Custom Dresses for Little Darlings

A while back I had a notion that I would absolutely never be able to sew all the Kaffe Fassett fabrics in my stash into quilts. Just humanly impossible! But, I do have granddaughters and I can make dresses and they are only little for such a short time - so it seemed to make a lot of sense to get busy making dresses for them.

 I delivered this little dress to Cate on Sunday. Hopefully I can get DD Erin to send a picture of her wearing it.

This little dress (below) was made for Reagan, and I do have a picture of her wearing it, although you don't see much of the dress! Reagan's dress has 2 pockets. Down at the bottom of this post I describe another dress in the same fabric with only one pocket - that one is for Annie.

I just finished this one below also for Reagan. I think this one might be my favorite. Those deep KF blue fabrics are the best! 

Little Annie got one just like Reagan's but with just one pocket. I had just enough of the two fabrics left to squeeze out a size 1 and only 1 pocket. She (hopefully) will be ready to wear it next summer.

 Emma's fiance Glen has a daughter (bonus granddaughter!), and she gets a dress, too! I had a sundress pattern that she liked, so I whipped this up for Harper. I hope to get it to her soon. And I will need her to try it on before I secure those straps.

I will resume quilting activities soon. Come on back and see what I've been stitching since finishing these dresses!

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Jayne

The KF Retreat

As I pulled together the projects I planned to work on at the recent retreat, I mentioned that this might become known as the Kaffe Fassett retreat - that prediction was spot on. I made three quilts with this glorious fabric, and I love all three.

First, I finished a WIP (work in progress) that was begun while in Florida. I made blocks of an entire mostly-blue KF jelly roll. That was all done prior to the retreat. I set off those gorgeous blue/green/purple blocks with a narrow pink sashing, and used some blue from my stash for the cornerstones. 

That pic above looks washed out; here's a different angle; hopefully the colors look more vivid.

 The final measurements on this jelly roll quilt are 45"x50".

The second project was the project I planned to do with my dear friend Sharon. We'd spoken for a year or more about using our KF fabrics to make an Around the World quilt. I shared hers in yesterday's post. She'd begun it back in the fall while I delayed because - get this - I didn't have enough pastel colors in my stash. I had to buy more! (I know, you're all ROFLing, right?)

The wonderful floral pattern above was my center panel. From there, I just added border after border after border - all different widths and all selected with the idea of cohesiveness of color and design.

I really didn't know what it would look like when I began, but this is what I ended up with. I sort of expected that it would be more pink, but the fabrics led me to this and I'm pleased with it. It measures 48"x62". I could conceivably add more borders. Now that I am home and have access to my entire stash, I might just see what I find. However, I do like this and may just leave well enough alone.

Having this completed, I turned my sights on making a baby quilt for our new granddaughter. Both Cate and Reagan have quilts made like this, and I thought the newest little girl would need to have one as well. The last thing I grabbed when packing for retreat was a stack of solid fabrics piled on the end of a table. It was meant to be.

The  blocks for this quilt use the same general principle as Around the World - that is, begin with a panel of colorful florals or prints, border it with a matching solid, repeat a border of the floral/print, then finish off with the solid. Make 9 of these blocks and stitch them together. Voila! Baby quilt in no time. This one measures 60"x76". I am sure the ones I made for Cate and Reagan were lots smaller. Since there's not a set pattern, you end up with a surprise. I used narrower strips or started with smaller central panels on my previous versions. 

 I just found this picture in my camera roll; I'm completely clueless! One of these went to Reagan; I must have gifted the other one...but to whom? I forget...Below is the first one from 2022 when Cate was born.

 So, yes, it WAS a Kaffe Fassett retreat. Wonderful! It was really satisfying to complete 3 flimsies, all made (mostly) from my stash of KF fabrics. I'll be back soon with a final retreat report in which all the other quilters get grouped all together in one giant post.

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Jayne 

Hello April! So Glad You're Here!

April is here! We here at the home of Jayne's Quilting Room have been eagerly awaiting this month since learning that we would get another grandbaby this month! She will be here soon!

 

  

Now you know why we just HAD to get back to Ohio by April first. We are awaiting baby girl's arrival any day now. 

In addition to being eager to welcome our newest little love, I am preparing to head out to a 4-day quilt retreat. Deciding what projects and necessary supplies to take is taking up a lot of my head space.

Other head space is being devoted to food prep for Easter celebrations coming up this weekend. 

My head is just full of stuff, isn't it!!? 

One project going to retreat will be this jelly roll quilt that I started while in Florida. I stopped work on it when I began having trouble with my sewing machine. It should be a quick and easy finish. The Kaffe Fassett jelly roll I used is one that came from my dear sweet Frienzie Kay, who passed away last year. I am so grateful to Kay for introducing me to KF fabrics oh-so-many years ago. 

This retreat may become known as the KF retreat, as this next quilt will see some sewing action. Trip Around the World, from the Fasssett book Heritage Quilts, is one I am making with my sewing bestie, Sharon. She has actually done a bit on hers, as we began it last fall. 

I want to have a pastel look and my stash, while extensive, did not contain adequate lighter colors to suit me. With that in mind, while at Florida's Quilted Twins, I shopped specifically for fabrics with lighter, pastel tones. I am pleased with the collection of 1-yard cuts that came home with me.

One more piece is a larger amount, because it is what I plan to use in that jelly roll quilt (see above) for the sashing strips. It will also work in the pastel assortment for Trip Around the World.

 Two KF quilts at a retreat? I think I can do it. I suppose I will also take along some back-up plans for just in case situations. Never want to run short!

Happy April, dear quilters, and Happy Quilting, Friends!

Jayne 

Bits of Sewing and Busy Days

Family and friends often ask us what we do while we are in Florida. My response is a description of totally different people from the ones they know in Ohio. We are such homebodies normally, but while we are in FL, we go-go-go.  Shuffleboard three times each week; bike riding; thrifting; estate sales; flea markets; games in the evenings (sometimes here, sometimes elsewhere - we take turns hosting); or walks around our little neighborhood.

I have to work to squeeze in time for sewing. Here's what I've been doing lately when I get a few spare minutes at the sewing machine - stitching up a jelly roll of cool-color Kaffe Fassett fabrics for a simple lap quilt.

The strips are cut at 8 inches; 5 strips make a block. And look at that fun pink fabric I plan to use as sashing strips. I am making slow progress. Perhaps about half of the blocks are stitched as I write this post.

These pictures have a decidedly yellowish cast to them; maybe afternoon sun hinders the true colors. Anyway, the quilt looks better than these pictures indicate, and will go together quickly once I take the time to concentrate on it.

 So, what have we been doing lately that has kept me out of the sewing room? Lots of visiting. We've had a couple of unusually busy weeks. We have visited with Ohio friends vacationing in other areas of Florida; we had family over for an afternoon visit; most recently, we have just returned from 3 days at 'the most magical place on earth' visiting my sister and brother-in-law. Walt Disney World!

 

We just happened to be there on some of the coldest and windiest days, still we had fun. We definitely got our steps in! We traipsed all over the place! Saw lots of cool and interesting attractions, ate at amazing restaurants; most of all - enjoyed the company of family. 

Sisters! Jayne and Carol.

 We were guests of my sister and her husband who vacation at Disney all the time; we got the royal treatment!

The gang - Carol, Monte, Kevin, John, Sandy, Jayne, Dawn, Dave.

We are grateful for all the Disney fun, but are glad to be back to our slower pace and less 'people-y' home on Moonrise Lane. Those folks in the photo above (John, Sandy, Dawn and Dave) are our cousins who also live on Moonrise. Sandy and Dave are siblings and are first cousins on our father's side to Carol and me.

I have let too many days get past me without a blog post. When there's no time for sewing, it goes without saying that there's also no time for blogging. 

Stay tuned! I do have some hand-stitching to share. That will be my next update.

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Jayne 

Sewing With Sharon

Normalcy is slowly returning around here as my physical therapy and healing continues. If you ask me, I am ahead of schedule in the recovery department, and am impatient to get to full, unrestricted activities ASAP!

One bit of "normal" this week was my Tuesday sewing day with Sharon! Oh, boy, did we get a lot done! Sharon began her first few surrounds of her Kaffe Fassett Around the World quilt. It is going to be spectacular, if this initial portion is any indication.

 

Does this halt you in your tracks? Look at the movement in those flowers! Such a striking center panel and it could not be more perfect. A small border of pink dots on blue and then another wonderful floral with roses on a lavender background - this combination of fabrics is a wonderful start to her quilt.

Her next layer is this light blue "fans" piece; it contains just the right pops of pinks, purples, and greens to enhance those same pastels in the previous fabrics. If only mine will be half as gorgeous. Sharon has great fabrics from which to choose, and with her "eye" for just the right color and design, her quilt is gonna' be amazing.

She took this quilt to about the 4th or 5th surround, then felt it wise to stop. She wants to sift through her Kaffe Fassett stash a bit more thoroughly before moving ahead. Like me, Sharon has fabric all over the place. There might just be one random piece of KF in a stack in the back of the closet, or under the desk, or in a storage tub. We'd best pull all these random KF fabrics together so we don't miss anything!

She moved on to working with her Tilda remnants, making 9-patch blocks with a gentle off-white neutral. 

We remarked that two fabric styles could not be more starkly different - Kaffe Fassett and Tilda. One is bold and color-saturated while the other is soft and muted. One screams while the other whispers. And both are just as luscious to work with as anything.

So my task for the day was to continue making pinwheels for my Winnie the Pooh panel. Finishing the pinwheels led to making top and bottom borders, followed by side borders. All very straightforward. Attach said borders to the panel and VOILA! It's now ready to go on the long arm machine.

I acquired the Pooh panel when Jan was purging her stash awhile back. I acquired the green for the pinwheels just last month when Becky was similarly purging. I would even venture that the dotted fabric in the pinwheels came from someone's purge - we've all been feeling the weight of the excesses of our stashes. Anyway, this quilt totally has happened through the generosity of my dear quilting friends!

Let's hope all this productivity continues. I would really like to finish out 2025 with a flourish of quilting activity!

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Jayne 

Welcome May! Scrappy Kaffe Flimsy

May! It's a pleasure to welcome a new month!

 

April ended on a super-high note as I finished a flimsy! It feels so good to have a finish to share. Feast your eyes on this Kaffe Fassett beauty.

Last November, I  began sewing my collection of 2.5-inch squares of Kaffe Fassett scraps. A block even easier than the 9-patch, I opted to keep it really basic with a 4-patch. The collection of random fabrics collected here in this scrap quilt date back a whole lot of years. I did some serious reminiscing with some of these beauties.

All the while I was making the 4-patches, I had absolutely no plan for them. I trusted that when I had a while giant mess of them made, I would know what to do next. I knew that an idea would come.

 With my best sewing bud Sharon's input, we came up with the easiest and (as I see it all together now) the very best option. Keep it super simple and use just one fabric for setting squares. Let the 4-patches be the star of the show. And they truly are. I love-love-love this quilt top. 

The nature of scrap quilts - at least in my experience - is that piecing small bits is acceptable as is making blocks with 'near matches' when necessary. Using the scraps is the main goal, so improvise as needed.

Pertinent details on this quilt: Blocks are 4" (finished); 4-patches are made with 2.5-inch squares; it is 18 x 22 rows and measures 72" x 88"; it contains 396 blocks; 198 pieced and 198 setting. It does not have borders, but I may add some. We shall see...

Are you a fan of Kaffe Fassett fabrics? When they first began appearing on the scene, I was not a fan, but they grew on me. And then I sorta' became obsessed. I have a way-too-big stash, and even though I've made quite a few KF quilts over the years, I really need to get crackin' on making more.

Maybe sometime this month, I will devote a post to sharing all my KF makes in one place. That'd be fun.

I'll try to be back tomorrow to do the April collage and share some plans for May.

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Jayne

Sewing With Sharon

After a super-long hiatus, Sharon and I have finally had a sewing day together and it was wonderful! I honestly could feel myself regaining my quilting mojo as we got into the day. The sound of our machines chugging away, the soft wafting of classical music playing, occasional spring bird calls drifting in through the open window - ahhhh, it was all so very much NEEDED! 

We both have finishes to show for our time, too, which is always the boost one needs to get moving onto the next project. Here's what Sharon finished - a layer cake quilt that she started at retreat a week ago is now a finished quilt top.

 The layer cake was one of the recent French General lines. One can never go wrong with FG fabrics. She simply divided the entire layer cake into pairs, then cut off 2 2.5-inch strips. This left her with a 5.5" square which she surrounded with strips and corners. At retreat she finished this as far as stitching all the blocks into vertical rows. Here on Tuesday morning, she stitched the horizontal rows, and VOILA! a finish!

For my own finish, I finally took the baby quilt off the long arm machine. I loaded it onto the long arm back in mid-September, and had it nearly all quilted. On the last pass across the quilt, I began having issues with the top thread breaking about every 8-10 inches. It was so daggone aggravating. I just left it. And left it. And then Reagan was born, and we had the holidays, and then we left for Florida. Well, you see how things sorta' lagged there for a good, long while.

The quilt was intended to be finished by the end of September when Reagan was to be born. I could not solve the breakage issue, and I already had one quilt ready to give her, so I put off dealing with it. This is a sweet fabric line called Effie's Woods by Deb Strain/Moda. I was gifted a lot of it - including the panels - and I had it sewn up in no time. Here's the post I wrote 4 days prior to Reagan's birth in which you see the quilt on the frame.

I did the last of the quilting Monday evening (yes, I still had breakage) and Tuesday, I bound it. I hope to wrap it around our sweet baby Reagan very, very soon. I'll get a proper picture of the quilt as well as the baby in the quilt, too.

With those two finishes out of the way early on, we both moved on to other projects. Sharon continued with yet another precut project. After her layer cake finish, she pulled out a jelly roll project using Tildas! Oh, that scrumptious fabric! She has a fast and easy design that is a twist on the popular "race" quilt.

After binding the baby quilt, I moved on to a scrappy 4-patch project from last fall. I wrote about it here. I didn't realize I'd made so many 4-patches - I'd separated them into groups of 10 and had about 150 total, so it seemed as good a time as any to begin sewing them together. With Sharon's input, I decided it best to just keep it simple, so with a whole stack of a rather neutral Aboriginal Dots (iykyk; one of the KF designs) I am in the construction phase of a really awesome scrappy 4-patch Kaffe quilt.

 And I'm gonna have to come back with a picture for you. It's dark as I write this and I just know I wouldn't get a good photo in poor lighting. 

Now, about that thread-breakage issue on the long arm . . . I am not yet convinced that it is entirely corrected. I will soon load on another smaller quilt and fiddle with the tension. I do believe minor tension adjustments, a bit of oil, and a new needle will solve my quilting woes.

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Jayne

Having Fun With Kaffe Scraps

Yesterday I worked for a time on some secret Christmas sewing. Since I cannot show that just yet, I will show you what I worked on after the secret stuff.

Initially, I was simply attempting to tidy up around my sewing machine and work table. Believe it or not, I'd allowed little stacks of things to clutter up the space. I know! Hard to believe, right?? (ha!) I thought maybe I'd try being proactive for a change. Deal with the little bits before it all became massive, overwhelming, unmanageable bits. 

I certainly did not have any plan whatsoever to actually sew any of it. Honest.

One of the bits needing put away was a small stack of 2.5-inch Kaffe Fassett scraps - maybe a dozen or so squares. I would add these to the larger collection of 2.5-inch squares. Even after all the sewing I did last winter in Florida, I still have a large tub of 2.5-inch scraps, within which all the KF fabrics are separated and grouped. 

Rather than put the little stack away, I instead pulled those KF scraps and began making 4-patch blocks. I ended up having a lot more KF squares than I expected. I did not need a plan; just make 4-patches. This was such an impromptu decision, I cannot even explain what brought it on. Maybe I just felt like seeing what I could make out of these gorgeous scraps.

You know, those tubs of carefully organized scraps are set aside for "someday" sewing. Perhaps I just had an incredible urge to have yesterday afternoon be that "someday."

Whatever it was, it was great.

I had such a grand time mindlessly creating 4-patch blocks out of these scraps. It was about as much fun as one could have in the sewing room. Makes working so hard to save, cut, separate, and organize all those scraps worth the time and effort.

I have only just begun whittling down this pile of KF squares. I will make as many as I can from what you see here, and then stash them until inspiration tells me what comes next. I have a couple of different ideas, and since this was such fun, I do think I will be returning to them ASAP.

Hope you are having fun in your sewing room. I highly recommend it!

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Jayne

A Few Small Finishes

Despite how badly I wanted to begin something new, I restrained myself and instead made progress on finishing some of the items on that pesky UFO/PHD list I made a few weeks back. The struggle was real, I tell you, however the reward was satisfying - I checked several UFOs off my list.

One of the most satisfying finishes was a table topper-sized quilt made with the panel gifted to me from Sharon. While she was here sewing last week, I pulled out some potential fabrics to pair with the panels. We explored lots of possibilities. While that floral one (above) looks great, the flowers in the panel blocks are lost, so with Sharon's helpful input, I opted for the pink Aboriginal Dots.

Doing a small project like this takes no time at all. In 30 minutes, I had these 16 blocks stitched up and pressed. The time-consuming part was deciding on which fabric to use and cutting the panels accurately. 

Sharon suggests I add a border, and since I have more of the pink, I probably will. I mean, gee whiz, use the fabric! I certainly have no need to conserve here!

Two more fast finishes involved clothes for granddaughter Cate. In order to finish the bloomers for this green and white striped outfit, I needed elastic. I did it, and yesterday, she actually tried them on - but I failed to follow the Grandma game rules - I did not take a picture! It fits, though, and she looked darling in it.

The other Cate finish was the little yellow sweater that needed ribbons replaced. Again, I have no pictures. (arrgghh!) The sweater was one that Erin wore when she was a baby, homemade by a family friend. I'd saved it for giving to a grandchild, and now it's Cate's. I will take some pics the next opportunity I have.

To make up for the lack of photo evidence of Cate's projects, let's just look at the little darling herself. What a happy child she is! She now sits up well enough to take baths in the big tub, and from all accounts she loves tubby time.

Have a great week!

Happy Quilting, Friends!