Sunday, November 4, 2007

Bathrobe finished and quilt topper done!

I've had a productive last couple of days, project-wise.

First I finished the applique process on the quilt I'm making. Here's a sneak peek at the topper:

Fishie

I won't show any more until my cousin and his wife have seen it. Hopefully that will be soon. I'm still trying to decide if machine quilting or hand quilting is best. The foot for machine quilting is $30, but hand quilting takes so much longer (and I don't have a hoop yet, either). So I'm not sure what I'll do yet. Once I figure it out, I'll baste the sandwich together (I like the food reference in the sewing terminology very much).

The other project I worked on was one that I started and finished. Friday night I cut out all the pieces for Kevin's bathrobe. It isn't a gift -- he just asked me to make one for him. He claims to have never had one before. I was shocked. I was also shocked I didn't know this already. I picked up a unisex PJ pattern, bright blue flannel, and a little bit of bright green and white patterned flannel at Kaimuki Dry Goods last week while my computer wasn't out of commission. I wanted all of the fabric to have a pattern, but the solid flannel was cheaper.

I cut out the pieces on Friday and started putting them together. Last night I made a lot of headway, getting the three main pieces put together, as well as the collar/facing piece. Then this morning I finished it up. I let him try it on a few times to be sure I was making it correctly. I have a tendency to not always follow pattern directions. I alter them and sew things up how I like to, especially when I see things that I think aren't necessary, like topstitching. I only sometimes will do that. But it was a flannel bathrobe, so I didn't do much of that to it.

Kevin in his new bathrobe

He'd been wearing it for a bit when I took this picture, but you get the idea!

It was fun to make. The soft flannel is of course nice to work with, but it does stretch a little, so some places have puckering. And I was very confused about how to match up the back to the shoulder/neck part of the front. There weren't any clear instructions on how to do it. I even matched up the circles and triangles, but there was more fabric on the collar/front piece than the back piece. I ended up just giving up on making it look really nice, since that part won't ever been seen, anyway (it's underneath the green collar in the back). Oh, well. He likes it. :-)

1 comment:

Acornbud said...

You've been busy. The robe came out great and so did you little fishy/