January over - but some progress!

Hi all,

How has your January been?  Amazingly I have managed to catch up with quite a few things on the home admin side but also, and more importantly, I have made time to sew!

Last year I was a bit down in the dumps about how much fabric I had/how many WIPs had accumulated/how many ideas for quilts were unrealised and how I seemingly had no time to advance any, let alone all, of these matters.

So my goal for January was to tackle some of the WIPs which have been kicking about for one or several years, cluttering up my house and my brain.

Very happy to report that my goal has been achieved and I have got three quilt tops together.  I am sure they will now lie fallow till I get organised for a marathon quilting session, but at least the tops are together and I can liberate and use the leftovers in other projects. 

Which is a sort of tidying up, mentally as well as in the context of piles of stuff everywhere in physical space (aka lack of space).

So here they are in order of completing:

Carnival: the pieces for this quilt were cut out probably three years ago and I got as far as joining the elongated triangles into pairs but no further.  Ever indecisive, I had the 'pennants' up on a design board for ages, finally taking them down and putting them away when the room had to be decorated.  My motivation in tackling this one first is that I wanted to use any spare scraps for my Log Cabin squares (I said they were addictive to make!).

I guess over the intervening time I have become more relaxed about trying different colour combinations and not always playing safe, as this time around it didn't take nearly so long to lay out the pieces in an arrangement I was fairly happy with; I then got on with sewing it all together before I could change my mind.

I won't say I am any more skilful or instinctively good with colour as I don't feel skilled/clever at all in this area, but I do think that practice has helped, and making the Log Cabin squares has been a good exercise.

Anyway for better or worse I now have a completed top.  It measures 56" x 75" and the pattern is a free one available from Windham Fabrics.   The design is by Ashley Newcomb of the blog Film in the Fridge.  I love quite a few of her quilt designs and am currently using a free tutorial on her website for another quilt - but you will have to wait till February to see that one!

Meanwhile I am very happy with Carnival which makes me feel cheerful.  All the fabrics were from stash, including the plains.  Now I just have to decide how to quilt it...

Next up is a Fractured Star design.  I started this quilt in January 2019 in a workshop at Patchwork Cabin, a shop local to me which has since closed.  I loved making the blocks and made as many as I could on the day and in the week afterwards, then ground to a halt as I was overtaken by my older son's move to Belgium and then the village fete planning which I mentioned in a previous post.

I knew I wanted to make the quilt bigger than 25 blocks, and because the design has to be square, that meant making it a 7 x 7 block set: another 24 blocks were required!  I used mostly fabric from my stash and really enjoyed working out the layout with the different shades of blue.

I also decided that I didn't want the corner triangles to form a dense blue hourglass square where the blocks touch, so I modified the pattern and added more narrow sashing and tiny cornerstones to keep the whole quilt light and airy.

Here's a photo pf the back so you can see all the 1/4" seam allowances press neatly into the back of the 1/2" finished sashing.  The slight extra thickness in the sashing actually helps to frame the star blocks.  

Adding the sashing between the blocks also saved me from having to match the horizontal and vertical sashing/seam lines within the star blocks and avoided the lumps and bumps which would have occurred where all those seams would have come together.

Very happy with this one too, but it is large at 88"square: the blocks finish at 12".  The sashing between the blue star pieces of the block and between the blocks is cut 1" wide, so it and the cornerstones finish at 1/2".  The colours and shapes make me think of cool wintry snowflakes.  Looking forward to quilting this one with simple straight lines through the sashing once I find a suitable backing fabric.

Final finished top was a bonus; I picked out the fabric strips one evening last autumn with a new baby in mind.  The pattern is from Cluck Cluck Sew (Strip and Flip Baby Quilt, which is a free tutorial) and it is one which I have thought about and wanted to make for ages.  The strips sat there without any further action, and the baby duly arrived and received a different quilt...  But I finally managed to put the top together in a couple of evenings this month.

Fun to try for a rainbow effect, though my palette is more limited than the full spectrum of colour (determined by a jelly roll selection of strips I had on hand).  You do need strips the full width of fabric so fat quarters are no good for this project.  I am still pondering how to quilt it but no more babies in my vicinity are expected just yet, so I have a breathing space!

Spotty fabric for backing, by Riley Blake I think.  Quilt top measures 38" x 42" so I can just about squeeze it on to a 1 metre piece of backing fabric.

My other great achievement this January (having failed last year) was to make some marmalade.  I do love the zing of marmalade on sourdough toast for breakfast - jam just doesn't cut through and wake me up!

Have a great weekend, and here's to a productive February!

Student progress

Although my sewing progress wasn't great last year, my students, Miriam and Sophie continued to work away at their projects.  As this blog functions as journal for their work as well as for mine, here are a few of the smaller projects they fitted in:

Miriam has been working on Anna Maria Horner's Feather Bed Quilt for her own bed.  Here is a photo of the rows of strip pieced feathers waiting to be joined:

Miriam's top is together since this photo was taken and she is quilting it.  The weather here has been  too dark and dreary recently for good pictures so you will have to wait a little longer to see the finished quilt.

She took time off from making the quilt to make a couple of feather cushions as a gift for her aunt, using a stripy Indonesian fabric which looks amazingly like feathers and a gorgeous teal shot cotton for the background:

Beautiful concealed zip using this excellent tutorial from Sotak Handmade:

Miriam also made a trio of boxy pouches for gifts using a tutorial from an old issue of Love Patchwork and Quilting.  You can see her distinctive colour palette summed up in the paisley style lining:

There's a tutorial for a similar boxy pouch on Sotak Handmade, without the strip of pieced flying geese but with a smart contrast strip edging the zip: I'd like to give this one a go this year.  You can never have too many pouches.... and they make great presents.

The girls both made lined drawstring bags using In Color Order Jeni Baker's tutorial here.  Photo above is Miriam's bag, below is Sophie's.

Miriam had a stack of tiny bonus HSTs from a previous project.  We felt it was time for a challenge, and we don't like to waste fabric (haha!), so earlier in the year she tackled the North Wind block.  

These delightful blocks finish at 3" so there was quite a lot of unpicking and fabric 'manipulation' along the way, but the result is great and beautifully showcased in the useful bag (which holds more sewing stuff!).

Sophie has been working on a blue and cream version of the North Wind quilt block for her new bed quilt: the blocks are time consuming and accuracy is important if all the small pieces are to fit together, both in the block and at the end of the process when the rows are joined together.

Even though her blocks are twice the size of Miriam's, finishing at 6", there are many challenges to accuracy with this block, some of which only show up as the blocks are joined together into rows, so it has been good for learning.

She is now at the stage of deciding what to do for a pieced border.  Look out for future updates as I promise it is going to be a beautiful quilt.

Other small items she has made recently include:

Calico drawstring bags for loose vegetables to reduce the need to use plastic bags when shopping.

A trio of wide mouth pouches for gifts: this is the Noodlehead tutorial she used.

And Sophie had a go at waterproofing some of her own fabric for this pouch below, so it could be used as a washbag:  she used Odicote and here is a Youtube video explaining how to use the product.

She made another threadcatcher basket (tutorial here from The Sewing Chick) in her favourite blues.

These sturdy little baskets are great for all sorts of things.  I use mine for keeping my worktable clear of  scraps and threads when I am trimming blocks, but the girls use them for all sorts of other purposes.

Here is another basket: this time it is from a pattern by Beth Studley.  I made a couple of these baskets in the early part of the year as gifts for babies expected by the daughters of dear friends: I filled the baskets with small gifts, cuddly toys, a first book, toiletries and small items of clothing.  Filling the basket just added to the fun of making.

Sophie got to grips with the new techniques required for a round basket and made an excellent job of it.  Her basket is used in her family's living room for keeping the TV remote control and other necessary detritus of modern life!

I especially like the way Beth has designed the handles.  The basket is interfaced with Bosal In-R- Foam so it is quite 'bouncy' but it is robust and keeps its shape well.

And as though you can never have enough baskets (which you can't!) the girls also made in the summer a fleet of new baskets for their growing fabric collection.  

Sophie made the two on the far left of the picture, and Miriam the three on the far right.  Each basket has its own character because of the fabrics chosen.  The size is really useful, not too big or too small, and folded fat quarters fit snugly and don't flop about.

The pattern is the one hour basket tutorial by kelbysews and is also available now on Bluprint at a low cost.  Highly recommended, Miriam and Sophie interfaced their baskets with Bosal In-R-Foam again and found they could make this quite economically if they planned the cutting carefully to minimise waste.

So lots of sewing fun has been had by us all this year, even if I have less to show for it than Miriam and Sophie; lots of new challenges and skills acquired.  And hopefully the chance to do more in 2020.  

I am grateful to all those creative people out there who design and post patterns for all the lovely things we sewers get to make.  I appreciate their generosity, often in posting free tutorials which must take hours to write and test.  There is such joy in creativity and making - let's keep on sharing it.

Enjoy your sewing this year!

New Year/old year roundup

Happy New year to you all!  How are we half way through January already?  My resolutions are the same as ever: will I find greater resolve to stick to them, I wonder?  Hopefully writing this post is a good start!

It is a third of a year since I last posted so I will try and account for that briefly and then press on with more interesting stuff.  Thinking backwards into December and beyond, but leaving out the usual Christmas admin and celebrations:

• I attended two craft fairs and sold some of my many quilts - it felt great to re-home some of them to new families.  I have had the pleasure of making and I hope the new owners will enjoy using them for many years; 
• I gifted a couple of cot quilts to new babies, born to the daughters of friends, and a quilted baby jacket (see below); 
• my dog, now a geriatric at the age of twelve, was unwell at the beginning of December and needed several vet appointments.  He is now on lots of medication but it seems to be helping and his quality of life (and therefore ours too) has improved; 
• my daughter finally completed on her flat purchase and moved, and there have been a few teething problems as well as practical help provided;
• as ever there was a ton of village admin piling up, especially with all the extra Christmas activities; 
• November saw the decorators arrive; they were very welcome and did a great job, but there was, and continues to be, a great deal of moving of furniture and clearing up before and after - we are determined to get our house straight after three decades of accumulated family living.
• I attended a great workshop in October and made a drum lampshade for my younger son's room.  I am so pleased with the result that I now want to re-lampshade all the rooms in the house (though I need to choose new curtain fabric and re-make all the curtains first!).
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• I taught four classes, including how to make the baby jacket referred to above, and also the little scrappy squares mentioned below.  Photos below of the jacket I made and gifted to the daughter of one of our oldest friends who had a baby boy in December.
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• I made dozens of these little jackets years ago when my children were young and my friends were having babies; now it is their children who are producing the next generation.  The jacket is a pleasure to make and to give.
• I went to Scotland with my mum who was 89 years old this week!  It's a long drive from the south of England but so glorious once you are there:
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  These photos were taken at Rannoch Moor station.  There was an unexpected bonus in that we happened to be there when a steam train arrived, and as we were leaving this family group of red deer came down beside the road and posed for their pictures.
  
  
  
  

So what of this year?  I have just this week started sewing again and my warm-up piece has been to make more of the Scrappy Squares: Log Cabin Variation which I posted about here (relevant photos are at the end of the post) and here.  

This is such an enjoyable side project to have going on alongside other tasks.  I cut up whatever is left over from other quilt projects and then have fun choosing interesting colour combinations for each little (5") block.  Positively addictive, I find myself looking at existing WIPS and thinking I must hurry up and finish the quilts so I can use the leftover fabric for scrappy squares!

And my first completed make for 2020 is (drumroll of anticipation):

On Sunday I attended a workshop locally run by the excellent Nicki Rowling and made this striped willow basket with an asymmetric border and wooden handle.

I still cannot quite believe that I managed to make it!  I have done basket making in the past but not for a long time, and apart from sore hands (it is quite physical), I am raring to do it again.  

I think if I hadn't been a quiltmaker I would have made baskets or done upholstery - I love the craft of both, and the fact that you don't need to be 'arty' to succeed.  What would you like to have been/done if you had your time over again?

More to report which will have to wait for another post.  For now, I wish you a happy weekend and time to progress your own projects, whatever they may be.