Leggings and a Book

I decided to show you what I look like wearing the leggings. The burgundy leggings are just a little longer then other leggings but they fit really really nicely. I love putting these on first thing in the morning as I drink coffee and feed the cats. The material is 95% Rayon and 5% spandex. The material has a 4 way stretch, it's about a 60-70% stretch which makes it great for leggings. You can make a size smaller and they will still fit,. It's all about the waistband and the elastic you use. Some elastic is nice and comfortable but your leggings will pull down every time you bend over. A nice strong non-roll elastic will keep the leggings in place. I have come great celtic designs that I'm going to print on the fabric this week to see how it takes.
I received a copy of Sara Midds's latest book "A Bowl of Olives On Food and Memory" from Workman Press. It's a beautifully illustrated book that contains memories of picnics, summer dinners on the balcony, a funny chapter on eggs and a delightful page of napkin designs. Sara Midda's delicate watercolors through out delight the eye. I found myself looking at some of the pages soaking up the elegant images of raspberries, pomegranates & figs. Thought the book is small in size it is filled with such amazing detail,  I took 3 days to pour over and soak in this wonderful little book. I keep going back to the raspberry and the napkin illustrations for inspiration.  

Sewing with Knits

I have crossed a couple of things off my sewing bucket list. I have seen several of the T-shirt quilts on blogs and I finally decided to follow a tutorial and make one. It's fairly simple I used this tutorial &  this tutorial that I saw in the Handmade Holidays series on Sew Mama Sew. I didn't have a lot of batting, so I used part of an old blanket in-between the t-shirt squares. This is a small 36"x36" blanket perfect for a cat bed. It's also amazingly soft. I want to make a larger one now. It's the effect way to use up small pieces of batting and puts old t-shirts to good use. I'm all about recycling whenever I can and I been hoarding t-shirts for a few years just for this type of project. I see a couple more of these t-shirt quilts in my future.
I also made a pair of leggings. I've had the Jalie 2920 pattern for a while but was afraid to try it. Strange that I would be afraid to try to make something. Sometimes I get it in my mind that it will not work and that puts up a barrier and keeps me from every trying. Well I was cleaning up my fabric collection and pulled out some stretchy black fabric that I bought 3 years ago to make yoga pants. The fabric was a little too stretchy and the pants fell right off me. I decided to make the leggings. The pattern is only one piece...it dosn't get any easier then that. I also found some non-rolling elastic to use for the waist. These leggings were so simple I made them in about an hour...that includes re-threading the serger and a couple of mistakes in my stitching. These black leggings fit great. This pattern would also work nicely as a pair of long underwear for my husband in the winter months. A serger makes this project go very fast but if you don't have a serger you can use a regular sewing machine too. I used my Brother sewing machine to put in the waist band, you can see the zig-zag stitch that I used in the waist band above. I love simple and quick projects that I can make is less than an hour, especially if they are things that I was afraid to tackle.