Grape Success!

Is this it?  What's this got to do with grapes?  well, actually, nothing - but it is the only piece of sewing (yes, a 4" x 6" post card for a birthday swap) that I've finished in the last fortnight, and I've hardly made progress on anything else either.  The DD's have been keeping me on my toes and too tired / time poor to manage anything else!

However, I did find time (about an hour) on Friday after we'd realised that we would be going to the Kew Horticultural Show on Saturday to make this necklace - and was quite pleased to win Third Prize.  (I forgot to take a photo of it properly 'staged' - it obviously got man-handled a little during judging and disarrayed.

I also got a Third Prize for this cushion, once I'd secured DD2's agreement to loan it to me for the show, as it was her birthday present.

Apart from that, DD2 got two Highly Commendeds, and DD1 got a Highly Commended and a Second Prize (and I understand that it's quite satisfying to beat Mummy......even if in a different class) however, our family star of the show this year was DH, who won a rosette for his First Prize winning outside grapes!

He also got a Highly Commended for his Chillies.  As my big sister pointed out, so long as he keeps growing things that are either above the hens heads or not to their taste, he should do well.  This follows the summer where he planned to enter carrots and two types of shallots, only to have a hen escape from the run whilst we were on holiday and grub up all of them, somewhat before their time!

Congratulations on a great win, DH!

Blink and you'd miss it!

The cyclists came to town!  or at least, they passed through Twickenham, fleetingly, on a trial run for the London 2012 route....  Roads closed, neighbours out to watch, a parade of police motorcycles (and Yes! we got a couple to wave back to us!), cars with judges, guests, spares, before the peloton streamed past.  Such fleeting excitement baffled my camera skills, clearly!  Still, it was fun and all over by 9.30am for us, so plenty of the day left to get on with!

I've not managed quite as much personal crafting time as I'd have really liked this week.  However, I did produce this

so that the packet of variegated embroidery silks I bought will no longer slide out and bump me on the head when I open the cupboard (all I need to do now is to sort them into number order and 'file' them in my threads drawers.  I store fabric by colour, but embroidery silks by number catalogue number - unless they are 'non-Anchor threads', when they have a separate drawer and are stored by colour!  I wish my machine threads so were so well organised!).  All wound whilst supervising / being present for a DD's crafting session, so that was good!

I also finished this little quiltlet for the BQL skinny challenge.  Hand sewn in the middle and not much quilting, to be honest....

And I made a brooch, experimenting with Friendly Plastic (softens in hot water or with a heat gun).  I saw the idea for impressing wooden blocks into it and made this brooch one morning.  I think that the girls would like to have a go at this too..... and I could see it being a fun thing for a 'girls night in' crafting evening too.

Oh, and I finished the binding on the baby quilt that I'd mostly made on holiday, and a couple of blocks for my C&G course, so I suppose that I've made more progress than I thought!  Hand sewing is quite handy for taking to the playground or when we all get so tired that the TV goes on and we watch back-to-back kids science and art programs....

I hope that you are managing to achieve more than you think you are too!

Card Cases.

After such a productive week you might have thought that I'd be on a roll and sewing merrily away. Not a bit of it. Lack of time and energy meant that I only plugged the sewing machine in to make two small card cases this week.  It all starts to sound a bit Regency heroine, doesn't it, when your girls need cases to carry their cards when visiting friends?  Sadly, nothing Georgette Heyer about my two, and the card cases were for 'trading cards' rather than something to leave to say that they'd called.

On the plus side, my big sis and I did our best to shrink the girls by leaving them out in the rain all day at a fab place called 'BeWILDerwood' near Norwich. It didn't work (the shrinking that is) but they had a great time building dens, climbing up into tree houses, coming down giant slides and all the rest of it.  It nearly tired them out....  If you are in Norfolk I can also highly recommend the RNLI Henry Bloggs lifeboat museum at Cromer and the MO at Sheringham.  My DD's aged 6 and 8 were very enthusiastic about both.

I'm hoping to squeeze a few more minutes sewing into this week - despite working hard on UFO's last month I've still got nine projects to complete on my list before I start anything else (or at least that's the theory!).

Happy summer stitching, everyone!

My type of holiday!

Last week we had our main family holiday - an extended family, with nine of us from 73 down to 6.  Lovely.  Even better, whilst the others go surfing or cycling I'm left in peace to sew - yes, my sewing machine comes on holiday too, along with plenty of fabric and ideas!  This year was quite productive, and this is what I made:

 I started with a pen roll - the only way that I can think of to show my DD's that these are Mummy's pens, not theirs (really, I'm not being mean, after all they do have a gazillion drawing implements of their own, and I'd just like to know that I can pick mine up all in one go and find them still where I left them).  Actually, I suppose that it isn't quite finished yet as I hadn't taken any ribbon to fasten it when it is rolled up......

Then I made this little quilt (about 26" x 38") using two orphan blocks, four blocks made from Liberty style scraps (left over from when I made bunting for a friend last month), some polished chintz and a little of my fave Fabric Freedom range.  An eclectic mix, but I think that they have come together quite well and will make a small girl happy at some point.

Then I should have finished this - it just needs binding - a 30" square quilt (or thereabouts, I added a couple of borders to fit the bit of wadding that I had) for a little boy.  I think that the beach team came back earlier than I was expecting so this will be one to finish this week.

Instead I concentrated on finishing this cushion cover - another pattern from Kellie of  Don't look Now - which I made for the recently arrived baby girl of the people we were renting the holiday house from.  Very subtle personalisation - just a first name and a year quilted between the two birds.

I'm pleased with this.  Although the little bits for each flower are quite fiddly they are easy (and quiet!) to make during evenings.  They are the only time consuming part of the project, and once they are fused onto the cushion front you can zip along with the machine stitching and produce something very pretty indeed.




So, quite a productive holiday, especially as I made a couple of blocks for my C&G too!

I'm hoping to make a couple more little quilts over the summer with the other orphan blocks that I've got littering my 'design wall' (I use the term loosely).  The trouble is that I only have tiny amounts of them - and that the fabrics don't play together in any way - so I think that it will be three small quilts and pulling out the same sort of fabrics to construct other blocks to complement them!

I hope that your summer is giving you time to sew too.

Nearly the end of Term!

I've finished my big end of term projects!  This is the fish quilt, which has a fish made by every Junior school child (and this one by me when I needed a focal point for it).  It is approximately 44" x 74".  The fish are backed with Vilene and then 'sketch stitched' down - so the edges will still be quite soft, but should just roll a little once it is washed, rather than fray.  I was impressed with the number of different shapes and sea creatures that the children produced!

The Infants each made at least one stitch in the bird that their classes are called after - with the TA's picking up and finishing them off.  Then the Binca squares (I use the term loosely!) were handed on to me for the cushion covers to be made.  I wish that I'd made it clear that I needed a clear seam allowance for each piece, as some of them are stitched perilously close to the edge of the easy-to-fray Binca.  Still, with stitch and flip over a supporting white fabric, zig-zag stitching and some extra top stitching I hope that these cushions will stand up to normal wear and tear.

Both these projects are for the departing Deputy Head of the girls school.

These projects left me only a little time to make something for DD2's class teacher, who is also leaving the school.  Interestingly, DH tackled me yesterday on the fact that he thought it would be nice if I made something for Mr Folly too - clearly my stitching obsession is starting to rub off on him!  What he hadn't realised was that I'd already made a book cover with a Kingfisher and his name on and passed it on to the class reps for presentation with the vouchers later this week.  What I didn't realise was that I'd done this before I'd remembered to take a photograph of it!

Time now to start thinking about school holidays and the like, and what to pack for going away (apart from my sewing machine, of course that is never in question).  It's now such a 'given' on the holiday that I will be sewing that my nieces bring along their sewing projects (especially the ones that need a little extra help) too, and check to make sure that the collection of FQs will be travelling.  Nothing like promoting sewing to the next generation!

I hope that you too are preparing for sharing sewing projects over the summer.

Great Mail to Receive!

I've had some wonderful quilty mail this week.  Best of all were this pair of A4 sized skinny quilts by Ann Clare - my photos don't do justice to the richness of the stitching and the fabrics.  I'm very pleased with them.

I've also received a book  The Encyclopedia of Quilting and Patchwork as part of my (say it quietly and it won't be so scary, actually, I've only signed up for Module 1, so I'll just see how I get on with it and needn't be worried) C&G course materials.  Then I ordered myself a 9 1/2" ruler as that's the block size that I'd decided on for the samples that we have to make up, and it was on special offer on a site that I was buying something else from.....errrm, a quilt book (Scrap Quilt Sensation by Katherine Guerrier).  Also a couple of lovely 'favourite food' postcards from a BQL swap.

Most of my sewing time has been spent on the fish quilt you had a peek at before.  It's almost finished now, but I'll need a couple of willing helpers to hold it up for me so that I can take a photo of it.

Instead you can see this block - called Nelson's Victory - which is, unusually for me, all hand stitched.  As I was hand stitching it I decided that I might as well choose something with inset seams, as I often don't choose them when I machine stitch.  My plan is to use lots of blues and white as a background for my sample blocks, and then perhaps I'll be able to put them all together at the end.

Hope that you have a happy week.

Take Four Fat Quarters....

 .....and put them with a background fabric, to make a quick and easy 'Cobblestones' quilt!   I did mean to make a tutorial for this, but it's so simple that I don't think that it's needed.  So if I just share with you that each block finishes at 8", so therefore you need to cut 25 x 4.5 " blocks, then 25 sets of 2 x 2.5" x 4.5" strips and 25 matching 2.5" x 8.5" strips you'll probably have all the information that you need.  Remember that you'll only cut half of each from your four FQ's, the rest will need to be cut from your background fabric.  My program says 7/8th of a yard would be enough, I suggest that you use a yard or a metre (depends when and where you buy!) and insert a strip of it into your backing too....

You might have enough fabric from your FQ's for a border or two, and even the binding.  My way was to cut everything left over from the initial FQ cutting into 2.5" strips.  I added two borders, and then got to choose whether or not to carry on and add the other borders, or whether to cut them into 1.25" strips and use to bind the quilt, which is what I actually did.  Of course, if you had five FQ's to start off with you wouldn't face the same dilemma!

My quilt finished up at 44" x 40".  Quick and easy to produce a cute baby or lap quilt - and therefore no excuse for me to have taken so long to quilt it since finishing the top back in March, I think.

This week has turned into 'fish' week.  I'm putting together a whole cloth (didn't I say I'd never make another one?) with raw edge applique fish made by every single child in DD1's junior school, as a leaving present.  The children have been amazingly imaginative with their undersea shapes!

I have to keep coming up for air.....!

I almost forgot....

I finished my bonnet a couple of weeks ago, the one that I was making for 'Roses from the Heart'  (and more info here too) project, but forgot to put a picture up of the finished item.  I was reminded this week when I got a charming 'thank you' from Christina Henry, who is the founder of the project. 

 I chose the name of 'Mary Evans' - Evans being my maiden name, and added her journey details from one of the convict transport logs.  A few flowers and leaves, and then wavy lines to represent the long sea passage on 'Harmony'.

I am not the best hand embroiderer, but this was a fun and contemplative project to do.  I bought my pattern sheet from somewhere that I can't remember for a nominal £1, but I have found out that you can download it from here if you'd like to make one yourself and send it off.  Christina says that she has about 20,000 bonnets now, so still places for a few thousand more.....

I also bought in a service this week from Ani Catt.  She offers a fabric shape cutting service - brilliant!  You can send her fabric (I pre-backed mine with fusible web) and she will die cut it for you for a small charge. I have some lovely snowflakes for a winter project, and a few blue curlicues too, which were intended as embellishment for a stalled cushion project, but are so lovely that they deserve something more creative (and I've got a new plan for the cushion project, which involves turning it into a medallion for a baby quilt instead, much better!).

I also repaired a block from my 'Supernova' (not so very quilt along, in my case).  It rather looks to me as though a small person in the household had wanted to test my fabric scissors....  I suppose that it could have been her sisters hair (again) so perhaps I shouldn't sigh too deeply!

And talking of DD2's hair.......she and one of her best friends were all dolled up yesterday for their ballet exam - and very proud of their 'ballet hair' (and later, of their certificates!). 

I'm hoping that I'll be able to get a bit more sewing done this week, as so far it looks as though I won't have children at home following strike action or children at home following sickness - fingers crossed at least!

I hope you find time to do all the things that you'd like to accomplish this week too.

Fried PC, anyone?

The heat on Monday did a whole lot of no good to my laptop, which was already susceptible to overheating.  By Tuesday it was refusing to boot up, and is now at the local fixers.....so I'm without many of the links, addresses, tools and my regular e-mail - and I'm missing them!

I'm using my DD's PC (not quite steam powered, but slower and without many of the things that I'm used to) and if you'd like to contact me you can try plumcox at hotmail dot co dot uk....... With good luck and a following wind normal service will be resumed by Friday!

Ain't nothing going on but the.....cake (and giveaway winners)!

DD2 turned six this week.  So although I have sewing to show you - she'd asked for a cushion and wanted a seahorse / underwater theme for her party - it was finished a few weeks ago.  Another Urban Threads pattern sewn by hand, and the machine used for construction and background quilting.

Creative energy (well, available energy, perhaps not as creative as it might be) has been put instead into cakes.

Water Splash was for Frankie's actual birthday (when she had a couple of friends around for tea after her ballet lesson.  Coconut cake (her choice) with blue butter cream.

Seahorse Aquarium is the cake for her party -along with another 30 or so cupcakes with matching icing.  I have to confess that the idea for the streamers for weed / water / general effect was Simon's.  Without them the cake was looking more like a large tin of tuna, and I wasn't sure what to do about it!  Lucky that we have cocktail sticks and a hot glue gun to make construction of them quick and easy!

That aside, the quilty news is that my random number generator (DD2, well, it was her birthday) picked Lis as the winner of the stay at home round robin quilt and Linda as the runner up.  One parcel already dispatched, one address awaited.....

Another UFO Completed!

 We all have projects that hang around for a bit, right?  So what's your oldest project that you have maturing?  I decided to try and tackle some of mine over this year - I was surprised by how many I had when I actually looked at was was around.

This one of mine - notable because it's been on my 'design wall' (really vertical storage for odd blocks and small quilts destined for other homes) for some time.  In fact, 'some time' should really be quantified.  Really, in this case, 'some time' is in fact 'some years'.  I think that I made the central part of the hanging was made in 2007.  Certainly as soon as I got my 'Quilting Caveman Style' DVD from Ricky Tims. 

Still, now, the second of my pair of quilts is finished, a mere two years after the first one, and four years since I started.

 So did I try to quilt them to make them match?  Crikey no!  The first lily (blue background) was very heavily quilted.  Lots of dense stitching and trying out of freehand feathers.

 It's only by chance that the pair have come out at such a similar size.  I guess that was the benefit of keeping all the bits for the project in one place, and having at least partly made the wonky block borders before I put the project aside.

The detail of this flower shows slightly lighter and looser quilting. This is the densest quilting on the hanging this time.

Aside from this excitement, I've been hand-stitching on my 'Roses from the Heart' bonnet, doing a little light luceting (aim: to be able to lucet a neat cord without needing to look down).  Oh, and making a few more lavender bags.  Now that my 'projects to do' list is down to 7 (or at least, just the 7 that are already started) it was clearly time to indulge in a little retail therapy.  I bought this pattern for four cushion covers - another 'Don't Look Now' pattern - and some pastel FQs to make one or two of them.  Pastels? Me?  I know.  Clearly not in my usual 'the brighter the better' mood, but I suspect that these will become gifts and I do understand that not everyone shares my taste.

Giveaway!

 I've just finished the quiltlet that you see here.  It's turned into a narrative piece - hills, the girl about to climb up to the little house, the tree.  I made it as a 'Stay at Home Round Robin' hosted by Kate North.

However, I made it using colours that I'm not so keen on, just to see how it went.  Unfortunately, although I like the form of the quilt, I'm still not keen on the colours and don't want to make space for it on my walls.  SO if you would like it, please contact me or leave a comment.  If there is more than one person who'd like it I will draw a name out of a hat (probably at the end of the month).  It's about 19" square plus the dangly bit.

 I broke open the packet and started luceting.  This was the first bit.  At the bottom you can see the looser weave, then the tighter weave where I improve with the first method that I learnt.  Then there is a really wobbly bit where I tried to learn a second method, which straightens out enough for me to try to put a frogging line in, and then the section with the frogging.

It's going to be fun to try it with different types of yarn to see what happens, although I can only do a few minutes each day without making my fingers and wrists sore.

 This second photo shows a good step forward to what I want to do.  I want to be able to include beads (but clearly need to pay attention to counting to get even curves around the beads) and this is the easiest bead inclusion pattern that I've got.

On Tuesday I enjoyed a morning with two other Twickenham quilters.  Lesley allowed us to try out her Amanda Jane Pleater.  Amazing!  She gave us these lovely silk samples and I'm still trying to decide how to use mine.  They are very touchy-feely as you can move the pleats around to make pleasing shapes and forms.  I shall be interested to see what Avril does with hers.

And here is a photo of the hanging that I made last week for Kandy, now that I know that she's received it safely.  Similar to one that I made earlier in the year.


Finally, if you haven't already cast your vote, please take a moment to click on this page and vote for 'Unfolding the Quilts' to be a 'Best Heritage Project'. If the Quilt Museum (run by the Quilters' Guild) is the heritage finalist it will get a slot on a BBC show which would be great publicity.  It's already got and spent the lottery money, this is just a vote to say that it was a popular choice.

Five minute lavender bags.

 When you get post like this - a lucet (cord maker - I haven't tried one before), some jewellery findings and a bag of dried lavender, it's hard to know where to start!

I decided to make some speedy lavender bags to calm me from the excitement of opening the post.  If you have the right things to hand, you can make them in under five minutes each, so a real crafting quick fix!

First I half filled an organza gift bag (you know the sort, just pennies each through eBay or other wrapping providers).  I was half tempted to stop at that point, until I remembered that the first thing that either of my DD's would do when they came across them would be to open them to investigate the lavender, and I might never manage to re-fill it!  So I carried on with Plan A!  A line of machine stitching to keep the lavender in place, then a swift swipe with a rotary cutter.  My bag was about 3" x 4" at this point, so I cut a piece of fabric 5" x 8" and hemmed one of the short sides.  Then with the right side of the fabric facing up, I folded the hemmed side just less than 1/3 of the way across the fabric, before repeating the fold with the unhemmed side.  All that was needed now was a line of stitching across what were now the short ends of the folded fabric.  Turn the bag back to the right sides out, slip in the lavender sachet, and you have the perfect item to grace your knicker drawer.  Of course, you could also spot that the left-over end of the bag looks a bit like a flower when you draw the ribbons up, and stitch that on and even add beads to the end of the ribbons for extra pizazz - but that might just be gilding the lily (or, in this case, the lavender).

I've only done two bits of 'real' sewing this week.  I made a wall hanging for an online friend, and also started my quilting group's challenge to start a 'sew a row' quilt.  Mine looks very pink and girly, but the orange should give it a bit of a lift.  If when I get to the end of making the rows (and it's going to average a row a month, I think) I decide that it needs sashing, I think that I'd opt for lime green, at least, if I had some on hand I would.

I hope that you've managed some happy sewing time too!

Beach Huts

 The BQL May / June Challenge 2011 is to make a pair of 8" x 12" quiltlets that are obviously a pair.  I wanted to make a pair where scale was played about with - my first thoughts were a landscape piece (rolling hills, flock of sheep as white dots in the distance) and a 'close up' of one of the sheep.  Then I remembered my lack of drafting skills, and decided that I'd better try something simpler.

My second idea (pretty much, if I ignore the other 17 or so no-hopers that came in between numbers one and two) was to make a sketchy happy beach hut scene.  Think windmills, bunting and light illustration. 

So I started off.  I laid down stripey fabrics to look
like beach huts.  It looked all wrong (no photos of that bit!).Then I consulted my artistic gurus (thank you Nicky and Avril) .  OK. Distance shown by darker and duller colours.  I laid out more pieces and did the initial 'sketch' stitching to hold the pieces down and add a little detail.

Next I 'pebbled' the foreground shingle, and found that I couldn't shift the scale quite as I'd hoped, as my shingle wasn't significantly bigger on the RH piece.

 I decided not to worry too much about that, and used the same yellow thread with some brown thread (my first time using two threads through one sewing machine needle - yay!) to put in the next layer of beach.

Then another zig zaggy texture of just the brown thread. 

 All OK so far...

Moving further into the distance (and still chanting "duller, darker" to myself) I used the brown with some variegated olive green thread, starting to get the marsh grasses in.  Hang on.  Marsh grasses?  What happened to windmills, bunting, Punch and Judy and essential sunny urban beach huts?

Oh.  Yes, a quick look showed more like windswept Norfolk.  Perhaps I'd be getting my

 sheep in after all, just of the salt marsh variety.

I stop to reconsider.  And realise that a critical early marking line left my horizon almost exactly half way up the pieces.  Doh!  Even I've heard of the rule of thirds.  Time to trawl the thread drawer for more greens (duller, darker).  Hmmm.  Not exactly in plentiful supply.  I mix another variegated thread with the olive green and find that it's a bit bright and a pink in places...

 (and I've just misplaced the photo of that in Blogger, so won't have to show you that stage!).



 Time for the dullest green of all, some of it stitched over the brighter bits I'd just accidentally introduced.  Again I used two threads, but this time they were both the same variegated thread, and this time they caused more thread nests on the back than I would have cared for.  still, I had managed to move the horizon up the piece.

 Now to add some quilting to the sky.  I could perhaps have chosen grey or blue thread, but decided on white and windy swirls.



 Of course, by now, having quilted the pieces so heavily, they have shrunk.  I knew this would happen, so I'd taken care to quilt outside my guide lines, just a little, on every side.

Was it enough?  No!  I have to trim the pieces to 12" x 7 3/4" and hope that the narrow binding 'frame' will fill some of the empty unquilted space (and also not be too floppy).

 I decide to use the dull purple that I've used for the woodwork trim on the more distant beach huts to frame both pieces.  The colour fits the tone of the pieces and the tone of the dull, windy weather that we have in Twickenham at the moment. 

Initial ideas about colourful windmills and some bunting joining the pieces are thrown out.  It's not what I started out expecting to make.  If I'm honest,  if I'd known at the start that I wanted this much colour in the background I'd have laid down a fabric background rather than thread painting it.  On the other hand, I've never tried something like this before, so it was fun to experiment!

Bound, labelled, finished!



And this is just one 'detail' shot of the LH piece.  I'm not sure about the bucket and spade, but I quite like the spilt water!   I hope you've found my building process for these quilts interesting.  Perhaps you'll be inspired to go and play yourself, without worrying too much if the final product isn't quite what you had in mind!

PS If you head to Norfolk this weekend or next in order to look for salt marsh beach huts, make sure you leave enough time to go to Melton Constable to buy some terrific glass from Nicky Webb.  Norfolk Open Studios sounds great, but I have personal knowledge that Nicky's glass is super!