Experimentation

Hey, it's Friday!

I don't know where the time goes. Well, that's not entirely true. A lot of it goes to fabric and yarn... a bit to cooking, a bit to dog-care, a bit to movie watching with the boyfriend. But it all seems to go by too fast, doesn't it?

At least I have something to show for the week. Mario (the boyfriend) has been asking me to make him a new shift boot for weeks now. What is this, you ask? Well, it's the little thing that covers up the the hole in a manual car where the shifter comes up from the transmission tunnel. I don't know how newer cars work, but on older cars there is often a sort of utility cover made of rubber or something (which he has) and then a piece of cloth or leather over that to make it look nice (which he doesn't have).

This is what I had to work with for a pattern:

Not pretty, huh? This is what 25+ year old leather looks like when you take it out of your car. All of the pieces were sewn together in a sort of pyramid and then attached to the plastic ring, with goes around the bottom of the rubber shift boot. (Side note- all of my pictures are going to suck today. It's dark in the desert with rain clouds hovering over our head). So, using these, here is my first attempt:

He chose the fabric himself from Joann. It was Halloween fabric, too, so it was on sale for super cheap. It's really not perfect. The top definitely needs to be stitched better next time (I only took pictures of the "good side" so just imagine the horror of the other side...) and I think I'll make the whole thing a little taller so it is easier to sew onto the plastic ring. I will also be changing the order in which I sew things together to hopefully make it easier on myself. Once again, I didn't bother to check and see if there were any tutorials online for this sort of thing. But it was a great learning experience! I am going to make another one. Apparently he wants it quilted. Good thing I bought more fabric than I needed!

So that was a fun experience. I also finished up my second January block for the Skill Builder BOM (link in sidebar). 

I know, terrible dark picture. I tried! But now they are both ready to go! I really like how they both turned out and it was so much fun making them! I didn't really have a plan for either of them. I just messed with fabric and rearranged stuff until I liked it. It was really a lot of fun sewing this way and will definitely be doing it again in the future :) 

Those were my finishes for the week! I also made a good dent in my Hounds Tooth quilt. I still have about half of my stripey squares to press, but I needed a break. I think I might just square a few blocks up and sew a few together to see what it looks like. I'm getting more and more excited about it!

Linking up to Finish it Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts! Did you finish anything this week?