Scraps, strips and summer

Being the start of the new year and everything I have rolled up my sleeves and cleaned out my fabric cupboard.  I've given it a good tidying and sorted things into new and vintage, plains and patterns, dressmaking and quilting, fat quarters and large quantities.

And scraps.  My scrap bag is full to overflowing.

My last serious clean out of scraps was the year before last, a large bag going to the kindergarten for craft activities.  This time I'm keeping them for myself.  I've picked out the blues (got lots of them, I must like blue), greens, yellows, pinks, purples, and creams to work with, I've left the heavy weight fabrics, the denim cottons, anything too sheer like voile or lawn and anything red or black in the scrap bag (and even that takes up plenty of room in the bag). 

 I'm now attacking the scraps with my rotary cutter, slicing them into strips of all sorts of widths and lengths and sewing them into quilt blocks using the method I found here.

After trimming up the strips as I sew them together I am left with the teeniest tiny little squares and rectangles of fabric.  Should I now throw these away....?

I made eight blocks of about 20 x 20cm in a concentrated afternoon sewing effort.  I'm not sure how many blocks in total I will have at the end of this exercise but its certainly something fun and easy to work at over the warm summer days and evenings we are having.  We'll see where this project takes me over the coming weeks.

Bunting to Bulgaria

I have finished my second bunting quilt, this time a very girly one for baby Nya who entered the world a few weeks ago - a daughter for my husband's cousin.

Its a little bit thicker than the other one I made.  This time there are two layers of flanelette, white in the middle and pink on the reverse side.  It is going into winter in Europe after all.

The flag strings are white ric rac, I had the perfect length of this in my sewing box and that saved me trying to find a suitable shade of bias binding.

The postage cost to Bulgaria was very expensive, about $20, and the large Australia Post bag is headed to a very small mailbox slit on the side of an apartment building, so I really hope it gets there OK - also considering my dodgy addressing technique in the cyrillic alphabet!

Purple spaghetti

I made my own bias binding!  It wasn't so hard, the hard part was finding the time to do it.  The strips were cut on the kitchen bench in between dashing around making dinner for a hungry tummy and I managed to sew them together and do the ironing part in the space of a Playschool episode.  It was all a little dive in and slap-dash but it worked.

I cut a lot of strips from 1m of fabric, I'll have plenty left over for another project (or more).

Crafting time this weekend is dedicated to binding the bunting quilt, excuse me while I retire to the couch for hand sewing once again (I really do love it).  Enjoy your weekend, whatever you are up to!

At it again

Another baby.

Another snuggly bunting blanket.

This one is going far way to this lovely couple.

I have to overcome the making my own binding thing this time though.  A little challenge for my week, hopefully I will get around to it as I am doing a little travelling off to Melbourne soon.

On being afraid of the feed dogs

After many cups of tea and neglecting people/food and ignoring conversations/noise going on around me I have finished this baby quilt.

Its not my finest work by a long shot, but in a way its the most "quilty" I have done yet - let me explain...

The quilt top I made from stash fabrics, all cut to a 15cm x 15cm template and sewn together in a 7x6 grid, all seam allowances the same, of course.  Sounds very basic but I had a terrible problem with matching the seams and there was a LOT of wonkiness at the junctions of the pieces.  I am not being nit-picky people, this was serious, and noticeable.  The funny thing was that around the very edge everything matched up pretty neatly.  This was so very frustrating and I almost chucked the whole thing out.  But then I thought to myself that if I wanted a totally perfect quilt I could go to a shop and buy one made in a factory by a computerised sewing machine.  So I embraced my little bit of handmade wobble and pressed on.

When I finally took the quilt top to the fabric shop to find a suitable backing fabric I agonised with a capital A over cotton vs flanelette backing, and batting vs a second layer of flanelette.  I am totally self taught in this quilting caper and I just can't make the leap to using actual batting (plus it seems you might need superhuman powers to take the enormous with a capital E roll of it to the counter so they can cut you off a relative sliver of the stuff).  There I said it, I am afraid of batting.  I am afraid of putting it in my machine, I am afraid of these things called "feed dogs", they might bite, and I am afraid of wobbly quilting lines.

So the double layer flanelette won out.  I actually "quilted" a layer of white by "stitch in the ditch" down the seams that matched up on the quilt top, and then did the old trick with the pink backing by basting the edges of all layers together and finally binding the edge in white.  And yes, I do a kick butt mitred corner, if I do say so myself.

I think I need a quilting class so I can experiment further in a controlled environment where there is scope for discussion and consultation, and therapy for when it goes wrong.

Slowly but surely

Little Sofia was born over in the UK a few weeks ago and she has been patiently waiting for me to send her a welcome gift.  A quilt for her has been slowly coming along in the background of all my other sewing projects.  In the bargain I got to do a little stash busting for the quilt top, but I now have 3.5 metres of hand stitching to do to complete the edge binding.  Hello couch and lots of cups of tea!

Waving in the wind

So here you go!  My finished bunting quilt.  If these little flags were flapping free they would be being whipped around by the wind here today.  Its hard to photograph a quilt at the best of times, and I discovered even harder still when you peg it on your Hill's hoist and the whole contraption starts turning around this way and that, and your quilt flaps this way and that way in the bargain.  I had to be quick on the shutter button of the camera to get any decent photos (plus a low winter sun is not helping either).

Its a larger size baby quilt, about 1.1m x 1m, the top is a nice smooth white poly/cotton, the flags are zig zag stitched onto this without any sticky interfacing because I didn't want the stiffness this would add to the flag pieces.  The middle layer is bleached calico to really bring out the whiteness of the quilt top (white fabric can be a bit see through).  I had thought to use some white cotton batting in the middle layer but I had size and cost issues so I gave up on that idea.  The top and middle layers are "quilted" together long the seams of the bias binding that I used as the flag rope. 

The backing fabric is yellow flanelette, this fabric is so soft and I can't go past super softness when babies are concerned.  Finally I bound it in blue gingham, hand stitched just for a little finger torture (and to make sure that any dodgy and wobbly machine top stitching wouldn't ruin all the fun I was having).

For a little more bunting quilt inspiration (and quite a different look to my version), pop on over to Clutterpunk for a squiz.

The most fun

I am really having a fun time making my bunting quilt top.  I spent an extraordinary amount of time last night arranging all those little flags across the quilt in a way that pleased me.  My other half kept asking questions like, "What was your taxbable income for last year?", during the process, so I don't think that really helped my concentration...  Tax and sewing is not a good combination, I don't suggest it to you.

Flags are all stitched down and I'm ready to go to the next step.  I am not sure if this was the easy part, or the hard part!

Have a great Friday.

My Creative Space: bunting quilt

A first baby is due very very soon to a dear friend of mine.

I was cruising through Whip Up when I saw an idea for a bunting quilt.  You can read the tutorial for the quilt at A Pretty Cool Life.  I think this is a lovely idea, I might even make a little softie to go with it.

So, rotary cutter in hand I am going to make a start on the quilt top today.  Baby is due soon so I had better get cracking!

For more creative spaces, head on over to Kootoyoo.

Big stitches

Mmm, instant satisfaction is sewing together fat quarters into a patchwork. The three pieces of vintage sheet I ordered arrived in the middle of a heavy shower of welcome but rare rain on Tuesday. Lucky they were wrapped up well in plastic inside the paper envelope.

I got two fat quaters out of the orange and yellow flowers...

two fat quarters out of the blue and purple flowers (middle right, below)...

and two out of the blue flowers (bottom right, above), with more left over for another project.

Fifteen pieces in all, three by five in a patchwork. Oops, there's my toes!

Just waiting now to have the time to put the backing sheet on. Its a surprisingly different pink, green, blue and white sheet, fairly contrasty to the front, but let's go wild!

My Creative Space

Its been too hot in Brisbane to do much lately. I am suffering from a bit of heat induced crafty/blogging-itis, just feel like lazing around like a lizard, and with looming holidays I am kind of winding down anyway.

So, what do I have on the go? I am cutting up these vintage sheets into fat quarters to make a patchwork, inspired by this one from Meet me at Mike's. There are a few more pieces of floral sheet fabric arriving in the mail this week - yay! The sheets are nice to work with in hot weather, they are thin, soft and cool. I also got a great $4 floral sheet from the Salvo's store as a backing piece. Maybe it will be all cut and stitched by the time we go on holidays, maybe not. Its holiday time after all!

For more creative spaces, head on over to Kirsty at Kootoyoo!

The Quilt Project comes together

The fabulous Kirsty from Kootoyoo has brought all 66 redwork squares together into one fine looking quilt. Its really satisfying to see the fruition of her project, seeing how it looks both all in one complete quilt, and to see all the individual squares in detail. The pieces have such an amazing diversity, from simple to fabulously detailed. You really should check it out here.

My design "Winter Fox", and accompanying instructions are almost ready for linking to this website. I almost have it ready and was researching how to load it on this blog and discovered that Blogger doesn't allow direct links to files, so I have to investigate using a file sharing thingy-ma-jiggy. Just give me a few days to sort this out. Thanks.

You really should check it out, go on!

(image via)

***Embroidery pattern file can now be found on the side bar under "Free Stuff".

Completed quilt block

I have finished my block for The Quilt Project. It was very rhytmic, mesmorising and almost addictive stitching backstitch along all the lines I had drawn. It was my procrastination, my relaxation, my enjoyment, I stitched in bed, on the couch, in the garden, when I should have been attending to my child, when I should have been attending to life in general...and now its done and gone to Melbourne to be part of the completed quilt. Now I will have to re-set myself to normality, maybe. You can see the progress of others over here.

The Quilt Project

I am a little snowed under with a uni assignment right now (I am a sucker for punishment I think) so blogging is a little low on my agenda. However, I am making time to have a break and talk about my participation in The Quilt Project, as I promised to.

I stumbled on this project one evening in late July as I was perusing through various interesting websites. Kirsty of Kootoyoo was organising 50 participants to each sew a panel for a redwork quilt. After a moments deliberation about having time, being up to the challenge etc. etc. the community spirit of it all got the better of me and I threw caution and insecurity to the wind and decided that I wanted to take part. I then spend the best part of an hour trying to make my computer scan my completed application form to attach to email, so much for empowered and confident - but I made it.

I received my little package in the mail, beautifully presented, tied up with red string (brown paper parcels, tied up with string...). My friend was collecting my mail that week while I was on holidays, she must have wondered what I was getting such great looking mail.

So, I had the material and two skeins of the appropriate red embroidery floss. What now? The maximum design size is quite big, and all I can think of are these little flowery designs (ok, I like flowery designs), I tried enlarging a pattern of some pj pants of mine, but that just ended up looking like a bad doily, and boring. Then when I was walking down the hallway at home, the little fox above the spare bedroom door whispered in my ear - use me! Inspiration was found, a design was made and I began stitching.

I'll leave you with a few pictures, more later, I'm off to bed.

Quilt Mania

I have a single bed quilt that my mum made for me when I was little and I still like to sleep under it on hot nights, but thats not very cozy when there are two of you in the bed. So I decided to do a major sleeping arrangement upgrade and embark on a queen size quilt. Being a relative novice I decided on a "nine patch disappearing quilt". This is where you sew a nine patch square, cut it in half both directions, re-arrange the four resulting pieces and re-sew them together. It looks like you have elaborately cut a lot of different size squares and arranged them intricately together, but you haven't. I like a good short cut.

This took 81 original squares, sewed into 9 sets of 9 and all cut and re-arranged before sewing together for the final product. Took a couple of weeks, and a lot of running between the sewing machine and the ironing board before it was done. I backed it with white waffle cotton.

My pièce de résistance so far!