Fun!

I treated myself to a soldering iron (on the way back from leaving my trusty Bernina for a service). I've had a quick experiment with some fruit netting, skirt netting, ripstop nylon and a plain cotton underneath (all from my stash, of course). Seems funny to be sewing with an old fashioned Featherweight and then trying a modern technique out!

I have a feeling that there will be a lot to learn about how different materials react, so asked my online quilting group - the wonderful BQL - to recommend a book. The consensus was FusingFabric which I've now ordered.

Probably not a technique to do with the girls, though, so I suspect that most experimentation will have to wait until they go back to school.

Re-cycling? Up-cycling?

I keep meaning to find out the definition of 'up-cycling' - as I suspect that changing a pile of used dye catchers and some scraps of wadding into purses for the staff who have looked after my girls so nicely this year is probably up-cycling rather than re-cycling (if up-cycling means producing a ' value added' end result).

Very satisfying to produce these purses, wrap them and pass them on! Simple hand sewing with variegated thread on most of them, machine sewing when I started to run out of time.....

I also made this cushion for G's teacher as she's been SO lovely and helpful with G this year - she's been in Owl's class, hence the stitchery.

That's the school year over.....

I'm on my way!

It took me several hours (and several days to recover!) but I managed to get the 'first fix' on my version of Megs Garden. Not a great photo - linen wrinkles and anything that is 'pegged' to the bookcase using book ends probably won't be shown at it's best - but you get the idea.

Unfortunately my lovely Bernina is making very un-lovely clunking noises and needs to go for a service. So no chance to start the FMQ before the school holidays start as I'm pretty sure that my lovely little Featherweight is just too small for the job!

Fusible Flowers.....

Today is the day that I hope to turn all these envelopes of flowers (which resulted in this pile of flower papers from the backing of the fusible stuff) into a quilt top.

I see a lot of crawling about in my future, trying to position the flowers for correct spacing and colour balance........ and then I see an appointment with the osteopath to deal with the crawling about! Wish me luck!

Start 'em Young

In the interests of encouraging G&F to sew - I bought them a little hand cranked machine a couple of months ago.

Last week I decided that it would be nice to give them their own sewing space (which will save me having to get the machine out and clamp it onto the table every time that they want to use it - a win all round!).

I ordered a desk and chair in the Verbaudet sale, excavated a corner of the craft room, liberated a couple of small plastic crates from the loft, and voila! One crate for fabric, one crate for UFO's, threads and other sewing projects for both hand and machine..... If they turn out not to like sewing it won't be because of a lack of opportunity!

Block Made!

I found time yesterday to make my first block for Kate North's stay-at-home Robin. Not sure yet that I won't change it, as I don't like the brighter of the two whites - it's a bit shouty against the others. Could either get out the fabric pens and alter the colours, or re-make with a different fabric.

I plan to use mostly Batiks for this project, but thought that the black and white fabrics would work with them.

Design is from Quilters Playtime by Dianne Hire.

Preemie Baby Quilts

I've been making a small batch of preemie baby quilts for one of my local hospitals - encouraged by another member of the Richmond and Kew Quilters http://www.richmondandkewquilters.org.uk/.

I've produced a pattern (called Four Patch Pleasure) to make this quick and easy 24" square quilt and will try to add it to my blog page......

Four Patch Pleasure 01

Hello!

I've realised that there are some things that having a blog available would be useful for - primarily linking to other blogs - so I've grabbed a simple template and started typing.

What I should be doing, of course, is creating a 6" block so that I can join Kate North's ( http://www.katesquilting.blogspot.com/ stay-at-home Round Robin......