The Snug Bug: Blog

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The June dress… again. (Claire Cami from Serendipity Studios)

Hey there woeful eyed donkeys with detachable tails! Even though it’s already TWO DAYS into July, I thought I should still add an official entry to the year of the dress project. I think we can all agree that the June dress HAS to be the Claire Cami dress from Serendipity Studios. Because, guess what? I made another one!

That’s three of these in June. And I’m not done, yet. If you think my sewing blog has gotten boring, what with me only making one pattern over and over, you should see what I’m wearing. Just these three dress – they are that comfy and awesome! I literally don’t think I can have enough of them! (OK, I’m lying. I’m wearing my deer-in-the-woods crepe as I type this…)

For this version I mixed up the prints a bit to give it a bit more of a shirt-n-skirt vibe rather than dress. We’ve had this Oliver & S fabric in the shop for a while and I’ve been in LOVE with the turquoise and orange viney print that I used for the skirt, but haven’t gotten around to making anything from it! I particularly like it with a cardigan with this mix of prints…

Is it a dress? Is it a skirt? What IS it??

Hey! Guys! Are you paying attention? I don’t KNOW where your tails are. Next time, trying stapling them on. Egad.

Well, since this is the third post this month on the same dress I feel like I’ve said everything I have to say on the subject. I changed nothing about the pattern. For construction, I used methods we’d use in the classroom (e.g. easy and time-saving) the seam allowances are pinked as are the edges of the facings. All the facings are in the same viney print as the skirt for a bit of contrast. Funny story – this dress is destined to be a shop sample, so I really wanted to finish it exactly as we would in a class. Unfortunately, I was sewing late at night and rather sleepy, so the skirts side seams are french seams. I forgot I was doing it the ‘easy’ way and went on auto-pilot!

Since I don’t have many details for you on construction, I thought I’d amuse you with this series of photos that showed up from my photo session. Apparently, I prefer my hair PUFFY!! These were all taken within 2 seconds of each other…

Details

Skirt fabric – Oliver + S City Weekend – Park Ramble in Turquoise (available online – also available in cotton knit interlock)

Bodice fabric – Oliver + S City Weekend – Cobblestone in Turquoise (available online)

Trim fabric – Oliver + S City Weekend – Roundabout Dots in Orange Red (available online)

I’ll be teaching this as a class in July! Class dates are July 7th and 14th (it’s a two session class.) If you’re in Minneapolis, come on down and join me! [Register online]

Quick note – it’s Moving Weekend! (You don’t need to do anything, I hired movers.)

As I’ve mentioned, I am migrating over to Wordpress. Next time you see a post from me, the site will look a bit different! There may be some down time over the next few days, but look for the next post mid-week! My web address will NOT change, so you need to do nothing, just keep coming back! Just wanted to let you know that (for a change) my radio silence will be for a good reason. Not because I got sucked into petting the basset hound for 10 hours straight and didn’t get anything done!

Call for help… need some test eyeballs for new blog!

Hey there platypus-friends! Blogger, once again, is having some issues and I can’t post pictures, so today’s post will have to wait a bit. In the MEANTIME… I’m almost done with my new blog. Same posts, different layout. I have a few friends willing to take a look to ensure that it’s readable and easy to understand but I’d like a few more! If you’d enjoy a sneak peek and the chance to shamelessly abuse me over my fruity layout ideas, drop me an email at pattythesnugbug@gmail.com. I’ll have the site ready to look at sometime today or tomorrow and would like to work on the migration this weekend so you’d need a bit of time free before then!
(PS… and YES Amanda, I have the RSS button set up

! In the meantime here’s the link! )

Finished! My spring-green, stripey, silky, stitched up, wool & leather quilt.

Morning Easter Egger Hens! I’m back from our great trip up north, the quilt has been left on a gift table at the First Baptist Church, Lucy got to run around without a leash and fell in a ditch (no injuries, much laughing) and I got to meet CHICKENS!!! But more about that later this week, today we’ll finally take a look at the wedding quilt, which, to Mr. Bug’s intensely amped-up stress level was finished IN THE CAR and photographed on the way up north. Luckily, we have the most beautiful rest stops in the nation here in the great state of Minnesota…

I thought the back was so pretty it was a shame to wrap it up, plus wrapping a quilt is weird. I mean, who has a box big enough and if you skip the box it’s just a floppy paper-wrapped amoeba. I raided my jewelry box and co-opted my leather bracelets to use as special quilt straps, rolled it into a tootsie-roll and just pinned our tag to it. I used a bit of the same leather in the quilt as I had to make the bracelets, so it was very matchy-matchy.

And of course, I had to include a little tag. Everything’s better with a basset hound on it, right my chicken friends? I bet you LOVE this quilt, what with your penchant for laying green eggs…

{the front}

OK, first lets’ talk about the front! I used a whole bunch of different fabrics including some organic cotton flannel, silk/cotton blends, dupioni silk, cotton voile, wool flannel, silk charmeuse and plain ‘ole quilt-weight cotton. Unfortunately for the new bride (or groom, how they sort out their household chores is a whole different bag of scraps), this quilt will not take kindly to baths. I love giving practical gifts, don’t you agree?

In addition to all my fun fabrics, I did some not-so-fancy stitchin’. There’s a shop close to my house (Needlework Unlimited for curious Minneapolis-based hens) that carries a giant array of handwork supplies, including silk embroidery yarn (like perl cotton, but, you know, not cotton. I’m not familiar enough with the terms to tell you the correct weight!) The best part of the selection (apart from the fact that it’s SILK) is that the colors are much more vivid (and varied) than the DMC offerings at Joann’s. I got a couple colors of green, then ran some basic running stitches along a strip of Kona cotton in Snow. I embroidered the bride and groom’s names (Olin! Great name, isn’t it?) and their wedding date on one of the strips. Everything was totally freehand – I didn’t even trace out a pattern - and it cracks me up that the letters look EXACTLY like my handwriting!!

I embroidered one other strip by hand as well – just a scroll of running stitches with little sunburst flowers. Both white strips were 4” wide, if that helps give you a sense of scale.

I quilted with straight lines of stitching to either side of the seams. I’m not sure if there’s a name for this style of quilting. It took FOREVER, but I am incredibly bad at stitching in the ditch, plus I thought the double lines of quilting would look nice on the back of the quilt. I put on the binding entirely by machine – a first for me, as I’ve always sewed to the front by machine, then slipstitched to the back. It was fun to use one of my decorative stitches and I like the effect! In the end, it wasn’t that much easier than slipstitching by hand, as I had to be SUPER careful to have the edge of the front in line with the stitching line from when I had attached the binding, otherwise it looked messy in the back. And you hens all know how much I dislike a hot mess on the back of my projects!

As I said above, I stitched some leather strips to the quilt as well. I really wanted the overall look to not veer towards super-girly, so I offset the embroidery, silk and polka dots with a more ‘masculine’ color-palette, leather and wool flannel.

I stitched the label on after the whole quilt was assembled rather than stitching to the only one side before quilting or tucking into the binding. I like the casual look of stitching labels through all the layers – I do that when putting labels into a lot of my clothes as well. It’s even better if you use a decorative stitch – of course, one that looks nice from both sides!

{the back}

I really loved the back of the quilt. Almost more than the front! The silver shiny fabric is a wonderful silk/cotton blend (I think it’s 55% silk, 45% cotton, but I might have that backwards) that I got at my local quilt shop. I was a little concerned about working with silk in general in the quilt, and ESPECIALLY on the back, but this fabric is incredibly stable – no running, fraying, getting chewed up by the sewing machine, rippling or showing off giant holes from the needle (unlike some charmeuse’s and dupionis I could name…) I really loved the feel of the silk on the back of the quilt and it really looked awesome quilted!

In order to not have to do too much piecing for the back, I used the silk the long way – that’ just about two yards, so it’s 72” x 44” (more or less) on the right. I bordered the silk with some leftover strips from the front and then pieced together another wider strip of the green and white ‘brocade’ print cotton. I love the strong, simple lines and the fact that they are running vertically, while the quilting (and the piecing in the front) runs horizontally.

I actually needed a bit over two yards length for the back and asked for the wrong length of silk at the quilt shop, so I was about 5” short. I didn’t want to shorten my quilt top that much, so I ‘lengthened’ the large silk piece by adding a little pieced strip to the bottom of the silk before attaching to the narrow strip/cotton part of the backing.

Here’s how I did it: I trimmed a 5” strip of silk from the long side of the silk piece, then I pieced a few of my scraps to one short end and sewed it back onto the bottom of the large silk piece. For the most part it just looks like the silk is longer, but there’s this fun little patchwork piece in the lower right corner – it’s hard to see in the photo above because of the light, but here’s a closeup! You can also (sort of) see how the machine stitched binding looks on the back. A little wonky, but that gives it character, right??

All in all, this was a fun quilt to make. I’m not sure I’ll jump wholeheartedly back into quilting, but I would like a matching throw or two for my living room update. I may make a couple blankie/quilts that look more like the back of this quilt!

{what I learned, tips and resources}

Quilting. It’s not just for cotton anymore.
Spray adhesive makes basting a quilt a LOT easer (tutorial)
Strip quilts are fun to make and not quite as tedious as block varieties (tutorial)
Cutting binding strips is not difficult (tutorial)
Machine applied binding: sew to back of quilt, wrap around edge, line up fold with stitchline and secure with decorative stitch. Normally you sew to the front of the quilt, then slipstitch to the back as the neatest side will be the machine stitched (front) side, but when doing by machine you will need to see what you’re doing and the neatest side will be the side you are looking at when you sew down the fold.
Working with voile, silk and wool in quilts. As you hens know, silk dupioni frays like the dickens as does some wool (like the stuff I was using) and while voile is fairly stable as its tight weave is what makes it so soft, I always consider it ‘delicate’. I considered serging the whole thing and probably would have if I’d had a serger at home (I made the top pre-serger.) Instead I made sure to shorten the stitches a tad to make them extra-strong (I normally sew with a 2.5mm stitch, I went down to 1.8), I trimmed with pinking shears, and pressed to one side. It was not a pretty sight!
To deal with the quilt during the quilting process. You should start quilting in the middle of the quilt in order to keep everything balanced. When you start in the middle, you’ve got a LOT of quilt to either side to deal with. If you’re doing straight-line quilting like I did, roll both ends in – like a scroll. It rolls into a surprisingly easy to handle shape!
When doing straight like quilting like I did you have to ‘flip’ the quilt after every line, otherwise you end up with a crooked quilt. So. Start quilting (start in the middle, it’ll be easier). Sew your first straight line, then you will turn the quilt and start quilting on the same side that you just ended on. Like so.

Special thanks to my boss, Nikol, for all her advice during my frantic month of quilting… And to Ashley at Film in the Fridge for the endless inspiration (um, is copying someone’s work directly still considered ‘inspiration’?) and great tutorials!

In closing, a snapshot of some nice hens I met this weekend.

Poll results, weekend plans and other housekeeping.

Morning you lazy basset hounds! Oh, wait, there’s just ONE lazy basset hound here – fast asleep on the loveseat, on her back with her legs sticking up in the air and her ears hanging off the edge of the cushions.

It’s Friday and tomorrow Mr. Bug, the lazy hound and myself are packing up and heading north. A friend is getting married (remember the feverish quilt plotting?) and the wedding’s on Saturday. I still have a bit more quilting to do and the binding to attach. I’m going to cheat on the binding and do the whole thing by machine!

Before I log off to lug my machine into the kitchen (more space on the kitchen table for quilts!) I thought I’d report on the results from my recent poll activity! Last week I asked in a SUPER SCIENTIFIC POLL what kind of posts all y’all would like to see more of. I used the free survey tool at Zoomerang and as such am limited to only seeing the first 100 responses. Here they are.

In order we have…

Tied for first: More tutorials, more reveals. 68% of the vote.OK. A no-brainer. I mean, that’s why we’re all here, right? That’s my favorite thing to read on blogs as well. Actually, I WAY more like reveals than tutorials. Unless, of course, I’m trying to figure out how to do something. I really love seeing the results on real people! That’s why I like Pattern Review and Burda so much as well.
More shop stuff: new patterns, fabrics and other fun things. 57% of the vote. OK, you surprised me here! I thought this would come in LAST! I’ve been reticent about talking too much about the shop, so this was an eye opener! Going forward I’ll do more posts on the goods that we’re getting in and I’ll also try to be better at listing sources and information on fabrics, etc. that I’m using! BY the way… did you know that we ship patterns in the U.S. for FREE??? Did you know that we carry Colette and Sewaholic?? If you’re needing to stock up, head on over to our Etsy shop! And while you’re there, check out all the voiles that we have in – shipping on fabric is a a flat rate of $4.95!! I think we have enough of that Anna Maria Horner voile left to make one more maxi dress…
Inspiration and planning posts. 54% of the vote. This one was a surprise! I tend to shy away from too much “this is what I wanna do” type of stuff, as I’d rather wait and post about what I actually got done!! And I don’t want to be accused of being the blogger that is just posting pictures of other folkses’ stuff. Because I know how accusatory we can all get here in the sewblogging world (hee hee – sarcasm. Sewing bloggers and friends are the least accusatory people in the world. Unless we’re accusing each other of awesomeness, right??) When I think about it, though, I love seeing inspiration posts that all ya’ll are doing, so I’m not sure where I got this anti-inspiration bias!
Sewing school posts! 48% of the vote. yay! I like these too! I’ll definitely keep going with these! The first school session will continue to be Patterns 101. I’ve got a fun interview-type post planned with a girl who worked for one of the pattern companies! Watch for that in the (hopefully) near future!
More style posts! 46% of the vote. I was curious where this would end up in the ranking. About you half of you voting-hounds like the style stuff. I like it too. We’ll do more of that.
Philosophical posts. 33% of the vote. I haven’t done many of these – I’m not sure I’m that philosophical by nature (I guess. What does it mean to be philosophical??) and much like the inspirational posts, I’m more inclined to do a show-and-tell than throw stuff out there, although you all have super-interesting things to say and I love, love, love reading comments! Start looking to see a few of these posts tossed in the mix every now and again! I have a fondness for yay or nay style posts… AND I’m plotting on some technical changes ‘round here that’ll (hopefully) mean threaded comments for all – very conducive for conversations in the comments!
Let’s see the garden. 25% of the vote. Wow guys! I just threw that in there because it’s been on my mind lately and I love to take pictures in my garden. I’ll continue to do so, just for those of us who love the catmint and compost as much as dresses and thread!
Daily outfits. 22% of the vote. I’ve been really behind on my daily outfit posts lately, although I keep notes and do catch-up photo sessions! Hopefully, July will be a little easier for me to get through! I don’t really like having two blogs, although I totally get that many of you are into sewing, not style blogs. I’m hatching a plan to have the best of both worlds… more on that soon!
Crafty projects. 16% of the vote. OK. You guys are just not that into the crafty stuff! That makes perfect sense, as I mostly write about garment making, so naturally most people who bother to stop by my blog are also interested in garment making! BUT, since I work at a sewing shop that is adding yarn and needlework supplies to its stock AND I just re-whetted my taste for quilts, all ya’ll are going to have to budge over a bit to make some room for the crafty-curious. I’ll keep those posts to the reveal-eye-candy type, though. Even the most hardened garment makers amongst you cannot resist brightly colored cotton. Admit it.
Bring back the dream jobs. 10%. Last place. Poor dream jobs posts! As much as I love knowing how things work, I have to agree that these should stay low in the content rotation!

So what’s next? Well, my hound-friends, I’m working on a major overhaul of the site. As in, hello Wordpress. When I initially started this blog, it was more of a small house-and-wedding thing for Mr. Bug to read! I already had a blogger account and off I went. Once I started blogging about SEWING and caught the blog-bug, I already had a few followers and didn’t want to do a platform switch. I’ve always, always wished that I’d gone with Wordpress and recently Facebook made a change that renders the images from Blogger/Picasa hosted blogs in a super-craptastic manner, which was the straw that broke this blogging camel’s back.

Last fall I set up my current domain (www.pattythesnugbug.com) and hopefully most followers and subscribers are going to my actual there and not the blogspot address, so I think the time is ripe for a switch. It should be relatively painless, you’ll just wake up one day to a slightly flashier Snug Bug. Flashier as in awesome, not as in everything is animated. Because animation makes me buggy. We’ll make the big change in the next few weeks, there’ll be a few new things that some of you may love, and for those of you who are happy just the way it is, there’ll be an option for you to continue almost-as-normal! In any case, I’m not changing my blog address, just my looks, so you can just sit back and enjoy the show!

Since it saddens me to see a blog post so woefully low on photos… here’s a few snapshots of the B&B that the bears will be staying at this weekend. A dog-friendly B&B, ya’ll!! We stayed there last October, so if you’ve been ‘round these parts since then, you’ll recognize these pics!

Anniversary Dress (ANOTHER Claire Cami Dress!)

Ahoy there, fishies. Let’s make it a seafaring week, shall we? Today you will be blob fishes. And you are some strange looking mo-fo’s. Moving on.

As promised, here’s another new dress, although if you’ve checked out snugbug365 in the last few days, you got a sneak peek. It’s another version of the Claire Cami Dress!

This one is a tad longer, unintentional, as all you blob fishes know how much I like my dresses scandalously short. The main fabric is from Kate Spain’s Central Park collection (available online) and I was pleasantly surprised at how the super-linear print ended up looking very cabbage rose-like! The contrast fabric is from Tina Given’s Haven’s Edge Collection (‘Climber’ in celery, also available online!) I am quite enamored with how the two fabrics look together, especially close up! The pattern in the contrast fabric is greyish purple!

Topstitching RULES!!

I think I say this every time I review a Kay Whitt design, but I really love how her patterns are so heavy on topstitching and edgestitching. It gives the simple cotton dresses a much more finished feel.

Oh! The facings are in a contrast fabric from the same collection as the main fabric. Sadly, we have sold out of it at the shop.

I particularly like how edgestitching the waist casing looks!

And now… the dark side of topstitching

Can I indulge in my super OCD side for a bit? As much as I love the look of the topstitching, the combo of understitching and topstitching is driving me batty. It’s a HOT MESS on the inside! For this dress, I used the pink thread while understitching – that’s the pink you can see on the facing. I switched the bobbin out from pink to white for the topstitching, which helped a bit, but it still looks like I was doing some crazy-sewing on the facings. I topstitched with the right side up, so I could see what I was doing, so the inside is less, um, tidy. I HATE how the edgestitching weaves around the understitching and even veers into the teeny fold on the inside of the neckline. Sigh. If understitching wasn’t so helpful in getting the neckline to behave, I’d skip it all together, but I suppose it would be silly to sacrifice good construction for the aesthetics of the inside finishing. Although, I often do either understitching OR topstitching, not both.

To make matters worse, I stitched in the ditch to keep the facings under control and didn’t change the bobbin thread to white. I also only stitched in the ditch on the outside. Like I said, hot mess.