Isabel's Blessing Gown

I sewed the sleeves onto the gown, using entredeux.

 I sewed a French seam to enclose one sleeve and side seam, leaving the other side open. 

I sewed the fancy band together, using three rows of lace insertion and two rows of entredeux.

 To accomplish this, I sewed 10 lengths of stitches, 90" long! 

A lot of sewing!!!

I sewed a ruffle to the bottom of the skirt, one and a half times the length of the bottom of the dress.

I attached a beautiful pice of 2" wide French lace edging to the bottom of the ruffle and then sewed the other side seam with a French seam. 

Here's a closeup of the sleeve and the embroidered cotton Swiss band.

Here's a close up of the yoke, each little piece of lace and entredeux was seen in separately.

I have these fabulous book that I always refer to when I'm sewing heirloom children's clothing.

I traced Isabel's initials, with the first letter of her family name in the middle. I used white for the letters and ecru for the vines.  The idea is that when Isabel has a daughter, her initials will be embroidered next to her mothers before she is blessed in the gown. The dress has the potential to have initials all around the hem!

This is the yoke on the slip, I embroidered is and used Swiss cotton lace around the neck and armholes.

I sewed a narrow piece of French lace edging to the hem.

Here's the full view of the slip.

I smocked the bonnet with silk ribbon, it had a nice sheen to it :)

The ribbon is silk satin, it's so soft!

This is Isabel Louise, in her blessing gown, isn't she beautiful? I'll show you some close ups :)

This is Isabel's family, the sun is in their eyes, lol!

This is our family who were able to attend the blessing, minus my husband who was packing and my son in law who took the photo. We have one daughter wasn't here because she lives in Florida. 

Thanks for being interested in the evolution of the gown :)

Heirloom Sewing

This is my Sally Stanley pleater, and my husband made the board for me years ago.  

Through the years, the little dowels that hold the spools of quilting thread have broken off but it still works :)

(There's a Netflix movie on my iPad, sorry didn't mean to include it!)

The grooves are where the needles go, they curve around the dowel.

I rolled the fabric on a rod and slowly turn it through the pleater, aligning the fabric with a certain groove to keep it straight.

The quilting threads act as guidelines for me to smock on.

I'm smocking a bonnet for my granddaughter Isabel's blessing.

The thread is silk ribbon.

The fabric is silk batiste and it's very difficult to work with.

I'm using Madeira thread on my Bernina 750 QE and it keeps breaking, which is very frustrating.

It seems to break the most when I'm using a gathering stitch.

This is entredeux, it's French for "between two".  

Entredeux is used in heirloom sewing to join laces or join seams.

Sometimes you leave the seam allowance on while you sew it to fabric, but if you're sewing it to gathered lace, you trim one side of the entredeux off.

Here, I have trimmed the seam allowance of the entredeux and am attaching gathered French cotton lace.

French cotton lace is wonderful to work with!

To gather the lace, you pull one of the cotton threads running along the top, as pictured below.

This is one of my heirloom books, I think it's from the late 80's, or early 1990's.

I really can't imagine dressing a little boy up in that outfit trimmed in lace, but it's a Southern thing.

This is the yoke and neckline of Isabel's dress.

Each piece of lace and entredeux is attached separately, on the yoke.

The lace with the embroidered flowers is called Swiss cotton.

I finished the neckline and attached the gathered lace with entredeux.

The shoulder seams are attached with entredeux also.

I don't have little Isabel to try the dress on and show you how the dress drapes, so I used Kermit :)

Here's a closeup, I think you can see the lace so much better here.

I used a band of embroidered swiss cotton on the sleeve, with entredeux on each side.

There will be a small "fancy band"on the lower part of the dress, and then a gathered ruffle trimmed in wider French cotton on the hem.

Isabel's blessing is next Sunday, I hope to be able to show you photos of her finished gown, slip and bonnet, next week.

I'll also have lots of photos of Isabel in her silk gown to show you too :)

Have a great week!

Farm Girl Vintage Fever!

Have you heard of "Farm Girl Vintage"?

Well, I have the fever!  The Farm Girl Vintage fever!

If you are on Instagram, I'm sure you have caught the fever :)

The Farm Girl Vintage sew along begins on Friday, May 1.

I will be traveling that day, so I did some sewing of my own!

I've only shared one block (the 6" strawberry) on Instagram so far.

I'm hoping I can share them when the sew along begins and it will feel like I'm sewing along on that day too!!!

I forgot to mention that you can find the 
Farm Girl Vintage sew along  on Lori's blog here.

This is my Scrappy Strawberry block, a teeny little 6" one.

All the rest of the blocks are 12".

This is the Postage Stamp block.

I turned the Postage Stamp block into a Farm Girl Star!

This is the Milking Day Block.

The Milking Day block reminds me of my daughter Rebecca.

She owns 1/14th of a cow named Patience, and milks her once a week.

You can see the post I wrote about milking Patience  here...

Patience just birthed a bull calf.
 Here are my grandchildren, Maisie and Benjamin with him.

This is my Scrappy Strawberry block.

I really like using low volume backgrounds to mix things up a little,  and add more interest.

This is my Canning Season block.

This is my Baking Day block.

The spoon is backwards as compared to the pattern, but I made it my own :)

I love Jadeite bowls, and my daughter gave me a blue one which I love!

I put the red trim on the blue Jadeite bowl simply because I love the color red.

Cherries are my favorite fruit, I can eat them all day long...
This is the Pie Cherries block.

All of the blocks have such cute vintage farm names!

There are so many ideas for quilts to make in the book, and ideas of quilts to create :)

I've made so many Haystack blocks completed, when I sew using Leaders and Enders, that I'm thinking of making this quilt first.

It's kind of hard to see the whole quilt, but there are 4 Haystack blocks sewn together to make a 12" one.

There are 12 - 12" farm girl blocks sewn on the quilt too, tied up with block posts and sashing.  I only have to make a few more 12" blocks and then I can begin assembling my quilt!

I hope you buy the book and join the sew along, it will be loads of fun!

I'll see you in another week, yeehaw!!!

Quilty Fun Birthday - Paisley

Lori Holt designed the cutest Quilty Fun Birthday Cake banner.

You can get the link to the FREE pattern and more information on my recent post, here.

I decided to make a "quilty fun" birthday cake for each of my 11 grandchildren (wow, I can't believe I'm that blessed!) this year.

I'm going to make each cake into a personalized banner, and each year their moms can hang them on the wall to make their birthdays a little more special :)

Paisley Louise will have her first birthday in May.

I made her a red velvet cake, because I know it's her dad's favorite flavor.

I made sure that the cake pedestal had a paisley pattern too!

To personalize the cake and turn it into a banner, I added a 4 l/2" strip to the bottom of the cake.

I used wonder under and cut out the letters 3" high.

I ironed them on and used a blanket stitch on my sewing machine.

I found some fabric that reminded me of sprinkles, and cut 2 l/2" strips for the borders.  

I machine quilted it and voila, a pretty banner for Paisley :)

This is Paisley Louise in the Easter dress her mom made for her.

Isn't she as cute as can be?

One is a magical age :)

Snapshots QAL - kettle

This is block #3, Put the kettle on!

Bonnie from Cotton Way, chose this block to represent your favorite drink.

One of my favorites is Kombucha, have you ever tried it?

The Synergy brand in Gingerade and Gingerberry are my favorite flavors :)

Here's my kettle!

I am using all of Bonnie and Camille's fabrics for this quilt, but not much Daysail.

I had such a large collection of their fabric that I decided to use it instead of buying more :)

I'll just buy more of other lines, Ha ha!!!

These are the 3 blocks I've made so far...

Yes, I'm sticking to the red and aqua theme, one of my many favorite color combos!

The Snapshots QAL is a fundraiser to raise money for St. Jude's hospital.

A $5 donation is suggested, and the money goes to an incredible cause, helping sick children!
All of the information is on my Snapshots QAL board on Pinterest.

Ironing Board Cover tutorial link and Fabric Organizing

The last time I made a new ironing board cover, was over 3 years ago.

I knew that I had some severe water stains on my ironing board cover, but it wasn't until it started to molt, that I couldn't wait any longer...

My son ironed his shirt every morning before he went to work, maybe that's why he moved out, lol!

(just kidding...)

I think the stains are a combination of steam and starch!
The water stains were beginning to discolor my quilt blocks when I pressed them.

I saw that Jennifer Mathis from Ellison Lane Modern sewing and design blog, had a tutorial for a 30 minute ironing board cover.

I pinned it to my Random Tutorials board on Pinterest, you can find it here.

I bought some insulate at JoAnn's, and cut two thicknesses of warm and natural, and sewed them together.

I also bought some home decor fabric by Nate Berkus.

My new ironing board cover even has some nice padding!

I love it :)

Vicki, a fellow quilter at our Sacramento Modern Quilt Guild, told us how she wraps her fabric around comic book boards, and how wonderful it makes her stash look.

I bought this pack at Amazon for $10 and later found cheaper ones at my local comic book store.

This is some of my stash before wrapping them around the boards.

Not too bad, I try to keep the stacks looking nice.

Wow, what a difference!

I love the look of my fabric wrapped around the boards.

One drawback, is that this way of organizing takes up a little more room, and I don't have enough shelving to display my entire stash this way.

For now, it's a start and I arranged most of the fabric shelves with the fabric wrapped around the cardboard.

There are lots of tutorials online, just "google" wrapping quilt fabric around cardboard and you'll find them :)