A processor preview

You might think based on my radio silence here on the blog that there hasn't been much in the way of sewing, biking, or other hobbies in Biketopus land, but that's actually not the case. I've been getting a fair number of things done, including reaching a significant milestone on my processor quilt: I finally have the entire thing pieced! Finishing up the decorative stitching on those last few rows of red squares was not exactly scintillating sewing, but I managed to get it done by bringing them into the sewing shop on a Sunday so I could have some company while I stitched what felt like miles of straight lines.

Immediately after finishing piecing the top I made up the bed with it so I could see how it would look. It's not as wide as I somehow thought it would be (despite having supposedly carefully measured when I started it years ago), but it does look sufficiently long to cover up the SO's dangling feet. I was a little worried while making it that the bright colors would overwhelm our small bedroom, but I actually really like the way the quilt fills the room. I like peaceful decor in hotel bedrooms, but for my own house I prefer energetic bright colors.

 

 What remains now is to make a plan for actually quilting this quilt. I toyed with the idea of asking my sister to quilt it with a random meander pattern or even just quilting it with straight lines, but I just wasn't feeling that excited about going forward with a simple design. My SO pointed out that this thing has already been years in the making, so it doesn't really matter if it takes me another year to finish some ridiculously complicated quilting pattern. I'll probably end up very annoyed at myself halfway through, but right now I'm really looking forward to incorporating a bit more of the texture of the original photo with quilting. Where I have had an ongoing attack of the lazy lately, however, is in taking pictures. All I have for now are these cell phone pics, but I'll try to corral the SO into taking better pics sometime soon so that you can see the full quilt.

Still in process...

It's been a while since I've talked about this project, hasn't it? I think the last time I did any serious work on this thing was over a year ago, about the time that I was starting up this blog. When I last put it away I had around half of the quilt done, pretty much everything on the left side of the center line. Further progress on the quilt had slowed to a stop because I hadn't actually draw in the pattern for the other side of the quilt on my graph paper plan (it's not exactly a mirror image, so I really did need to draw it all out on the other side for my own sanity down the road). I've been having crafting afternoons with a friend of mine here in Montreal, and I thought that filling in the rest of the quilt road map would be a great lazy sunday afternoon activity.

After doing some work on the plan I was motivated to sew again, and as you can see I've made some pretty good progress on the upper part. I spread out the pieces I have so far in a bedroom that's mostly emptied out (as we're all preparing to move here) to get an idea of what it will look like overall.

First impressions: it's HUGE. And it's going to take me forever to quilt. This really is the project that never ends!

Wedding dress in progress

Just a quick progress pic here -- I took this a few nights ago to show my mom how this dress is coming along. I have a few weddings to go to this summer, and I'm getting a head start on fancy dress sewing to make sure that they actually turn out nice enough to wear to weddings!

This is the dress that I'm planning on wearing to my brother's wedding in July. It's make from Colette's Chantilly pattern, which is a pattern that I think is totally gorgeous but somehow doesn't seem to have been as popular as some of the other Colette patterns dresses (at least based on user-submitted pictures). The fabric is a silk chiffon from Fabric.com that I got a fantastic deal on -- I think it was part of the Vera Wang fabrics that went on sale a few months ago, and I got it for two bucks a yard! The lining came from my NYC fabric shopping splurge, and it was also two bucks a yard. So, all told I think I spent $16 on the fabric for this dress and will probably have enough left over to make a flouncy sleeveless blouse or something.

I'm basically finished the bodice of the dress now (I finished the topstitching on the collar after taking these pictures). Now I just need to baste the skirt on, put in the zipper, and hem the bottom layers. That's still quite a bit of work for me at least since I'm a rather slow sewer, but I always find it's a lot more fun to work on the final stages of putting something together when it starts to actually look like a real piece of clothing.