Hope Dolly Softies Appeal

I've finished my first two softies for Mon Petit Poppet's Hope Softies and monkeemoomoo's Dolly Drive.

I think I will make two more that are a different style all together and then each can get one bear and one something else.

My First Quilt....or Cwilt

Following a link from Samelia's Mum, I found bluepatch quilter and a post about her first quilt.  Sounded like a great idea so I thought I'd join in!

My first quilt was made for my sister-in-law for Christmas.  My inlaws do 'Kris Kringle' so we all only have to provide one gift.  Most years we have a theme, and sometimes it has to be handmade.  That year the gift had to be something starting with the first letter of the person's name.  I got Carol.... so I made a "C" Cwilt

 

Sadly I didn't get very good photos of it.  The above was taken with my phone.

Each star block contains a picture of something beginning with C:
Clouds, choir, curtains, cow, castle, couch, cats, clothes(line), compass, corset, computer, cards, cake, church, cherries, cheese, cotton, candycanes

I tried to pick things which Carol liked.  I hope I got some right ;)

The pictures are all appliqued by hand using blanket stitch with a few extras here and there.  The curtains are made of lace and are 3D, I believe the window frames are ribbon.  The cat tails are embroidered, probably back-stitch I'd say (can't remember).  The candycanes are made of red and white striped ribbon which was twisted then placed flat so that the stripes bend around the curve of the cane.  My (now) husband helped with some of the pictures, you can tell which are his by the more interesting blocks!  The castle, cats, couch and church are his.  We actually make quite a good team.  He'd draw a nice picture then I'd go over it, remove some of his little details and turn it into a 'block' picture that could be appliqued more easily.  Although I believe if we did it again now, I'd probably be able to applique in more detail than I could then.

The quilt was pieced and quilted on my Monster Machine (industrial straight stitcher), before I knew about walking and 1/4" feet.  The back is black and white checks to go with the black and white theme of the front.

I don't think I go back and look at this photo often enough.  I've learnt so much since then, but sometimes I forget how much work I put into this one.

What did I get that year that started with the same letter as my name?  A handmade steampunk kaleidoscope!

Music to my eyes

I have finished the music quilt top!

I don't think I want to applique another leaf for a long time.......

(You can see a sneek preview of the border fabric in there too)

I'm going to let it just sit for a week or two now because I'm a bit sick of it, and I need to work out how I'm going to quilt it.

I have the wadding and the backing fabric all ready to go, but I think I need to put it away and come back with fresh eyes in a little bit.

It's already a few months late so another few weeks isn't going to make much of a difference.

My Creative Space

The other day the Kona Solid in Eggshell I'd ordered from Pink Chalk Fabrics and the threads I'd ordered from Ebay arrived in the mail.  After washing and ironing the fabric and cutting it up into little squares, I was finally able to start on my Retro Nine Patch today.  Only a little bit behind, but I'm sure I'll catch up soon!

What are you working on?  Check out kootoyoo to see what other people are doing today.

Civil War block 8: Cotton Boll

Another week, another new Civil War block.  When I look at how many blocks I have, I see how fast the year is progressing.  I might stop looking in the box once I finish each one ;)

This week is Cotton Boll.  When I first read the instructions for this one was I was a little confused.  You had to cut rectangles and sew triangles onto the sides of them, or use the template to cut out the shape.  I thought a template sounded like too much fuss, so I was going to go with the rectangle option, but then it didn't say how to place the triangles against the rectangles.

Lucky for me, Barbara Brackman is based in the US, so her 'Saturday' block actually comes out very early Sunday morning our time.  By this time, a few of the other bloggers who I follow have already made theirs so I get to see some of the trials and tribulations before I even start.

Mary at Quilting in OZ made the block a different way.  She cut four squares instead of rectangles, attached squares into the corners, instead of triangles, and then trimmed the underneath.  I decided this was a much easier method, so off I went to find my fabric.

This week's fabric is from my stash, but it's the fabrics I selected to try my hand at making a hexagon flower.  Mary's method requires more fabric than Barbara's because you cut off excess.  Mary used 8 x 3" blocks.  The yellow fabric I wanted to use was left over from something my mum made once when she visited, and I also had used some of it for leaves on my music quilt.  Only a small portion of a fat 1/4 was left.  And not enough to get 8 x 3" squares out of it :(  I was going to have to do the block Barbara's way after all, which took a little more brain power.

Then I thought about the maths, and I thought about the maths another way, and then I thought about the improvisation that is "traditional" in quilting... and I decided I didn't need to have 8 x 3" squares exactly!  Once the quilt was made, no one was going to know how big those triangles on the corners were supposed to be.  So I measured up my fabric and discovered I could get 8 x 2 1/2" squares.  That would do me just nicely!

As for the story behind this week's block, I'll quote Jeanne from Spiral directly because she says it better than I could:

Barbara Brackman's article this week refers to the shortage of cotton fabric in the South during the Civil War.  Not that there's a shortage of fabric hereabouts :)

Here is a picture of the hexie and the civil war block together.  I love how the two work together.  I don't think I've actually made a quilt with the same fabric arranged in different shapes.  I want to do that now!

My first hexie!

I've been following the fun at The Inchy Hexagon Swap and seeing all the pretty hexagon flowers that people make.  I especially like some of the fussy cut ones that are created (but don't we all?).  I would love to get  involved in a hexie swap but felt I needed some experience first.  So here it is, my first hexie:

I used freezer paper as templates and I have to say I love that method! (although I'm yet to try any others).  With freezer paper, you trace your hexagon onto the matte side of the paper, without seam allowance, then cut it out and iron it onto the wrong side of the fabric.  It stitches in place so you can cut out your hexagon with approx 1/4" seam allowance, then fold the seam allowance over the edge of the freezer paper and baste them to each other at all the corners (but not through the paper).  All the while your little piece of paper stays in place!  Then you sew your hexagons together.  When you're done, you unpick the basting stitches, lift the edge of the freezer paper with your fingernail and pull it out gently.

Voila!  You have a hexagon flower.

Maybe when I've had a bit more experience I'll do a proper tutorial.

Birdie Stitches Block 2

Late as usual, I finally got around to doing my Birdie Stitches Block 2.  When I completed block 1, I followed the colour layout exactly, but then after seeing all the variations in the Flickr group I realised I could have changed a few things to make it personal.  I was then stuck with the dilema of do I now go ahead and change colours around a little bit at the risk of the first block looking out of place, or do I stick with following the original design for the whole quilt?

In the end I fiddled with a little bit (the colours of the flowers) but left everything else.

I may end up doing lots of changes as I go through the blocks but I guess I can always come back to the earlier blocks and change them if they look out of place.

The colours in the above photo are a bit off because I was photographing in the fading light of the evening.

Again I used water soluble marker, but this time I just sprayed it with my ironing bottle rather than washing it under a running tap.  Don't quite have the same crinkled up mess of the last block.

Speaking of the last block, even though I pre-washed the white fabric, it looks like the centre square has shrunk after being rinsed.  I couldn't work out why.  This month it occurred to me that maybe the pellon had shrunk!  Of course I thought of this after I'd ironed on the pellon for this month.  I couldn't locate any information online about preshrinking pellon (other than to iron it, which obviously doesn't apply to the iron-on version), so I followed the same instructions I'd found for whisperweft when looking the other day.  I'll have to wait till next month now to see if it had any effect.

I've finished constructing all the squares for this, and yesterday I bought a larger embroidery hoop so I can do it all in one go without moving the hoop.  It's all systems go!

I'm grateful for...

The way my baby's skin feels when she has just woken up from a nap.

It makes me remember why I wanted this, and makes me forget about the hours spent crying (both her and me), the late nights, the early mornings, the dirty nappies, and all the things I don't get done because I have a special little girl to take care of.

Go to Maxbella Loves and see what other people are grateful for this week.  Share what you are grateful for and add your name to the list.

Elephants on Parade

My baby elephants quilt is finished!  It's only taken me a little over 18 months, but I got sick of seeing it lying around the sewing room so I decided I'd better get in and do it.

I'd been working on the last of the machine quilting over the previous couple of months.  I'd decided on a wavy pattern as you can see, which really should have been done with a free motion foot but at the last minute I got nervous and did it with a walking foot.  I had to repeatedly stop, raise the foot, and reangle the fabric, but it worked for me in the end.  It's not perfect but it's the most fancy quilting work I've ever done!

I think one of my main issues with the quilting was marking out the design on the purple border.  On all the other colours I was just able to see the design from the paper underneath and trace it through, but the purple was too dark.  I think I tried all the white marking methods I could think of.  I got dressmakers carbon paper, I used a tracing wheel, even got out my talc powder!  None of them seemed to leave an impression.  I think in the end I put the pattern underneath and could just make out some major intersections and kind of made up the rest.  The purple quilting isn't as good as the other colours.

Speaking of colours.... I used monofilament thread for the border quilting, as I had used on the coffee quilt. I don't think I'll use that again unless I really don't want the quilting thread to show.  I used it for this quilt because I just wanted the effect of the quilting, didn't specifically want the lines to show up. Next time I'll just try using a matching coloured thread.  Nothing specifically wrong with the monofilament but it was just very fiddly sewing the ends in and things like that.

On the topic of quilting, I did hand quilting around the outside of the elephants.  You can't really see the quilting on the front, but it does add a certain amount of dimension to the blocks.  I had hoped on the back that there would be an outline of the elephant in white, but the thread I chose was not thick enough (Gutermann Quilting thread) and the backing fabric is just too busy.

The other problem I had with this quilt was the binding.  The pattern called for one strip of each of 4 colours, one for each side in a different colour to the border strip on that side.  When I'd finished my quilt and measured it up, my strips weren't long enough.  The quilt's finished size was supposed to be 112cm, but I think mine came out ever so slightly longer because of inaccurate seams, and also my fabric was 112cm from selvedge to selvedge, but I didn't want to include the selvedges in my sewing.  Since I had to join the binding strips anyway, I decided to make the bindings match the border, including doing the little bit around the corners (you can see this in the first photo).

The other thing I did to this quilt to make it a little more unique was to applique one square instead of embroidering it.

And the final bit of a quilt which often takes the longest...... is the label on the back!  I'd found an image on the internet somewhere ages ago that I decided I wanted to use, so that settled the decision of how I was going to make the label.  It was to be printed on Matilda's Own Injet Printable Fabric.  I had used this once previously for a quilt label.  Of couse it meant a trip to the shops for hubby to pick up a new colour catridge for the printer!

I edited the image, changing the colours of the elephants to match the quilt.  This took a few goes of printing on paper because of course colours on the screen don't look the same in print.

I also embroidered elephant footprints onto the label.  I had intended to hand quilt some foot prints into the cream inner boarder, but after the time it took me to quilt around the elephants I'd had enough hand quilting for now.  This was my compromise to get some footprints onto the quilt.  The printable fabric is rather had to sew through I discovered.  Embroidering the footprints was just bearable, given that I hadn't hooped it up.  Attaching the label to the quilt was another matter!  I was trying to only pick up a few threads for each stitch to make an invisible stitch, but the threads didn't separate very easily to let the needle through, and on more than one occasion where I had carefully picked up only one thread from the fabric, it broke with the force of the needle being pushed through.  I didn't remember this being a problem last time I used it, but I think I must have attached the label with blanket stitch that time.  So there's a tip for you - don't bother trying to do invisible stitches on printable fabric.  It's not really worth the effort.

I had thought the quilt was going to end up way too large, but the finished size would fit nicely in the cot if you tucked the large borders down the sides and end of the cot.  It leaves just enough space at the top for a pillow, the same as how a regular quilt covers a bed.  Unfortunately this is not usually how you place a baby in a cot.  It will, however, be very useful to cover the bed once Abigail is a little older and we convert the cot into a toddler bed, and also as a lap quilt after that.  Until then I think it will be used as a floor mat for her to lie on.... and hopefully sit on soon!  It should fill in the gap nicely until she is ready for a big girl bed, and needs a big girl bed quilt, which I'm hoping will end up being the Birdie Stitches BOM I'm currently working on.

Now that this quilt is no longer on my to-do list, I've got a free space for something new!!  I've decided that I want to make my niece and nephew lap quilts for their birthdays this year (August and September).  They will be turning 10 and 7.  She LOVES puppies and the colour green, he LOVES dinosaurs but I'll have to check on his favourite colour.  These quilts are going to be mostly or all pieced with little or no applique, and I intend to follow someone else's pattern, so this *should* make then quicker and easier to finish.  Think I've found a pattern for the puppies, and bought some fabric online today that I just loved... but more on that later.... and I'd better get in and finish the music quilt first.

Back to the baby elephants... here it is in action being approved by it's new owner

..... and yes it has been sicked on already!  Only a little dribble though.

Challenge Yourself - Bonus Edition

Today I saw that Cara Quilts has set a Basics Charity Challenge.  It started because she drove past a women's shelter and saw a sign saying that they needed paper towels.  We sometimes forget about the basic things we take for granted.  It's all well and good to donate lovely things like quilts and softies, but sometimes people need toilet paper and soap more!  (Not that quilts and softies aren't loved when they are received).

Cara has put the challenge out there to drive past or ring a local charity and find out what it is they need, then donate it.  Obviously we can't all just drop by a centre (for example I don't have a car), so you can also donate to a charity online.  She suggests that for Australians that we can donate to the flood appeals etc.

I'm thinking that I might keep true to Cara's first thought, and find a local women's shelter to donate to.  Whilst the flood victims do need lots of support, they have been receiving lots of donations and sometimes the smaller organisations suffer to these kinds of disasters.

So as part of my Challenge Yourself pledge, I'm going to take Cara up on her challenge.  I'm going to find a local support centre which needs support and make a simple donation.  Just have to find out where now.  I'll keep you posted.

Jump over to Cara's page and see what other people have done to meet her challenge, and find out about the giveaway she is offering as part of this challenge.

Civil War block 7: Log Cabin

This week's block was a nice easy one again.  I was getting a little worn out from all those little triangles!

I think my hardest problem with these blocks though is choosing the fabric!  I want to use fabric from projects that I'm working on at the moment, but my scraps and the colours/values available don't always suit the block design.

This week I used left overs from my Birdie Stitches BOM.  I really wanted to keep with the traditional light/dark division, but my fabric collection didn't really contain much in the way of 'light'.  I sort of achieved it with this fabric selection, I hope.  It's more visible if you squint, and it would probably be more obvious if I had a whole quilt of blocks.

I haven't done much log cabin before.  I  believe that my Swedish Wedding Cushions were my first go.  I'd really love to spend some more time exploring this block because it has so much possibility.  Last year I purchased The Ultimate Log Cabin Book and it contains loads of ideas.

The Log Cabin block this week is in honour of Abraham Lincoln's 202nd Birthday Anniversary.  Read more about life during the American Civil War on Barbara Brackman's Civil War Quilts blog.

Challenge Yourself - February

So here is my first monthly challenge for the year -

To hold a market stall before the end of the year!

Photo courtesy of Margaret from A Little Bit of Kaos

I know it's sort of cheating a little since I'd decided a few weeks ago I was going to do this, but here it is in writing so there is no escaping now.

I have a note book specially for the purpose.  I've made notes from a converstation with Margaret of Northside Makers (and A Little Bit of Kaos), I've started a list of things I could be making to sell, I've dedicated a page to each of the local markets I want to check out so I can jot down cost, stall size,  impressions of the market after I've visited, and any other details worth noting.  Hopefully by next month I can report that I've visited at least one of these markets.

How are you going to challenge yourself this month?  If you're joining in, make a blog post and add it to the link list below.

Challenge Yourself

I'm not really one for making New Years Resolutions, but I do like to set some goals early on for the year.  What I'd like to do or achieve, or ways in which I'd like to develop as a person.  This year I didn't get around to doing any of that because come New Year I was on holidays with a baby and no hubby, and then we had guests at home for another week after that.

Since it is now Chinese New Year, I figured it gave me a second chance to make some New Year goals.

I've decided that this year is to be a year of 'Challenges'.  I want to set myself challenges to complete by the end of the year.  The can be a year long project, or only take a day.  They don't have to be craft related.  They don't have to be physical, they can be mental or emotional.

So once a month I'm going to post a challenge to myself.... and then of course follow up when it's complete.  And the end of the year I'll (hopefully) be able to say that I've completed all my challenges!

Do you want to play along too?  Make a post on your blog about what you want your challenge to be and add it to the linky list that will appear on my challenge post each month.  I'm going to aim to do mine on the 12th of each month, but you can do it any day you want, as long as it's before the end of the month.

I've even made a button you can put on your blog!

My Creative Space

I've been meaning to join in with this for ages, but never seem to be doing anything on Thursdays or remember too late when I can't be bothered to get the camera out.

But not today!!!

Today I finished my first softie for Mon Petit Poppet's Hope Softies.  Softies are being collected to send to the Qld flood victims.

I also noticed today that monkeemoomoo is having a separate Dolly Drive.  Somewhere in my head I got them mixed up and thought they were the same.

Now I have a dilema..... do I sent my softies to the first, or the second?  Or do I make twice as many softie and send them to both?  I'm going with the second option!

The bear in the photo is actually a pattern I devised and the machine embroidery was my first attempt at making my own embroidery pattern.  I designed that for my old Janome which I have now passed on to my mother-in-law.  If I want to embroidery any more faces (I have a stack in the cupboard done already), I'll have to recreate the design for my Brother machine.

If you enjoy making softies, head over to Mon Petit Poppet or monkeemoomoo and find out details so you can help some of the kids in Qld feel a little special again.

What's taking over your creative space today?  Pop on over to Kootoyoo and see what others are doing today.

Civil War block 6: Richmond

This week's block in the Civil War Quilt is in memory of Varina Howell Davis, who became the First Lady of the Confederacy.  Read more of the story on Barbara Brackman's blog.

I found the fabric selection for this week a little challenging.  I wanted to stick with my plan to use fabric from projects I had been working on this week, but of course I'm still working on the Music Quilt and the Baby Elephants, which is the fabric that most of the blocks have been made of so far.  I don't want too many of my blocks to end up the same.

I had really wanted to use some of the left over fabric from the Birdie Stitches blocks, because I have been sewing those together this week as well, but they are jelly roll strips and wouldn't have worked for the larger pieces of this block.  I did consider making the larger pieces out of strips sewn together but then the maths of it plus making sure I had straight grain around the edge of my block just seemed to hard.  In the end I went with the backing fabric from the Baby Elephants for the centre star and fabric from the top of the Baby Elephants for the rest of it.  If you look closely you can see an elphant peeking out of the centre block of this one.

Barbara notes on her blog that the block is sometimes referred to as 'Butterfly'.  Mary of Quilting in OZ also notes that the block is sometimes called "Aunt Vina's Favorite", "Pinwheel" , "Butterfly" and several others.  Mary has posted lots of pictures of this block, but I noticed that the different placement of the colour values produced a rather different looking block.  It got me wondering if the different names of the blocks actually represent the different ways of placing the colour values... Something maybe I can research one day when I have nothing else to do.  I think my favourite of Mary's quilts is the green one at the end of her post.

.... and I only just realised the error I made with placing the four patch blocks!  Two of them have the white towards the centre and two have the purple!  That might explain why my star in the middle didn't show up as nicely as I hoped.  Oh, well.  Maybe I'll come back to it later in the year and re-do those sections, but not this week.

Fabric Delivery

I know I have too much fabric already, but I keep buying more.  My latest excuse is that most of my stash is dressmaking fabrics, and now I'm getting into quilting.

Recently I've purchased the following:

 From Aunt Beas Fabric (now closed) I got a fat quarter pack of It's a Hoot by Momo for Moda

The pack didn't include a full variety of the range, but it's a very usable selection.  I'd been thinking about buying a charm square of the range so I'd get all the prints, but then you lose some of the graphics when you go to such small pieces.  I have plenty of charm packs and jelly rolls in my stash at the moment, so this will give me a challenge to make something out of a fat quarter pack instead.

From Blueberries I got this selection of 12 Days of Christmas fabrics also by Moda.  I had hoped to get the red swirly pattern too but they had sold out (the disadvantage to getting things in the 'specials' bin).  There is still some of this range available around the place so maybe I should hunt up some more.  There is also a version of the ice skaters with more green in the background that I wouldn't mind.

I've made a prototype Christmas decoration out of it so far... but more on that later!

Also from Blueberries, I got these flannels from the Bouncing Baby range.  I haven't made a quilt with flannel before so I thought I'd buy a little bit and have a play.  I'm also conscious of the fact that I buy lots of pretty girly fabric and not much that's suitable for boys, so when selecting this fabric I deliberately chose designs which could be boyish, or at least unisex.

When buying fabric from a range like this, I've always had the problem that I think I don't like some of the fabrics.  I felt I had to LOVE a fabric in order to buy it, so looking at a jelly roll (or similar), there are lots of fabrics that I don't completely and utterly love so I wouldn't buy it.

I've been trying to look past that now, and buy fabrics that blend and work together even if I don't love them.  After all, if I loved all the fabrics in a quilt I'd never see any of them.  Sometimes you need the more subtle, or 'boring' fabrics to bring out the beauty of the amazing ones.  I hope that I'm now achieving a more balanced selection in my stash.  I can't wait to see what I come up with to make use of all this!  But isn't that half the fun of having a fabric stash, dreaming of the potential?

QLD Flood Relief part 2

Following on from receiving Dave the Giraffe, yesterday I also received the raffle prize that I won.

 

The cushion cover is from monkeemoomoo and I think it's awesome!

That cute elephant will be finding a home in the nursery eventually, but little Abigail is a bit too small for it just yet.





Speaking of little Abigail... here is her enjoying her new friend Dave

I'm grateful for...

my slightly muddy laundry and the wet stain on the ceiling in the foyer.

Yesterday evening we had a huge storm passed through Melbourne.  All our westerly facing windows leaked.  The sewing room got a puddle on the window sill, the study and the nursery got a patch of wet carpet as well, and the laundry floor got flooded (a littled crept into the hallway carpet).  Three tiles on the roof came out and so water got into our ceiling at the front of the house.  Luckily my husband got up and replaced them prior to the overnight rain.  The BBQ got flipped over and is probably a lost cause.  Some of our fencing has blown over to a slight angle.

I am grateful that we were one of the luckiest in our street (to my knowledge).

The next door neighbours had a flooded hallway and water running down the pantry walls, as well as their 16' trampoline doing a spectacular jump over the back fence.  Neighbours across the road had half their ceiling collapse in.  I can't imagine the disbelief I would feel if I woke in the morning to find that in my living room.  Of course they would have heard it before they saw it.  Plasterboard and ceiling batts covered their lounges, kitchen and TV.

I am grateful that all the clean up we have is a couple of loads of washing that was on the floor of the laundry, and the towels and clothes which got wet last night during the clean up, and we might have to have a metre of ceiling replaced.

What are you grateful for?  Jump over to Maxabella Loves to see what others are grateful for.

I think I'm a little insane!

Whilst searching around the web, I came across a free BOM from Blue Bird Quilts called Retro Nine Patch.  I really liked it but decided I had too much to do this year already.

After completing my first block of Birdie Stitches last weekend, I'm in love with embroidery again, so tonight I've decided I will take on the Retro Nine Patch.

Although instead of making the blocks 10", I'm going to reduce them down to 5" and just do backstitch instead of chain stitch.  Makes the project a lot more managable.  I'd like to say that I wont go out and buy more thread for it, just use what I have on hand but I wont promise that because I'm not sure what I have on hand.  I'll definitely try to not buy any new fabric for it though!

Also Lyn uses Whisperweft behind her stitcheries, so I might try that in contrast to the pellon I am using for the Birdie Stitches, and see which I like best.

Civil War block 5: Kansas Troubles

This weeks block commemorates when Kansas became a State (rather than just being a territory).

My fabrics for this week are from my baby elephant quilt.  I wanted to take a break from the music quilt and figured I should just get on and finish the elephants (I'm almost done now).

So here is my block:

I'm not hugely keen on the colour combination, I hadn't wanted to much white, but sticking to my plan of using fabrics from what ever I'm working on that week, I didn't have a lot of choice because that was the only colour I had a wide enough strip left over.  It's not actually stark white, it has a bit of a cream blend to it, same pattern as the brown and green but just not as obvious.

All those little green triangles make up a 1" square when sewn to the white triangles.  I had a go at using the technique where you sew them together while they are still a square, and then cut then down the middle afterwards.

I think this made the job a lot less fiddly.  Whilst my points aren't perfect, I'm pretty impressed with myself at the job I did do.  Except for the seam which puckered while I was sewing the four large squares together.  I couldn't be bothered to unpick it and try again, but maybe I'll get around to it before the quilt is sewn together.

Don't forget to check out some of the other blocks that people are doing over at the flickr group