mastering geese for a swoon

so, i started something new a little while ago. no surprise there! when i get the urge or the itch, i just dive into something. this time i decided to join the IG #swoonalong. in celebration of her 10th year anniversary in the quilting business, camille rosskelly started a quilt along of her most popular pattern, swoon. i've had the pattern as part of her craftsy.com class i purchased a few years back, and it's been on my "to do" list for ages. it's on everyone's "to do" list because it's so awesome. when the swoonalong came up, i resisted for a little while before being sucked in.

i'm eyeball deep in projects, so i wanted a quick version of swoon. i decided to make a swoon variation of my stella grande quilt pattern: one giant swoon block with a top and bottom border. i'm using heather bailey's floral picnic bouquet in gold as my main fabric, sandi henderson's meadowdot in mint as the secondary fabric, and essex linen from robert kauffman as my background.

i decided if i'm going to make the ultimate quilt, one of the fabrics better be my ultimate favorite: meadowdot, of course. i picked the floral to compiliment it. and i've always wanted to try linen. it seemed a good time to do that, too.

i started cutting away on the floral. and did it wrong. the swoon pattern i have is for a 24"block, but i wanted a 60" block. so i had to do some math. and i did some wrong. then i decided after reading up on quilting with linen that i should use a 1/2" seam allowance rather than the standard 1/4". so i did some more math and re-cut my floral center square.

at this point i realized i was not going to have enough of the floral for the quilt, even before i made my cutting error. so i had to visit etsy and ebay to hunt down that out-of-print fabric i was committed to using in my quilt. lucky me, i found 3 yards of it, so i'm safely stocked again.

and then i ran out of essex linen in flax. i went to my new local shop and go more, but thought it seemed to look a little different than the piece i had picked up earlier in the week. after washing it was still a different color! i talked to the shop owener and found out it was the wrong one. stalled again. whew!

while i was waiting on fabrics, i was also following the #swoonalong progress on instagram. i noticed some of the pieces in the pattern that were originally composed of hsts (like the pattern i have) were being made with flying geese instead. that makes for less seams and a more composed look, so i decided to just figure that out, too.

basically, i've rewritten the entire pattern myself.

i'd love to share all of it here, but that would be giving away a copyrighted pattern. sorry. can't do it.

i had to experiment with the geese to figure out the technique and math for those, too. with some trial and error, i got it down. i had some extra squares of linen not yet used that i paired with some solid scraps,

  the upper left-hand corner of linen is a failed attempt at getting the corner the right size. i tried just cutting a triangle and sewing it on. it came out wrong. i don't even remember what size it was. i think i probably used the leftover piece cut off some of the other bits i'd already done.

i read up on making geese a little and decided to go with stitch-and-flip rather than trying to just sew a corner on.

the geese i need are 12.5" x 6.5" unfinished. i think what i used was a 7" square for the corners.

after stitching both a 1/2" and a 1/4" seam allowance (for reinforcement), i clipped the corners off, per the flip-and-stitch method.

 the linen doesn't behave exactly the same as cotton, so i found i needed to sew a scanter seam so it would reach where it needed to be to line up with the block.

in the end, i completely nailed my tip for my flying goose (singular). it's exactly perfect. which is what i'm going for with this quilt. i've found that when working with large scale patterns, all the little flaws are much more noticeable. since there aren't that many pieces for this quilt top, i think it's worth the time and effort to get them right.

i now have most of the geese units completed, so it's on to the corner units. only i've turned back to the other projects i had going. my grande swoon is in the wip pile for the moment. when i do get back to it, i'm ready for a fast finish and i've got the tricks to getting it right down pat.

if only i remember them . . .

some munki munki

it's been a month since christmas.
anyone have their next one planned or started yet?
certainly not me.

i was going through photos and found this shot from christmas morning. can you tell we were up really late christmas eve?

this is relevant to a sewing blog because of the pjs i'm wearing. when i was getting "jingle jammies" (christmas pajamas) for everyone else, i came across some munki munki sock monkey pjs for me. my heather ross loving heart couldn't resist even though they are probably not fully age appropriate. the mr thought they were cute so i suppose i can still pull it off.

improving, i think

i hope it's apparent that this time it was moi, not the eight year old, who dove in and made another apron. i tried heather ross's "sunday hostess apron" from weekend sewing again. this time i chose the more kitschy/retro 60's-ish floral and graphic print combo in golds and pinks from alexander henry "in the kitchen" collection. last time, i didn't gather the skirt enough. this time i think i gathered too much and it's not quite wide enough to suit an adult, which is a bummer because i was making it for an adult. pooh!
there are times when i wonder if i'll ever get my sewing right. not perfect, mind you. just right.

something i did do right this go around that i am feeling rather pleased with myself about: i realized all on my own that in order to get my edge stitching as close to the edge as possible, i should move my needle to the farthest right position. so smart of me! (big smile on my face.) i love it when i actually know something or figure it out on my own.

on the first apron i made (top two fabrics) you can see i got near the edge on the tie (green fabric), but not really super close like i did on the second apron's ties (gold crosshatch fabric). and doing the tiny hem on the skirt was a lot more accurate and easy when i moved the needle over (red fabric, 1st apron; white & yellow fabric, 2nd apron). it's hard to keep the fabric moving through properly when it's not even touching one of the feed dogs. this time as i sat down to sew, i thought to myself, "you could get a lot closer to the edge and still have the fabric on the feed dogs if you would just adjust the needle position." i was so right. good job, me.

something i still didn't get right on my second piece: a smooth skirt hem.

you can see i have some gathers on the underside of the skirt hem due to excess fabric and trying to keep a smooth, even hem on the top side. in reality, i may not have done anything wrong, it may just be due to the way the pattern is drawn. you are supposed to do a tiny flip under on the skirt bottom then flip it up for a 5" hem. five inches seemed a bit deep to me, so i only did 3" instead. but the pattern is drawn in a tapered shape which means that when you flip it up several inches, it doesn't match up and the only way to make it match that i could figure was to have a few gathers in there. it all looks good on the front side, i just worry it looks wrong on the backside. which of course doesn't really matter except that i want to make this for someone and don't want it to look hokey, even from the backside.

in reality, i'm just glad to be done. i've not felt like making anything at all for the better part of 3 weeks. last friday i got myself geared up to make these aprons, but had to stop halfway through and couldn't get my gumption going again until today. i just made myself sit down and do it. now 'tis done. only it's not suitable for the person i'd intended it for. good thing my girls like it. truth is, i was going to make these aprons for my first five followers, but i'm not feeling too confident with how their turning out and may have changed my mind again. it's a vulnerable feeling, offering something handmade and imperfect to another soul. even if it is a gift.

the upshot of all this rambling is that my follower giveaways are still not done (over two months later) and i'm back to square one with what to make. really, what was i thinking volunteering to make something random? silly me. don't anyone worry too much or feel bad if you're supposed to be getting one. i'm not that stressed about it, i'd just like to make something simple and nice as a thank you and i'm having a hard time deciding what that will be. the headbands were easy, this one not as much. back to the drawing board and daydreaming.

sunday hostess apron

i finished that apron pretty lickety split. i had it completed in the weekend i started it, as promised. it came from heather ross's  weekend sewing, after all, which is full of projects you can make in a weekend. i estimate it was done in about 3 hours from start to finish. that includes the time it took to unpick a seam when i accidentally sewed some of the middle portion of the skirt into the waistband (i felt so high school home ec at that point!) and the funny gaff i made of using a safety pin to pull the end of the tie inside out. that only works when you are pulling a tube inside out, not something sewn off at the end. if you try pulling the tie through with a safety pin, like i so brilliantly did, then you end up with a safety pin stuck on the inside of your tie's tip. oh, live and learn! it was a fun project none-the-less. and if you don't look too closely at my stitching, it's pretty darn cute.

the pattern was mostly easy to follow except for one part: it wasn't clear enough (for me) about what portions of the waistband and ties to sew together in the beginning. but that was easily remedied when i finally figured out what i was supposed to have done. the only thing i am considering redoing is the gathers on the skirt. i pulled the gathers and then had to set the project aside. they'd loosened up when i came back to sew the waistband on, so they do not appear as full and frilly as i'd have liked and as the pattern intended. but i hear my stylish seester, marcee, about snatched the apron when she was at my house last week, so apparently i'm not the only one who likes the outcome.