Meet Wessinger Woodworks!

Hey, it's been awhile since I've been around here- more updates to come soon. But first, I wanted to share some exciting news: Bill has just launched his own furniture and woodworking company! He's been designing and building furniture for years, and now his craft is for sale!

Wessinger Woodworks, LLC

Sure I'm biased, but others will tell you that Bill is truly a craftsman and has an amazing brain for design. Every one of his pieces is handbuilt by him and designed with his eye for interesting and beautiful joinery. This chair is one of the most comfortable and lovely things I have ever sat in:

Tell your interior designer friends, and please visit the link to his website above to see more designs and learn more!

A Lively Quilt

I'm back, to share my very first solo quilting project with you! Over the last year or so I've been challenging myself with new and more complex sewing projects, including quilting and making various items of clothing. A dear friend of mine recently returned to our hometown after nearly six years of living in Southeast Asia, and she returned not only with a wonderful husband, but with a bun in the oven! I latched onto the opportunity and decided to try my hand at a baby quilt. I had been involved in quilting projects with my mom and aunts while growing up, but never attempted anything on my own. I used this tutorial, and found it was flawless (the tutorial, not my quilt).

I mostly used fabrics I already had. Knowing that this baby would have a big, bright personality, I went big and bright with my fabric choices. I also knew it would be a boy, but I try not to let gender have too much influence on colors and patterns. My favorite tip from the tutorial was to include a "zinger fabric" to really get a color that pops out and catches the eye. After going through my collection and cutting out squares, I ended up buying some bright red and yellow to get the zinger effect.

I think my favorite stage of the process was arranging and rearranging the squares until I got the perfect layout of colors and patterns. 

 Adding a bright yellow border

 I used a double layer of 80/20 cotton/polyester batting since I was machine quilting. Love the feel and weight of it, and it feels a bit more wholesome than the completely synthetic stuff. I used a pale yellow gingham for the backing.

Learning how to use basting pins. 

Learning to quilt with my shiny new sewing machine (!!). It was a little cumbersome but went quickly. Looking at this picture, I'm not entirely sure why I was trying to feed all the rolled up part of the quilt under the machine arm rather than turning the whole thing around and sewing from the other direction. Well, you live and learn. 

Perhaps not entirely straight corners and quilting, but I'm pretty pleased with the result. 

Adding the binding!

Learning how to make mitered corners. 

Done! Bright, soft, and a really nice weight for a wee one. 

Washed and ready to go. I love the crinkled antique-y look it took on after washing. 

 The quilt was posted off at the end of January, along with some burp clothes and bibs. I learned so much, had a very satisfying result, and am looking forward to trying my hand at another (small) quilt soon. Also, you might like to know that Baby Boy was born strong and healthy, at home, on February 5th. I get to meet him this weekend and can't wait!

Oh, hello!

Hi! It's been awhile. I don't have a particularly good excuse for being absent from my blog, but some things did happen in the last six months.

-In October I started a new job, in my field. I now work for the Oregon Health Authority, doing work I believe in and am excited about. It keeps me very busy and I get to travel around the state and work with awesome people, so it's very fulfilling. 

-I gave up my community garden plot when I started my new job. It's so sad not to have a garden to plan for this time of year, but working downtown and being so busy, I never would have gotten to my plot anyway.

-I have taken several trips to see my family and have spent lots of time with my little niece, Maggie, who is now nine months old (!!)

-Bill and I have continued to work on a Shaker style cabinet for my kitchen (which we started over a year ago). Now it just needs drawers and a worktop.

-I started and completed my most ambitious sewing project to date. It's a gift, so more details after it has been gifted.

Life is good, projecting continues to happen, and hopefully I can get to be around here more often these days. Happy New Year!

A Birthday Apron

I just finished a fun, challenging-to-me sewing project: a kids' apron of my own design. My niece Maya (daughter of one of my best friends) just turned six (!!), and this was my gift to her. In a sense, it was custom-made: I took Maya with me to the fabric store, and she picked out all the fabrics and decorations ("Can it be pink, Auntie Liz? Can it have sparkles?!?! And these buttons?!" Sure. I can figure out a way to put buttons on an apron!). Then I worked up a design and sewed for a month of fits and starts, as I do, and voilá:

I am pretty pleased with the result. I'm really glad I wrote my pattern out step by step ahead of time, to make sure I got everything in the right order. I presented it to the birthday girl on Thursday, and was happy to see that it fits well, although is plenty large so she'll be able to use it for a long time. And was very gratified by her glorious smile and exclamations of "You made it so so beautiful Auntie Liz!" Bless young eyes that don't see my mistakes.

I don't have a good way to share my pattern, but it was fun to come up with so I'll give it a shot. It was a good exercise in geometry and fabric engineering, for my not-particularly-math-inclined brain. I probably could have made it simpler, but I wanted to make sure it was "fancy" for this awesome little girl. Hopefully the photos are a good reference if my directions get confusing.

This could easily be adapted into a larger apron, but the final dimensions for this one were:

Height (top of bib to bottom of skirt): 29 inches
Width (top of skirt): 13 inches

Materials:
2 100% cotton fabrics, one print (1/2 yard) and one solid (1 yard), pre-washed and dried on high heat
Matching thread(s)
Ric-rac
Buttons (optional)

Pieces (All dimensions include 1/2 inch seam allowance on each side):

Print fabric

Skirt:

• Shape is a trapezoid, with the curve added onto the bottom after these dimensions 
• Height: 15 inches from top to bottom of trapezoid
• Width at top: 14 inches
• Width at bottom of trapezoid: 19 inches
• I used a ruler and the skirt of one of my aprons to help me free-hand an even curve at the bottom of the skirt. The curve is optional!   

Bib: 10 inches x 10 inches

Solid Fabric
Belt: 5 inch x 44 inch strip (could stand to be longer, but these are the dimensions I used)
Neck straps (2): 2.5 inch x 19 inch strip
Pocket: 5 inches x 6 inches (optional: cut off bottom corners diagonally for more interesting shape)
Hem ruffle: 3 inches wide, cut to match slant of sides of skirt and bottom curve of skirt, or  3x19 inches with slanted ends if using flat line at bottom of skirt

Project Steps:

Cut out pieces in this order:
1. Belt (you'll want to use the long side of your yard of fabric before you cut out any other pieces)
2. Neck straps
3. Skirt
4. Bib
5. Pocket
6. Hem ruffle 

Sewing:
(note: I'm leaving out steps that involve pressing seams and belt/straps, I figure you'll be able to tell when you need to do those things)
1. Hem top of pocket
2. Sew ric-rac onto pocket
3. Turn sides and bottom of pocket under and sew onto skirt
4. Hem the bottom of the ruffle
5. Sew ruffle to skirt
6. Sew ric-rac onto skirt
7. Hem sides of skirt/ruffle
8. Fold belt piece the long way with right side of fabric facing in.
   8a. Sew into a long tube, leaving the ends open.
   8b. Turn tube right side out (this is easiest done with a large safety pin pinned to one end, the same trick I use when threading elastic through a waistband).
   8c. Hem the ends of the belt
9. Sew the skirt to the belt (make sure to mark the center of the belt and center of the skirt and line them up before sewing)
10. Sew ric-rac onto bib
11. Hem sides & top of bib

12. Sew the bottom of the bib to the belt (again, remember to center it)
13. Sew the straps to the top hem of the bib, at the very edges of the bib
14. Sew the buttons onto the bib

Done!

Lately

It's that wonderful sunny busy time at the front end of the summer, before things get REALLY busy. Here's a little of what's been going on in my life lately. 

:: I spent Memorial Day Weekend up north with my family, babytending my wee niece and enjoying a stay at my childhood home, where my favorite wildflowers were blooming. 

:: My mom and her grandbaby

:: A gift-in-progress for a pink-loving six-year-old

:: The final batch of starts are now safely into the garden, with Bill's help this morning. Ararat basil from the farmer's market, tomatoes grown under my shop lights. Peas abound.

:: Some of Bill's students got a gorgeous day to launch the boat they built. Bill took them on their maiden voyage, and later a smaller group of us went sailing in another student-built boat.

:: Life is pretty darn good.

In a Holding Pattern

I've been absent from here for awhile, mostly because things haven't felt...blogworthy. My life is good, and filled with good things, but mostly I feel like I'm just waiting for The Next Big Thing. I feel maxed out at my current job. I'm lucky to have a good employer and a supportive boss (who lets me switch my schedule around to accommodate interviews for other jobs!) but my work doesn't stimulate me, and I feel like I have nothing left to learn from my position. It's been nearly a year since I earned my MPH, and I want to be working in my chosen field. I'm currently in the process of interviewing for a big state job that would be a career maker. I may get it, I may not.

I've been at a loss for big projects of my own to work on, so sometimes I get home after work and just wonder what I should do with the evening. For a person who places high value on productivity, I've been having a hard time figuring out what to work on. I have a hard time with feeling at loose ends-- no big trips planned, no big events to look forward to, finished with a big round of sewing/crafting projects and now casting around for new ones. I would be planning summer vacations or trips (one of my goals this year is to go to a national park I've never been to before), except that there may be a job transition in my near future, which makes for unpredictability in terms of time off. Although now I'm considering just planning a week-long trip, so that I have plans regardless, and can take unpaid time off if I have to.

The biggest event that I had been looking forward to happened at the end of March, when my niece, Margaret, was born. I was antsy as all get out to meet her, of course, and had the most wonderful nine day vacation in April, as a live-in auntie. It was so great to be there, to know that I was being useful to my brother and sister-in-law by doing dishes and laundry, making dinner, and waking up in the wee hours of the morning to give Maggie a bottle. It's so incredible (and yet totally normal) to see my brother as a parent, and it was amazing just having so much time with that gorgeous baby.

She was asleep when I first got there, so I only saw her at that point, swaddled and passed out in her crib. I truly met her at 2 AM after a shift change with my sister-in-law. Maggie woke up hungry, and as I picked her up for the first time, she locked her big blue eyes on mine, with a deeply furrowed brow (which is precisely my father's), as if working out that although she had never met me before, I was kin. Just me and her in the middle of the night. Pretty magical.

The weather has turned summer-like, and I've been getting back into garden mode. I kind of got out of garden gear over this winter full of surgery and laid-up-ness. Now it's so very nice to spend my lunch breaks in my community garden plot, and to potter around at home with the little starts under the growlights and the herbs and flower in the pots outside my front door. Still, I have been longing for a big garden outside my back door, always with work needing to be done to fill my evenings. 

 Scapes!

Peas!

Pollinators!

Tonight after work I spent an hour at the garden in 80-degree heat, planting my home-started marigolds, plus beans, lettuce, and another round of radishes. I also cast out some dill. I never plant a patch of dill- I just throw some seeds around the plot, and get lovely stalks coming up here and there. Some self-seeds every year, but I always want to make sure I have enough for canning dilly beans come August.

The neighboring plot is home to this gorgeous (and knee-weakeningly sweet smelling) rugosa rose.

Bill is very busy teaching at the moment (have I mentioned here that he teaches a combination of math and boatbuilding to kids who aren't thriving in traditional math classrooms? It's a job he was born to do), and he's trying to finish his own boat in time for summer sailing, so little progress has been made on my kitchen island. However, we decided we'll get it done in time for my birthday in August, so it will only have taken us 10 months to build!

Otherwise, I've been reading a lot, cycling a lot, job searching, and trying to stave off the itchiness for change. New job, better income (read: pay off student loans and buy a house), bigger projects, traveling, something to feel like I've got a little more forward motion in my life, early in the summer in which I will turn 30.