Sewing with my Sister

My sister was out from North Carolina, visiting me in California for just over a week. Of course we did sewing stuff. We visited and bought fabric at the American Jane Fabrics Open House Friday 8/26/16. On the following Monday we went through my stash and pulled some fabric combinations to make pillowcases for her grandkids. My sister made these three pillowcases. The one on the left and the one in the center were from fabrics in my stash. The one on the right is from fabrics my sister brought with her. Seeing these three completed projects side by side prompted a discussion of the different fabric requirements when selecting directional fabric for pillowcases. Depending on the cross-grain or along-the-grain orientation of the print, the main body of the pillowcase requires ¾ yard or 1¼ yards of fabric. The cats and bicycles needed 1¼ yards each. The hot air balloons needed ¾ yard.

My sister had brought with her the hot air balloon fabric along with the arching turquoise material for the band and the orange pin dot material for the accent flange. She oriented the hot air balloons to rise above the turquoise "clouds" in the band beneath.  She planned to assemble the pillowcase while visiting.

The mauve and black mini-print band on the cat print pillowcase is an odd color that seemed to pick up the purplish tones of the kitty print; the rust accent strip brought out their eyes and the insides of their ears.

The stripes on the band she coordinated with the bicycle print was fortuitously the same combination of hues as in the bicycles. The same was true of the purple paint speckled insert flange. It was invigorating to rearrange my stash and find new fabric combinations containing color coordinates as yet undiscovered. The granddaughter who is to get this pillowcase has just gotten a new bike.

During her selection process, I had fabrics scattered over counter tops and beds and pretty much all horizontal surfaces inside and within about a 20 foot perimeter of my sewing room. Not all of it was selection focused; most of it was just showing her what I had so we could ogle it together. I did not think to take pictures of the mess. Instead I took the opportunity to organize, label, and refold most of it while she was sewing. It is ironic but I just realized that we used none of the fabric purchased just three days earlier. I like to imagine fabric to be like fine wine; it needs to ripen on the shelf before use. Here is my yardage sorted by length and neatly piled.

There is still more fabric in other places. My fat quarters and my half-yard lengths are in two twelve-drawer kitchen units from Ikea. I have some one yard pieces and extra long lengths on my sewing machine cabinet. Above the cabinet is a decorative chalet-shaped shelving unit my husband built the first year we were married, over forty years ago. It stored my collection of owls then and was called the "Hoot House". Its color scheme and what it holds has changed over the years from owls to mini-houses, and now to quilting notebooks and fat quarter bundles I still can not bear to break up just yet. I think I need more shelving. Another interpretation could be I need less fabric.

While she was here, my sister tried out some free motion quilting on my HQ-16 sit-down longarm. We had a blast giggling about her first squiggles using the machine for the first time. I think she became hooked though, and practiced different designs over and over. She was a quick study and I think if the visit had been longer, she would have been FMQing circles around me in no time.

Maxine just left to go back home today. We had a lot of fun together during her visit. I will miss having her here. To lift my spirits I will visit Let's Bee Social #140.