Ava Quilts

Hemming Pants

2008-11-12T14:13:00.000-08:00

I bought an awesome pair of jeans the other day and the pants are too long, which means I have to shorten them. The last pair of jeans I bought I folded the hem up on the bottom till I got it shortened to how I wanted, then cut the extra fabric out or something weird, so the hem is now coming off my old pants, and the bottom of them are fraying.

This time I'm just folding up the hem till I get it shortened, then sewing it down and leaving the original hem intact!

I want to say the hem on the pants is 2", and I had to fold it up twice to get it the right length, so that took like 4" off the pants?

I'm glad my mom bought me my own sewing machine for my birthday/Christmas a few years ago! Otherwise I'd have to wait until I went to her house to fix them, or just wear them as is.

You would think...

2008-10-20T14:29:00.000-07:00

that since I have 3 hrs of free time to myself each day that I would be sewing more, but nope. My little one goes to preschool each day now, so I have those few hours where I'm all alone in the house. It is nice, but it's weird too. I'm used to him being home all day every day with me, and now he goes to preschool 3 hrs a day! The only people who had watched my son up until recently were all family. His first day of school was the first day that anybody besides family has taken care of him. He's never been to daycare, he's never had a babysitter, so I was a little weird about putting him on a bus and sending him off to some unknown person each day, but I've met his teacher since his first day and she is really nice. She says that he is just a really lovable little guy and that he is doing great at school.

Starching Fabric?

2008-10-14T14:46:00.000-07:00

I read or heard somewhere about using starch to stiffen my fabric before I cut it so it doesn't stretch out of shape as you're messing with it, but I don't know if I just didn't use enough, or if the way the fabric feels is supposed to be as stiff as it gets.

I originally did one piece spraying starch as I went then I laid it down to dry. And then my small square pieces that I'd already cut out, I just laid them on my cutting mat, sprayed them, flipped them over and sprayed them again and let them dry. Some of them did ripple somewhat, but they feel stiffer than the big piece of fabric I sprayed!

Need Safety Pins :(

2008-09-07T14:35:00.001-07:00

I need to go to the store and buy some bigger safety pins later. The ones I have are smaller ones, so they don't hold the front, batting and backing without messing up the way the fabric is laying. :( I need to turn the front piece anyway because it runs out of backing fabric on the sides, but not on the top and bottom.

BOM #3!

2008-09-06T16:25:00.000-07:00

Got this one done this afternoon. I got it all sewn together and then realized one of the pieces didn't get sewn down (thankfully I had just sewed that section!) so I had to run it through the machine again and move the one section so it got sewed down. But it's done!

Sitemeter and Blog Question

2008-09-05T19:19:00.000-07:00

Help! In 4 minutes earlier today I got 16 hits to my blog, all from very weird URL's. Has anybody else had that problem? And they are all different people and all foreign countries.

Almost Done

2008-09-05T14:14:00.000-07:00

I'm almost done with the block. I've been reusing the fabric I did the first time I did some of the blocks, so it's not necessarily coming out 100% correct but oh well. Tonight the plan is to go to the bookstore and you can bet I'll be looking at the quilting magazines!

Hopefully by Monday!

2008-09-04T23:19:00.001-07:00

Hopefully by Monday I will have my block completed. I have 3 pieces that I pinned to the wall so I know where they are and can easily see how much I have left to do. I plan to do some more work on it tomorrow. Today I just got frustrated with it because after I got 4 pieces all done, and 2 more partially done, I realized that they weren't going to go into the block the way that I thought. So I had to print out a mirror version of some of the pieces and start over!

Still Working on Block 3

2008-09-03T22:55:00.001-07:00

I'm still working on block #3. I ran into a problem with my rotary cutter, it's like the blade is really dull or something, so I had to switch to another rotary cutter I have. I used the one for paper piecing and cutting through flannel, but it seems they should last longer than that!

When I tried to use the one rotary cutter it felt like if you have a pin in your fabric and you try to cut over it. Weird description huh?

BOM #2

2008-09-01T12:37:00.000-07:00

My block won't be going into a quilt, just practicing. I got better with paper piecing when I worked on this one. I don't know how to do the mitered corner so I decided to paper piece it.

BOM #1

2008-09-01T12:36:00.001-07:00

My blocks aren't going into a quilt, I'm just trying to get some practice!

Fabric I Just Bought

2008-08-31T18:46:00.000-07:00

I went to Joann's today and bought some fabric. I tried to stay away from the blues and purples that I love so much but I couldn't help but be drawn to them! I think my favorite colors to include in a quilt are blue, green, and purple.