About oliver's fancy

I am wife to a patient husband named Ian and stay-at-home mom to a busy little boy named Oliver. When not running around after him, I enjoy dabbling in all sorts of craftiness. I am a self-proclaimed fabric-aholic and proud of it! I have started this blog to document my journey of bettering my sewing/ crafting skills and show off occasional pictures of my little man and superb culinary creations:).

Fabrics A-Z

Posted on July 13, 2012 by oliver's fancy

Have you gotten a copy of Dana’s new book?

I just received my copy in the mail this week and am so excited to put it to good use. There is seriously a ton of information in here! Fabrics that I have never even heard of before are listed. This is not a project book, but is a good resource to have as a user of fabric because she gives the definition of the fabric type and then lists the properties, advice for working with that fabric and how to care for it properly. And the book is a nice purse size- perfect for taking with you on your trip to the fabric store.

Even better, Deborah had a book signing party for Dana last night and my sweet hubby said we could take a day trip to Atlanta so that I could attend! Isn’t he the best? 🙂 His brother and sister are visiting with us this week and we had loads of fun visiting Ikea, walking around the Olympic park, and of course having fun at Whipstitch (or maybe the last part was just me 🙂 ) I loved meeting Dana. She is just as sweet and down-to-earth in person as she seems on her blog. This had been a great year for me! Back in March, I got to meet Rae and Karen and now I have met Dana! It is so fun to connect with people after reading their blogs for years. It also makes me feel less like a stalker when I have met them in person. 😉 I hope to continue to be able to meet more blog friends as the opportunity arises. It was also great to officially meet Deborah after taking the online quilting class from her in June. Oh, and Ian won a door prize for me so I took home a tote bag made by Dana with some Forever 21 goodies- sunglasses and headbands: score!

Of course, you must note that my new purse made it into the pictures and I picked up a few goodies at Whipstitch that I hope to using in some upcoming projects…hopefully you will see them soon!

my door prize!

New Purse!

Posted on July 10, 2012 by oliver's fancy

I have been wanting to make myself a new purse for ages! I picked up some chevron fabric and knew exactly what I wanted but couldn’t find the right pattern. A few months ago, I spent some time at Barnes and Noble looking to see if they had any good books with a pattern I liked. I found this great purse book called Bags: the Modern Classics that had just what I wanted along with tons of other cool patterns. So I headed over to the amazing Amazon that night and picked up a copy for myself.

Fast forward several weeks and I have yet to make my purse! This past weekend I decided the time had come to finish my purse. I was able to finish most of it during the boys’ Sunday afternoon naps and got the rest of it finished Monday morning during Oliver’s nap. Very happy with how it turned out! Pretty must exactly as I had pictured- don’t you love it when that happens! I made the Floral Bag- small sized. The pattern was very simple and straightforward- basically just a few rectangles with curved bottoms and corner darts. I will definitely keep this pattern handy and use it again. Oh and the small turned out quite large so I definitely would not recommend a large unless you want super-size. I am looking forward to using some of the other patterns in this book as presents for family and friends. It is a great resource if you want a variety of styles of bags and purses.

Changes I made to the original pattern:

interfaced the lining instead of outer fabric
used mid-weight interfacing instead of light weight
added phone pocket inside
used two different fabrics on purse outer

Things to do differently next time:

Add more pockets!
Interface the straps so they are sturdier
It called for a magnetic snap and I decided to cut one out of an old purse and reuse that one. It didn’t turn out very pretty looking so next time, I will cover the old snap with new fabric.

This Weekend

Posted on July 9, 2012 by oliver's fancy

I always enjoy seeing a summary of other’s weekends and the random assortment of craftiness they have accomplished so I thought I would begin a series of weekend posts updating on the miscellaneous crafts/fun times that aren’t enough for a blog post in themselves.

Most of the pics will be instagram because that is how I roll these days…are you loving this app as much as I am?

First off, I worked on my quilt top some more this weekend. I really wanted to get more of it finished but began having some bobbin issues late Saturday evening and that was my cue to put it down for a bit. Right now I have almost 5 of the 9 blocks quilted! I am doing each block a different style of quilting to further the sampler quilt idea and give me more practice with free motion quilting. I was practicing with loops Saturday.

I worked on some more hoops for the etsy shop…having fun coming up with different ideas! It is teaching me tons about photography, marketing, and creativity and I really enjoy it. I am determined to keep this etsy experience fun and not drudgery so I am moving somewhat slowly but enjoying every minute of it! I have had some good views and favorites this past week and hoping they will move into some more sales soon!

I have had a purse planned out for several weeks now that I haven’t had time to get to and I decided this afternoon that I would work during the boys’ naps. I really wanted to finish it today, and I didn’t quite make it but I don’t think it will take me too much longer. Here’s a pic of my progress so far. I will blog about the purse and pattern I used when I finish. So far it is shaping up exactly how I envisioned which is super exciting for me!

And finally, not at all sewing related, we picked up my little brother from the airport today after his summer at a camp in California and I can’t resist sharing the super cute pic of the little man giving Uncle Alex a big hug!

Ta-ta for now. Hope your weekend was full of fun, family, and a bit of craftiness as well. 🙂

Sewing for Kids Workshop

Posted on July 4, 2012 by oliver's fancy

I realized that I never blogged in detail about my sewing class that I took at Whipstitch back in March. Because I learned so much at that class, I wanted to discuss it a bit and show off a few pics. To begin with, I have talked several times about how much I LOVE Whipstitch. Seriously, if you get a chance to go to Atlanta, you MUST go to her store. It is the perfect shop for the modern quilter/sewer. But even if you can’t get to Atlanta, she has an etsy shop where you can buy her fabric online.

I had been to Whipstitch last year when the hubs and I went to Atlanta for our anniversary. It is so modern even the hubs said he doesn’t mind going into it- Score! When I saw Rae blog about the class she and Karen would be teaching there in March, I jumped at the chance to go- meet one of my bloggy heroes and learn more sewing tips…perfect weekend. It just so happens that I have a birthday in March so the timing worked out well for me. No need for the hubs to buy me any other presents!

And it pretty much was the perfect weekend. We headed down to Atlanta after the hubs got off work Friday night (about a 2.5 hour trip). We have a very generous friend who lives there and offered for us to stay with him all weekend- thanks, Andrew ,for making our trip possible! (I’m sure he doesn’t read my blog but I’ll give him a shout out anyway. 🙂 ) There was a crafty meet-up on Friday night that I really wanted to go to but we got in too late for that…bummer.

I stayed at Whipstitch all day Saturday and the hubs very generously watched the Little Man for me. He dropped me off early in the morning for a free clothing workshop- given by Karen and Rae, came back for lunch with me and then took Little Man back to the house for an afternoon nap while I went to the Sewing for Kids Workshop. All day I was pretty much like a kid in a candy store.I know I am being a bit melodramatic here, but it was a dream come true for me. Being a mostly self-taught sewer, it is so helpful for me to get instruction from others. The Saturday morning tutorial was all about constructing handmade garments that look professional. A lot of discussion was given to seams and finishing touches. I really took away tons of helpful advice for clothing construction. Then in the afternoon class we made the treasure pocket pants that I have been addicted to since…from the book Sewing for Boys. It was a crazy whirlwind class because we were trying to finish the pants in 3 hours but it was loads of fun! Rae and Karen are great teachers! I am just sad I don’t live closer to Whipstitch or Michigan to make attending more classes at either a regular occurrence 😦 . Whipstitch just happens to be about 5 minutes away from Ikea so after my class was over, we headed over there with our friend Andrew to have some fun.

Here are some pics of the weekend…They are mostly instagram shots because we didn’t bring the regular camera.

my nerd shot- getting a pic with Karen and Rae (both of them made their dresses…love!)

frantically sewing during class

rae busy sewing the demo pants

the boys having fun while I sewed

Oliver loved Ikea!

: The finished pants!

Grand Opening!

Posted on July 1, 2012 by oliver's fancy

Just a quick post to tell you that the etsy shop is now open! See that new widget button to the right of this post with an E on it? That’s the link to my shop. I set up shop yesterday posting some of my hoop art and appliqued onesies, and I have already had my first sale! So pumped about this. I hope to continue to refine my shop over the next few weeks to increase its popularity but I feel that I am off to a good start. Wish me luck and feel free to pop over and take a look around. 🙂 I haven’t posted a ton yet because I know you are only supposed to post a few items at a time to increase views so I will be adding more items to the shop over the next few days. This is a step out for me and I look forward to see where it goes!

Fun with applique

Posted on June 28, 2012 by oliver's fancy

The last several weeks I have been working on some ideas that I hope will turn into money-making adventures for me. I would love to find a way to make some money from this sewing habit of mine-if only to help fund my fabric habit. This hobby sure does get expensive at times! But I think that it’s worth it to be able to create handmade items for friends, family, and myself. 🙂

I have focused on handmade items for boys because I think that so many people make cute things for girls and leave a lack of options for the male child. Having a male child myself has opened my eyes to this problem. I hope to open up my dormant etsy shop this weekend and see how my creations do out there in the big world. It has been fun creating all kinds of new outfits for Oliver in the process of trying out different ideas!

I have also delved a bit into the realm of decor- as you will see in the pictures. I am in love with embroidery hoops and have received such a great response from some hoop art I made for my house, that I decided to try out some options with that as well. Not everything has turned out great, but it has been a good learning curve. I really like the quirkiness of many of the resulting creations. Although I am marketing boys’ items, many of these creations could very well be used for girls’ rooms or even for general house decor.

Here are some pics of the resulting projects. All of the applique is adhered with an iron-on adhesive and then machine stitched for some extra durability. I primarily used fabric for the applique pieces but also used a few felt pieces for the hoop art. I did not use felt for the onesies because I want them to last through many washes. By the way I realize that the South Carolina pieces do not have the heart/star over the capital city. I thought these would be fun pieces for local people- therefore I have made Greenville the highlighted city!

Of course I can’t resist at least one picture using my adorable model 🙂

Let’s Quilt! part 5

Posted on June 25, 2012 by oliver's fancy

Part 1- here, Part 2- here, Part 3- here, Part 4- here

At last I have finished my quilt blocks! Or finished them as much as I plan to- we’ll get to that in a minute.

Drunkard’s Path block-

I really enjoyed this block. The original block from our class had a smaller circle but I wanted a different look so I enlarged the template circle a bit and am so excited that it turned out. I went on Pinterest to look up ideas for this block so check out my quilts board if you want to see other ways this can be used. I love how with just moving the blocks around, you can totally change the look of this block. I feel confident about sewing curved seams now. The only thing I didn’t like about the block was that it requires LOTS of pinning so it becomes quite time-consuming: difficult when your sewing time is limited to a toddler’s nap time.

Dresden Plate block

This block was our practice in applique. I have been doing quite a bit of applique recently so this was a review, but I enjoyed putting it together. I opted out of hand-appliqueing for time’s sake and did a straight stitch around all the edges. MUCH faster and I still like the effect though I do prefer a hand-applique look for a block like this. I used a freezer paper template for the center circle and even with this template, I had a hard time getting my circle completely round- but I’ve determined not to stress out about small imperfections!

Tumbling block

Ah…this block. What can I say about it? I spent much time painstakingly cutting out tiny diamonds, sewing said diamonds together, and mastering the y-seam, only to have to scrap this block for now. 😦 I was really happy with how this block was turning out as I was sewing my diamonds together. This y-seam thing wasn’t hard at all, I thought to myself. And then I began to sew the rows to each other. I just could not get them to work! The seams were so far off that in no way were they ever going to meet and I would have to resew all the individual rows to try to fix the problem. I also realized that my template was so tiny, I was going to have to make twice as many little blocks to fill my 18 inch big block. So, I scrapped it for now. We had 10 blocks built into the class, and I only need 9 for my quilt top so it wasn’t a big deal to opt out of it. I would like to revisit this block at some point and learn how to make it correctly because I love the visual effect it gives. Here’s my instagram shot of my progress.

Now that all my blocks were finished, I had to decide on sashing and borders. I was going to do a sashing between my blocks but the only solid I have on hand to match is a very dark grey, and I didn’t think it would look good so I decided to put them together with no sashing. However I am going to do a 6 inch border of the dark grey. I got as far as sewing all the blocks together tonight and will work on the border and backing tomorrow. I am pretty excited because tomorrow’s class begins the discussion of free motion quilting- something I very much want to learn!

Let’s Quilt! part 4

Posted on June 19, 2012 by oliver's fancy

Part 1- here; Part 2- here; Part 3- here

I have gotten a bit behind in my quilt class because I spent most of my time last week finishing my Father’s Day quilt so I am trying to get caught back up this week. I’m making fairly good progress and have 3 more blocks to show.

First off, the Double Pinwheel

I just finished my pinwheel quilt so I wanted to challenge myself to try something new in this double pinwheel. I like how I could showcase my large scale print fabric in the big wheels. I did not have any problems with this block and am happy to report that all the points line up in the middle…yay! So happy that Deborah gave us some magic numbers to use when figuring out how big to cut the squares for the half square triangle shortcuts because I’ve never been able to figure out that math!

Next up- the Ohio Star

I’m trying to balance out the blue-greens and pinky reds in the quilt so I knew that I wanted this block to focus on the blue and green prints. I also wanted to branch out a bit from using white as a background and decided this light green print would work well. Since it is such a small scale, light print, it works well for a background. I liked doing the quarter square triangles the easy way! I’m pretty happy with how well my points lined up. There are a few places where they’re off a bit but for the most part, it’s good. I like the effect of this and I am hoping it coordinates with all my other prints even though I didn’t use white as the background.

Lastly, the Card Trick

This block was extremely challenging for me and I think it pushed my skills quite a bit. Previously, I have only made triangles using the easy method of sewing two squares together and cutting them in half. I did spray the blocks with starch before I cut them and I think that helped them not stretch so much. Some of the sections, I got my points to line up perfectly and other sections are off quite a bit. I was a little discouraged because I thought I was doing much better with keeping things in line, but I guess I still have work to do. I like the effect of this block, but since it was so much work, I don’t think I will make it too often- definitely not a whole quilt of this block! I do have a bunch of triangles left over so maybe I will try to put a small version of this together for the backing of my quilt.

All my blocks so far- 7 in total.

A quilt for Father’s Day

Posted on June 18, 2012 by oliver's fancy

Last weekend, I was trying to decide on a good gift for my father for Father’s Day. I had a revelation-a quilt! He likes to sit around and read or study so a nice lap size quilt would be a great gift. I didn’t have to think too long about what kind of quilt. My dad is a big Clemson fan and likes to collect Clemson paraphernalia so I knew he would like a Clemson quilt. I quickly looked up some ideas on Pinterest until I found a design that my sister and I liked. (My siblings happily went in with me on the monetary aspect of the quilt-making since I would do all the work for them 🙂 ) Unfortunately, the picture I found does not lead to a website so I couldn’t find any specifics out about that picture, but since it was just a patchwork square quilt, it was pretty easy for me to personalize. I tweaked the design a bit to make it rectangle instead of square and decided on 8.5 inch squares. Thankfully my local Hobby Lobby carries some Kona cotton and I was able to find the colors I needed there- Purple, Clementine, and Bleached White. The backing is a Clemson logo print. I appliqued the tiger paw onto the middle block- purposefully leaving the edges a little raw so they will fray nicely. I made this quilt pretty quickly in any spare time I had this week so I didn’t take the time I should have to make all my patchwork squares line up perfectly but it’s not so bad that most people would notice- although my husband did make a comment about it.

The quilting is just straight lines quilted a 1/4 inch from each seam. I bound it in the same Kona cotton purple that I used for the blocks. I used my walking foot for the quilting and binding. This was my first time using the walking foot and I was happy with the help it provided, but it did take a bit of getting used to. I quilted most of the day Saturday and finished the binding Saturday night so I decided to machine stitch the binding in order to be finished by Father’s Day on Sunday. I don’t think I will make that decision again. While it turned out fine, I prefer the look of the hand-sewn binding.

The other change I would make is to sew the tiger paw onto the block before quilting next time- I wanted the paw outline to be on the back of the quilt, but since haven’t figured out the free motion quilting on my machine yet, it was really difficult to maneuver that part around.

I am happy to report that my dad loves the quilt and I am glad to have it finished so I can catch back up with my quilting class…I’m 3 blocks behind! Hoping to catch up on that this week and show you my progress soon.

I couldn’t resist showing off my cute photographer’s assistant 🙂

Let’s Quilt! part 3

Posted on June 13, 2012 by oliver's fancy

Find Part One- here

Find Part Two- here

Modern Herringbone block

We used the tutorial from Sew, Mama, Sew’s Modern Block of the Month series to make this block. I love the end result of this block but the process was a bit strenuous. If I were making 12 inch blocks, it would have been no problem, but since I am making 18 inch blocks, the math became a bit sketchy. Deborah had posted an updated pattern for those of us using larger blocks but I messed up on some of the numbers and had to do some seam ripping and re-sewing. Math has never been my strong point! I think that if I ever make this block again, it will be much faster. However, the other thing I did not like about this block was that you end up cutting off quite a bit of fabric and, to me, that is somewhat of a waste. I do enjoy learning new skills though, and this block taught me some good math/block construction skills.

Double Nine Patch Block

I have always wanted to make nine patch blocks but never gotten around to it so I was happy that a block was included in this class. This block is a bit of a twist of the traditional nine patch because it includes large blocks of fabric in with the nine patch blocks. I had planned on doing a different layout, but as I looked through my fabric I realized that I had quite a few 2.5 inch strips left over from my Log Cabin and Rail Fence blocks- I even had a long strip already sewn together! I then decided to save time and use the fabrics already cut and combine them with a solid white Kona cotton to break up the scrappiness. I do so like how this turned out!

I’ve completed 4 out of the 10 blocks for this quilt class and learned so much already! Next up, I’ll be working on some HST (half-square triangles) as I make a double pinwheel block. I have learned so much already from this class and can’t believe it is almost half over 😦 . Every day I can’t wait to log in and see what new block we are working on! Hopefully these blocks are inspiring you to learn some new skills as well!