Going with Flo

Ta dah!  A quilt top, finished, for Siblings Together.  I learned a fair bit from this one, I think - not least the differences between what "a 1/4" seam" means on various sewing machines.  In retrospect, a block that required precisely matched seams may not have been a sensible choice.

There are, certainly, a few places on the quilt where four blocks meet in perfect synchronicity:

And there are a few places where it looks more like this:

I will admit, my perfectionist heart sank when I started pinning blocks together, and for nearly a whole row I wrestled with trimming and easing and generally tweaking to try to make everything exactly as I had imagined it.  And then I remembered a very wise lady whom I worked with several years ago.  Her name was Tracey, and when things didn't quite turn out as planned, she was often known to say (in her wonderfully soft, soothing voice) "Go with Flo.  She's a good girl, is Flo, she'll see you right."

So I did, and I'm glad of it.  It's a beautiful quilt top, with all the quirks and individualities of the people who made it.  The pattern still shines out just as I hoped it would, and I think the effect is fresh and friendly.  I am hugely grateful to the very skilled and very generous members of the ST2 bee.  And it has the Moosh seal of approval too.

It's also HUGE - that's it spread out over our super-king sized bed - and I've never quilted anything this big before.  There is every chance that I won't finish it before the Siblings Together retreat...  but if I don't, I can comfort myself that I have at least contributed.  A while back I dug a few finished quilt tops out of the midden of my workroom that I'd completely forgotten about (I KNOW) and asked if anyone would be willing to quilt them up for ST2.  The very wonderful Sue stepped up and has finished all three!

This one was a sort of scrappy, inverted Irish Chain quilt that I put all my most cheerful scraps into and then forgot about.

This one has a ton of Denyse Schmidt Shelburne Falls in it.  I was finally making something for ME, and I painstakingly devised a block, then set it on point, and just as I was finishing up the top I realised that there would've been a vastly easier way of creating the same effect without having to deal with a million bias edges.  I promptly fell utterly out of love with it, despite the fabrics.  Whoops.

And this last one is entirely made of Madrona Road, intended as a showcase for the range back when I briefly dabbled in selling fabric.  I still really love this range.

But more to the point, isn't Sue a hero?!  I got to do the fun bit and then she's made them actually useful!  Three cheers for Sue!  Fingers crossed I can quilt up that beast at the top and we'll make it 4 finished quilts for the retreat.  Wish me luck...

Raining sunshine

Gosh, the responses to that last post have been WONDERFUL!  I now have sixteen blocks on my design wall, waiting to be assembled into a quilt top.  It's my birthday on Tuesday and I think since I have so many blocks already it's the perfect excuse for a whole day of sewing.  Who knows, I may even get it quilted now that I've discovered the joy of spray-basting.  (Did you know?  I did not know.  Spray basting!  It's so quick, and so flat, and so much better for my knees!)

I tried it for the first time on a quilt I've just finished as a commission for a lady called Claire - or rather, for her young daughter.  She'd already bought a beautiful felted mobile of fluffy clouds with falling rainbow raindrops from my very talented friend Peppercorn Crafts, so when she wanted a quilt too, I immediately thought of Dashwood's new Rain or Shine collection designed by Stephanie Thannhauser and raced off to Simply Solids with an excuse to buy it at last.

I think it's worked, don't you?  Nice and simple, to show off those lovely jolly prints.  I mixed in some new mini pearl bracelets and some of my very precious hoarded Aneela Hooey cats from her Hello Petal collection, since I noticed some of the clouds in the Rain or Shine fabrics had text that said "raining cats and dogs" and I knew Claire liked kittens.  What kind of person doesn't like kittens, after all?

I bound it in some navy stripes to keep it from getting too sugary, and may I say I'm getting quite good at this machine binding malarky.  Look at that corner, eh?  A lot better than they used to be!

I found 2 yards of a pretty blue blender called "Stonehenge" at good old Abakhans and decided it looked a bit like a slightly cloudy blue sky, which worked with the theme.  Then I got carried away and added a few squares to the front too, so that I almost didn't leave enough to cover the back...

I love the smiley sunshine and the little rainbows of Rain or Shine, but honestly my favourite fabric in this one is still those little white cats.  This square is my favourite - I always thought "Tiddles" was the traditional cat name, but "Tibbles" is much better.  It makes me think of Tybalt, the King of Cats from Romeo and Juliet.

By the way, I'm calling this quilt "Raining Sunshine" after the theme song of a rather wonderful film called Cloudy with A Chance of Meatballs.  If you haven't seen it, you should.  Trainboy was OBSESSED with that song for months, and remarkably enough I can still stand to listen to it.  Occasionally.

Two finishes in one!

A wee while since, my lovely friend in Amurrika, Lauren, told me that she was going to be an aunty soon and she wanted to commission me to make a baby quilt.  Two baby quilts actually, since her brother and his wife were expecting twins.  

We discussed designs and such - the parents are librarians, so she wanted something that suggested books, and the babies were apparently Very Wriggly, and were referred to as Joey and Roo, so she fancied some kangaroo references too.  Thoughtfully, Lauren also considered that babies are not known for their natural cleanliness, so she asked if it could not have a white backing.  She even posted me a few fabrics to include, so I could get a better idea of a suitable colour palette.  I footled around in photoshop with some pictures from Google images and mocked up the following: 

It was deemed a go-er and so I set to.  Unfortunately, no-one had informed the Babies that I am not the fastest worker and they arrived about a month before I posted these off... they stayed in the NICU for a little while but are home now, and hopefully these quilts will arrive with them shortly.  

Here they are on my bed!

And here are some closeups: Right

...and Left.

The fabrics include some with Dr. Seuss characters and some Hungry Caterpillar fabrics, which I feel are books no baby should be without.  But not all books are storybooks!  My second-favourite part of making this quilt was finding this fabric, featuring cute animals doing SCIENCE.  And even better, several of them are in ladies' clothing:

Science Cat!

Science Dog!

Since the twins are both girls, I don't see any harm in getting the positive role-models in early.  No gender stereotyping here, thank you.

I found the loveliest backing fabric at the wonderful Simply Solids shop, one of my new favourite places in the world.  It is dribbly rainbows that rather nicely complimented the loopy free-hand quilting I wrestled with... not all my stitches are regular, I will admit, but damn it I tried and they definitely improved over the course of both quilts!

Finally, my very favourite part of making these was the applique kangaroos.  Because they mirror each other, like twins!  Two little kangaroo sisters sleeping quietly in their rainbow libraries.  HOW CUTE IS THAT.*

As ever, I am annoyed with myself for not finishing these before the babies arrived, but Lauren has been very understanding.  I hope she'll like them.  :)


 *VERY CUTE.  Do not argue with me on this.

Aaand finished.

My last bit of Christmas crafting done - a pair of stockings for my brother-in-law and his wife, commissioned by my lovely Mother-in-law, who has always been my best customer, bless her!

I forget where I found the pattern but you can find variations of it all over the internet, such as this one from Diary of a Quilter.  And now it is time for me to pack away the Christmas fabric 'till next year, and maybe get on with some Christmas Eating.

Craft Fairs! All done now, though... oops.

Egads I am the worst.  MOVING ON...

So, me and some more organised and confident mates have set up a little group doing craft fairs about the place.  It seemed like a marvellous "last-push" idea for my aim of reducing my stash!  And then of course, as previously mentioned, lovely Alison generously offered to give me a large bundle of Christmas-themed fabric to use, so it's not been so great on the stash-reductions... but at least I didn't buy anything new?

We did one stall at the village lights switch-on, and another craft market in town, and I must say we didn't do too badly.  I had some Christmassy aprons based mostly on the Seasalt & Stitches pattern with a few tweaks - I lined the bibs, shortened the straps etc - some wheat bags, lavender bags, gift bags and the like.

It all looked terribly festive, even if it was blinkin' cold.  In January I'm hoping to get back onto some quilting, and we'll see if I can sell some crib blankets I've been putting together.  I have a few specifically Christmassy bits left over which I'm listing on my Facebook and will probably take into the Emporium on Wednesday if they have room for them.

Tree's up!

Thursday was a smashing Crafternoon with Alison (there's a truly gorgeous photo of me in the link, be warned), whose stash of Christmas fabrics appears to have been dented Not One Whit by the enormous quantity of stuff she'd given to me!  We did some lovely hand-stitching and ate fab soup and pigs in blankets, which are frankly my favourite part of Christmas.  And at the end of it I had these lovely little ornaments.  Hurrah!

Eye pillow and two lavender bags, commission.

OH LAWKS

Of course, the ridiculous thing is that while I haven't blogged for months, I have been sewing like a mad thing the entire time.

In the spirit of my "use stuff up" project, I've been doing 12.5" quilt-as-you-go blocks for the wonderful Soy Amado project:

And I made some pot-holders for a wonderful friend of mine who got married last week in the US.  I wish I could've been there but from what I've seen it was a fab day and she made a gorgeous bride.

And I've joined a real actual sewing bee!  The Siblings Together Bee (mk 2), where we make 2 x 12.5" blocks per month for a year.  These are November's rainbow coloured slab blocks, although I got a bit carried away and made 3...

I also made a commissioned toddler quilt which I didn't even take a photo of, and half a dozen baby quilts for Project Linus which will go to the Calderdale babies ICU.  I didn't take photos of those either.  I am USELESS!

Worst of all, I've realised I never posted the finished Bear Quilts.  So here they are, two disappearing nine-patch quilts in "Indie Chic" by Riley Blake fabrics and a few stash bits and Kona solids, for a pair of twin boys:

Here's a close-up of the Bear Block at the top of each quilt (based on this block at Quilter's Cache, but tweaked a bit for my purposes):

Each quilt had a little teddybear to go with it, made from a Love Patchwork & Quilting pattern.   Unfortunately the bears had to be posted off before the quilts were finished, so I didn't get a proper photo, but I managed this one while the quilt tops were still on the design wall:

There, that'll do for this post.  Now let's see how long before I post again...

TWO finished quilts. Yes, two.

Hurrah for finished objects!  

Fired up by my quilting success last Saturday, the past two evenings have been spent putting bindings on those two unfinished quilts.  I was so buoyed up with success that I even thought it might be a good idea to emulate one of those lovely, aspirational quilt blogs, full of wonderfully artistic photos of quilts as held up by members of their family.  Sadly I didn't have any antique barns or wildflower meadows to hand, but it was reasonably sunny so I popped into the garden with Trainboy and a camera.

...BRILLIANT.  Stay like that, just keep still so I can get it in focus.

Er... please could you hold it up again?  No?  Okay, let's try spreading it out on the bench... 

Better.  How about a smile?  ...is that a smile?  It is?  OKAY THEN.

This one was machine bound with zig-zag stitch, which I seem to be getting a bit better at.  It has certainly used up a big stack of repurposed and vintage fabric scraps, and I was genuinely surprised at how pleasing I found the light/dark contrast in the blocks.  A point to remember for my next kaleidescope quilt, I think.

The second one was the pink quilt of 5" scrap squares that I backed with a woolly blanket.  I am delighted to report it stood up to washing and tumble-drying on low heat excellently well - look:

Another machine binding, too!  Straight stitch this time, visible on the back inside the binding line which seemed to suit the quilting pattern I'd used - 1/4" lines either side of every seam.  To my surprise, although the zig-zag method is probably more forgiving, I much preferred using straight-stitch.  Here's how the binding looks on the front:

It really is beautifully thick and snuggly, this one.  I'm very pleased with it - look how pretty it is!

And speaking of pretty, here's Trainboy again, insisting that this time he will "smile properly"...

Hum.  Yes.  Ah, bless him.

I shall probably put both of these in the Slaithwaite Emporium and list them in my Etsy shop fairly shortly.  Who knows, I may even sell one of 'em.  See you soon!

I am the worst blogger!

To be honest I shall probably continue to be the worst blogger, so let's just keep moving forward, eh.

Things have been MADE, and blog posts written (in my head, where it doesn't really count of course...) and the odd photo has been taken.  So today I should like to show you a cushion, which was begun last week and given to its recipient today.  It is a very special cushion nonetheless.


I have teacher friends and relatives and I know there is a wild proliferation of chocolates and mugs at the end of each school year, so I wanted to make something, but really I wanted to make something with Trainboy.  Trainboy, who got a perfect score of "A" for effort in every subject this year... except Design & Technology.  Trainboy had no ideas.  Nor did I.

But then I scored some super-cheap fabric marker pens in TK Maxx and brought them home with a sudden brilliant idea.  I ironed a bit of white cotton, handed the pens to my son, and asked him to draw a train.  Then I suggested we went and chose some fabrics to use for the cushion.  My idea was to put the drawing on one side and a bit of pretty patchwork on the other, so his teacher could use it either way, depending which she preferred.  I mean a teacher probably collects an awful lot of other people's children's artwork...

What co-ordinates with a blue, red and green train?  Why, delicate shades of lime and sage green, and perhaps a bit of neon orange, of course!  And yes, that is some of my precious, precious Denyse Schmidt there.  He's got some taste, at least.  The block is basically "Scots Plaid" from the marvellous 500 Quilt Blocks by Kerry and Lynne.

It was a bit of a challenge but it worked, I think?  I ironed some lightweight stabiliser over the back of each panel, overlocked the inside edges, and put a reasonable zip in the side.  We gave it to Mrs K this morning and she seemed to like it.  She is a really marvellous teacher - I think Wilf and I will both miss her next year!

Tumbler Quilt

I'd never made one before, but there's a lovely one by Poppy Makes in Issue 5 of Love Patchwork & Quilting magazine (which is brilliant, by the way - very fresh and not as twee as most crafting mags) and decided to have a bash.  I had a mass of fabric remnants in blue, yellow, and green, which felt suitably springlike, so I set to.

I have no idea where this deer fabric came from but isn't it cute?

By glorious serendipity, just after I started chopping them out, I happened upon a Designer's Guild white cotton sheet in our local charity shop which had an embroidered border of flowers... in green, blue and yellow.  So that's where the top and bottom borders of this one come from, and the backing!

However, I've been holding off on showing you all this one until I could add a final, rather special, finishing touch.

LOOK AT THAT.  Pretty cunning, don't you think?  All thanks to Woven Monkey, which basically seems to be a UK-based version of the famous Spoonflower.  The postage was quick, the prices, though not cheap, aren't too eye-watering, and the quality seems fine to me.

And if you're interested in buying it, I'll be putting this quilt up in my Etsy shop as soon as I finish this post.  If I can work out how.  It's fine, I'll be fine.  Probably.

No rest for the wicked, though.  Next week with any luck I shall be showing you the result of these late night headaches...

Still playing with the last of those linen scraps...

This is a very quick and dirty laptop cover.  There's a layer of batting for protection but no quilting or fastening, just a basic fabric envelope.

I actually started this a few months ago before a holiday in France, but I managed to sew it so that the bunnies were upside-down, and it annoyed me so much I unpicked it as soon as we got home.  And now at last it is finished.  Perhaps that means I should go on holiday again...

A Cushion

I was seized with the desire to make a cushion this weekend.  Recently we re-did our sitting room and I got a bit carried away with making everything co-ordinate in shades of yellow and grey, and having finished, I've decided it's a bit matchy, and some more random is called for.

I had a rootle through my home decor weight and linen scraps - most of which have come from scrap rolls - and put the following pile together.

It sewed up pretty quickly - I used big chunks because these fabrics fray so quickly, and just pieced them randomly.  My favourite kind of quilting if I'm honest.  For the back, I used the daisies and the guitars since they were the only bits left that were big enough, and this rather brilliant zip tutorial from Fiona at the Village Haberdashery.

(I'm not showing you the rest of the room just at the moment because it is A MIDDEN.)

 

Then I decided it was about time we got some cats on this blog.  So I took it upstairs to the bedroom where Deeley (the black one) and Marsha (the tortoiseshell one) are usually sleeping and tried to pose them nicely with it.

Marsha was having none of it.

Deeley, meanwhile, despite being black and usually quite hard to photograph, obligingly sat on the window side of the cushion and looked into the lens and everything.  She's good, is Deeley.  She eats carpets, but for the most part she's pretty good.

Ah, beautiful!  Well done Deeley.

...Marsha.  Go AWAY.