The Good, The Bad, and The Frustrating

  I know that I can't be the only person who's had this problem before. The internet is a big place with a multitude of fun things to find, share, and capture our hopes, dreams, and even...our hearts (stage audience sigh). However, with the positive side of its vastness comes the evil twin . . . TRYING TO FIND SOMETHING AMAZING TWICE!!!

  It's impossible sometimes. In this case I'm looking for a website for a fabric designer and quilter who had absolutely oodles of free quilt patterns on her site. I had a few picked out on my laptop but, as sometimes happens, I ended up with about 20 tabs open on my browser and decided to just close them all and start searching fresh. That was at least 2-3 days ago. I've spent the last 3 hours searching on and off for the site and designer itself as well as where on earth I found the link to it! I never just blatantly seach for fabric designers online, so I am almost positive it was linked through one of the sewing blogs I read. I haven't found it in any posts going back a week on every one of the blogs, but occasionally I pop in and check out new blogs as well.

  If anyone is up to the challange or has any ideas, here's the sparse knowledge that I have from my memories of the site and colections (I was busy looking at the fabric, not the site).

   1. It's a female designer and her name is escaping me entirely, but her name was the name for her fabric line
   2. She had multiple different lines of fabric, all were very fun, busy patterns, just with different themes/motifs/color schemes to the different collections
   3. She didn't sell her products directly from her site, but had links to where to buy her products, one of the purchasing sites only sold about 5-6 different designers' fabric and one of them was Ty Pennington's (of Extreme Home Makeover) home decor fabric line.
   4.Like I said before, she had a massive amount of free quilt patterns, the list was easily 50+ patterns long, but unfortunately my home printer is out of ink, so I couldn't get hard copies of the ones I loved right away.
   5. What I do remember of the site design is that it was very minimal. Lots of white on both sides with the main subject centered, and a fancily scripted list of links to different areas of her website.

  Well, there it is. It's not much to go on, which makes my search that much more difficult and frustrating. I know I don't have a lot of traffic on here, but if you happen to think of someone that seems to match this description, I would be thrilled to find her again!

Ah well, live and live on...or in this case search and search on.

Happy Thursday!

Matthew

New Beginnings

Happy Friday everybody!

I am extremely happy to say that I got a lot done yesterday. I just about got everything patterned out. I just have the collar, collar stand, pockets, and the front right piece (most I just get one half and will mirror it for the end piece, but this one needs the breast pocket marked and the button holes).

Supplies all laid out and ready to go!

I also went to Joann fabrics and got everything I need EXCEPT for a french curve. I was extremely frustrated, but I realized that, at least for these first few attempts, I don't think having a line that is a bit wobbly is going to make the biggest difference in the world. After all, the pin lines that I ended up with weren't that straight, and I still need to calculate and add cuff and seam allowances plus the extra 2 inches that I'm going to be adding to the torso.

Right sleeve all pinned down and ready to prick the outline.

Here's the pencil outline with labels and notes to remind me to add seam and cuff allowances. I'll be going over everything in sharpie later and then using tracing paper to make the copy that I'll end up cutting so that I can adjust sizes and proportions later if needed.

Quick question, does anyone have a recommendation as far as where is best to add those two inches, I was thinking the best place would be the side panels, but then I have to allow for the arm hole adjustments, and the patch pockets are mostly just covering the front piece, but they cross over about an inch onto the side panels. I feel like it would be a pretty big hassle, but at the same time, if I added it to the back I would ruin the lay of the double vents, and the front would probably make it lay funny and look lopsided.

I simply drew a line over the top of this patch pocket to mark the path of the side panel seam, for the darts in the front piece, I just measured how far under the pocket they went and continued the line to that point.

Here's the pencil outline of the same piece.

Anyways, today I'm going to try and finish those last few pattern pieces, and get at least a few pieces of fabric cut out, pre shrink my interfacing. Then I'm going to take a break to work on a Valentines day pillow for my sweetie. It's one of about 5-6 parts to his gift that I have planned out and the only one that I haven't gotten a start on. I'd prefer to NOT be the guy rushing like a crazy person on Wed. to finish everything (been there done that).

My front left pattern piece complete with pockets placed, darts drawn, and buttons...umm something that starts with "B"

I hope you were all able to be productive yesterday, and if not, then take this afternoon to put together a short list of what you hope to get done this weekend. Remember to keep it realistic, but still try to push yourself a bit. Maybe start in on a new hobby you've been meaning to try, or pick out a project that has been pushed to the back burner and take another crack at it.



Variety is the spice of life.

 Matthew