Pieced Stripes Hammock

This hammock isn't being made out of striped fabric, but I'm trying out a fairly simple piecing pattern. Here's my extremely abbreviated plan.


Hopefully, I will follow the plan and thereby minimize seam rippage.

Here are my fabric choices and my original scribbled plan. Yip, the real plan makes even less sense than the above revised plan.


There are 6 different colors, so the plan is only depicting light and dark pairings. This should look pretty snazzy when pieced. Also, I should end up with several blocks, but I will need to use additional border fabric as the above fabric lacks enough border fabric for multiple blocks. Boring, eh.

So, here's a pretty picture of my fabric laid carefully on my sewing machine, as I just ironed them.




Currently, the four strips are in the process of being sewed together which I should finish tonight.

I'm excited to see how these turn out.

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A Quilted Liner -part 4

Finally, I finished the liner yesterday. I decided that I just couldn't stomach risking putting the liner into the bottom of the cage, so I converted it to a super hammock.




Oh, today, I threw together the matching hammock.

And, here's a couple shots of the hammocks in action.








I probably should admit to a few things. I had to rip out a lot of stitches after sewing it all together without the borders, sigh. And, I am never going to do the appliqué the way I finagled it ever again.

Regardless, the rats are loving it. Then, again they would love a towel hung the same way. Sigh

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A Quilted Liner - Part 3

Finishing up the piecing tonight. Made the squares and then, sewed them together.



Here's the completed pieced top. I don't know if I'm ever going to do this again for a rat liner, extremely labor intensive. This pieced portion is beautiful. Unfortunately, the photo washed out some of the color. This would be an awesome baby blanket.



Next step will be adding the borders, so that it fits the bottom ledge. Then, I will have to cut out the fleece backing and sew it together. Then, the final step, quilting.

Oh, and I might at some point, play around with a little bit of applique.
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Furoshiki Bag

I stumbled across a you tube video demonstrating Furoshiki bags through Pinterest.
So, in the video it states 105 cm. And, I'm like 105 cm, hmmm I wonder if that's 42 inches. After some quick calculations (2.54 cm in an inch), I was like dancing around the room and dashed to my sewing room and grabbed a piece of fabric that was approximately square.
Cool Fact- Standard fabric bolts come in 42 inch or 60 inch widths.
My very own furoshiki bag.

Here, I have loosened the lower knot, so I can peek inside.

I'm so excited about this. Such an easy project. I would need to cut a square and then hem it, and voila. A beautiful and functional purse.
I thought I was done with this post, but then, Skip says what would the purse look like with a rat inside. The models are Walter and Lily. They are shyer than my usual models, but the purple bag demanded blonde rats.


So, of course, I'm now thinking about making a hammockized Furoshiki bag. Also, would these make for a good bonding pouch?
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A Quilted Liner - Part 2

Last night, I continued cutting and sewing my liner.

Here's a fairly lousy photo of my sewing the first seam. Sigh. It looks like I am in a cave.



Here, I am cutting out the 5 inch rectangles. My seam was not quite a quarter inch on one of the strips, so, we will just have to see what happens. I figure it will correct when I square them up after the next seam.


And, here are the piles of pinned squares. I was using my plan to check off each square as I go. Sheesh. I initially pinned a square wrong, and when I checked the plan, I was so happy that I caught it there.



So, this is how far I got last night. I have more than enough squares, actually a couple extra which may become hammocks. We shall see.

Oh, and I am so thrilled I found an applique star pattern in my "new" book, Sewing for Baby. It just arrived off Ebay. I'm thinking of putting a purple star in one of the squares.

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A Quilted Liner - In Progress

The Rittles go through liners like they are tissue paper. We've figured out a few things to slow them down. Quilting the layers, Avoiding hides that have open floors, and certain fabrics are apparently yummy.

I get really bored sewing liners, and, of course, they need a new set, so this time they will get a pieced liner. If it works well, I might make a version of it as a picnic blanket. It would also make a nice baby quilt. You can somewhat see my scribbled plan in the fabric photo.

So, here are the fabrics. I'd wanted it to be southwestern themed, but my pinks were too babyish. I'd actually had the pink fabrics sitting on my desk for a day before I finally accepted that they were not pleasing. So, this is southwest theme, sort of. My other challenge for this liner may be adding some applique.




Then, I cut the fabric into five inch strips. Two strips for the background and one strip for each of the accent fabrics. I'm crossing my fingers that I've calculated properly.





And, then, I went ahead and pinned an accent fabric strip to a background fabric strip.




Tonight, I start sewing my strips together.

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Walter and a Snorkeled Rat

Rats love to pile. Walter is looking right at you, and beside him is Rose snorkeling. Lily is just lying there, and Mabel is on the left.




Rose is siamese, but there is probably some porphyrin in this picture. However, after a year of on and off antibiotics, we have finally found the cause of her rash. She is allergic to gluten. Bittle, the dog, also is allergic to gluten. So,... now all of the pets are on gluten free food. Her rash has cleared so much after a month off gluten, but she still occasionally has some porphyrin staining.

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