Hearts and Yarns

I've been carrying on trying to work through my scraps.  I'm making 'Heart It' by Esther Aliu but hit a bit of a problem when my wrist became even more painful than it had previously been.

Its no fun when you are a quilter who can't hand sew, use scissors, use a rotary cutter or machine quilt - it's just very, very frustrating!

However, I've managed to subcontract the first round of scissor cutting to a local teenager, I've bought an ergonomic rotary cutter and I'm the proud owner of two different types of crafter's support gloves!

So, rather than setting up blocks for some gentle hand sewing, I'm going to be making machine applique blocks instead.

More than one way to skin a cat or indeed make a quilt!

My heart halves are glued onto Floriani fusible, the seam allowance glue sticked down, and then lined up on two pieces of background fabric.

You see it here with the centre of the heart sewn into the background, leaving me just the outside edge to sew down.  it will be a small zig zag stitch in grey, I've decided.

It's awfully tempting to make one or two of these heart halves double -sided, though, so that they could lift off the fabric like this one (but looking more finished, obviously!).

It would tie in nicely with the dimension that the 3D bowties will give to the other blocks..... certainly something to think about.


My only other crafty endeavour over the last couple of weeks was with some young crafting companions (My DD's and a neighbour).

We were all much struck by the idea of making yarn bomb 'cherries' (pairs of pom poms) and letting them 'fruit' in a local park on Twickenham riverside.

They made the pom poms (new pom pom maker gadgets making this SO MUCH FASTER than the old fashioned 'two cardboard circles' way) and we took them to the park.  We hung them up and almost immediately there were children trying to hit them with tennis racquets and a pair of old ladies talking about making pom poms when they were children.

We went back to take them down a fortnight later (pleased to say that cheap acrylic yarn worked splendidly, having thrown off all the weather that had happened).  There were still children interested in them (who were THRILLED when we gave them the pom poms as we took them down!).  It made us all feel good, that we'd achieved 'yarn bombing', that we hadn't left any to become litter, and that they made other people happy too!

Of course, if you saw them and were appalled during the two weeks that they were around I can only apologise.....but I'm really hoping that wouldn't actually apply to anyone.

Right.  Onwards and upwards.  I'd like to think that my wrist is starting to get a bit better - cross your fingers and send me a good wish, please!