August Project Roundup

Welcome to the August newsletter! August was a weird month for me, so enjoy more personal sewing projects and the reveal of my test bra.

Flat Roman Shades

Personal Sewing

I started off the month with a short trip to Victoria, BC, which led to my husband catching COVID. Thankfully it wasn't as bad as last time, but he was still out for over a week. I focused most of my attention on taking care of him, but I was able to sew a flat roman shade for our library! It's the hottest room in the house and the afternoon sun has been brutal.

I do not think shades are a beginner project because there's not much room for error. So if you search for information on how to sew a Roman shade, there's far too many videos cutting corners (using glue, no bottom hem, no weight rod) to make the project beginner friendly. There's definitely an audience for it, but I wanted my shade to have a high end feel to it.

I chose a flat Roman shade with pleats because I wanted to have the plastic rods create a more uniform shape when the shade was pulled up. The steps I used for this shade were from Sailrite's Hobbled Roman Shade video, except I omitted the hobbles. This video provided the high end finishes I was looking for! I will admit I've used this video to actually make hobbled shades before, so being familiar made things easier.

If there's interest I could write up a separate blog post on creating a flat Roman shade with pleats!

Lattice Baby Quilt

Personal Sewing

I was only able to make one Roman shade before I needed to switch to making a baby quilt! My SIL is having her first baby, so I decided to use that as an opportunity to make my first quilt. Some projects I put a lot of research into before getting started, but this was not one of those projects since I’m on a deadline.

I wanted to go with a simple quilt to avoid disaster, and found a blog that seemed trustworthy with a free pattern. I followed the pattern as written and my biggest complaint is the author did not provide the total length of the sashing strips needed. I would say that’s a pretty minor complaint for a free pattern with plenty of resources.

The top came together without incident and now I have to do the actual quilting in September!

I did barely any sewing for content this month because I spent most of my time either taking care of my sick husband or working on producing my first long format YouTube videos in a year! That meant lots of planning: writing scripts, figuring out scenes, and getting all the supplies. It’s the classic case of turning what you like doing into a job and then not getting to do the thing you like doing. Last month I wrote about finishing my embroidery and bra, and I was able to finish editing those videos, which are doing really well! I’m thrilled.

Unit next month,
Sarah