Pickle Dish

I had some grand sewing plans for the 3 days of vacation I took when the decision was made to close the office Wed-Fri for Christmas.

In reality, I ate too much, drank too much, read 3 novels and took an unplanned 600 mile road trip.

A midst all that, I managed to start a paper piecing project.  The pattern is listed as Pickle Dish, Eyelashes as well as a Wedding Ring variation.

I am still auditioning fabrics for the center as well as the outside.  I have some red/black fabrics in the drier right now.

Mr Snaggit

Meet Mr Snaggit
He suffers from lipodystrophy and scars.

He is BFF with Mr Taggit.  

Earlier this evening Mr Snaggit nearly underwent a sex change.  

I had decided that the nap of the fabric on the lower jaw was important to be continuously in the same direction of the plushie.  This means that my scrap is just a wee bit too small.

I spliced on some fabric for the upper spikes.  I was thinking that I might have to hide this with a giant attached "hair bow". 

Thankfully, the creases at that point hide the seam and if you look at the top picture, you can see that other spikes look more seamed than the ones that are.  

His name is related to the pocket behind that questionable dentition.  He might actually be better identified as Mr Snackit.  

Out Of Control Creativity

I have a serious problem.  It is pathological creativity.  Once that idea kicks in, I can't stop.
No.  Really.

So I was hanging out with my favorite 1 year old twins this weekend and discovered that my darling Jamie is obsessed with tags.  The tag on a commercial blanket.  Flipping over the throw rug to find the tag.  This girl loves tags.  Who am I to judge?

I had seen some mini-quilts on line focused on the idea that lots of babies like tags.  And the concept of Mr Taggit was born.

I cannot say Mr Taggit without throwing in a Northern Midwestern accent. (throw in a y before the a and drag it out the"a" a bit?)

This is a police sketch of Mr Taggit.

I searched through my stash and found a piece of yellow minkie fleece from a project one of my daughters made and a remnant of flannel in a  yellow/orange floral that I bought at a second hand store for $3.

The color scheme was set.

I found a little bit of gold satin ribbon in the stash, and about a yard of some glorious silk green/brown.  My sole investment in this project was 2 rolls of wide yellow satin and gold grograin ribbon (half price).  I threw in 1.5 yards of the wide ric-rac since I thought the texture would be great.

FYI, the final tag count is 77.

Is Mr Taggit eating something to the left? Or running away toward the right?

Bibs

I spent some time over the weekend with my favorite 1 year old twins.  It was the first time we had lunched together.  I was inspired to make some extra long bibs as a surprise Christmas gift.  A quick search resulted in this free toddler bib pattern.  The original uses oil canvas and bias tape.  The link has a great tutorial along with it.  

 I had leftover fabric from this apron project

Changes from the original included using a single piece of fabric, folded on the upper age for the pocket. 

There were a couple scraps that were too small.  I spliced on another piece of fabric and top stitched it in place.  

The backing was left from the quilt I finished yesterday.  It was a cotton sheet from Ikea.  I found a small hole right in the center of one of back layers. 

I found a piece of white fabric that had some fusible on the back already, and stitched on a secret flower. 

Then I sewed a front to the back with a 1/4 inch seam, leaving an opening on a straight side section.  After turning and pressing, top stitched right on the edge.

With all the unexpected adaptations I had to make, it was still under 3 hours for 4 bibs.

A nice change of pace from quilting.

Finally Finished

I finally finished the quilt top that I pieced back in April.  I borrowed the idea from Raewyn but messed up on some math and ended up with a different pattern.  She had designed it for paper piecing, which would eliminate all the bias issues that I had that resulted in some wonky, asymmetrical sections.

It is all machine quilted.  The long, straight sections done with the walking foot.  The fill is FMQ.  The white is quilted with Gutermann 50 wt cotton.  I used a new to me thread for the black.  It's Coats & Clark Cotton "Machine quilting & crafts".  Strangely, it claims to be 30 wt.  I say strangely because if anything, it seems thinner than the Gutermann.  I bought this thread once years ago and gave it away as the 1200 yard spool wouldn't feed on my vertical thread spindle.  It works fine on my new machine which has a horizontal spindle.  I find this to be good news as it's $7.50 locally and I can consistently buy it for 50% off or BOGO at JoAnns.

I did free motion on this section.  Fortunately, the bamboo batting/ shrinkage hides how non-parallel those lines were.  And it adds nice texture.

When I started the pebbling, I ended up with a bobbin tension issue I didn't notice until I'd done 3 of these 5" squares.  There is a lot of swearing involved with unstiching that much pebbling.   (This is the re-do, it's the poor lighting that makes the upper one look wonky).

I'm actually getting to the point I looked forward to doing feathers.  Hard to imagine.

Another UFO off the list and the gift finished with over a week to spare!