Sewing and Crafting

A fun 'crafternoon' with Benta and Vicky led to me sewing these card toppers.  

I had fun assembling pieces of felt with a selection of scraps, adding stitches to hold them together, and then finishing them with simple flowers.

Have you seen flowers like this?  Mine were made with fabric circles that were about 2" diameter, then cut in half.  Then it was a simple matter of deciding how many petals to use in each flower (mostly I used six, but not always), and sewing a small running stitch across the straight edge of each petal, joining them onto the one length of thread.  Then tie a knot, fluff out the petals, and you have finished a flower!

 I'm still using up random cards from my papercrafting stash, so these were the ones that I made.  Even though they didn't photograph well, the two on the right are silver.

They didn't make much of a dent in my scraps, but were fun to make!

Crafting not Sewing

 A little side trip into crafting this week - every now and then I make a batch of cards.  This time I had a few bits and pieces that I wanted to use up - sticker sheets that were almost finished, scraps of paper and cut outs - you know how these things accumulate when you aren't looking!

So, with some of my older - again very random - cards, I made a few cards to tide me over until I next sit down with a good idea what I want to do!

Always satisfying, and it makes life easy when you have a few handmade cards on hand!

Bench covers re-done.

My kitchen benches (two storage ottamans) were needing an update on the quilts that we use to cover them.

This is how they look now, with their new finery quilted on.

This is the third time that I've used the main materials.  

I made two quilts originally (cream and blue hourglass pattern with the floral shown here on the back).  When the quilt got a little too worn, I covered the fronts with new quilt tops, made from the favourite blue and green batiks.

Now the batiks are, in turn, getting a bit too worn.  You can see them here.

This time, I'm covering over the floral back, and 'facing the new quilt top onto the old quilt, apart from one side which has been chopped off to match the new shape of the quilt top.

 You can see that  I had to lose about 5" - it's probably going to be better, as the amount that was tucked down the back of the bench was quite a lot before, so it should be more manageable now!

A simple nine patch with sashing was what I decided on, with plenty of meander quilting to keep everything together.

It's the last time that I'll give these particular quilts a 'do over' though, as the extra layers of fabric on them have made them surprisingly heavy to help through the machine when I'm quilting them!  All new wadding and backing next time.

Still, as the old ones have managed a creditable 18 years, I don't think that they owe me anything!

What a lucky thing I am!

 So, I little belated, and a little incomplete, but still much appreciated!

My Christmas munificence included a lovely stack of fat quarters, expertly chosen by DH, a small project holder, and these wonderful puffin buttons, both made by the lovely Benta!

Not shown is the Christmas 'ginger' that she also gifted me - but it's packed away with the Christmas decorations now.

Thank you!  I love my Christmas presents!

Taking a Line for a Walk

I recently took an online workshop with Bethane Nemesh - inspirational!  She had a lovely manner, and a very clear way of demonstrating her ideas both on a whiteboard and with stitch.  Amazing!  Makes me think that I should spend more time planning quilting and practicing it!

This was what I produced shortly afterwards, demonstrating different freehand feathers and fills - fairly quick to quilt, with all sorts of possibilities rolling around my mind as a result of it.

This was just a demo piece for myself on plain fabric, so I could see what I was doing.

Of course, it seemed a waste to leave it like that, so I turned it into a zippy pouch.

This is one side.

This is the other.

And here you can see the zip and the lining (which I added after the quilting was complete.

A nice result from a fun workshop.  I recommend!