2014 December

 

Advent Fun

For years I have used an embroidered Advent Calendar that I made before Lisa was born - I carefully wrapped small toys or sweets, and hung them from it: the girls took it in turns to open a package each day.

Now they are older they aren't as interested, and Lisa isn't here for half the month anyway, so I haven't got it out of the loft this year.

But

An Advent Calendar still feels like the start of the build up to Christmas!  I went to a website to buy some wool tops, and saw they had Advent Calendar Buttons (badges) - somehow they jumped into my shopping basket, and arrived a few days ago.

Today I managed to create an advent calendar that uses the buttons (and was inspired by Hadley's Countdown Quilt) and will do just fine :-)

Internet interruption

Hello again friends - we've just emerged from ten days with no Internet at home - I've had to do grocery shopping and Christmas shopping either using the tiny screen on my phone, or, shock horror, in person!!!

We have now returned to the 21st century and I can be a blogger and a bloggee again at last, and can catch up on Christmas shopping the "traditional" (clickitty click) way

There have been lots of small projects happening here:

I added initial tags to some lingerie bags pressies as several of the recipients share a girly weekend once a year:

I made some mug caddy wraps for Christmas pressies for colleagues,

I cut a whole load more kona solid into triangles for a group quilt

And I decorated my Christmas tree

There has been more too, but that can wait for another day, this post is (almost) photo heavy enough!

But just one more . . . After Niki sewing as she was bored without Internet, Husband was clearly lost too - he *baked*!!!!!!!!

Internet Interrupted (2)

In the last week or so I made some Christmas Eve gifts for the great nephew and his sisters: I figured littlies get plenty of stuff at Christmas, so I would do a little something to open the night before: hopefully to help calm them down at bedtime. Sam and Nina are too young this year, and Emily is all grown up, but maybe it will work for Lulu!  These have been filled with pyjamas and Christmas story books

I also finished some sewing and embroidery for customers:

 

And following a family photo session (fifteen of us for Nanny's birthday), I just want to share with you this pic ... of everything I've ever made . . . These are my *best* creations!!

All 4 of us:

and all fifteen:

Linen Love

The red linen quilt is finally finished, in use and loved!

I think it is possibly my favourite quilt!

I had a quilting plan which I promptly forgot/ignored and I decided to quilt, by hand, a design in each big square.  It felt more like embroidery than quilting, and I had great fun drawing frixon designs to stitch over 

There are 20 or so, but I shan't bore you with them all!!!

Gifts from Girlfriends

Isn't it lovely when people give you *exactly* what you would have bought for yourself?

I met up with three girlfriends a few nights ago, and received two fab button mugs:

And a hand made hexi sewing travel kit -Jane, you are awesome!

I've nearly finished making gifts - thanks to Plum's fab tutorial I have made just a few covered notebooks for Santa to distribute on the day!

So Long Lisa

So Lisa has gone - flew to Australia this morning, on a one way ticket - but she has promised her mummy that she will come back!

She's a light traveller:

and she left her room SO tidy

I felt a bit sorry for myself, but then husband sorted out a silver lining:

And I managed to cheer myself up a bit by sewing, and have finally assembled / basted / quilted this onto a fleece:

Just a few more quilt blocks in strips to go!

Good job I have another week off school ;-)

Quicker than Quilt As You Go

I've mentioned this method before on the blog, and it's what is helping me assemble / baste and quilt these strips of blocks so quickly - a few hours and they are ready for binding.

I know the result is a Coverlet rather than a Quilt (two layers rather than three) but it is just as long lasting, much cheaper, and MUCH quicker than the conventional method.

So I have my blocks in strips (in this case just 'bricks' of fabric joined into strips the same measurement as the width of the fleece)

I have already done the middle ones (numbered  16 to 21) and I am now joining the next two (15 and 22).  I have pinned them to their next door neighbours, and to the fleece below

Then I stitch through 15, 16 and the fleece, (and 22, 21 and the fleece). I press 15 and 22 open, and repeat with 14 and 23 etc.

I'm not a great fan of heavily quilted patchworks (unless its quilting in the negative spaces - Jen, you rock!) so I'm very happy with there being no visable quilting on the surface and there is no crawling around on the floor stretching, taping, pinning, or tacking the flimsey.

And I managed two and a half tops today!

Measuring Time

The conventional way to measure time is, of course minutes and hours, but sometimes . . .

A wait for a hospital appointment . . .

51 basted hexies

The drive to Portsmouth:

34 hexies

but I don't mind these waits . . . Look how they are going together:

And one final photo - it was pointed out that in the prev photo of it you couldn't really see the Red Linen quilt as child and cat had obliterated most of the view, so here it is in (most) of it's glory:

Friends and Flowers

Following on from me showing a felted flower on Facebook, (from a lesson in felting flowers), a few friends wanted to have a go.

I *had* to shop for supplies.  It was difficult to choose a supplier when I'd never bought felting stuff before, but Gillian's Glad Rags didn't let me down! 

These colours are soooo lush - aren't they awesome!

Then we met up and created: I had a few inspirational photos:

but they weren't even needed as we got stuck in and made these

 A fab evening!!! Thanks ladies

Fabric Festivities

Well I hope you all had a lovely Christmas, and I wish you all the very best for 2015!

I just thought I'd use this last post of 2014 to show you some of the fab fabric related pressies I was lucky enough to receive under the tree!

I'm a lucky girl!  (There were even more but some have been used or moved!)

2014 November

Inspired in Ireland

I've escaped from work, overdraft, unfinished house and my usual life and am having four days in Ireland with Jackie.  Sewing with another enthusiast is do much better than sewing alone, and I'm sure we get more than twice as much achieved!  There is possibly a bit of chatting and catching up, and putting the world to rights too

We've had a day being tourists in Dublin, and another at the knitting and stitching show. 

Jackie's son Patrick took us on a guided tour of Dublin - he walked us miles and miles, and took us to some great places, then hurried us along for a 3:30 surprise ... He'd booked us into a Viking splash tour!  It was amazing, I've wanted to go on one for years (in London, and they started a year or so ago in Windsor)  we had such a good time!  Thank you Dr Pat x

The knitting and stitching show saw a few (but seriously, only a few) purchases

And then we came "home" to another treat - I've finally met my honorary grandson, the gorgeous, oh so happy Aidan - I think he's the most cheerful baby I've ever met!  I'm in love!!!!

Tomorrow I'll show you what we achieved on sewing day #1! 

Inspired in Ireland (2)

So we spend Saturday surrounded by fabric, scissors, pins, rotary cutters - it was heaven!
The was some cutting and laying out which led to this

Some cutting and sewing (and, gasp, following of instructions ) which led to this divided basket from Noodlehead

And some laying out and moving and changing minds of this fabric collection

We also tried some crochet, with one of us trying very patiently to teach the other one a new stitch (I didn't get it!)

We have a list of things to try tomorrow before I have to go home!

Inspired in Ireland (3)

We raced against the clock on Sunday afternoon . . . and managed to finish another Noodlehead partitioned basket

Jackie had bought some vinyl, so we had a go at the zippered pouches that Kathy makes so well, and finished one each. (I will add links later, but if you ever want a link to anything just message me)

And having bought the vinyl we *had* to play, so we made up these too


We also started sewing the + blocks together, but they didn't look much different so no pic of that.
I still have money in my pocket, so I bought a few (!) FQs

And I've ordered a few zips after falling in love with Jackie's

Now I'm back in Blighty, back to bored (work) and feeling bereft: it may be next March before we manage to meet up again :-(

Multi Tasking Mayhem

So I work 25 hours a week at my 'day job' (39 weeks of the year), I teach one Friday a month, and every other Monday, I have two embroidery customers who have about 30 units embroidered every four or six (or eight) months.  I have en embroidery machine that gets serviced maybe as often as once a year, and I have a nephew who very occasionally goes abroad for business, so I go and help his wife with little Miss two-and-a-half and the four month old twins

Statistically a few of these things may occasionally happen in the same week - BUT EVERY SINGLE ONE??????  Oh and we can add in that Lisa is moving stuff home from London in preparation for going to Australia, so my overflow sewing room is packed

The sweat shop that is my sewing room

And the storage facility that is my overflow sewing room

OK Pity Party over - I'm off to play babies.  When I next come up for air I have some marvellous miniatures, and a fab flower to show you

Marvelous Miniatures

I'm taking a break from the embroidery marathon, so I thought I'd tell you about my Friday

I had a lovely afternoon at Chertsey Museum helping the ladies make crafty mug caddies, then I was going back a few hours later to attend a felting class.  One the volunteers, Kaye, who was attending both classes invited me back to hers instead of driving all the way home then back again.

I accepted her offer - with high hopes for a special teat.  Kaye makes miniatures - 1/12th scale, 1/24, 1.48 and even 1/144.  She has brought a few in to show us at Fun With Fabric, but I was really hoping for the guided tour - and I was not disappointed!

I had to serious concentrate on keeping my jaw roughly where it belonged!  A whole room is given over to her creations, and I was like a kid in a candy store - I just couldn't take it all in.

I managed to get a few photos, but you wont get the full experience, sorry, but I can rub it in and tell you it was amazing!

A Tudor house (1/12)

A fabric and patchwork shop

 

I should have typed "A *tiny* fabric and patchwork shop": 1/48th I think

And shelves and shelves of others

As if I wasn't overawed enough, we then went back to the museum to learn how to make felted poppies - That's tomorrow's post!

Fab Felted Flowers

(This description of how we made these fab flowers is more to remind me than a detailed tutorial)

These are the main ingredients: roving in red, darker red and black, resist (a piece of plastic packing material, it needs to be flexible and cut into a circle a bit bigger than the proposed poppy size) plus a tea towel and some bubble wrap (note to self, white tea towel next time, working with red on red is a tad difficult)

Put the disc on one end of the bubble wrap, on the towel.  Pull fine sections off the roving and lay them so the ends are in the centre hole, spreading out over the edge.

Spray, this helps to anchor them to each other for now (warm water and a little bit of liquid soap)

Flip the other half of the bubble wrap over the top, and flip the bubble wrap sandwich over - lift off the top half of bubble wrap, now you can see the resist and just the ends of the wool.

 

 Fold all the outer ends of the wool around the edge and towards the side 2 centre, spray

Repeat with side 2 up, and flip and fold the ends onto side 1, spray

Lay just a few strands over the  top of the wool on side 1, spray

 

Repeat the first steps again: strands onto side one,

 flip

 and fold and spray

Then strands onto side two, flip and fold and spray.  If you want to add a few strands of darker red now it the time to do so.

loosely bunch up some black wool, and add it in three points near the middle.  Spray and flip

Put the bubble wrap back over the top, spray the wrap and start stroking the flower through the bubble wrap, gently so as not to risk moving the black sections.  You need to stroke for at least 10 minutes, moving your work around as you go, so you are stroking in all directions.  Flip over, and repeat

When the fibres have all felted together (you cant pull any off), fold it in half and roll firmly between your hands,  then fold back on itself and repeat.  This will have distorted your circle into an oblong, so fold in half (at 90 degrees to the first fold) both ways ad roll again to restore the circle.  It will have shrunk, but the resist wont, so it will look a bit bloated.

Cut around the edge, but just inside the edge, so one side is a bit bigger than the other.  Once you remove the resist it should look something like this (there should be just one piece as the centre will have felted all the way through)

To create the petals, cut the top circle into thirds, from edge to about an inch off the centre.  Do the same to the other side, but offset (see dotted lines)

 Snip the corners off each section

Scrunch in your hand and roll firmly to rough up the cut edges. stretch each leaf width ways so it falls into waves

Take some black roving and wrap it a bit like winding a ball of knitting wool to make a small ball for the centre, roll it between your fingertips for ages, then gently between the balls of your hands until it has felted.

I've almost certainly forgotten some stages, but I plan to have another go, so I'll edit thee notes as appropriate

Sew the ball onto the front, and a pin onto the back, and as always, wear your poppy with pride!

Can't Sew Will Sew

Lisa has moved home - she is temporary, but her stuff is more long term!  It could be as much as a couple of years before she returns to the UK and takes it away again (how am I coping with the thought of her being away for that long? Not well, thanks for asking)

So her stuff is in her room, which means my stuff *isn't* in her room- want to see where it is?

Yep absolutely jam packed into the sewing room!

So for now I can't even get to my computer or sewing machines, let alone use them!

So instead , I'm sewing flowers together;

A girl's got to sew!

Saturday Stars

Lisa has now left for New York: I consoled myself by moving lots of stuff back into her bedroom!!!!

I celebrated access to my sewing machine by pulling the Jenny Bayer charm pack and a Moda solid charm pack in cream.  This bundle has *nearly* been stitched into a variety of designs, but I finally split it into lights and darks rather than trying to use all. Working with the darks, I added wonky star sections to a quarter or so of the squares 

then started joining in strips of three to make parts of wonky stars:

All stitched, now waiting for the pressing and speed dating stage

At Crafty Church today we made stars for a Christmas tree we are entering into a Christmas Tree Festival in a few weeks time:

Lots of methods, including our craft of the month - felting 

Hadley's HSTs (copied)

A while ago I got the ladies at my church group sewing: we were making paper pieced string blocks and got this far 

We discussed who we were making it for, and unanimously agreed it had to be one of two ladies - Vikki or Sheila - lovely ladies from church - both of whom were fighting cancer.

Sadly Vikki died before we got much further, and while I know the quilt wasn't to blame, I kicked it into a corner in disgust, and couldn't bring myself to work on it while I was in mourning for such a lovely lady. I eventually got into the right frame of mind to finish the quilt for Sheila, and she died. Another lovely lady, such a loss to the village .  Another period of mourning :- (

Again I fell unable to complete the string quilt.  It has too many sad memories! At house group last Sunday Mandy made an observation - maybe its time to give up on this and start something else. I'm not sure it's a permanent surrender, but I think she's right that I need to move on at the moment.

The thought rattled around in my mind for a bit, and then I saw the Kona FQs I got from Ireland,

and was reminded of a project Hadley worked on last year -

(Pic stolen from Flying Blind - hope I'm forgiven)

 Hummmm?

• Can I cut rainbow FQs into 6" HSTs?
• Can non-sewing ladies stitch HSTs into squares?
• Can I easily restitch HSTs if needed?
• Will these units make a fab flimsy?

I reckon all these can be answered with a YES, so I'm leaving the string quilt to "mature" and we'll work on a copy of Hadley's quilt for a while!

Triangles cut - roll on next house group!

Recent Round Up

Life seems to be about choices - do I choose to sew? Or choose to blog? The choice has been "sew" for the last few days, so I thought I'd show you what I've chosen to sew:

I made some bags for a friend who runs a weekly raffle at a club she runs (slimmingworld, slowly but getting there, thanks for asking)

And I joined the Magna Carta ladies - we started putting the blocks together:

 isn't it looking fab!

And I made a basket

Binding Bother, and Bags

My Red Linens quilt is now assembled onto a really soft fleece, but I've run out of red linen so I cant bind it :-(

 Fingers crossed I can get something suitable soon.

 I seem to have been on a bit of a bag run recently.  Lisa has a rucksack for her travels.  It's already been to Norway, Amsterdam and Arizona, now New York, and soon Australia.  She's been buying patches of the places she visits and has stitched them on

She wanted contact details on the bag, so I stitched a luggage tag that I make quite often, but stitched it on rather than  tying it on.  For those who know her there is a delicious irony that it's next to the Lost badge!  (message on day one in NY regarding how she found her way back to the apartment "I did try three different directions before accidentally stumbling across the right road")

I've used up a lot of donated furnishing fabrics, and made 5 tote bags to be sold at the church stall 

And I've made one VW Combi bag for a customer, and another just to use up the rest of the fabric (both reversible, with one small and one large pocket, sub-divided into 3, plus a key/wallet strap )

Pretty Perfect Pumpkins

If practice makes perfect, I must be close to perfect at stitching the Pumpkins Pre-School logo onto shirts and sweatshirts - I've done loads this week!

 

We've changed the logo slightly, I'm really pleased with this version

 

At last released from that design, I made a gift for the Richmond and Kew quilters Secret Santa Lucky Dip. With a limit of £3 it was either going to be cr@p or hand made - I hope the recipient doesn't think it's both!!

 

 

My last job today was to man a craft table at the St Andrews church's Christmas Tree Festival. It meant I got to spend two hours colouring with kids - don't mind if I do! The church was filled with trees created or decorated by individuals, families, groups, or classes in the village. Crafty Church & St Michaels's Sunday School created a star themed tree

 

But ours was very boring compared to some of the others: the badminton club used shuttlecocks to make angels, and one of the preschools had penguins from footprints sliding down icy slides on their tree!

Now I'm home for the evening and thinking I just might bind the red linen quilt - Amanda at MonkeyButtons has found me some dark red for the binding

My Cousin and a Consequences Coincidence

The third month of the Consequences Round Robin from Richmond and Kew quilters has landed an Africa themed quilt on my workbench.  For the previous quilts I have made a patchwork block and also a machine embroidered block.  The embroidered blocks may not be what people want, so these are a sort of extra block which they can use or not, but I've had fun making.

For "Africa" this machine embroidered extra block could have been easy: elephants against the sunset, a lion's face . . . but I had an idea nagging in the back of my mind, and I was trying to see if it would be OK

Meanwhile I got on with the more traditional patchwork block.  This lady could have been paper pieced, or foundation pieced, but I created her by adding roughly shaped scraps of fabric together in strips (apron then dress then sides, bodice then arms then sides, face then hat then headdress then sides) then the strips added.

(inspired by a block seen on Pinterest, but I don't know where it originated from)

Meanwhile the 'other' idea kept nagging away.  My reluctance was due there being a long explanation behind it, but finally I thought sod it, it's an amazing story, and people can choose whether to read it or not!

I have a cousin called Kire: as well as being gorgeous on the outside (hang on I'll show you what I mean, guesses as to her age are welcome) she's gorgeous on the inside, and oh so talented.  Meet Kire Godal

She is a film maker, working with Discovery Chanel and National Geographic amongst others, and living, by coincidence, in Kenya.  She recently made a film about Lion Guardians, and it was nominated for a Wild Screen award ("considered the equivalent of the “Oscar” by wildlife film makers worldwide")  The film, a campaign film, is used to train Maasai Warriors who are becoming Lion Guardians.  Lion Guardians is an amazing conservation programme, re-educating the Maasai Warriors into a new relationship with lions

So my second Africa block tells the story of the Lion Guardians:

It's a fairly subtle embroidery: goldy orange on stone fabric, but it reads:

Lion Guardians

Traditionally Maasai males would kill a lion to 

reach manhood and warrior status - 

endangering the numbers in the lion prides.

Today the Lion Guardian conservation programme

recruits and trains Maasai men to track the lions,

collect DNA samples and produce identity cards

for them.  this confers a sense of ownership

and pride amongst the men, forming a vanguard to

prevent other Maasai men from hunting lions

The Guardians get  to know 'their' lion -

searching for it daily, and can warn cattle

herders if they are letting cattle graze too

close to the lions.  In searching for their lion

they also track and return stray cattle, and

can take groups of tourists to a pretty much

guaranteed lion sighting

I hope she likes them