The Goth Quilter

I've decided to get into historical costuming. I'm not particularly worried about historical accuracy so maybe I should say I'm interested in history bounding and wearing historically inspired clothing. I have a lot to say about it and more to write about it, but I think I'll save that for another blog post.Today I'm going to talk about my experience sewing the Simplicity 8193 pattern, in the hope that other people who want to make this pattern feel more confident to do so. This isn't the first time I've tried to sew apparel clothing, but it is the first time I've sewn from a clothing pattern.The first times I've tried to make clothing were... less than successful. I also wanted to try learning to sew from patterns because I want to learn the sewing intuition that goes into sewing different types of garments. For example: which pattern pieces to sew first and what parts can be guessed at and which need to be exact.  For this garment, I saw that it...

When I first started piecing, I used a black ballpoint pen to mark my fabric and then used a combination of a running stitch, a back stitch and machine sewing to put it all together. It was a huge mess, but the fabric did hold together. By the time I realized my ink would probably run everywhere and ruin the project I had a pillow-sized piece of patchwork. I was so disheartened I jumped to machine piecing and english paper piecing (EPP) and didn't try the running stitch again for years.  I'm happy to announce my fear of the running stitch has happily ended. I've started Lucky Stars from Millefiori Quilts 3 by Willyne Hammerstein and so far it has all been pieced by hand with a simple running stitch. I've bought silk pins, and frixion pens and everything is going quite smoothly. I'm really enjoying hand piecing so far, it's a lot faster and needs a lot less prepwork than EPP.  Here is my progress so far. I've finished sewing all of the "x" shapes. N...

 I've been trying to make lots of fun hand sewn hexagon blocks to add to Riley's quilt. I started out by sorting the duplicate blocks from the charm pack and putting them to the side. I wanted at least one of each print in the quilt relatively untouched. Then I use the duplicates for my hand sewn extra special blocks.  Most of the blocks are cut out randomly, but for a few of the blocks I am fussy cutting. Fussy cutting is really difficult when you are using charm packs lol. I would not do this again, partially because of fabric waste but mostly because it's hard to get 6 identical prints in a 5x5 inch square. I am saving the extra fabric scraps, but they are pretty tiny I don't yet know if I can use them. Here, I've had to use two charm packs to fussy cut the right number of bees. I was nervous that using just grey tones would be boring, but the end result turned out quite charming in my opinion. They remind me of a circus. If I had more of ...

Yay, a blog post that can really live up to the blog name! I've been wanting to make a skull quilt for a while now, but was always waiting for the right pattern. Some were too simple and some just didn't have the look I wanted. Luckily, I found the Bone and Chain pattern and thought it was just the most enchanting quilt pattern and perfect for me. I really enjoy this pattern because while the skulls are definitely not replicas of real skulls, they are very charming stylized recreations. I also can't get over how well the blocks interlink to form bones all over the quilt. I've already gotten started and I can't wait to sew up this quilt. One thing I am having difficulty with is all the little pieces. There are tens of different shapes you need to cut out. I'm managing this with liberal uses of plastic bags which unfortunatly has coninced my cat they are very fun toys. For this quilt, I'm using the Ghouls and Goodies line by Moda. I bought this ...

This is my first post as the goth quilter and I've got to say I'm probably really letting my name down. I promise my other works in progress are a lot more goth! I've decided to go ahead posting this quite cheery quilt though because I'm spending a lot of time on it, and I have the most progress to show for it right now. The quilt I'm working on is called Riley's Quilt. Which means I've started yet another quilt before finishing the previous ones. Oops. My Moncarrapacho and skull quilt are still progressing but I wanted a project that was smaller and that I could actually finish before the year is done. I saw the tutorial for the Missouri Quilt company's quilt as you go hexagons and fell in love. They're so simple to make and really showcase the fabric from my charm square pack. I'm using the Bee Grateful line by Deb Strain as well as an older charm pack that I can't find the name of. For the border I'm using all black. I like the B...