Hello Friends!
Thanks for reading! LOOK! I made a dog! I signed up for the https://www.purlsoho.com mailing list, and they offered a free pattern of my choice of 4 different things. As the name implies, it's more of a knitting place, but they had this adorable pattern for a stuffed Dachshund, and I made it!!! I was inspired to make him as a present for a sweet new baby girl (princess). So, he's got a big job to do.
While I don't have a free pattern to offer you (yet), I love the idea of doing a sew-along to make him! (Just go to purlsoho.com, join their email list and download the Purl Soho Pup.) The pattern was very straightforward, but if you've never sewn together paws and ears and head and tail before, it might seem daunting. In fact, I was so hesitant about even beginning this sweet project that I enlarged the pattern pieces from the original letter size paper to 129% enlargement! I thought a bigger dog would be easier. I wound up making the original proportions, and it was not difficult or scary. Get in touch with me if you'd like to work on this together! I'd LOVE to!
The thing that made me question my ability to meet this Hotdog head-on was that I was not much of one for sewing curves (on purpose) before last week.
I've gotten much better at straight seams, mind you, but curves were a scary territory for me. I began with a simple "Drunkard's Path" pattern which can be so cunning in contrasting fabric.
Here is another very simple template for creating the two-piece blocks for Drunkard's Path. The rest is up to you. (http://quilterscache.com/D/DrunkardsPathBlock.html)
Perhaps my imagination was stuck in neutral, but I began with my blocks by making CIRCLES! Something about the way this looked to me made me very happy, so I kept going.
The contrast is not high on the blue and pink example, but it gives you the idea of how the blocks, arranged in a different pattern would create something quite different. That's the traditional "Drunkard's Path."
With all the contrasting color/pattern ideas there are, this is such a fun way to work with curves.
One of these days, I'm going to have the courage to tackle a double wedding rings quilt like the AMAZING Victoria Findlay Wolfe! That's a whole project that we'll take on at another time. Let me know if you've ever wanted to take Double Wedding Rings on and we can take the adventure together!
Well, that was my week in CURVES. Now I want to talk TOMATOES!!!
This is my collection (so far). Have you ever wondered, "Why Tomatoes?" I have. And now, thanks to the Google, I know a bit more than I did before.
Basically: a tomato with a strawberry attached—was most likely introduced during the Victorian Era.[4] According to folklore, placing a tomato on the mantel of a new house guaranteed prosperity and repelled evil spirits. If tomatoes were out of season, families improvised by using a round ball of red fabric filled with sand or sawdust. The good-luck symbol also served a practical purpose—a place to store pins.[5] Typically, the tomato was filled with cotton, wool, horsehair, or sawdust[6] and the strawberry with emery powder, an abrasive to clean and sharpen the pins.
The italics are copied directly from Wikipedia. The references are pretty intriguing, and I love the part about the emery powder in the strawberry! This does work! I can attest! I like the ultra-fine pins. The blue headed ones are new. They weren't sliding into and out of the fabric the way I had expected, until I'd put them into and pulled them out of the Tomato a few times. Not even the strawberry, but the abrasion of the innards of the tomato was enough to give the pin the proper sheen. Interesting. Proven by personal experience.
Talk to you all again next week. Sign up for the blog (it would make me so happy). Even if you don't give a fig about sewing minutiae, at least, when you get an email that there's a new blog, you might think, "Oh, I guess she's still alive. Maybe I should call her up for lunch some time next week..." That'd be fine too! Let me know what YOU are working on! I'm really interested. Have a great week.
Sorting pins,
j