A Homemade Dress for Hazel Village's Phoebe Fawn

I really like the Art Gallery Fabric that I used for the Bomber Jacket in my last post and here it is again in a dress I created for Phoebe Fawn. This fabric line, designed by Amy Sinibaldi, is aptly called “Dollhouse”! This particular pattern in the fabric line is called “Jolie Fresh in Knit.”

Phoebe tells me Autumn is one of her favorite seasons, so I thought this soft knit with a bit of spandex (great for taking leaping jumps!) fabric would be perfect for her. I drafted the dress pattern. It’s a simple A-line with a couple tucks in the front bodice and a ribbing neckline to help keep out the drafts. The tiny button is OK because there aren’t any children under age 3 in my house. (It wouldn’t be safe on a doll dress used by a very young child because it’s a potential choking hazard),

Her Flower Crown is from Hazel Village. Its so sweet!

I really enjoyed making this little knit dress!

Phoebe’s Fawn’s little tail, peeking out the back of her dress!

Notice: This blog is not monetized: I do not use affiliate links. When there are links in a post, they are to give credit to another creative person, because I like or have used a product, or to help the reader easily find supplies for a project.

STEM Theme Quilt

The Proper Bostonian Quilters Guild has a number of charity projects.  One involves making quilts for specific kids, using a theme of their choice. I recently took a look at the list. One teenage boy had requested a quilt which was essentially a STEM theme. (STEM=Science, Technology, Engineering, Math).  It had been on the list for a quite a long time.  Who has STEM themed fabrics?

I do!  The guys in my family are all engineers. So when I see a great technology fabric, I add it to my stash. I have used a number of fabrics designed by Carolyn Friedlander in this quilt.  She was trained as an architect before she started her quilting business and many of her fabrics fit nicely into the theme. There is also an Art Gallery fabric, "Manhattan's Dawn" by Leah Duncan, which is a street layout. 

I used Cheryl Arkison's pattern, "Stripes" from her book, A Month of Sundays. Her quilt was a mix of blue stripe fabrics.  I borrowed the idea of quieter fabrics in the center of the quilt and darker fabrics on each lateral strip of blocks from Score #5, "Rhythmic Grid" in Sherri Lynn Wood's book The Improv Handbook for Modern Quilters. It was fun mixing and matching the designs!

Here's a detail of some of the fabrics and the quilting.

Detail of the blocks and quilting

I used a mix of free motion quilting and straight line quilting with the walking foot for this quilt. I let each block in the quilt dictate which to use.  That definitely kept the project interesting!

Most of my quilts are lap size. This is a twin bed size. It really helped to have the folding table to the left of the machine to hold the weight of the quilt. 

STEM is a great theme!  A challenge, but so much fun!

Modern Flying Geese: Completed Quilts using 3 of 5 variations

So far I have made 3 of the 5 variations shown in my Modern Flying Geese pattern.  Here they are:

Left to Right:  Lion in a square--open diamonds, Study in Melon--closed diamonds, Fox and Geese

At the moment, I'm partial to the Fox and Geese version. But that may be because it is the quilt I just completed. Or it maybe because this is the color scheme my mother, a professional interior designer who was a participant-in and devotee-to Mid-Century Modern, used in a house my father built in the early 1950s.  The use of turquoise and yellow-green with accents of grey and navy seemed very avant guard to me at the time! 

I quilted Fox and Geese with the walking foot on my domestic sewing machine.  Here are two details of the quilting.

I used painter's tape to mark the first the row in the upside down V, top left in the photos.  Then I used my line of stitching as my guide for the subsequent rows.  When I reached the top of the triangle in the center of the bright green block, I had drifted to the left approximately 1/4 inch.   If I were doing it again, I would draw a line with dressmaker's chalk, or other removable marking, from the center of the top block to the point of the inner triangle in the green block.  That would have given me a clear pivot point and my stitching could have stayed in alignment. That's how I marked my Modern Hexagon Quilt.  

Here's one last photo. This is my English Springer Spaniel, Tipper, showing off the text fabric on the back of the quilt. He likes to pose in my quilt photos!

Modern Flying Geese: Variation 4, Work in Progress

I'm starting to work on one more quilt which is variation of my Modern Flying Geese with Variations pattern. Version 4 is probably the most consistent with Modern Aesthetics of the five variations in my  pattern. 

I'm using a mix of fabric lines:  Carolyn Friedlander's Line "Botanics", coordinating Kona cottons assembled by fabricBUBB on Etsy, Art Gallery "Gramercy Park" by Leah Duncan and an assortment of cream fabrics with low volume prints.  (The collection of Kona's is so beautiful I would have wanted it even if I hadn't been collecting fabrics in the "Botanics" line). 

The pairs of flying geese in the quilt float in negative space.  I'm thinking I might make this quilt larger than the 40 x 52 size in the pattern.  I think more negative space will be a good thing...and make the quilt more cuddly too!

The flying geese are done and the background is cut out.  Quilt assembly is pending!

Modern Flying Geese: Variation 4

From other blogs:

Have you seen Abby Glassenberg's post about "How Much Fabric Designers Earn--an inside look" on her blog, While she Naps?   If you buy fabric or are fans of particular fabric designers, Abby's post from November 3, 2014 is a must read.  Once again Abby has written an amazing piece based on excellent research.  Take a few minutes to read the comments at the end of the post.  They are really interesting too.

Tomorrow Abby is posting a piece on designing fabrics for Joann's Fabrics.  I know it is going to be fascinating reading!