Meeting Cidell

Kristy, Cidell and me waiting for the fashion show to start

On Saturday I got to meet fabulous Cidell. We got together to attend the fashion show for Sew Me What You've Got at Ikea, Baltimore. Cidell was everything I expected her to be fun, warm and more beautiful in person. Her friend Kristy also joined us, she likes to knit, quilt and used to make all her clothes so that you can imagine all three of us had plenty to talk about during lunch, we actually had to hurry not to miss the show.

I thought the show was great, the models were all different body types and the Ikea fabrics which they all had to use were very colorful and modern. I was surprised that some of the construction and finishing was a little sloppy (like you could see where the machine hem stitching started and ended and invisible zippers were not invisible), I don't know how long they had to complete the garments but I'm sure it wasn't a Project Runway/Fashion Show situation. If you would like to vote you can do so at the link above they even have great photographs of all entries.

Anyways here are some of the pictures I took.


This one I loved the exhuberance of the model with such a fun dress.



The yellow band had was all pleated




I like how the designer used the design on the fabric to form the petal like skirt


A regular shirt in a cool fabric on a good looking guy ;-)


I like that the designer combined fabrics with little ruffle details and a fun flirty skirt.


Loved the grey fabric and the pink piping


This fabric was fabulous and it turned a simple dress into an attention getter.

After the show we headed to the fabric area (of course) where Cidell bought a very cool fabric, go check it out on her blog where you'll also get her impressions of the show. I also got to see her doing her happy dance when she talked about her new Featherweight, which I got to see stuffed in the front passenger seat of her car.

What a great time I had! Meeting Cidell was a pleasure and I hope we get together again soon!

Wedding Anniversary

Sunday is my wedding anniversary, I married DH 17 years ago. I wanted to share with you pictures of my dress and my maid of honor's. My dress was designed by my friend and maid of honor who at the time of my wedding had a bridal business. She is a graduate of FIT(Fashion Institute of Technology) and has since worked as a designer for various RTW companies.

When it was time to pick out my dress, my friend L. came with me and my mom. We tried many,many dresses and once she knew what I was looking for she showed me parts (a sleeve and part of the bodice) of a dress she was working on at the moment and told me that if I like it I could use it. I fell in love when I saw the delicate ribbon embroidery accented with seed pearls, crystals and much more. The fabric is silk organza. She also made my hair bow after we spend a wonderful time at the most incredible ribbon shop in the district; the owner gave us a blue piece of ribbon as we were leaving which became my garter (which I still have...no throwing of a garter for this bride!). The veil was beaded by my mom and me with seed pearls and crystals.

Her dress she designed and made herself. The fabric is silk organza in a gorgeous pink plaid and she found perfect shoes for it.

My dress has held up pretty well to the years, I hope that maybe one day a granddaughter may love it as much as me and has a chance to wear it.

Weekend wrapup

My kids got colds starting a week ago and of course they were staggered so I had sick kids for the duration of a week, that culminated with me being sick this past Friday through most of the weekend. So...not much sewing, actually none at all was accomplished and nothing else for that matter. As soon as I felt better on Sunday I did laundry and cooked.

Yesterday I felt so much better that I went for a walk with my family. We went to Montgomery county and took a trail around Lake Frank. This is a beautiful hike at points you can barely see the lake and you are surrounded by beautiful woods when you finally get to see the lake, it is a wow moment.



The hike we thought would be flat and easy but they were enough changes in the terrain to make it really interesting with enough hills to climb for those that like a challenging hike. The mountain laurels were blooming and they were gorgeous!



The weather however decided to not cooperate and for most of our trip we had thunder and then the pouring rain started, the four of us and our dog were a poor sight, I can't remember the last time I was in such a downpour. Anyways now we have a funny story to tell.

Baby Quilt

I finished the baby quilt and it has arrived in its new home so now I can blog about it. I'll warn you that I really like the way this quilt turned out so I took a lot of pictures:-)

I changed the original design from Kaffe Fassett's Quilt Road, Rowan's Baby Block Quilt. I changed one block and of course I used totally different colors. I used cotton batting because I like the way it wrinkles when washed giving the quilt an old fashioned look. The binding was pieced from different prints. The quilting is diagonal lines, this is a simple way to quilt; I marked the first diagonals from corner to corner and then using those as guides and the quilting guide in my walking foot I quilted parallel lines one inch apart.



I went looking for a fabric for the back that coordinated with the colors of the quilt top but could not find any, so I decided to piece it with solid colors and add a strip of the prints used on the top. My inspiration came from the quilts in Red Pepper Quilts, her quilts are very beautiful and cheerful.



On the label I included a piece of the fabric I used on my babies' room, I thought it was a nice way to tie the cousins.



By looking for inspiration in several bloggers that quilt I found out that the style of quilt I most enjoy has a name Modern Quilts, duh, I never thought about it just knew what I liked. The good thing about this discovery is that there's a ton of books out there on the subject that I can use for inspiration when it is time for me to quilt again.

Next up

Update: Trena's question about topstitching reminded me that I wanted to mention I found topstitching weight thread at my Joann's. They redid the displays and brought in new merchandise. I found the perfect color red to go with my fabric; I finished all the topstitching and it looks great, really stands out. I just need some time to finish with the rest...

I started sewing Burda WOF 4-2009 Mod 101 A. This is such a cute skirt and I have liked every version I have seen in blogland. I'm using a red stretch denim from my stash but I have to go out today and get a zipper and buttons. I hope to maybe finish it today, the boys are home (no school) and they have projects to work on so I might have some free time.

A prom dress

My mom used to make me all my party dresses, so when senior prom came along we headed out to the fabric store to find a pattern and fabric. I picked this Vogue pattern but we could not find a fabric we liked, so my mom after work (she worked at a bank that was located where they now do the Today show in New York City) went to the fabric stores in the city and found this beautiful silky fabric. I wanted to coordinate with royal blue (after all this was 1980) so mom made me the belt from beaded trim and I wore royal blue peep-toe pumps. My date brought me a blue orchid corsage, all in all matchy-matchy.

What was really funny, well not so much back then, it's that my neighbor whose personality and likes were as different from me as can be chose the same pattern for her dress!!Thank God her mom made her the short version and in a different color; well we both laughed at the coincidence and it wasn't like we would be spending time together at the party.

Here is one more with my brother who as a freshman got to go to the prom with one of my friends (he went to every prom after that except his own, I guess he had had enough!)

Mother's day weekend

If you click on the image to make it bigger you'll notice my husband's nose is covered in pollen (that's what happens when you go around smelling every flower you see)

On Saturday we went for a walk because the rain finally stopped in our area and Clio the beagle was desperate to be out; she hates to be out in the rain so she has been pretty sad for about two weeks. We went to the wetlands park which is local and we love it. The boys love wading in the streams and there's always wildlife to enjoy. We've had beaver's dams, salamanders, blue herons, snakes, turtles, ducks, geese,etc;yesterday we saw a blue heron and geese with chicks.



Sunday morning we went to see Star Trek the movie. I loved it! There was lots of action to keep you on the edge of your seat which was nicely balanced by the character's stories, we are all ready to see it again! I was telling my kids how when the Star Trek 1960's series was first on, I was in Cuba so my dad would put our little tv antenna on the balcony to get the US reception so we could watch the show; my oldest thought that it was pretty amazing that I wanted to watch the show since it was in a language I could not understand. Well, mom and dad understood English so they would summarize for my brother and I.

The afternoon we spend at home having a cookout with my mom. It was a beautiful afternoon to enjoy the backyard.

I'm finishing up the binding on the quilt and after my brother and SIL receive it I will post pictures.

I hope you all had as nice a weekend as I did!

A rainy weekend

Yesterday I went to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, and I'm glad I did, today has been raining all day, yesterday was overcast but we did not get any rain. It was also the spring carnival at my son's school and as always we volunteered for one shift at one of the stations. It looked like my kids this year decided that they were too old to play so they spent their tickets on the food, so after our shift I left for the festival minus the family.

I met Holly at the entrance and we wondered around until 6:00pm when we sat down to enjoy a lamb dinner. It was very good. We also saw Jody along with other familiar knitters. See if you can spot me in Jody's photographs :-)

As always the yarn was gorgeous and here is what came home with me.

This is a beautiful sock yarn from Yarns Forever that I'm thinking will be made into fingerless gloves.



Next is Misty Mountain Farm Super Fine Naturally Colored Alpaca. I bought enough to make a lacy sweater. The color is a deeper brown the flash lightens it.



And lastly from Brooks Farm a superwash wool (Solana) in a worsted weight for a vest.



I also bought Kim Hargreaves' book Amber. The designs in this book are gorgeous, I couldn't pick a favorite.

Today I'm planning to do some more quilting. I already have my next sewing project (a garment) picked out, stay tuned...

A week in review

I have been busy with my crafts but have nothing finished to share. I continue working on the baby quilt, below you can see a preview; I am in the middle of machine quilting.



I'm also making progress on Green Gable (I guess mine is White Gable). After working on lace I wanted something simple.



This past Thursday I was a chaperone for my son's ninth grade science class. We went to the Air and Space Museum in DC. They had a handout to complete and after we had some time to wonder around. I found out that Pucci had designed uniforms for the stewardess in the 60's. They had one sample and lots of pictures. Here is one of the pictures they had on display.



I spent Saturday at Hershey Park with my family. We had lots of fun and actually got to ride some roller coasters (my kids are not too keen on them). Their zoo only has native American animals and they have a good selection of specimens, lots of lizards and snakes which are favorites in our household.

I'm kind of tired today but I hope to get some more quilting done after I get everything ready for the school week (laundry, supermarket run, etc).

I got the new Burda WOF yesterday and enjoyed it while having my coffee this morning. There's a lot I like in it, it is after all the dress issue, but I'm also liking the plaid section especially this little vest




And this jacket/top




And lots more....

Shetland Shorty from Knitty.com

I have had this project on my needles for almost a year. The weather got cold and I switched to winter projects so this waited until warmer weather. The lace pattern (4 row repeat) took a while to memorize and I ended up undoing my work quite a few times.

The yarn is Filati FF Sailor (cotton) that I bought from Elann as a full bag and at a very reasonable price. I made a medium which gave me plenty of ease, I wanted it with a loose and relaxed look. I made this to wear with a Burda WOF dress I made a while ago, I'll show a picture when I wear them together.

Lost in DC

Well, not really, more like sitting in traffic in DC, but it wasn't as catchy for a title.

Note to self: Do not attempt to go to the zoo during Easter break.. Really, it took us over an hour to get there (usually at most a 40 min trip) to find the entrance blocked with the sign "no parking available". Now, there is a lot of parking at the zoo, lots, so this was not a good sign, also all around us there were families trying to get to the entrance, nonetheless we tried to find parking on the street with no luck. We ended up on Connecticut Ave again sitting in traffic trying to get downtown to catch New York Ave to get to the National Arboretum, where we decided we could go to enjoy the picnic lunch we had in the cooler. That took about another hour. I have never seen so many people in DC; I guess because we live so close we do our trips during non-peak tourist days. I had a lot of time to study the architecture... Total time from leaving home to the Arboretum 3 1/2 hours...yeaph.

The Arboretum was heavenly, quiet, sunny, cool and few people around. We had our picnic and then walked around some of our favorite gardens.



Camellias in bloom



A view of the river



A Japanese Flower Arrangement Exhibit



The National Capitol Columns



The end of our visit

Burda WOF 10/2008 114 Knit top

I really liked the design for this top/dress when I first saw it and when I saw Christina's version I had to make it.

I tried the top first, that way if it didn't work for me I wouldn't try the dress. This top has been finished for a while and I wore it before today but I wasn't completely happy with it, so today I took it in at the side seam at chest level and a little bit of the "wing" and I'm much happier with the look. When putting it together I reinforced the shoulder area with fusible tape and I raised the neckline (next time I will raise it more ;-) The fabric I used is a very comfortable to wear rayon knit from Joann's, my only complaint is that it wrinkles very easily.

Here are a couple of more pictures.

A Trip to the National Aquarium

At the Australia exhibit

The boys are off for Spring Break and they had been wanting to go to the aquarium, so off we went yesterday.

My whole family loves aquariums and zoos, and we are lucky to have the National Aquarium in Baltimore and the National Zoo in Washington D.C. Tomorrow we are off to the zoo.

Here is a couple of pictures; it was really cold and windy yesterday so we didn't linger outdoors too much.