2014 August (first half)

Petite Post

I'm going to Festival Of Quilts next week, and will be at Deborah O'Hare's stall at 2pm Friday and Saturday if anyone is interested in meeting up (and seeing / falling in love with / buying some great dyed fabrics and project ideas!) Stall QIA21.  (I think this is the extension hall on the right hand side)

Pressies needed, Pronto!

After an early start ("taxi" service to the airport at 5am) I planned a relaxing morning before meeting friends for lunch . . . lunch for a friend's birthday . . . Sue's birthday . . . Oh flip flops, no pressie!

Inspired by people I admire, I made a notebook cover for her, and for another of the girls who's birthday is next week.

The instructions for the cover come from Plum,

the elastic for a pen came from Jackie,

and the rainbow design came from Kathy

So I cut rainbow fabrics into 1.5" strips

Joined them, and cross cut into strips

Bordered them with some sketch fabric, and cut to size

added the sleeves, and stitched and turned through

Two birthday pressies sorted in time!

Hackney Hexies

Yesterdy we went to see Lisa in Hackney Wick, east London,  to see some of the open studios as part of the http://www.hackneywicked.co.uk art festival in the area where she lives.

On the train I managed to work on a whole load of Kona steel hexies 

So now my rainbow hexies look like this (I'm aiming for something like this one)

The open studios were great,: SO many studios within a few square miles.  Lisa had heard it described as a post apocalyptic London where only artistic people have survived!  I can see their point !

This graffitied street is in huge contrast to the Olympic park that adjoins Hackney Wick.

Beautiful open spaces and loads of play equipment for the kids. This is her route to the gym and swimming pool (Olympic pool); an enormous shopping centre (Westfields, Stratford) and public transport links to wherever she wants to go!  She really is living the best of both worlds

Art Anxiety

But is it Art? We asked this question several times in Hackney Wick on Saturday.

Sometimes the answer was clear to me: no, this is graffiti not art !

Sometimes it was a bit of fun: (mine is the rainbow on the right - later in the day this was covered, I think nearly everyone had a go!)

Sometimes it was witty

 And sometimes it was pretty

There was some unusual art - these kittens had been rescued from the riverbank a few weeks ago - they were dipped in a food colouring paste to create "Art"

And bed springs used to grow flowers, and finally, a lovely wooden piece of furniture - this gorgeous table top made for Lisa by a friend

So when does graffiti become art ? For me, it's when I like it or it makes me laugh but I expect the street clean team have a different view!  

Teaching Tuesday

I was booked to teach a kids' class at Chertsey Museum today: making people or animals from wooden spoons. When I lasted checked three or four had signed up - when I got there today I found I was expecting 14!!!

They have such great imagination - just look at the creations:

I especially liked how these followed the original design

And this slightly out of season chap

(Individual photos are available at www.FunWithFabricUK.Blogspot.com)

Secret Sewing

Today I've been doing a bit of machine embroidery designing and stitching, some (secret) sewing and packing for my trip to Festival of Quilts.

Part of the box of fabric recently donated was a sort of linen / hessian fabric in a stone / beige fabric - I'm not normally a fan of this neutral shade (it was part of my school uniform at senior school) but add a bit of dark red thread and I'm loving it

But this is all I'm going to show you today

I've packed the important things:  This fab triple zipped pouch that Jackie made for me holds everything for my Rainbow and Steel hexi project for the train

Roll on tomorrow!

Secret Sewing Spoiler Alert

Yesterday's sewing was pressies for Jackie: a project bag

With this embroidered on the front 

And a pin cushion for sewing machine needles - so you can identify them if one has plenty of life left in it but you need something different for now

Festival Fatigue

We've just got back to the hotel after our first Fesitval of Quilts - my poor feet!!!

However, we had a lovely day!  We met up with Eldrid, Margaret, and Sue at Deborah's stall. (Photo on camera so I need a PC to get them onto the blog)

Today's shopping was mostly ticking things off the list:

Fabrics for the red linen quilt, buttons for a waistcoat mum knitted me, and lace to lengthen a denim top.  Additionally I found a stitch ripper with a rubberised end for gathering up the scraps of thread (thanks Katy for the suggestion) and some soya wax (I'll let you know how successful it is!)

I also got Kona steel and white for two in- progress projects, and thermofix red paint plus a new silk screen.

Fairly restrained!  I wonder what tomorrow will bring!

PS, thanks to Jackie for this fab wide mouthed bag , perfect for the next stage of rainbow hexies

Shopping Show and Tell

Now that I'm home and have recovered from walking *hundreds* of miles (my feet tell me I'm not exaggerating much) I can show you day 2's shopping haul:

The Warm Company were giving away wadding (batting) in exchange for an email address: Warm and White on Friday, and Soft and White on Saturday - thank you, I'll have some of that!

There was a stall selling 150cm wide fabric cut into 50cm lengths (so nearly the size of 3 FQs) for £3:50 a piece, so I bought some red and whites from them, and I picked up some £1 FQs that will be great for Sunday school.

I also got some picture FQs, some buttons and some beads, some sea fabric for a lighthouse quilts I've been asked to make, and that wibbly pink frame is a pompom maker - the ladies on the stall made it look really easy!

I think that's about all :-)

I did take some photos of some fab quilts - they are on the Private Use page

Quick Rewind

I've finally found the cable so I can download the camera photos from Festival of Quilts.  I've added some more quilt photos to the Private Use tab, and here is the photo of the bloggers I managed to meet up with:

From left to right: Margaret, Sue, Jackie (who doesn't blog, but is frequently mentioned here), me and Eldrid who blogs as KameleonQuilt.

 We met at Deborah's (the blue hare) stall and her daughter kindly took this photo (thanks Charlotte) but Deborah herself was busy at the time, so didn't get included in the pic.  It was lovely to meet / see you all and put faces to the names.

A Rose by any other name

Does this quilt design have a name?

I think of it as a LJR7 quilt:  one group of strips is made up of pieces where the border is a L shape followed by a J, L J L J etc, while the alternate strips are made up of r, 7, r, 7 etc.  (At least that's the conversation I have with myself as I'm sewing the strips together!)

Anyway I've added the white borders to two sides of all my rainbow charms and pressed them, and I *think* they are still in the right order so I'm ready to LJ and R7 the strips

Charmed, I'm sure

 So my LJ 7R quit has been coming together well

 Except somewhere along the line I forgot to alternate!

Unsewing is very boring, but now my strips look like this

Ready to be pressed. 

Please tell me if you can see any other mistakes!

Is Benta Barmy?

Based on the comments of yesterday's quilt you reckon I'm losing the plot!

So this is an LJ R7 quilt because, as you (I) go down the columns assembling the blocks I say to myself, "join an L then a J then  another L and another J:

Then the next column is an "r" then a 7 then an r then a 7:

This all works fine until . . .

 

And it's not just my quits - I've infected Jackie's too!

So tell me what you would call this block then?

If anyone needs me I'll be in my own little world - they know me there!

2014 July (second half)

 

Quietly Quilting (and transfer paints)

I did some transfer paint painting a few days ago, and produced this campervan on fabric

And I've now started quilting it

I rather like it from the back too

I think this will become a notebook cover - possibly a Christmas pressie ready before Christmas!

Where did the Week go?

Friday afternoon - and I'm too tired to sew, how sad is that?

This came from Jackie though, and really cheered me up!

Roll on a good nights sleep, and a sewing Saturday :-) 

(Last nights sleep was interrupted by two hours of this:

( photo from Nicola B)

Dreaded Deadline

The Year 4 embroidery & patchwork altar cloth project needs to be ready for Monday morning to be presented to the school and blessed by the vicar.  We ran out of time at school so I have to finish the embroidery, cut the pieces to size, patchwork them, finish and bind the alter cloth, trim and bind and frame embroidery for each child, and make a thank you pressie for the mums who helped!

Sewing machine 

Frames 

Laptop with embroidery designs

Embroidery machine 

Old school dress for appliqué

Pile of stitched designs

Cutting mat and equipment 

Measurements of alter table

(Unseen) large cup of coffee

See you on the other side!

Day One Done

At the end of day one I'm a bit more confident i will meet the deadline - all the children's samples have been stitched and framed:

And all the alter cloth blocks have been stitched and joined in rows 

If you want to see the individual designs just pop over to the Fun With Fabric blog!

(http://funwithfabricuk.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/trinity-st-stephen-leavers-project.html?m=1)

Second Sewing Day

Well the Altar cloth hasn't yet got the better of me - it was assembled this morning:

And now is quilted (!) and machine bound, and it's still afternoon!  I've just got to hand sew the binding, - I wonder which is the coolest room in the house?

Don't you love it when the binding is JUST right?

Just a few pictures tomorrow of it in church and then I plan to never show it again !

Fortunately Infortunately

Fortunately school finished today

Unfortunately we only get six weeks off

Fortunately I haven't got much planned, so I can do lots of sewing 

Unfortunately my sewing room is inaccessible as we have guests

Fortunately my ancient but reliable Bernina is set up downstairs 

What to sew?

Fortunately I have a rainbow charm quilt ready to sew 

Unfortunately I ran out Kona white after a while 

Fortunately I have a red linen quilt ready to sew some more blocks

Unfortunately, having made up loads more bordered blocks I've discovered I've not got enough light coloured blocks 

Fortunately I'm going to Festival of Quilts in a few weeks and will hopefully get some more

Unfortunately it's now time for bed

Fortunately tomorrow I can sew and sew and sew!!!!

Changed the Chain

After yesterday's failed attempts to get on with any project I decided I needed to achieve something today . . .

I dug out the Irish Chain quilt which only needed the binding attaching. The rest of the quilt has been made from the more muted colours in the Moda Essential Dots range, but I really love the bright red - as the back is a red fleece, and only a little bit of the binding will be seen I figured I could get away with a bright binding

 

Machine bound on the front:

 

Before I got too far on attaching the binding I remembered a suggestion Plum made a while ago, and with a bit of text help from her I added a casing on the back to turn it into a quillow.

I used the few remaining unused nine patches, cobbled together scraps for a nine patch star, and used some kona black to made the size block I needed

 

I attached it, inside out, to the back of the quilt (Plum says this makes a nice foot warmer pocket when the quilt is being used)

 

Then I folded the quilt into 3 width ways, and into 4 longways, and pulled the pillowcase right side out

 

So now I can use it as a cushion, and I can ignore that the binding needs finishing - I'll do that when it's colder: I can't have a whole load of fleece on my lap when it's 28/82 degrees outside, and I don't think anyone will need it for warmth just yet (and this will keep the cats from adding their own layer of fur to it!)

 

 

Ikea Inspiration

Niki and I went to Ikea today and mostly managed to stick to the shopping list, but did get tempted by this lidded mug

It was only after we got home that I wondered if I could replace the decoration with something else - wish now that I'd bought loads more!

I used the existing decoration as a template - folding it into 8ths to save having to do any maths for the angles

 

Then I transferred those marks onto stabiliser

 

And stitched fabrics on using the lines

Quilted and trimmed

And into the mug

 

Got to love Ikea!

Friends With Fabric

A lovely gentleman at one of the churches in the two villages has given me a whole load of fabric from his late wife's sewing room; a friend who workes for a local curtain and fabric shop dropped off some samples and another friend who makes curtains dropped a box of fabrics by the back door.

(About 10% of the donation looks like this)

(Another 25% is in this box)

Clearly it would have been rude to refuse any (I'm sure you understand) but there really is a limit to how much I can store "just in case "!

So I have made some bags to sell at the church fete in September :  (all lined and reversible)

And one bag for a friend who needs one for her cutting board - Janet, you only get it if you make a comment - I know you read the blog, go on, make a comment!!!!

I haven't made much of a dent though, so watch this space for more bags!

Teal on Tuesday

Today I have taught a class making puppets (pictures tomorrow) and have added borders and binding to my teal bricks quilt.

I got the perfect border (only needed for two sides) and binding last week, and got them added today 

Another one on the finish-the-binding-when-it's-not-so-hot pile 

Plenty of Puppets

I had a lovely morning yesterday with a bunch of kids at Chertsey museum making puppets. I don't even make samples for these classes any more - the kids have such great imaginations!

 

 

Great day!

Lino Lines

I got a kit for Lino cutting, and had a go: I'm not very good at it, but I guess a bit of practice will help!

My attempt looks like this

Using the black tube of ink and a roller was not successful, but using a stamp pad to ink the Lino then using the roller to roll the Lino onto the paper was a bit more successful.

While I took a rest one of two visiting nieces, Tindra, picked up a block and a cutter (scalpel ?) and carved this 

Which stamps like this 

Darned teenagers!!!!!  

Tindra has a thing about eyes - her own is a work of art too