by Sherri Sylvester | Jun 5, 2017
Happy Monday to you! Thought I’d drop in today to let you know about a fun tour making the rounds right now. As you might know, it’s Canada’s 150th birthday on July 1st – and some amazing bag-makin’ ladies decided to make a tour out of the occasion.
You probably know by now how much I love featuring Canadian content – so I’m pleased to say this tour features all Canadian pattern designers, bloggers, sewists and even some Canadian tartans! (Which I just found out actually exist – so cool!)
Visit Emmaline Bags for all the details, tour stops and to enter to win some great prizes. Each tour stop has a giveaway of its own – plus there’s a huge Grand Prize to be won!
Today’s tour stops include Sew Far North, and she was kind enough to make my Forest Glen Satchel pattern as part of the tour! In fact, she even made a test version first – so now she’s made two! #bonus Her tester version (above and below) is impeccably sewn with lovely rose fabrics and photographed on a Canadian-appropriate snowy background. LOL
I can’t wait to see her final bag – she sent me the moose photo above as a teaser on Saturday and I thought I’d share it with you! Head over to her blog to see more hear her take on the pattern and enter for your chance to win it too!
Happy Birthday Canada ~ Sherri
by Sherri Sylvester | Jun 3, 2017
Little did I know, when I was oohing and awing over Heather Bailey’s ‘Hello Love’ collection last fall, that I’d get to put together a bundle based on it. Woohoo! Watch out folks – it’s a bright, summery one…
Fabric Spark provided me with this fat quarter bundle and sponsors this blog. My opinions are always my own. Thank you for reading!
Fabric Spark and I go waaaaaay back, lol. They were the first sponsor of this blog and the first to ask me to curate a bundle as well! #bonuspoints
This time they asked if I would choose this month’s Monthly Sparks subscription bundle. These bundles are put together by bloggers and sewists from around the web – and lots of my favorite bloggers are on the list! #fangirl
You can find five unique Monthly Subscriptions at Fabric Spark! It’s so fun to get fabric in your mailbox every month – You can choose to receive any (or all!) of the following options:
It’s always fun to peruse an entire shop’s collection and choose a few fabrics that might go together. But, how do you ever decide?! Usually, I end up finding a fun print to start with and go from there. This time around it was Heather Bailey’s ‘Octopus’s Garden’ in coral. It’s great because it has lots of pinks, reds, purples and a lovely mustard yellow. These inspired filling the bundle with blenders to match.
I tend to make a quilt from each Fabric Spark bundle I’ve curated. So far I’ve started an Hourglass Quilt, am using one for my Sewcial Bee Sampler and recently finished this Trip around the World inspired quilt.
Do you have a favorite quilt pattern that uses roughly 12 fat quarters? I can’t choose between all the one’s I’ve pinned on my (apltly named) “Quilts I Might Make” inspiration board!
Speaking of quilts – Fabric Spark will be at Quilt Canada, coming up June 14-17 in Toronto. Come meet them up close and in person – and pick up a few fabrics you need too. #buyallthethings I’m hoping to be able to get there on the 17th, cross your fingers I can bring the girls with me!
Thanks for visiting. See you again soon ~ Sherri
P.S. About halfway through photographing this bundle I realized it matched my kids’ colouring bucket and spent an inordinate amount of time trying to photograph both it and the bundle. And yes, the kids do keep them in rainbow order!
by Sherri Sylvester | Jun 1, 2017
Enter stage right – Monday – full of after school swimming lessons and general busy-ness, newly finished dresses and previous days of unpredictable rain. Enter stage left – Me – with a rushed plan to fit a photoshoot right smack in the center of it all (before it rained again!). Any guesses to how it went? Lol. Thankfully, after a bit of a rough start (followed by a few minutes of silly selfies), we all got our act together. Whew!
Today is my turn on the Art Gallery Fabrics tour for Katarina Roccella‘s recent collection – inBlue. Aside from my excitement at being asked to show off this beautiful fabric, I’m so pleased that you get a chance to win the Pollywoggles Pattern I used and lots more in the giveaway at the end of this post!
Art Gallery Fabrics provided these Katarina Roccella fabrics and sponsored this post. Pollywoggles Patterns also provided their Primrose Anne pdf dress pattern. My opinions are always my own. Thank you for reading!
First, I have to say my girls and I LOVE these dresses so much! The sweet florals and thoughtful design – I love Katarina Roccella’s design style and my girls do too.
The Bloesem Sweet floral was an instant hit with my oldest and suits her dress well as the main fabric. We used the Bloesem Royal and Chinoiserie Kobalt in the ruffles to highlight and offset it. The little one loves blue, and as we mused over (the many!) she wanted, came back to the light blue backed hot air balloons from Fly Away Laat. Two tiny florals, Weide in Blue and Rose finished it well pulling the corally-pink colour out. I had such a hard time deciding which balloons to feature on her bodice front – did you see the swan balloon?! There were fun surprises hiding throughout this print.
Fabric Quality: I am also glad to write a glowing review of these woven Art Gallery Fabrics. They provide, hands-down, the best quilting cotton to use for sewing apparel. (And I already knew this!) Lately, the trend has been to use apparel fabrics for garment sewing and leave quilting cotton for quilts and other projects. No need here – AGF woven cotton has great drape, feels amazing and behaves beautifully in garment projects.
Sewing Pattern: This is the Primrose Anne pdf pattern from Candian pattern designer Pollywoggles Patterns. I sewed her kids’ robe pattern earlier this year and was so impressed with the instructions that I asked to use this pattern when AGF emailed about their tour. (Thankfully Heidi said yes!)
I think my favorite part of the dress is the back bow and clever strap construction. Close second, though, are the tiered bottom ruffles – which I think match the spirit of Katarina Roccella’s fabric – and look so pretty on the girls. The minute they put the dresses on you could see they felt great in them. Lots of twirling to be had! And speaking of ruffles, I was super grateful for the rolled hemming foot (included with my on-loan Janome Skyline S9) when I needed to hem the 7 yards of ruffles per dress!
In fairness to Heidi’s original pattern, I did alter one dress from the intended tea length. My youngest is going through a “maxi dress please mommy, so they can’t see my shoes” phase! The elastic back bodice makes this dress really easy to fit and should allow it to fit the girls longer as well.
I’m getting long-winded, so I’ll end with the giveaway and ask you for your thoughts. (Plus, take a look through the tour links below – so much great inspiration and options for boys as well!)
What your thoughts are on the fabrics and dresses? How do you approach your garment projects? And have you ever been in a hot air balloon?
Tour Schedule
Monday
I Married Superman
Tuesday
Coffee and Thread – Handmade Frenzy
Wednesday
Sunflower Seams – Handmade Boy
Thursday
Thread Riding Hood – Pear Berry Lane
Friday
Ammon Lane – Sew and Tell Project
a Rafflecopter giveaway
by Sherri Sylvester | May 25, 2017
This past Monday was a lovely warm Canadian holiday, perfect for a trip to the park. The girls and I explored a new area nearby and had a great time taking photos of Frolic – Tamara Kate’s brand new collection for Michael Miller Fabrics. (Best fabric line name ever! Love it!)
Michael Miller Fabrics provided these knit Tamara Kate “Frolic” prints for me to play with. My opinions are always my own. Thank you for reading!
I am fortunate to know Tamara personally. (She’s Canadian too!) I’ve enjoyed meeting and working with her several times. Her fabric collections are filled with bright gorgeous designs, on-trend animals and pretty water-coloury florals. She’s a fantastic quilter and lovely and fun to hang out with in real life too!
Michael Miller Fabrics produced 8 knits along with the quilting cottons for this new collection. (Apparel fabrics, woot-woot!) Great for easy summer sewing, and a first for Tamara’s designs. My favorite kids’ handkerchief-hem Banyan tunic always turns out great. It’s comfortable and looks stylish too. The girls chose the “Frolicking” print in Berry and Royal Blue knits.
By way of a recommendation, if you ever get the chance to work with Michael Miller knits – they are my favorite! I found them when I started sewing knits a few years ago and can’t say enough good. The stretch and recovery are fantastic, they are simple to sew (without many of the usual issues you can get with knits) and they wear really well.
I was curious and did a test to see if they shrink during pre-wash and dry. My 4″ test square was only about 1/8″ shorter afterward. And I love that there wasn’t a need to press the fabric before cutting out my pattern pieces. These shirts are truly wash-and-wear.
The Tamara Kate Frolic collection will be shipping to stores on June 15th, 2017. Ask for it at your local shop! To find more Frolic inspiration visit Tamara Kate to find all of the Frolic Fabric Tour posts as they are released.
I’ve got another Frolic project to share with you soon. If you’d like, follow along to get sneak peeks on Instagram.
What is your favorite knit sewing pattern?
P.S. I love finding great scrappy knit projects and the girls’ headbands were easy to make with my offcuts. I used this knot headband tutorial from girl.inspired. They literally took about 10 minutes each with my serger!
P.P.S. Did you see the cute sizing tags? I made them with my on-loan Janome Skyline S9 – the little clothesline is perfect!
Thanks for visiting, see you again soon! ~ Sherri
by Sherri Sylvester | May 11, 2017
Hey there! It’s been so long, how are you doing? I’m ok, still doing my best to recover from whatever it is that’s got me down. In the meantime, I’ve got a long-finished project to show you. Thankfully there are tons of these in the wings – just gotta get the energy to write about them!
I finished this quilt top almost exactly two years ago, June 2015. Backed, quilted and bound it early this year and photographed it in February. Sounds like May is a good time to write about it then?!
You can read about the process I took to make the top in this post entitled “How Not to Make a Quilt” – for realz – that’s the truth! Back when I wasn’t a quilter, it seemed daunting. After my 2 years more experience it took very little time to finish it up and now it’s a kids cuddly lap size at about 44″ square.
It is quilted using the dual feed foot on my on-loan Janome Skyline S9 with diagonal lines in robbins egg blue with navy thread in the bobbin. I just aimed the machine at the next corner in line and went for it. Each square is about 3 1/2″ square finished, so it was a nice easy finish. I also used basting spray for the first time, love it!
The backing fabric is a gorgeous border print from Sarah Watson’s collection with Cloud 9 Fabrics called “Biology”. The quilt top is made from a generous amount of Cotton and Steel fabrics (from when they first took over the fabric world, lol) with a few other gorgeous prints sprinkled in.
There’s actually a label this time! Stitched in shaky blanket stitches that I was too lazy to redo, or maybe just felt like leaving it to show that I don’t fix everything before it’s posted. Found in a Missouri Star Quilt Company post lately…
Finished is better than perfect!
The colours in this are so bright and cheery. It gets used a lot even if it does clash with my red living room furniture. Quilt top fabrics are a Monthly Sparks bundle I put together for Fabric Spark two years ago, the backing was ordered from them as well. Binding is from a Solids Club subscription with Sew Sisters Quilt Shop. Both are lovely sponsors of this blog and Canadian online shops.
As an aside, I just realized that I’ve replaced photos of “quilt on a barn” with photos of “quilt on an abandoned building”. #citygirl #lol
