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
by Sherri Sylvester | Apr 11, 2017
Turns out there are four ways to quilt something – by hand, on your home machine, with a long arm machine or on your embroidery machine. Guess which one I’m going to talk about today?! (#spoileralert Check the title!)
When I was loaned the Janome Skyline S9 combination sewing and embroidery machine last year, I was excited to see a page in the embroidery designs called “Quilting Designs”. Fast forward to now, and I’ve finally managed to use them!
Here’s a little tutorial so you can do it too!
I’m quilting an Easter throw pillow for this project. You can find the instructions for the traditionally pieced 12″ block here: Spring Bunny quilt block.
This post is sponsored by Janome Canada. The Skyline S9, AcuDesign app and iPad Mini have been loaned to me as part of their Artisan program.
1) Prep your project as you would normally for quilting, with batting and backing. Since the backing won’t show on this throw pillow, I used some inexpensive broadcloth in place of a better quality fabric.
2) Use a removable fabric pen to mark the areas to be quilted. I chose to mark out four equal 6″ squares for my throw pillow.
3) Choose a hoop and a design to embroider. I chose the first design in the Quilting Designs folder – the center reminds me of a kite – perfect for spring! There are 12 quilting designs included with the Skyline S9 machine. You will also need to choose a hoop size that will accommodate your quilting. In my case, the largest RE20a hoop worked well.
4) Set up the machine. You will need to thread the machine, attach Embroidery Foot P and choose a needle. I used a blue tipped Janome needle and regular Gutermann thread in both the needle and bobbin.
5) Size the design. You can do this on the machine, or send it over wi-fi or USB key to the AcuDesign app – available for purchase and downloadable to Apple devices. Use the sizing feature to re-size the file as needed. I wanted the quilting to be square, and just smaller than 6″. When finished, send the file back directly to the embroidery machine.
6) Hoop your project. I found that the thin batting I used fit in the hoop along with the pillow front and backing. Be careful not to overstress the hoop.
7) Position the file. I used the free Acusetter app (downloadable to Apple devices) to position my file. First, receive the file to the Acusetter app. It will lead you to photograph and line up the hoop. Then position, angle and scale your file as needed and send it back to the machine.
8) Place your hoop in the machine and start quilting! (Here’s a fun Instagram video of the machine working.)
9) Repeat the steps to embroider the other areas of your project. I took time to mirror the image for each of the 3 remaining corners of my pillow using the Skyline S9 embroidery editing mode. This way they look like one cohesive quilt design.
Finish your project as desired!
I love this feature on the Skyline S9 machine, it makes quilting very quick and easy. Plus, my pillows look super professional, and it only took about 37 minutes of total embroidery time!
This week, I’ll also be posting a tutorial including how I used the quilt bar and dual feed feet to finish the front and how to turn any 12″ quilt block into a throw pillow. See you again soon!
Let me know what you thought of this tutorial. Was it helpful? How do you usually quilt your projects?
by Sherri Sylvester | Feb 28, 2017
I am so thrilled today to let you know that I’m starting my first “real” workshop series in March! I have loved the other two one-time workshops I taught, it’s lovely to chat and talk with other sewers as we create things together. It seems that everyone has had a good time too!
Canadian online fabric shops Country Clothesline and Fabric Spark teamed up last year to open a brick-and-mortar shop in downtown Toronto. It’s a bright and airy space filled with (of course) gorgeous fabrics and fun notions.
I wrote last year about finding my passion where I didn’t expect it, and I’ve found that teaching is one of the things I hope to do more of. The fact that these lovely ladies asked me to teach is so good and I could not be happier!
You can join us for their Learn to Sew Series, specifically “Sewing for your Kids” class for 4 Thursday nights from March 23 to April 13, 2017. Find out more and sign up online here or here, or visit their shop for more details.
Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten my farther-away friends! I will be releasing PDF patterns for each of the 4 projects here on the blog over the next few months. They are all beginner-friendly patterns, specifically designed to increase your sewing knowledge while being perfect gifts for your kids or grandkids (and yourself!)
If you want a laugh, check out this video we took of my youngest during our photo shoot. It was a little chilly!
Here are the 4 projects you’ll be making and what you’ll learn:
Pencil Case (or Sewing Pouch!)
Insert your first zipper into this fully lined and finished pouch. Plus, learn how to sew a French seam.
Fabric: Keely by Alexander Henry, Aunt Ruthie’s Dots on Blue
Child’s Apron (multi-size pattern!)
Finish this simple apron with a neck and hem facing, easy straps and a customizable pocket with tidy edge-stitching.
Fabric: Raindrop Cicada Song, Braidy in Teal
Child’s Throw Blanket
This whole-cloth blanket is flannel backed and omits any batting for the perfect spring/summer weight. Learn to create self-bound mitered corners and how to hand tie a quilt for an easy (and quick) finish.
Fabric: Sew Cherry 2 Red Daisy, Mammoth Flannel in Red
Tote Bag (for You!)
Create a tote bag with boxed corners and curved edges. Find out how to use fusible stabilizers and interfacing to make a stable bag, plus insert a lining to finish it off.
Fabric: Talking Heads, Theory of Aviation Denim Newsprint
I would love to see you there! Let me know if there is anything else you’d love to learn at a workshop.
