WIP Wednesday...Folksy Flannels Frenzy

We're joining in on the fun....

Anna Maria Horner's Folksy Flannels collection arrived on our doorstep earlier this week, and Aurora and I are in love. This is some seriously beautiful fabric... and so, so soft!
These bundles are destined to be quilts for Aurora and Liam... with Aurora designing her own. I plan to give her the precut squares and let her decide their placement... we are both excited for this new adventure into sewing. For Liam's I'll be using the cool colors bundle and, because there's quite a bit of floral motifs, probably be sticking to a fairly modern and simple quilt design... some sort of strip quilt, I think... so it's not too, too feminine.

Aurora let out a loud gasp of awe when I opened up the package and she saw all the beautiful fabric. She asked for her picture to be take with 'her' fabric. Here she is showing it some love...
And, here, she's making sure to keep it warm with her blanket. Fabric must be kept warm, you know...
The fat quarters spent the rest of the day popping up in various play scenarios.... going to the fabric store, doing laundry, repurposed as blankets and slings for her animals, and worn as (in Aurora's words) a kerchief.

As excited as Aurora is about the quilt making, I'm a bit nervous. Either my sewing machine's not very good or I don't know how to use it properly... or, more than likely, a bit of both. But, the fabric is so inspiring, as is Aurora's enthusiasm, that I'm sure that even if it's not perfect it will be just right.

Let's see if I can remember that in a couple weeks when I'm tired, frustrated and cursing at my machine because it won't do what I want it to ;)

Oh, and there's a flickr group with some gorgeous stuff if anybody's got some time to kill (or it's 4:12 am and you're up nursing your baby, as I currently am).

new dress

An easy sew... the material came already shirred by the yard. Just had to sew some straps from some of the scraps. I gave them two rows of shirring to add some flair. And as a bonus, Aurora seemed to be genuinely excited about this dress.

some simple sewing

A couple of things I've been working on lately....

Reversible Pinafore dress, using this tutorial. I had to freehand draft the pattern myself, which was a tad tricky, given I'm so new to all this and my little model was asleep. There's a few alterations I think I'll make to the pattern I made, but for now it works. Aurora picked out the fabric herself... lots of baby animals.... and carried the bolt to the cutting counter herself!

The back, showing animal print side

and the front/blue side. I just used seam-a-seam for the 'applique' orange bubbles

And then, after finding this tutorial over at Indietutes for using elastic thread for shirring, I decided to give a little skirt for Aurora a try. It was so, so easy! I highly recommend this method. I measured her waist, doubled it and then measured how long I wanted the skirt to be, added hem and seam allowances, and cut a rectangle to those dimensions. Then I finished the top edge and then sewed four rows of shirring, finished the bottom edge, sewed it into a tube and voila! It was easy and quick and Aurora can put it on/take it off easily. I see a summer wardrobe full of these for Little A, and maybe a couple for myself as well ;)

detail of ribbon edging

So, turns out I have a budding little seamstress here in Aurora. She now loves the fabric store, and has taken to noticing people's clothing and mentioning what nice fabric it is, lol. Yesterday she was on her bed with her special blanket and saying how nice the fabric is, etc... and that she picked it out herself! We were also outside recently, when a friend (who's blog is here)brought out these cute little cupcake pants she had sewn for her daughter . Aurora's eyes lit up! "Mama, go to fabric store, get cupcake fabric?" Well, who can resist that, I ask?!

I've got my eye on this beautiful wooden toy sewing machine.... perhaps for her birthday (which is shockingly only 4.5 months away!).