DIY Curtains and Valances

As I mentioned in my previous post, last week was full of sewing ... just not quilts! Curtains were the theme of the week. It all started with a simple valance for the laundry room.

The cute little blue floral duck cloth was purchased at Hobby Lobby well over a year ago. From start to finish, it took about 30 minutes to make. After I finished it, I realized I had forgotten to add a lining. Oh well, it’s good enough! Sometimes you just have to call it done and move on.

The little valance put me in the mood to keep going. As you all know, my sewing room has been without curtains for a long time ...  about a year, actually. I purchased the fabric for the curtains two or three years ago at Hobby Lobby for $2 a yard. It was a great price, and I fell in love with the sweet little embroidered flowers.

Aww… look at them! Little daisies… my favorite flower.  I knew they would probably cause a little trouble when sewing, but it was a chance I was willing to take. After all, who can resist a fabric covered in little daisies?

 They didn’t cause a problem at all. The needle went right through them with no issues. BUT the fabric, on the other hand, was the biggest pain in my keister!

I tried every size needle in my stash, and not one of them would go through this crazy fabric without pushing the fabric down into the bobbin housing. After a few swear words, a time-out, and a completely useless search of the internet, I started brainstorming the problem.

Then, out of nowhere, I came up with a solution. My thought was that if I pulled the fabric from the back side of the walking foot and from the front, but in opposite directions, while helping it along, it might stop the fabric from being shoved down into the bobbin housing.

By golly gosh, it worked! It was a little awkward to do, but it got the job done. Sometimes you just have to outsmart the sewing machine! 

It took a little longer than expected, pretty much the whole day to make two sets of curtains for the windows and…

.…one set for the door. Yes, I have an exterior door in my sewing room. We think that at one time, this was a small one-car garage.

The next day I thought, why stop now? I was on a window treatment roll, so let’s make a new valance for the bedroom. I wanted something a little more “fancy.” How about a valance with a scalloped lower edge?  Oh, that would be cute!  I had to tape together some packing paper to make a long enough template. There was a little math involved to get the scallops evenly spaced, and I used an old quilting template to draw the wavy line.  Who knew all those quilting tools would come in handy for making curtains? 

This valance will be lined. I watched a few videos on how to add a lining, and they made it seem far more complicated than it needed to be.  I decided to keep it simple ... put the right sides together, sew around the outer edge, and leave an opening for turning. Sometimes the simplest way really is the best way.

Slowly, I made my way around the fabric. Sewing a 5/8" seam made me feel like I really knew what I was doing,  It’s been many years since I’ve used anything other than a quarter-inch or half-inch seam allowance.

That extra 1/8" had me feeling pretty fancy!

After turning it right side out and giving it a good pressing, I sewed around the edge to keep the seam secure through future washings.

A rod pocket was added to the back by making a simple tube of fabric. I drew a straight line on the backing, lined up the edge of the pressed tube with the line, pinned it in place, and sewed it down.

This was much easier than the complicated methods used by those professional curtain designers I found on YouTube. Sometimes I think they just enjoy making things harder than they need to be.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that all of the fabrics in today’s post were prewashed and dried on high heat for maximum shrinkage. No future shrinking surprises for me!

She turned out pretty darn cute if I do say so myself.  Maybe next week while doing my weekly errands I'll stop by Hobby Lobby and check out the trims.  Perhaps a short fringe of little fuzzy balls for the scalloped edge?

  

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Quilt Top Finish - 169 Cake Stand Blocks

After a year of sporadically working on the Cake Stand quilt, it’s finally a quilt top! 

I’m pretty sure I deserve to do a little happy dance for this one. 

For all of my math loving readers here's the numbers.

The quilt top finishes at 91 x 91

Total piece count is a whopping 

6188

Yep, you read that right.  No wonder it took me a year to get this one together!

This week the plan is to piece the quilt backing from the yellow and teal floral yardage, make a label and attach it to the backing, and then make the binding.  Speaking of a label, I've not come up with a name for this quilt.  Any suggestions other than Cake Stand?

The rest of the week I'll be focusing on quilting the blue quilt on the frame.  I didn't make one stitch in her for the last 2 or 3 weeks. I can't wait to quilt up the cake stand quilt, so that's just the push I need to get ole blue quilted and off the frame.  I guess she’s been waiting patiently long enough.

It was a busy week in the sewing room by the end of each day I wasn't in the mood to work on the yo - yo's.  Only 17 to add the stash, that's better than none.

See you in a day or two for more about last week's sewing room adventures.

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Weekly Update

This week in Podunk is going to be busy, so todays update....short and to the point.

Half of the cake stand quilt is together, the upper half.

I tried to keep the same prints from touching but it happens.

Two things that made me smile last week.........

Thing one

Thing two.

Two things that didn't get much attention last week.

Thing one.

Thing two.

See you next week!

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Mini Quilt Blocks Playtime And WIP's

Every now and then I get a hankering for a little fabric playtime.  After a couple of weeks of arguing with myself I finally caved, dug through the scrap bins and made a couple mini blocks.  The first was this adorable scrappy mini Churn Dash block.  The inspiration was found on Pinterest and much to my surprise it had a link to a blog post tutorial.  I found an error/typo in the tutorial but could not report it because the blog has been abandoned.  So if you want to make this block the center square is cut at 2.5".  I used (4) 1" squares for the each side of the churn dash and the green polka dot is 1" x 2.5", the HST's in the corners are 1.5".

While digging through the scraps to make Churn Dash I decided to pull out enough scraps to make a 4" mini dresden using Suzn Quilts Mini Dresden template.  Dresden's are popular again, so I'm seeing them all over social media. It's my favorite block to make, they are so happy and cute no matter what size or color pallet a quilter chooses.

There’s no plan for either one of these blocks. I just needed a little scrappy playtime. Sometimes you just have to dig into the scraps and make something fun, with no plan and no pressure. 

Now it’s back to the design wall to get the Cake Stand quilt top together. All of the set-in triangle units are finished, so I should be able to get this girl into a quilt top in the next couple of weeks.

The first three rows in the upper-left corner have already been sewn together, and seeing those rows come together is so exciting! I’m finally getting close to having a finished quilt top. I can almost see the finish line!

I made a little progress on the yellow yo -yo's for the Yo - Yo coverlet.  34 completed and all the circles have the seem allowances pressed.  Someone asked recently if I'm using a Yo - Yo maker.  I am not.  I'm cutting the circles using a 5" longarm quilting ruler then using Karen Kay Buckley's Perfect Circle templates to iron the seams under.  The running stitch around the circle is free hand stitching.

My plan to get this quilt off the frame was a total bust. I didn’t even touch the quilter all week. 

Maybe this week… maybe. 

 

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Quilting and Shopping

 This past week flew by, and here it is Monday with very little quilty progress to share. But I assure you, I was busy .... just not nearly as busy in the sewing room as I had planned. Apparently, the rest of life didn’t get the memo that I had quilting to do.

My week started with a plan to quilt the Moody Blues quilt, just a little each day, and have it off the frame by today. Well… that plan didn’t exactly go as expected. I did manage to quilt the top border and half of the first row of blocks. So, technically, progress was made. It just wasn’t the kind of progress that makes for a very impressive Monday morning report.

 I’m trying my best to keep the quilting as simple as possible, doing as much free motion quilting as I can with just a little ruler work thrown in.

The original plan was to use only white thread, but I didn’t care for how it looked on the dark navy fabrics. So, as you might have guessed, Jack the Ripper and I had a little playtime.

The quilting plan is to use the same quilting designs in each block ... feathers, curved jumps from corner to corner and straight lines. 

My thought is keeping the quilting somewhat the same in each block will help bring the quilt together.  

Almost every evening this past week, while watching the original Little House on the Prairie series, I made a few yo-yos. Thirty seven to be exact.  At this rate, it’s going to take me a few weeks to get through all the yellows. I guess it's a good thing there's 9 seasons to watch!

As for the Cake Stand quilt, very little progress was made this week. Only 10 inset triangles and corner units were finished. I’d really love to have this quilt top ready to quilt within the next couple of weeks. It’s about time to start getting the yard ready for winter, and after that comes the busy holiday season. Somehow, the year just keeps moving faster and faster.

I was planning a scrappy quilt backing for this quilt ... just pulling yardage from my stash and making it work. Since this quilt is super scrappy, I thought, why not keep the scrappy theme going on the back too?

That plan changed after a trip to one of our local quilt shops, Love It Sew. They were having an anniversary sale with 20% off everything in the store, including the clearance fabric! How could I possibly pass that up? 

My plan for the sale was to stay home and avoid temptation. But when a quilty friend asks you to go shopping after you’ve had a stressful week ... fabric therapy is just what a girl needs to get things feeling good again!

The shopping plan was to simply enjoy browsing, petting all the pretty fabrics, and maybe pick up a few low volume fat quarters. I came home with two FQs.

So I’d say I showed remarkable restraint.

Well, sort of… I also came home with 12.75 yards of this Moda fabric. How could I not? It was only $7.20 a yard!  No digging through the stash trying to piece together a backing for the Cake Stand quilt. There’s more than enough of this one print to make the whole backing.  I could have bought less, but I thought, “What the heck ... just get it all!”

It's called Happy Home by Tara Reed.  I've never heard of her or this line of fabric but it's a large floral and that makes me happy.

We were also given a free goody bag for shopping during their anniversary celebration. I came home refreshed and ready to put the week behind me.  It’s a new week, a fresh start, and a new plan to get things done. 

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Four Projects Moving Forward

 My quilty mojo is running at full speed and there seems to be no signs of stopping.  Maybe it has something to do with the lunar eclipse we had this week....HAHA!  This is going to be quicky blog post.  Let's start with what took up most of my time this week .... processing scraps into the scrap saver system.

Remember the yellow scrap bin from last week? After sorting through it, I cut nearly 150 circles for the Yo - Yo coverlet and somehow managed to turn the edges under on quite a few of them.

My #1 goal for last week was to get the Cake Stand quilt blocks on the design wall.  TADA!  All the blocks I had finished last week are on the wall.  The goal was to sew together a few of the inset triangle units but I ran out of time. So that's going to the top of the list for this week.

I could have sewn a few on Sunday but I decided to finally put this quilt on the frame.  It's been waiting far to long.  The plan is to keep the custom quilting super simple and have her off the frame by next Monday.

Sorry for a short and sweet post but ..... the mojo is ready for more sewing time!

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