day 12

Today I woke up around 9:30 and headed over to Debs house with a few of my dresses that needed to be adjusted. I tried them on for her, and we pinned the areas that needed to be tightened. Deb did all of the sewing today, but it was really cool to watch how she fixed my dresses for me using different techniques for each one. I hopefully will be able to do this on my own the next time I need to alter a dress or another piece of clothing by using the sewing techniques that I have learned throughout the past two weeks. I finished the evening working on my self reflection. Tomorrow I will make my poster board.

day 11

Since I already completed my quilt, today was a pretty laid back day. I drove down to Concord to return some fabric and quilt binding that I did not use. I also began working on my self evaluation. Tomorrow I will meet with Deb early again just to look things over. I am also going to bring a couple dresses over that I am hoping to alter with Deb's help.

Weekly Reflection- Week 2

I had another enjoyable week working on my quilt. Just like last week, Deb was a huge help and showed me many new cutting, ironing and sewing techniques. Deb showed me how to hand stitch, as well as use both straight and zig zag stitches with the machine. My favorite was hand stitching especially because it is a very valuable skill to have in life.
I am very satisfied with my final product, and despite a few bumps along the way I am surprised at how smooth it went. I think that Deb and I were so successful do to her experience and knowledge on what would be the best type of quilt to make with our given materials and fabrics. She helped me tremendously along the way by showing me exactly what should be done, and allowing me to do it in a way that worked best for me.
I put forth my best efforts in order to make the quilt appear to the best of my ability. Throughout the sewing process especially, I made a few mistakes that I could have left alone, but Deb and I decided that I should go back and fix them in order to make the quilt look its best. If I were to come back to see the quilt hanging and notice these mistakes, I realized that it will really bother me if I leave them untouched. I figured that although someone else may not notice these, I wanted to go back and fix them in order to feel more accomplished with my own work. At times, I became very frustrated with myself when making silly mistakes such as sewing together both sides of the quilt without knowing it, or melting the fusing paper while ironing it. An example of this is when I didn’t realize that I had a layer of the quilt folded under the layer that I was sewing, causing me to have to go back and rip out all of the seems and start over. Another mistake that I made was when I put all of the pins in surrounding the border facing the wrong direction, so I had to go back and re pin every single one of them. Deb would simple say “take a deep breath” and she shared many stories of mistakes she had made on projects while sewing. Deb remained very patient with me and helped me fix these simple mistakes.
Throughout this week, I have become very confident with using a sewing machine. I feel that I have learned a large amount about quilting and sewing. Sewing is a great skill to have in life and I am happy to feel confident in doing it on my own. I hope to be able to make another jersey quilt in the future. I look forward to presenting my quilt to the community on Thursday!

Day 10- quilt completed!

I worked hard and long today, but the good news is that I finished the quilt! I had to finish sewing the border, so I did that as soon as I arrived at Debs around 9:30. She then taught me how to hand stitch each corner of the quilt. This took about an hour to complete all four corners. Once I finished this, I sewed three rings onto the back of the quilt which will be used to hang it. I then took scrap pieces of the green and white fabric and folded over their edges to iron straight. I bonded them together with the fusing sheets and signed my name and class on it. I then fused this to the quilt with the heat and bond paper. I finally sewed this onto the quilt for a finishing touch. I worked for about 4 hours today. Above are pictures of rings that I sew on in order to hang it and a sneak peak of the final quilt! Come to my presentation on Thursday to see the final product!

Day 9

Today was a good day. Everything seemed to go well as I didn't run into too many problems or obstacles at all. I began by tying small ties throughout my quilt in order to hold the batting in place with the fabric. I then went through and trimmed all of the ties. Next I began sewing around the border, removing the pins as I came to them. Deb and I did notice that we put some of the pins in facing the wrong direction, so we did go back and switch them in order to make the sewing process go smoother and to protect me from getting pricked more! After about two and a half hours, I took a lunch break and then continued sewing for about another hour. I only have one more side to sew on the quilt and then I will have to sew on the rings to hang it tomorrow.

Day 8

When I arrived at Deb's house today we began by laying out my quilt on top of a measuring board. She then showed me a trick on how to make the bottom of the cut fabric straight by pulling the pieces of fabric across the bottom causing it to fray. On most fabrics this will cause a completely straight line, but it didn't seem to be working very well with the fabric that we were using as it continued to bunch and tear. We then decided to use the lines on the measuring board as our guide, so I followed these while cutting the fabric to form a straight line. I left 4 inches of white fabric on the top and bottom of my quilt, and 3 inches on the sides. Once this was completed, I sewed about an inch along the border of the green fabric to use as a guide of where to fold and iron. This made the fabric look straighter and smoother. Once I was done ironing, I laid the green border fabric on its front side. I then placed the batting on top of it. Finally, I placed the white fabric with the jerseys sewn onto it on top of the background fabric and the batting. Deb and I then folded the green fabric over the white edges to create the border. We pinned this down tightly, so it wont move at all for when I begin to sew it on tomorrow. I forgot to take a picture of what I have accomplished today and I realize that it may sound frantic and confusing without a visual, so I will make sure to upload one tomorrow!

day 7

I worked for about four hours today. Once I arrived at Debs house I continued sewing the jerseys onto the white background fabric. Karl stopped by to check things out and mentioned that the jerseys with gold on them are about 30 years old! He said that Proctor switched to using black rather than gold in their uniforms around the early 80's. I found that interesting. Once I finished sewing all of the jerseys, I laid out my quilt to see if I had made any mistakes. Deb and I did find a few places where the jersey wasn't perfectly straight which caused it to bulge a little. I took out the seams with the seam ripper and re-sew these areas. This was a little frustrating as I found myself making silly mistakes such as sewing the background fabric on top of each other without realizing it, but after about two hours I fixed these mistakes and finished sewing the jerseys on. I spent the next two hours of my day "cleaning up" the quilt. I cut all loose yarn on both sides of the quilt and added a no fray liquid around the edges of each jersey as we began to notice them fraying a little. The quilt is coming along quite nicely and tomorrow we will begin sewing the border.

Day 6

Due to having to leave early for a lacrosse game, I only worked for three hours today. When I arrived in the morning Deb had a board laid out on her table with the white background fabric covered over it. From here we began placing the jerseys and logos in different positions, trying to decide which way we liked best. Once we finally found our favorite arrangement, we pinned down the jerseys to hold them in place in order to sew them to the white fabric without them sliding or moving positions. This took about an hour to complete. I was then ready to begin sewing. We knew that this would be challenging due to the large amount of fabric that I would have to man handle in and out of the machine, but despite a few mistakes that were fixed I sewed about half of them on within a two hour period. Tomorrow I will be able to finish sewing the rest of the jerseys onto the white background fabric. I still have a lot of work to do, but the quilt is coming along quite nicely!

Weekly Reflection

I have really enjoyed this past week of starting my quilt. I have already learned a large amount with the help of Deb. She knows so much about different sewing and quilting techniques and does an excellent job teaching them to me. I was amazed to see all of the other bags and clothes she has made herself just with a sewing machine.

After a long week of tedious cutting and trimming, I am finally beginning to notice my quilt coming together. I had no idea how long it would take to cut and iron the jerseys before I even began to sew them. Throughout the week, I learned a number of different cutting and sewing techniques. I learned the best way to use a rotary cutter, but due to a dull blade I made most of my cuts with fabric scissors. This made it a little more challenging to cut straight lines, but I grew a steady hand and found different ways to make my cuts as straight as possible. As funny as it sounds, I never had much experience with ironing before this week. Now I am an experienced and skilled "ironer" as I learned it is best to start from the middle out while ironing fabric. My accuracy while using a sewing machine has already improved tremendously as well. I learned how to thread a sewing machine, as I always had trouble doing it correctly before. I am also more confident while sewing as I noticed my lines have become straighter. I have learned many different sewing "terms" such as a zig zag stitch, quilt binding, and batting. Deb had me practice my sewing and ironing on practice pieces of fabric before I began doing it to the actual jerseys. This made me more confident with sewing ability before I began sewing the actual jerseys.

Besides deciding not to add the gold quilt binding, Deb and I are sticking to our original plan of what we would like the quilt to look like. I am very excited to see my progress next week, as I am sure that I will be close to finishing.

Day 5- The Sewing Begins

I began the morning with a late start around 10am. For an hour I worked on trimming up the jerseys rough edges in order to make them appear as clean and precise as possible. After this was done I finally began sewing! Deb and I decided that it was best to use a zig zag stitch as it was most appealing. After practicing a little bit on a scrap piece, I began to sew the logos to the green backing fabric. After this was completed I used a straight stitch to sew a border around each piece about an inch wide. This was used simply as a guideline to show me where to fold the fabric over when I began to iron the edges. All and all the sewing took about an hour. I spent my last hour of the day ironing the pieces around the corners and edges. They now will not fray when they will be placed onto the backing fabric of my quilt. They also look more precise and even around the edges. Today was a successful day and I feel as though my quilt is coming along quite nicely.

Day 4

5-13-2010

I finally feel like things are coming together! Today I began working a little later than usual, about 10 o'clock. I worked until 12:30 finishing ironing all of the backing onto the smaller logo pieces. I was relieved to finally have completed that step and was ready to move on. After a lunch break I returned and spread out all of my jersey's and logos onto the two and a half yards of white fabric. I placed them in many different positions, trying to find the best and most presentable way for them all to fit onto the quilt. After practicing sewing the gold quilt binding around the jerseys, Deb and I realized that they looked better without it. We decided that we were no longer going to incorporate the gold quilt binding into the quilt, and that we would simply use a straight or zig zag stitch along the border of each jersey. This gave me a plan for tomorrow morning: more cutting and trimming the jerseys borders as they will no longer have quilt binding hiding their jagged edges. I will be working on "cleaning up" the borders of the jerseys and logos tomorrow morning, and then will hopefully get to sewing in the afternoon!

Day 3

Today was a tedious day. I spent three hours cutting and ironing fabric! I began where I left off yesterday, cutting the green backing fabric to the same shape of what I cut the jersey squares too. Once I finished this process, I ironed the green backing fabric onto the back sides of the jerseys by using the heat and bond sheets. It took about two hours for me to complete all of this as I ran into some difficulties with my iron. After a lunch break, I began cutting out smaller jersey logos that I will incorporate onto my quilt as well. Once all of the cutting and ironing is done I can begin sewing!

Day 2

5-11-2010

Hours spent on quilt: 9:15am-11:30am, 2pm-3pm

I began working around the same time today. (9 am) I first finished cutting the remaining jerseys around their seams that I did not get to yesterday. After I was done cutting out all of the jerseys along their seams, I ironed them so they will appear smoother and easier to work with. I then used a straight edge to mark where I wanted to cut the jerseys. This cut is what determines how the jerseys will appear on my quilt, so I did this very carefully. I began cutting each jersey into a square. I left about an inch to two inches of room along the border of each jersey that I cut because I will sew a gold border around each jersey when I begin the sewing process. Next, Deb showed me how to use the heat and bond paper. We ironed it onto the back of one of my jersey squares that I had just recently cut out. We then pealed off the top layer of the iron on and placed another sheet of green fabric onto the back side. We then repeated the same thing on the other side in order to combine both the jersey and the green backing. This is done in order to make the jersey piece more stable and easier to work with when I begin the sewing process. After watching Deb do most of this process, I am confident in being able to complete the remaining jerseys tomorrow on my own. After a lunch break, I took a trip to a local quilting shop and purchased a green, marble pattern fabric to use as the border of my quilt.

Day 1

5-10-2010.

Today I worked from 9:15am-1:15pm.

I began my morning when my alarm clock went off at 8:30 AM. I headed to the field house to meet with Jake Johnson, our equipment manager. He led me upstairs to a room that I never knew existed. I was extremely surprised to see the hundreds of old jerseys stacked in boxes throughout the room. There were football, basketball, soccer, baseball, hockey, and wrestling jerseys that were at least twenty years old. After I picked through the many piles and chose the Jerseys that I thought were best for my quilt, I brought them over to my sponsor, Deb Emeny's house. There, we began to sketch the design of what we would like the quilt to look like. After we had an idea of what we were working with, we began to cut the jerseys apart along the seams and placed them into a pile to be used for when we begin the sewing process. Finally, we made a list of materials that I needed to make the quilt. I chose to stick to Proctor colors, so I went to Joanne Fabrics and bought two and a half yards of white and green fabric. I also bought gold wide seem binding that I will place around each jersey once I begin to sew. The last thing on the list was an iron on adhesive that will be used to place the jerseys onto the quilt.