My Sewing Projects: January 2008

The second project that I have completed in 2008!

I don't have a lot clothes that fit right now and I made a whole bunch of shirts during the summer, but now that it is full blown winter, and we have been getting so much snow this year, I don't have a lot of winter shirts. Anyway I was wanting more shirts with long sleeves.

So I originally intended to make this a long sleeve shirt instead of a 1/2 sleeve. But I made a shirt like this for Christmas and the sleeves pattern I used ended up being a weird length that went above my wrist, which made the shirt look like high water sleeves, so I wanted something longer. Well I really cut it short on the amount of fabric I had. I had to piece the one sleeve, and then I cut the one sleeve 3 inches longer, but forgot to add the additional length. I was really frustrated but I salvaged the project by cutting a lot of length off and making the sleeves half sleeves. Hooray for cutting more off and fixing it!

So I love to sew and spend a lot of time sewing. I decided that I needed a place to keep track of all the projects that I complete and also showcase them, so here goes. So I am only planning on posting about projects that I finish currently. I am going to start a flick r account that has pictures of past completed projects, for anyone that is curious.

This is the first project that I completed in 2008, yay!

That black dot on my lip is a big nasty cold sore

In September 2007 my mom and her siblings cleaned our their parents' house (my grandparents). My Grandma died over 7 years ago, and my Grandpa will never leave the assisted living home that he has been living in for almost 6 years, so they decided it was time to get the house cleaned out and sold. So while going through things, and there were a lot of things because my Grandma didn't waste anything, she had cut up all of these different polester fabrics into blocks that are about 1.75" by 1.75". Neither of my aunts or my mom wanted to save these fabric squares and they were going to be thrown away, but I couldn't let that happen. I just kept picturing my grandma sitting at her desk cutting out all of these squares, and I wanted her to know that her work wasn't fruitless.

While I was at my Mom's house over new years, I pieced all of these squares together into nine-patch blocks, because that is always what my Grandma did, and there enough additional nine-patch blocks from this project that I will be able to make a doll blanket for my girls and a baby blanket for my sister for her future children.

Anyway I was really pleased with this project, because I know that my grandma would be so pleased that I used those squares that she cut. This blanket is going to be used in my bike trailer to help keep my girls warm during the winter. Every time we have biked since making it, it makes me think of my Grandma, and that is a nice thing. Also on other thing I wanted to mention is that the long strips of navy blue are also the same size squares, but there were tons of navy blues. I can only assume, because my grandma wore a lot of navy blue polester pants, is that theses squares were cut from pants that she no longer wore. What a good woman my Grandma, not wasting a thing, and using everything!