Strawberry Pillows, Day 7

The day has finally arrived.  The day I had been avoiding all week.  Yup, today is the day I finish up the berries with hand sewing.

For finishing up the berry, The Purl Bee listed a cotton embroidery floss that was a size 12 thread.  All I had on hand was DMC embroidery floss, which comes in six strands that are each size 25.  I don't know much about embroidery floss, and even less about floss sizes, but apparently the higher the number, the thinner the thread size.

Strawberry Pillows, Day 6

Since I was still procrastinating on hand sewing up the Connecting Threads strawberry, I moved on to the patchwork strawberry.  I had about five different shades of red for the main body and about seven shades of green for the stem to work with.  I didn't have any real rhyme or reason when sewing up the patches together, other than to not sew up the same fabric next to each other.

Strawberry Pillows, Day 5

On the top of my list of things that I don't like about sewing is hand sewing.  For one, it involves dealing with sharps, and, as you may know, I try to avoid interacting with pins and needles as much as possible.  For two, it doesn't move as fast as, say, a sewing machine.  Or a racing turtle.  Or an ambitious snail.  And for three, I always feel like I'm doing it wrong.

So instead of sewing up my strawberry, I worked on the strawberry top.  I cut the two template pieces out, and I was fine with the stem top, but I was confused by the stem bottom.  It said to "Cut 2 and tape together along dotted line."  Did they mean to cut 2 of the templates and then tape them together before cutting the shape from the fabric?  And if so, would I cut one or two pieces from the fabric?  Or, did they mean to use the template to cut two pieces of fabric and then tape the two pieces of fabric together (for some strange reason)?

Strawberry Pillows, Day 4

Ah, to frolic in a garden of strawberries as big as my house!  Can you imagine how delicious that would be?  Berry delicious!

Week 14: Strawberry Pillows

Strawberry Pillows from The Purl Bee
Photo courtesy of The Purl Bee

The other day I was shopping at the local chain grocery store and was lamenting over the selection of out-of-season tomatoes.  I tell ya, there's nothing like the smell of homegrown tomatoes freshly plucked from the garden.  But we're not at peak tomato season yet, so I've had to console myself by browsing through the local farmers' markets.  We're lucky here in Northern California to have so many farmers' markets to choose from.  On some days, we actually have more than one to choose from!

Lap Duvet Sew and Tell

For my "Sew and Tell" posts I'll basically review how my project went for that week.  I'll talk about what worked, what things I'd change, things I'd learned, what I liked, etc.

Lap Duvet, Day 7

I'm still getting used to this whole blog thing, so apologies for not posting as it happens.

So the quilting phase started out being aggravating for me.  Because my duvet didn't end up being 58"x42", when I started out pinning every 7", my last row ended up being close to 5".  This drove me crazy so I started all over again and readjusted my measurements so that each row was the same height.

Lap Duvet, Day 4

I started working on the Lap Duvet on Saturday afternoon.  As I mentioned, I chose two fabrics from the Grow With Me collection.  In addition to reducing my stash, I am also trying to cut back on my spending, so even though the project called for throw-sized (60"x60") wool batting, I used some crib-sized (45"x60") "poly-down" batting that I already had.  I have a few larger-sized packages of batting, but I figured that the crib-sized batting would work perfectly, since the finished duvet would measure 58"x42".  More on this later...

Week 1: Lap Duvet

Photo courtesy of The Purl Bee

Hooray, it's Week 1 of 52 weeks of sewing, knitting, etc!  I'm going with a supposedly quick and easy project, the Lap Duvet from The Purl Bee.  According to the website, this project should take about 2 1/2 hours to make.  I'm so excited to make this!  They look so cozy and fluffy.