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.

Holiday sewing and a finished quilt top

We have recently returned from a week's holiday in Somerset, in an area designated AONB (area of outstanding natural beauty) called The Quantocks which is to the north of Taunton and the Somerset Levels.  We stayed in a beautiful 17th century cottage and pottered about, enjoying the peace and quiet.

As our dog is getting on in years (he will be 12 years old next week, so he is an elderly gentleman now), I managed to wangle a couple of days staying in the cottage sewing while the other family members went further afield.  What joy to be able to sit and handsew for several hours without the sound of traffic and all the interruptions of 'normal' life.

I made good progress on Arlington Square:

and I also managed to work on Robin's Nest which I have hardly touched since last summer holiday...

We visited several gardens: Hestercombe (below)

and Lytes Cary (below) where there was still so much glorious colour, even at the end of the season:

Enough holiday snaps, before I went away I had a mad week of sewing to make up for the previous dry spell.  I chainpieced madly, laid out and joined my bright Log Cabin variation blocks together:

The laundry rack came in handy after stitching and pressing the long rows:

And here are a selection of photos to give you an idea of the size of the top and variety of fabrics used:

Lots of seams but they sit quite neatly - always press outwards, from the centre to towards the edges of the block.

I didn't fussy cut on this occasion, and I'm not a great collector of novelty fabrics, but sometimes the centre block worked out with something interesting to look at:

Using up scraps, especially in such narrow strips, had a surprising effect: it has made me REALLY look at some of these fabrics and appreciate them in a way I didn't when I used the same fabrics in other quilts in much larger chunks.

And at Hestercombe there was even a Log Cabin made from tiles on edge in the paving!

Enjoy a gorgeous autumn wherever you are, and some sewing contentment too.