Friday Favourite - Great British Sewing Bee

When you've got three kids you are very good at multitasking. You are also very good of milking every single second of any free time you've got. So when I was blessed with a unexpected afternoon off (school, playdate, long nap) I decided to sew and watch The Great British Sewing Bee. And it was awesome, all of it.

I worked on these blocks. And made it through 2 episodes. After the kids went to bed I watched the other two episodes. I was tired the next day, but so motivated. I started looking at dress and shirt patterns for myself. I want to sew clothes now. I've never wanted to sew clothes for myself. I hate sewing clothes and I don't know that much. But this show made it seem so interesting. And oddly, doable. I won't be making an evening gown, but I think I could tackle a simple dress.

The show is a reality show, let's be clear. But the Brits do these competition shows differently. The drama isn't there in the competition, just honesty from the contestants. And the judges are actually kind and not caricatures. If I was a man I would lust after the suits Patrick wears.

The best part? You can see all the episodes on you-tube for free!

Deborah over at Whipstitch is getting ready to launch an e-course on dresses. This might be perfect timing for me as I definitely need someone to walk me through this. I envision my pincushion and good tailor's scissors are going to get quite the workout.

Letting Her Play... Or How I'm Learning to Let Go of my Fabric

It was like a floodgate. So much just pushing on the doors, screaming to bust through and wreak havoc on anything in its path. I let her in, I really let her in the sewing room and now I can't keep her out. No longer content to arrange and make a mess of my jars of scraps she is now turning to me stash. She pulls out her favourite colours, determines just the right combination, then grabs my embroidery scissors, and hacks away. She's discovered fabric glue and fabric markers. With no input from me, and little regard for my fabric she is churning out butterflies and more.

It was one thing to let her pick and play when making her quilt. I still had some margin of control over that. Now? All I can manage to keep her from doing is hacking through some favourite fabrics with random cuts down the middle. But it rips at my quilter's gut and every now and then my heart, the heart that is tied to obsessions with fabric gets broken. She listens to me when I vehemently insist that she leave THAT fabric alone, then turns around and insists herself that she knows what she is doing and won't wreck my fabric because she is making something more beautiful.

She does this while I sew, while I write, while I cut fabric for her sister's quilt, while I play around on the internet. She won't touch my scraps, preferring to attack the bins of fabric in my stash. Did I mention the heart palpitations? Then I remember what Amanda said, It's All Just Fabric.

So we've had repeated discussions about cutting from the corner, not the middle, and how Mama gets final say on whether she can use that particular fabric. And when she wanted a big piece on which to attach a swarm on butterflies I let go and said that it would make a perfect garden.

One

This wild and crazy guy is 1 today. ONE! I can still remember the sunrise on the morning he was born, the feeling as he was placed on my chest seconds after being born, the moment my husband told me it was a boy, the fuzz on his beefy arms, the look on the girls' faces when they met him the first time.

Not to mention the days and months since where he surprised us with his ability to tolerate the girls' shenanigans, his pleasure at being in the company of anyone new, his quiet curiosity at the world, his insatiable appetite for anything but a raspberry. Then there is his insufferable cuteness. Okay, I'm pretty biased on that last one.

We aren't ones for over-the-top first birthday celebrations. We will make a cake and let him smash it wherever he wants (although, this boy does not like to waste food). I will rewrap the toy we've given all our children for their first birthday. We will shower him with affection and love. And he'll be wearing some cool/funny looking pants while we do it.

I adore the Quick Change Trousers from Anna Maria Horner. I'd made him some when he was a newborn, then slacked off. A few new pairs were in order for my growing boy. I'll admit, I doubted my fabric selection, thinking it was all a bit much. The combos worked great flat, but as pants I'm not so sure. Ah, whatever, right? You're only 1 once.

Just Sit Down

There are times in life when we need to push ourselves, when the teacher becomes a student, when the one who can't top talking needs to shut up and sew. This pillow serves a reminder to me to do all of that.

After my two days of teaching at QuiltCon I had the pleasure to take some classes. The pillow is the end result of my class with Yoshiko Jinjenzi. I jumped at the chance to take a class with her, even though I wasn't thrilled about making a pillow with sheer fabric. Whatever, it was Yoshiko Jinjenzi.

Turns out we were making a project from her book, Quilting Line and Color. I have the book, I constantly pull it out and drool, but I've never been inclined to make anything. The instructions seem fussy and overly complex. Well, this pillow was actually dead easy to make. We had a total of 5 minutes of instruction from Yoshiko and then we set to making.

As our first step we got to go and dig through scraps to create our own bits and bobs to highlight on the pillow. Every single person in the class had to resist the urge to squirrel away extra fabric. We were cutting little bits so it was quite fun to think about this fabrics on a very small scale.

After we picked our fabric, cut them to whatever size and shape we wanted, and laid them out on this gold fabric she provided we layered it with a sheer gauze. Some basting stitches to hold everything in place then we set to quilting the heck out of that sandwich.

That is, when we weren't crowded around her fondling the quilts she shared. It was half pillow class, half trunk show. But it was when she was showing her quilts that you saw the potential of this layering technique. Something I was quite easily dismissing at the beginning of the class suddenly provided inspiration. Of course, the intricacy of her work and the extreme attention to finishing details might have also had something to do with it.

In the end, I did get my pillow almost done. Despite the distractions of the quilts and my neighbours Marianne and Leanne and my SIL (way to represent Alberta in Austin!) All but the actually turning it into a pillow. Just as soon as I could I turned it into a finished project, minus the tassels. I knew that if I let it sit it would never get done.

This pillow is so far removed from anything I would normally make, from something I would likely every make again. Gold? Sheer? A Pillow? But it serves as a good reminder for me to just shut and sew sometimes. And for that reason it will keep a place of honour in my heart, if not my room.