I'm back to work today after a five week absence (to have a vacation and then to take care of BSP pre and post surgery); and so I've been very busy the last four days getting things organized.  You know, easily accessible and cooked food, a spring-type cleaning of the house, fall wardrobe update and the like.

This entailed not only the cleaning and organizing of my fall wardrobe, but also the making of certain additions - two new skirts, two dresses, and a suit. 



I have a very specific work look which I call "sexy secretary".  I've always been in love with 40s and 50s era fashion and have constantly sought out and made clothes in this style for myself.  Pencil skirts feature frequently in this look and they're easy to sew - these days, I don't even use a pattern - I just cut directly into the fabric and they only take 45 minutes to an hour to make (including felled seams) - so quick and easy!

The dresses took longer - but that was mainly because the second dress (a Vogue pattern that should have taken only an hour) looked great on the tall, thin model on the pattern cover but on me looked like a sack.

I wasn't going to lose two and half yards of slubbed silk, so I had to re-work it; adding darts,  princess seams, changing the sleeve and making a tulip shaped bottom. It worked, but the end result is nothing like the pattern I bought.  The skirt for the suit took about an hour and 1/2 and the jacket about 5 hours. (It was way more complicated than I usually make). 



I also intend to make myself a few more wardrobe pieces and an outdoor coat of red wool, but those are for another date. So,  together all of those pieces had me working on Friday evening from 6 to 11 or so, and then a further further ten hours on Saturday broken up in the afternoon and the evening.

And then (and then!) I realized that I would also have to make a quilt for today's blog post.  Normally, this might be an eep! moment, but as it turned out, I've had an idea in my head for quite some time to make a  simple, modern baby quilt.

All that fooling around I've done over the last year with drunkard's path templates and circles gave me the design for this quilt, which I've been carrying around in the front part of my head for the last couple of weeks.  I even took out the turtle fabric last week (I've had it for years as I bought it at the Textile Museum Yardage Sale even though I  had no idea what I would do with it as I bought it before I started quilting!)

So, making the quilt was just a matter of measuring for size and then whipping it up.  If you look at my notes, they consist of the following on a post-it:

"Turtle Island
38 x 48
16 inch block plus 4 and 2"

After following these very complicated instructions (!), I added a plain white back and quilted it front and back in this wave pattern with acquamarine thread.


Done and done!

Back to work I go...