working on it on an on-off basis and often blamed it on my lack of sewing mojo (sometimes I think my sewing mojo needs some form of insurance like an NC health insurance). Well, no more!

When I first started off this project, my sewing machine was already a little clunky. Then halfway through when I was putting the fleece together with the drill, it died on me. I went through a few breaks in the thread before it finally came to a halt. So off it went to the doc’s – well, he’s just a guy with a stall at the market near my place – and the prognosis was quite grim. The machine needs to be serviced, it’s been a while and well, it’ll take a couple of days and I’ll let you know the cost. For a moment there, I thought he was going to tell me that it would cost an arm and leg, but no, it turned out to be an affordable $60. Well-worth it consider that the machine hasn’t gone for servicing since the 80s!

After I got it back, I could tell that there was a lot of difference to how it ran – smoother and definitely quieter! But I didn’t really get to work on it often as Eva was going through some teething-related sticky bouts and my nights were more for relaxing instead of sewing (*shifty eyes*). So it sat in one corner and finally saw the light again when Eva started going to the babysitter. Before I knew it, I was very close to the end of it all.

Then it happened.

I broke THREE needles try to put the hood strap loops onto the straps! All that padding and folded killed three needles before finally submitting to a leather needle. Of course I had to go ultra slow as well. But yes, three needles! *shakes head* But when it was done, I realized another mistake I made. I sewed the hood straps on the wrong end of the hood!!!! ARGH! After more ripping, or rather snipping, I did some simple zigzag sewing and voila, it looked right and proper again!

Eva and I tested it out once she got back and I tried front as well as back carry. Found back carry to be a little strange and I suspect I still need time to adjust to the weight on my back instead of in the front like how I’ve been carrying Eva all this while. But hey, I wore her with this when my parents were around and found it surprisingly airy despite the hot and humid conditions here. It’d be perfect for European weather though as drill cotton is quite thick. I would sew it better the next time and am even tempted to make the Japanese version called the Onbuhimo which has two rings at the waist instead of a waist strap. One annoying thing about mei tais though – storing them with those long straps! Still, at least now, we’ve got a back-front carry carrier that works for Nil and myself! w00t!

Quilt #3: Blocks & Squares

Posted on June 5, 2009 by Mabel

Quilt #3: Blocks & Squares
Width | Approx 127 cm
Length | Approx 183 cm
Pattern details | Cotton squares & strips from fabric from Mondial Tissue & other sources, alternate colour schematics
Batting | None
Backing | 100% wide width cotton fabric from Textile Ambience
Binding | Single fold tape from leftover fabric used in blocks

Yes, my blankets are getting bigger and bigger…

I love how this turned out – we picked a dark blue border material for the backing as well as the border. For a moment I was apprehensive because of how the red tone seemed more prominent than blue, but after putting on the border strips, everything just fell into place. Add that with the binding – I chose the red multi-coloured fabric my mother-in-law gave me and made the binding with the aid of a binding tape maker – and it turned out just right.

Instead of folding this and using it only as a lap or sofa blanket (I tried napping with this as a blanket and it’s warm enough…so luckily I didn’t put in any batting otherwise I would be steaming underneath it!), Nil thought that we would cover our sofa bed with this, and as you can see, it added plenty of colour and interest to a dull computer room. His inspiration? My mother-in-law. She does this with ALL the patchwork blankets and quilts that she has – covers sofas and chairs with them.

Anyway, now that this is done, I’ll back to cutting up strips for my next quilt. Hopefully I’ll be able to complete the squares before the birth. I plan to finish the whole blanket in Singapore but who knows? If I work fast, I might just be finished with it earlier!

Quilt #2: Autumn Heaven

Posted on May 16, 2009 by Mabel

Quilt #2: Autumn Heaven
Width | Approx 68 cm
Length | Approx 92 cm
Pattern details | 3″ 100% cotton squares from Ebay, cross arrangement, alternate colour schematics
Batting | None
Backing | 80-20% cotton-polyester fabric from Textile Ambience
Binding | Single fold 100% cotton tape in cream-yellow from Textile Ambience

This turned out surprisingly well even though it was slightly smaller than the first blanket I made and with a number of errors (lets go through them one by one).

For starters, the pattern this time isn’t random. The cotton squares I purchased come in several designs and each design has about 20 pieces cut down to size (3 inches). So I decided to rotate several colour pairs by way of inversion and such. To top off the pattern, I put an all-brown border, again repeating some colours, and then finally an all-white border. After sewing together the pieces, I discovered right towards the end when all of the squares were pieced that one of the cross in the patterns is off and the white border on one end has been switched around. Aiii…talk about something not matching its twin.

Then of course there is still the matter of getting the seams of each of the squares to match. Somehow I screwed up on piecing them properly. At one time while fiddling with the machine, I nearly sewed over a pin so the resulting line wasn’t straight with ended up with more fabric “eaten” to compensate for the seam. So some squares were quite off but again, thankfully, it’s just some. Again, definitely more work on the accuracy and such is needed.

Then there was the matter of sewing the bias. I can’t seem to find double fold bias tapes and somehow despite pinning this, I ran into some issues halfway while sewing this – I didn’t sew down a smallish portion of the tape so I had to run through the whole blanket twice and the offending section four times. ARGH! Luckily the thread is the same colour as the tape, otherwise I would be kicking myself!

Anyway, the finished piece is still very lovely and I am utterly tempted to keep this for myself but Nil said no. So off it’ll go as originally intended. I hope the recipient will like it as much as we do.

Eva’s Red & Pink Cuddly

Posted on May 13, 2009 by Mabel

Quilt #1: Eva’s Red & Pink Cuddly
Width | Approx 78 cm
Length | Approx 105 cm
Pattern details | 5″ 100% cotton squares from Moda’s Charm Park Candy Kisses (Ebay), random arrangement
Batting | None
Backing | 100% cotton fabric from Textile Ambience
Binding | Single fold 100% cotton tape in black from Textile Ambience

I’m seriously in love with the colour – the black makes the red pop out (white would have muted the colours and blended in) but hey, Nil and I weren’t exactly looking for the typical baby receiving blanket when we chose the colours. We were quite tired with pastels (y’know how it is with baby clothes and all) and sometimes I think Nil feels that pastels are only great when you’re dead or sick. Ugh.

We did, however, had some problems agreeing on the colour for the backing. Nil wanted something much darker since he felt that the colours were already bright enough but I wanted something that co-ordinated with the colour scheme like red or cream.

After checking out the textile shop nearby, we finally decided on this lovely dark blood red fabric with equally gorgeous dark flowery design for the back. Cutting it down to size and sewing it to the squares weren’t an issue. Working with the bias tape on the other hand was another story altogether. I had purchased about 4 metres of single fold bias tape without realising that I ought to have bought DOUBLE fold instead. Gah.

So after much hunting online for tutorials and what-nots on using bias tapes, I decided to turn this single fold into a double fold. Then there was the issue of sewing it on and such. Mind you, when I was learning sewing in school, working with trimmings and bias tapes was something that I never liked doing…simply because I sucked at it. So I did more read up, referred to a couple of online videos and braved the whole bias tape thing.

The end result was neat but not quite perfect. Still, Nil proclaims that it’s looks great for a first timer. Now this little baby will head off to the washing and storage while I get back to work on Quilt #2 and figuring out which looks better – a suit or a tuxedo. Heh.