ufo – Sewtropolis

I haven’t been sewing too many outfits lately… besides working on my photo greeting cards, I’ve also been working on a UFO that has sat around for way too long. I’ll reveal it soon – but for now I am keeping it under wraps for reasons I’ll reveal later.

Anywhoo – I wanted to share an outfit I made back in March/April with fabric I picked up from the Sewing Expo. This is the Emmie top, with bonus sleeve modification, from Seamwork Patterns. I love this top so much! I ‘believe’ the fabric is a voile from Art Gallery Fabrics and was purchased at the Pacific Fabric booth (if I remember correctly). It’s my color and has these tiny little olives on it – it practically called my name as I passed by!

I love the little details – such as the hook and eye; and since I didn’t have access to cording I made my own by braiding strips of fabric.

This top reminds me of a prairie style top of the 70s with the bell sleeves and open neck – I’m really happy with the way it turned out!

The pants are from an old McCall pattern that I modified to add pockets. The fabric is a linen fabric also bought at the Pacific Fabrics booth – primarily because it matched the top fabric. Since this is the 3rd or 4th time I’ve used this pattern the pants went together fairly fast. The modifications include the pockets and elastic waist, front and seat adjustments.

Stay Safe my Friends!

2019 was all about finishing up some of my many UFOs (UnFinished Objects)… including the Sewtropolis Signature Quilt. I started this quilt about a year before I closed my store… not knowing at the time that I would be closing. It was intended to hang in the studio portion and I thought it would be a fun way to have my customers assist in a quilt. There are 100 signatures most from the kids who took my summer sewing camps, but also from my adult students, employees and customers.

I managed to put the top together and that’s about the time I realized I needed to close my store… and this project and so many others went into the UFO basket for the time being.

So here it is six years and a cross-county move later and I’m finally tackling that that UFO basket. All I had to do to finish this quilt was to quilt and bind it so I waited till I had a few tops to quilt before reserving time on the long-arm. After quilting the first two with no issue, I loaded this one and started doing my thing… and about 3/4 of the way into it I realized that the backing had somehow creased and was getting worse as I went along.

I can “live” with a lot of mistakes, but this crease was not one of them. I took it off the machine, brought it home and took out most of what I had done. To be honest with you – I had heard of people doing this and thought to myself NO WAY would I ever do this – I don’t mind a mistake or a few, I think they give a quilt character – but this crease was in a league of its own!

Once I was done unstitching, I re-quilted it on my home machine, putting a heart in each of the blocks, and a wavy pattern on the boarder – which is kind of a metaphor for my business: I loved my customers, but it was definitely a crazy ride!!!

Overall I’m really happy with how this quilt turned out – I loved seeing the signatures of the gals that worked for me (miss you ladies), the signatures of the camp kids – some who were seriously SO MUCH FUN, and I even teared up when I saw Skilo’s block.. God, I miss that dog!!!

Eventually I will pick off all the stray threads, but for now they are a reminder of the difficulty of my owning my own business and of finishing this quilt.

Happy Sewing

Tag: ufo

Another Summer Outfit

Sewtropolis Signature Quilt