After nearly 3 years, my mother and I were able to see each other in person! What an amazing 10-day visit with lots of mother-daughter bonding. In addition to shopping, cooking new recipes, going for walks, and playing rounds of Rummikub, our visit included lots of crafty fun together.
One of the first projects we tackled was taking apart and repairing one of Mom's first quilts made 14 or so years ago. It was tied with a button at each of the yellow cornerstones and had some signs of wear and tear, especially along one of the sashing strips. We carefully removed the binding, buttons, flat sheet backing, and polyester batting that had seen better days. I was able to remove the damaged sashing strip, but did not have any of the striped fabric in my stash. So we searched my stash for an alternate striped fabric...see if you can spot it in the photo above. While it may stick out here in this small section, it definitely blends in and is VERY hard to find when you look at the entire quilt (as I discovered when I tried to find it to take a picture for this blog post!)
Here's another piece of evidence from one of our crafty sessions...
It's also been nearly 3 years since I last did any fabric dyeing. I was on the fence as to whether I should keep my fabric dye supplies as they were just sitting in my dye closet for so long. It felt great to pull them all out and play! Mom wanted to bring back hand-dyed socks as gifts for her co-workers so luckily I had plenty of white cotton socks on hand that were transformed with Dharma Procion MX Dyes: Chinese Red, Lemon Yellow, Emerald Green, Cerulean Blue, and Eggplant Purple.
During mom's last visit, we learned how to sew dresses using the Trillium dress pattern (formerly named Washi Tape pattern). We practiced making the dress using Prepared for Dye (PFD) fabric and I've been remiss in not dyeing it sooner. We sewed up a second dress using Pimatex PFD during this visit and so both of those dresses received a splash of color.
As it's been a while since I last did any fabric dyeing, I ended up making a bit too much dye stock. We dyed two In-N-Out Burger t-shirts along with some shoelaces as a gift for my brother. Then I ripped a few half-yard cuts of Pimatex PFD for use in my quilting...and there was still quite a bit of leftover dye remaining.
Earlier in the week, we did quite a bit of shopping which included the purchase of fabrics for use in garment making! Mom wanted to make more Trillium dresses and found two great fabrics at Bay Quilts: a grey floral Kaffe print modeled by yours truly in the photo below and a lovely pink batik which you can see in the very first photo at the top of the blog post. Mom took care of most of the pinning/pressing and I did most of the sewing. Thanks to our teamwork and assembly line process, Mom went home with 4 new dresses--2 prints and 2 hand dyed!
I wanted to try sewing with knits using a new Gorgeous Godet Top pattern by Style Falcon. Other than assisting my mother with her dresses under close guidance from a fellow quilter, I have never sewn garments! So I was pretty nervous about sewing knits but the pattern indicated it was quick and easy project. To be on the safe side, we practiced the pattern using a solid knit I already had on hand (which was more of a medium weight) but a few hours later, it was Ta Done and fit well! It really was an easy-to-follow pattern with lots of helpful tips included throughout the pattern instructions. I purchased a beautiful lightweight knit and can't wait to sew a second top for myself!
It was nice to have this welcome distraction and something to look forward to the next morning when I could unwrap and rinse out all my hand dyed goodies which included:
- 4 1-yard cuts
- 12 1/2 yard cuts
- And a few smaller pieces that had gold accents using the last bit of dye which was watered down for the first two prints shown below.
It was so wonderful to be reunited with my mother, reacquainted with fabric dyeing, and introduced to the world of sewing with knits. I can't wait until we can get together again for more mother-daughter bonding!
What a fun post! Yes, I had to look closely but was able to find the new sashing - kinda like that it's different, how fun!
ReplyDeleteThanks Jenny! The quilt top was folded and I kept rotating and refolding to find that replaced sashing strip. I finally had to lay it out on my floor and it still took some time to find it! It's very different from the original strip, but clearly it works.
DeleteWhat a thrill to spend some one-on-one time with your mother. How fun that she likes sewing and dyeing. And congrats on reworking the old quilt. I've never done that. PS: You two look alike and you both look lovely.
ReplyDeleteIt was a lovely visit, complete with quilting fun. Yes--this is the second quilt we've taken apart for repairs. It's certainly a humbling process to see all the rookie mistakes, but proof of all the progress I've made over the years.
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