Terminado/Finished Sewing Baby Lounger- Changing/Playing/Napping Pad

Cousin Martha Loving up my dog Jasper
on our recent camping trip
at Pismo Beach

My cousin is going to be a grandmama!

I thought about buying some beautiful Kona cotton and making a finely pieced and quilted baby quilt. 

But......

Would I get it done? I hate to admit that I have found bits and pieces related to unrealized baby quilts in my sewing collection, where the baby involved is in high school..... That's what happens when you decide to focus on garment sewing!

"Whiskers and Tails" - Robert Kaufman fabric

I was looking through my fabric inventory and found this doggie print, very thick batting and a blue and white striped home dec remnent. Golly what a thought - to use up what I have!

Considered various piecing ideas with the print and decided some things are more darling just as they are.

Here is baby pad tucked into it's matching laundry bag
Extra laundry bags for babies are handy
Note - Jasper appears to approve

I have just completed the baby-to-be, a changing/napping/playing pad. It's not intended as a blanket, because the home-dec side would be rough on tender skin. I remember it’s handy to have items you can throw down on the grass or a less than clean zone. 

Babies lounge around a lot.

Reminder of doggy print  became laundry bag - and will serve as gift bag for the baby shower. Horray! nothing remains but minimal scrap!

Also ordered  a baby’s-first type toy to attach to top of laundry bag

I also plan to make several of those bunnies you fold out of washclothes* to attach to the top - there never being sufficient quantities of washclothes in house when a kid is born

I will save the fine piecing and lovely quilting for another day

Técnicos

I did basic round shaped quilting - kind of snail like. Paper worked  well - I hand basted a big circle of it down, then stitched it in place with machine stitching and ripped it off. I also used round chalk lines with pins as guide lines. Quilted enough across surface to attach top to back.

Tried the walking foot - but teflon foot floated better. Maybe because of  very thick batting?

Making the bias strips from home dec fabric, and dealing with fussy corners actually took the most time - that thick home dec fabric is not very fun on the mitred corners.

* For washcloth bunnies I rubber band (instead of tying ribbon) and add faces with sharpie pen (instead of gluing on eyes) to attach to top. The ones in the link below have attachments that would cause choking (that link is not intended for newborn babies but has a handy folding diagram). But once the rubber band is removed and the cloth washed - it just becomes a washcloth. In addition to following link, there are a variety of youtube videos showing how to fold these bunnies origami-like.

 http://www.auntannie.com/Easter/WashclothBunny/

Costume: The Queen of Hearts

The Queen of Hearts
Ready to Trip the Light Fantastic

Techniques: The Queen of Hearts already owned the ruched/shirred black bustier and tutu skirt. For the inset I cut a long rectangle of white costume satin and ran a gathering stick up both sides and two, closely spaced down the middle. Then I spent a lot of time trying to get the white satin ruching/shirring to mirror the black satin. Finally I had to just go for it. The red hearts are two sided. I pinned the white sating rectangle to mirror the sweat heart neckline of the bustier, then loosely hand stitched the white section on. After which, I hand stitched the hearts down. I expect to remove the entire inset in the future with a seam ripper, so I didn't go for a permanent meet up between the insert and original bodice.

Technique for the future: 

Those hearts didn't come out with crisp edges, eh? Well frankly in this case I kind of like the soft floaty,  imperfect, homemade look. These days, too many costumes roll off the assembly line for my taste. However, if I wanted to achieve a crispy look on this soft stuff another time, I think I would interface a similarly rounded and pointed edge form to one of the sides, then sew them up (all except for one straight shot on the right or left leg, then turn the joined sections right side out and stitch it up. In this case I didn't have to stitch the open edge up, because I was sewing the entire heart down to the white satin, so I just caught up the open edge then.

It's a Pressing Matter: Get Behind Me Goo!

It's not the Queen of Hearts
fault that I foreswore the
press cloth in my attempts to
make quick work of her
togs

I'm pretty sure I'm not the first sewist to trot out the old phrase It's a pressing matter, when it comes to ironing  So I surely do apologize if another sewing blogger or podcaster has used it as a major theme. The good stuff tends to stick in my craw, and I often think I've invited it myself. It really used to irk me is when somebody else used my good ones, (particularly at work!) and got all the credit. But it happens all the time. I've learned to accept it, and realize I probably do it myself.

I've been a little more focused on pressing because of my Fashion Sewing 110 class at Cañada College.  Rhonda and Kathleen made rather a point of remembering to use the press cloth to avoid sticky situations. That pretty much saved my iron a few weeks back when I mistakenly used 2-sided fusible instead of interfacing (I was in a bit of hurry and it looked the same to me). One of the sticky sides ended up on my press cloth and not the sole plate of my iron.

However I wasn't so lucky yesterday. In a hurry to get 3 just-turned-right-side-out red satin hearts for my daughter's Halloween "Queen of Hearts" bodice well shaped, I thought the iron, minus press cloth,  would help give them more definition. Well, it did. It also gave the iron a nice coat of sticky residue. Apparently the slickery coating on that cheap costume satin comes off mighty easily - in this case onto the sole plate of my iron.

Luckily, I remembered that Kathleen had mentioned she cleans the iron sole plates in class with that fine product "Goo Be Gone". I'm not the only person who doesn't always use the press cloth, it turns out. Luckily I own a bottle of Goo Be Gone Spray Gel. And, interesting to me - is it to anyone else? - I bought it at Menlo Hardware, a store that Kathleen (and her parents before her) owned herself for a long time.

My iron is shiny clean now. And the Queen of Hearts is ready to trip the light fantastic in a few weeks time.