Poplar Block #1
There are six blocks to my little quilt for the nieceling. Three of them have large trees, like this:
As I described in the last post, the circular part is pieced in. I sewed the trunk to the bottom of the tree before I set it in and just poked it through to the front, then sewed it down as a last step to finish the block. From the back, it looks like this:
I’ve been on kind of a sewing binge. I hope after the weekend I’ll have a finished dress/tunic to show you. My binge may also have included some fabric purchases. I may have discovered the rabbit hole that is Glorious Color. (Why yes, I do covet the Liberty assortments. Do you think I could register for one, you know, for the baby?) But with spring busting out all over, how could I resist these?
Hmm, WordPress has once again managed to desaturate my photos. Imagine these brighter!
Some of these, at least, are going to become ducky little Oliver + S garments. If my sewing skills hold up, that is. (I had a small tantrum over the fact that my sewing machine has a maximum stitch width of 5mm and is therefore unable to sew a zigzag stitch over (but not into) a piece of quarter-inch elastic. I called the sewing machine store to find out if there was some magical way to sew a longer zigzag that I was missing, but there wasn’t. I actually tried manually shifting the whole piece back and forth between every stitch, but this was too ludicrous for words. Finally I pulled up my socks, thought through the problem, and used the other kind of zigzag that makes several stitches on each pass, having carefully stretched and pinned the elastic ahead of the needle. It turned out fine.)
Posted: April 28th, 2010 at 4:00 am
Love your tree. I like how well the technique worked for you. I might have to try this out. 🙂
Posted: April 28th, 2010 at 4:04 am
Very cute – I like how your nieceling may be able to play ‘i-spy’ with some of the fabrics when she is older.
I guess your other option for sewing in the 1/4″ elastic would be by hand, but that is fun and novel for maybe a few inches at most!
Posted: April 28th, 2010 at 4:19 am
Hi, if you really stretch out the elastic, won’t that make it narrower? Then you could ease it through the zigzag channel. The other way I used to do it was to sew a tuck on the inside of the garment, to form a fabric channel.
Good luck; I wish I had time to sew as well as knit – and spin – and crochet – and needlefelt – you get the idea 🙂
Posted: April 29th, 2010 at 10:56 am
The quilt block looks pretty good. You are definitely a better sewer than I. My last skirt is still waiting for the waist band and hemming (still, it’s only been about 2 years).