Daffodil quilt, applique butterflies and lip balm holder

Over the last few days I made some progress on my Daffodil quilt.  Another 6 blocks completed and joined to another row.

Here are details of the blocks.

4 rows are now completed, another 3 to go.  I couldn't resist laying them out on the bed to see how they would look.  

Very happy with this.  It is going to brighten the room up when completed.

I've also been obsessed with butterfly appliques from Kreative Kiwi.

These 3 are currently decorating my sewing room.  The gold and silver is made from mylar (metallic gift wrap) and is hanging above the curtains.  The other 2 are attached to the curtains.

The above is actually purple and yellow, colours haven't photographed very well.

And this one is on my kitchen wall.

I've also made a couple of FSL Xmas ornaments and a lip balm holder.  

I've made another lip balm holder,  which I haven't pictured, and I'm using as a USB holder.  I've attached it to my embroidery machine cover to keep my embroidery USB handy.

It's been a busy 10 days in the sewing room.

Tea time

I've made this cute set using Kreative Kiwi designs.  The tea cup mug rug and the teapot mug rug are both freebies.  The tea cosy is made using the flap from the crazy patch shoulder bag.  I sewed 2 together, added lining and finished the bottom with bias binding.  It was the perfect size for my small teapot.  I didn't want the monogram given in the design so omitted that and added designs from my embroidery machine.

I didn't take into account that the bag flap points down and by cosy points upwards and so my butterfly is upside down.

Burdastyle embroidered sweatshirt and Jalie Jeans

I saw a top embroidered with Urban Threads Flight and Dark butterflies and knew I needed this for the sweatshirt I was planning on making.  The sweatshirt is BurdaStyle Feb  2016 #121  that I previously made last year.

I really like this sweatshirt, so when I saw some blue sweatshirt fabric on special at Spotlight I got that to make another sweatshirt.

For the embroidery I wanted it to appear that the butterflies were flying up over the back and up over one arm to meet the butterflies coming up the back. I also added a few to the front pocket.

I've also been keen to try making my own jeans.  I find shop bought ones are never comfortable as the fit is so poor.  Usually a tight crotch and a too loose waistband.  After looking at Pattern Review I decided to go with Jalie Womens stretch jeans 2908.  These are bootleg jeans.

I worked very hard to get the fit right so that I will have a go-to pair of jeans in future.

Adjustments I made were:

• Added 1/4" to the front inseam to lengthen the front crotch curve.  Tutorial used was this by Closet Case patterns
• Did a 1/2" low butt adjustment, using the same tutorial.
• Made a contoured waistband using this tutorial

Learned the hard way that when you iron interfacing onto denim the denim shrinks.  After cutting my waistband it ended up shrinking 1/4" at each end.   To solve that I ironed a piece of interfacing onto uncut denim, and then cut out the waistband.

I meant to add 1" to the length but I forgot.  They are just long enough though I had to make just a 1/2" hem.

I added rivets to the pockets.  I also embroidered the back pockets before attaching to the jeans.  As you can see one pocket has the butterflies on it.  The other has a Boutique Blooms design, again from Urban Threads.  I have a larger design from the Boutique Blooms and plan on making a denim jacket with this embroidered on it.  So the jeans will match both my sweatshirt and denim jacket.

For all of the steps I followed the Closet case patterns ginger jeans sewalong.   I also made a lined waistband, rather than faced with denim as discussed in the Closet Case.  I'm pretty pleased how that looks.  I need to take a photo and show it.  My topstitching isn't showing in the photos, so I will try getting some more photos with close up details.

The pattern calls for denim with 20% stretch.  I'm not sure my denim stretched that much.  My jeans are pretty tight fitting and I'm wondering if I should have gone up a size.  However they are stretch denim so  I will try wearing for a while and see if they stretch out.