A bit of this and that

I haven't shown a quilt in a while and found these photos to share. The tessellated block is an oldie but goodie and can be found in a lot of places. This one is the same as Freddy Moran's version in the Collaborative Quilting book. This monochromatic top is done in batiks and was never quilted because it wasn't doing anything for me. It is interesting to look at though.

I'm off to our annual quilting retreat this weekend, which is only five minutes away from my home so I have been working on getting these bag parts ready so that hopefully, I'll come home with it all completed.

The other ladies are working with these fabric panels as the pockets, aren't they fun?

I'm off to make a giant pot of soup and a batch of biscuits ( cookies to you non Aussies and Kiwis) this apron will help convince me I'm doing some serious cooking, lol. We make sure we don't starve.

A bit of sewing and my nest

I've been wanting to have a go at making this notebook cover from Bloom's tutorial. I started with the same as hers so I could understand measurements for others I want to make. The only adjustment I had to make was to turn in the ends by more to fit better. I did a don't look now butterfly on the back.

There's a bit of sewing room tag going around at the moment and I've shown you mine. Here's my sewing corner in the lounge, otherwise known as the sewing nest. I park myself here to do all my hand sewing and quilting. I haven't dressed up the spot for a mag shoot, I'm keeping it real.

In the corner of the room is my quilt rack that a friend's DH made for me. There's no danger of quilts fading because we had a special film placed over the windows in the french doors to block out UV and harmful rays.

My play room

I had a clean up. I could hardly get into the sewing room for the clutter. I'm not showing you all the mess but I will show you the main parts of my sewing room. This is a before shot of my giant table, messy on top and bottom!My DH built this table which is about 13 feet long and at cutting height. There are a lot of bins stuffed with fabric underneath because this room used to be a retreat room downstairs and doesn't have any cupboards.

And my sewing cabinet is also very cluttered. Note more stash in the bins on the far right!

The shot of my table after the great tidy up. On the left, there is a cloth covering a light table which was built in with fluorescent lights underneath. I do all my drawing and cutting on this table.

At the end you can see my design wall which is also a bit messy because I put a flannelette sheet over a top in progress so I could use it for the pink and green wip. There is a bedroom next door with large cupboards and believe me, they have a lot of fabric in them too.

I have a double bookshelf in one corner that has my books in one half and stereo, photocopier and other bits and pieces in the other half.

I haven't had time to tidy the fabrics in my main cupboard but that's for another day and I can have a cull then too. There are two large drawers on the bottom where I store patterns. See the doors bulging, lol.

So now you've had a mini tour of where I get to play. It's not flash but I love that I have my own space.

Apart from the clean up, I even managed to go shopping today and found these feed sack style fabrics for a bargain, I didn't get all of them in the range but it's a good excuse to go back.

I couldn't resist making this sweet crochet flower last night just to see how it's made. These could be addictive.

Post edit, go on over and visit another Janet to see her gorgeous hexagon quilt she's made using my header quilt for inspiration. It's a beauty using Japanese fabrics.

Distracted

I'm still working on small things at the moment, my sewing room is such a mess that I need to get down there and have a clean up before I can work in there.In the meantime, since I haven't been doing much with quilting, here's a gratuitous shot of my giant pinwheels quilt top I made last year out of Denyse Schmidt fabrics.

Every Autumn and winter I get bitten by the wool bug so I got some balls of wool and my crochet hooks out. I bought this set of clover hooks when I was a teenager so that makes them very vintage.

Last night I was hooking merrily away and here's a sneak peek at what I got done. Hopefully, I'll be able to show it to you maybe next week. It's a smallish project.

The pink fabrics I ordered has arrived so as soon as that sewing room is back in order, I'll be able to use them.

Have a great weekend!

Meet Mrs Perkins

You can call her Dotty Perkins Be kind, she's listening to everything you say.
Please note the pretty pink hooves,
The very flash and fashionable buttons.

Really she's a little shy about all this posing.

This is her best side, I think she has a kink in her neck, I might have to take her to the Chiropractor with me.

Whew all that posing makes her a bit pooped.

I've joined Lurline and Joy in making this softie from a Melly and Me pattern, but they must have a lot going on because there's no sign of any impending giraffes yet.

Wasting time

I'm going to have one of those lazy weeks where I don't achieve a lot and I fluff around, wasting time. Is this not a time waster? I went onto wordle and played around with words from my blog to make a word cloud. It was fun though.

You'd recognise the quilt from my header and I have to say that I've had a lot of enquiries about it so here's some information.

You can see that it is a project I did out of the magazine below. I've contacted the publishers to see if I could maybe get hold of some back issues. No luck sorry, all sold out. There was a mistake in the templates in the magazine and they printed the correct templates to download but their link is not working. I talked to them about this and they will try to rectify that so as soon as they make them available, I'll let you know and then those who want to make the quilt can go by this photo and have the templates. The magazine said they were quite happy for anyone to do that.

I wouldn't mind your thoughts on hand quilting with pure cotton. You can see the stencil I'm using in the rings with the washout blue pen.

See how it looks above? When you quilt with cotton, you get an antique crinkly look to it, I love that but the downside is if you are quilting closely like I am, you lose the definition of the pattern. It seems like a waste to do fancy schmansy feathers if you can't make them out. Should I have just cross hatched it? There's a lot of turning in a hoop when you do feathers. I know it's too late to change this one but what are your thoughts, have I wasted my efforts?

Also this week, a small thing, it takes me awhile to fiddle around with softies so this giraffe is having a long labour, ;)

When the cold weather comes, it makes me want to pick up some simple knitting, this will be a scarf and is a good fill in until I get my quilting mojo back, hopefully next week.

The week that was

At last I have a taa-daah moment to share. I finally finished the hand quilting on this reproduction style crib quilt I first posted about here. I don't do a lot of hand quilting in the summer months but this was picked up from time to time. I always like to have a hand quilted project at the ready.

My favourite part was doing the quilting inside the leaves, I love the effect, but I'll think twice about doing double lines again for the background.

The quilt measures 38.5" square and has 100% cotton batting.

So now that the weather is colder at night, I can go back to this old thing again. Yes I'm talking about the DWR. These corner blocks are a bit of a bear to quilt.

I did do my nine patches for Christine's nine patch swap so that got crossed off the list.

And really do I need yet another pincushion? No, but I made one anyway. This has silica sand in it so it can sit on the arm of my chair without getting knocked off as it's so weighty.

There's a softie on my list for this coming week, some more hand quilting and blocks to piece. I think I can handle that!

Bags

Some friends and I are heading off to a retreat at the end of this month and every year for the last few years, we have ended up making a bag or sewing accessory of some kind. The above bag is Toffee Apple by Melly and Me, not made at retreat but by my DD and given to me.Some of us are making a bag that requires making some parts ahead of time. The two small quilts are for pockets. I'm just getting in early while I've got the chance.
One year I made this large bag above. It's big enough that I can carry a small quilt and hoop in it. The pattern was in a magazine and had multiple mistakes so was not so much fun until it was finished.

Another time we made the fat quarter bag to carry a large quilt in. The pattern is in this book.

This is the Sherbet bag by Melly and Me, my daughter and I made one of these each.

The bow bag by Moonshine Designs.

It stays open because of the rigiline in the top and handles.

The stable bag. Pattern is available here.

Here it is open, really this is a great bag because everything can be got at inside.

This last one was a copy of a bag bought in Singapore by one of the ladies. We called it the Singapore sling. It's a small pouch just big enough for a camera or keys and wallet. After we made these, they started appearing everywhere, even on Martha, but as a bigger version.

I never intended to have so many bags , I kinda just fell into making them, accidentally. They are handy to store different projects in to sew away from home though.