A Seminole Garment

Last week I shared photos of some of my favorite quilts from the Madison show. I also talked about how my classes and lectures kept me very busy. The 3 hour workshop I taught this year was “Quilt, Slash, Create”. It’s a very playful, creative class, and I think I can safely say we all had a good time. Here are some of the student’s works in progress:

I had one morning free and I couldn’t wait to take a class. It was a serging workshop and Pam Mashie, the Bernina instructor who taught it, was excellent! I had my winter runner finished before class was over and I learned so much. Pam teaches at Sew Much More and I highly recommend her! (and don’t you love the way I coordinated my outfit with the class project? 😂)

Prior to the show I decided to experiment a bit more with my serger, and I created something to wear at the show (and anytime I teach a Seminole class 😊). Here’s the story:

After having a good time making a pair of pants a few weeks ago, I decided to go with an idea that had been brewing for a while. My Seminole Sampler classes have been very well attended, and wearing a garment with Seminole piecing would make teaching it even more fun. So I purchased a beautiful dark blue batik at Madison’s Crafts and Fabrics here in Watertown (it was actually an extra wide backing fabric ~ which worked great). Then I chose a fun Seminole design and began piecing a strip to go down the sides of a pair of wide leg pants.

I love the Seminole strip piecing techniques and followed the measurements in a book I have ~ which was published in the 1980s.

It resulted in a pretty strip, but it was quite narrow and I wasn’t pleased with the low value difference between the two gold fabrics I’d chosen.

Hmm… maybe this narrow row should be used in a vest, and a wider one could be made for the pants. The instructions for the piecing were only in one size, so I grabbed my 1/4″ graph paper and came up with amounts for a larger strip of the same design.

It looked much more proportional!

Making the pants was easy because it was the same pattern I’d made previously. And I’m getting better at serging 😊.

Then came the vest. I found a pattern that I thought would work, but where would the Seminole piecing go? I stared at the fabric and pattern for quite a while and decided to walk away until inspiration struck. That happened the next day when I took photos of the fabrics and leftover chunks of Seminole from the pants, and played with designs in Affinity Photo on my computer. This is what I came up with:

It really is handy to know how to work in a photo editing program. I took a ten week class in Photoshop™ 20 years ago and it was one of the most useful classes I’ve ever taken. Now it was time to stitch what’s pictured above for the back of the vest. Here’s an “in progress” photo . The colors aren’t good in this photo, but by the time I realized it the piece was already sewn together.

The colors are closer to the actual piece in this photo of the completed block:

Next I added fabric around the piece and cut out the back of my vest. Then I asked myself “should I piece a motif for the front? I wasn’t sure, and so I took a photo of the pattern piece (on the left) and a leftover strip of the Seminole piecing (laid out on a piece of the background fabric to the right). I opened them in Affinity photo again and tried something I hadn’t done before. Using a selection tool in my computer program, I selected the inner part of the pattern on the first photo and deleted it. That made the “hole” where the pattern was turn into a “tiny gray/white checkerboard”. This is what happens in photo editing software. My idea was to then copy the middle image (with the hole) and paste it over the one on the right.

And this is what happened!!!

Yup ~ the image on the bottom showed through the hole! Just like I’d hoped. And I liked it! That was fun 😁! You may have noticed I added a small gold square in the center of the Seminole strip prior to taking the photo above. I was happy with that too. But all this was only done on the computer once again. It was time to have some fun piecing it and putting it all together.

I think the entire outfit is fun ~ but is it a little clown-ish? Mike said kind words, but I’m not sure he wants to be seen with me wearing it in public 😂. The strip down the legs looks a bit like it came from a band leader uniform. Even in the 70s, Seminole pieced outfits were a little out there. It will however be a hit in my Seminole classes. ~ and I had to wear it at the Madison quilt show, because quilters get it! I wore it to my first class of the show and received many nice comments. Here are a few selfies I took in the hotel room mirror.

I think this serging of garments could become a new addiction!

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And one more (completely unrelated) thing…

I recieved an email from Debbie with this message:

“I have a vintage crib quilt with appliquéd Beatrix Potter characters that I would like to sell. It is in very good condition and has no stains or tears. It is 53″ x 35″.”

What a sweet quilt! I would love to own it, but I’m at a point where I need to start downsizing my collection, not adding to it. If you are interested in Debbie’s quilt, please comment or email me at , and I’ll send you her phone number.