bodner052

This one is all about the fabric. It is a medium weight Japanese cotton I purchased from Louise Cutting at the Atlanta Expo in March. I purchased 1.5 yards and it is 45 inches wide. What was I thinking?! I just barely squeezed out this version of the Zen jacket pattern from the Sewing Workshop. (It looks like the left front curves down but that is just a shadow. The front hem is even on both sides.) Truthfully, this is a not-unusual predicament for me. In my personal private postmortems I see it as a source of inspiration. But in the moment, I wonder why I'm so cheap. So I had to choose my pattern carefully and manage the fabric as efficiently as I could without sacrificing the distinctive print. The Zen jacket has an inverted pleat in the back. That was the first thing to go. I also narrowed the fronts by creating plackets down the center fronts. For this I used a cotton-linen in black and gray check. I also cut off the sleeve hems and created facings using the same black and gray...

For a long time now, I have admired sun prints, especially the botanical ones. But I always thought it required special paint, or special fabric, or special something. I have recently learned that it does not require anything special at all. How fun is that!? Episode 1711 - Print and Paint - of Quilting Arts included a segment on this. Artist Lisa Chin demonstrated that these prints can even be accomplished by the impatient artist using an iron (no sun at all)! I did not have much luck with an iron but everything else I tried worked great. First I soaked a piece of thrifted white cotton shirt in plain water and wrung it out. Then I placed it on the bottom of a plastic bin. I diluted some fabric paint with water and painted the color on with a wide brush. Lisa Chin says you can do this with ordinary acrylic craft paint too. Next I placed a *fresh* weed on top of it and placed it in the direct sunlight for a couple of hours, just until it was completely dry. I have lots of these fresh we...

For a while now, I've been an admirer of modern quilts and especially those that are improvisational. I have been following Debbie of A Quilter's Table via her blog , as well as Flickr and Instagram. When she issued a challenge a few weeks ago, I decided to give it a try. The challenge is called Improv Stripes and you can see the description here . My first attempt involved two coordinating fabrics. I made one block with some pretty skinny stripes first: Back of block with skinny stripes Front of block with skinny blocks After this block I tried more chunky blocks and found those to be more fun for me. It is lots easier to make the blocks flat if the stripes don't overlap one another. And I like the look of the more chunky blocks. I arranged the blocks free-form, layering the raw edges until it pleased me. Then I added a cotton flannel batting and a striped linen piece for the back. The striped linen piece came from a thrifted shirt. My quilting is simply more-or-less strai...

This project was inspired by a recent article in Threads magazine - Jeans to Jacket by Mary Ray (July 2017 Number 191. I love almost everything that Mary designs. And I've been wanting to play with the Tabula Rasa jacket pattern again. Also I found a pair of DH's jeans in the trash. He thought they were too worn to even give to charity. But they were just right for a remake. First I took the jeans apart, as much as I could. DH helped me remove the rivets. As mentioned in a previous post, this created fabric with all sorts of interesting resist patterns from the years (and years and years) of wear. I took one belt loop apart but tossed the rest. I kind of wish I had kept those too. They would have made such interesting closures for the front. I used the one on the back: Stitching added to one shoulder area where the knee was extra worn. Because of the fairly narrow pattern pieces in the Tabula Rasa, I was able to cut most parts with a minimum of piecing. Of course, I wanted som...