Soluble Fabric Bowl Class

Before I went away this week I made the most of my husband being off work and ran off for the morning to play at my friends house!

Liz is an amazingly talented lady, it is down to her that I ever started quilting, she is so inspiring! I find that I almost have to go to her studio with blinkers on or I find myself distracted by all the wonderful projects she has on the go.

I am very comfortable doing fme, it is one of my favourite techniques, I love doing stitched pictures with it but I wanted to see what other applications it can have.

This time we got to grips with soluble film.

We popped our film into an embroidery hoop and using this as inspiration set off!

Once we had finished our embroidery (lots of bobbin changes later!) we dissolved the film in a bowl of warm water and shaped the bowl around a balloon. Then used a hair dryer to set it, you could leave it overnight if you have time. 

Next time I will use a smaller balloon as I'd like higher 'sides' on the bowl but I am still really pleased with how this turned out.

I highly recommend having a go a this, it is so simple and loads of fun, the possibilities are endless!

I am hoping that next time we get together we can make up one of these bowls (bit of a bowl theme going on, but you can never have too many bowls!)

Now all we need to do is source the cotton clothes line in the UK, in the US it is very easy to buy and very cheap - not so much here!

2nd Quarter Finish-Along Goals

Wow, why is it that a few 'restful' days away leaves you with a mountain of chores when you return! 

I feel like my to-do list is endless so I am prioritising my finish-along list, leaving off some of the small jobs and not putting everything on here (for fear I may faint!)

1. Make the Siblings Together Quilts from the fabric that Jennifer really kindly sent me to use. I am still blown away by her generosity! The least I can do is make the quilts.

2. Make some more Granny Square blocks for Siblings Together using the white solid that Trudi kindly sent me.

3. Make my Mother-In-Laws 70th birthday present, I am not decided on what to do yet but I love this lamp and possibly another fme bowl to go with it.

4. Make my name badge for my partner in the Fat Quarterly Retreat swap

5. Make up the remainder of the sample swap items for the FQ Retreat (2 made, at least 2 more to do)

6. Get July's Birdie Stitched block finished (part started but ran out of embroidery floss!)

Hopefully an achievable list - it has to be as none of these finishes are really optional!

Quick little gifts....

do you need a last minute Easter gift? Shops shut? Well I certinaly did!

Thank goodness I found this video tutorial and the postman arrived today with these, a lovely limited edition Easter bundle from M is for Make. 10% off and free shipping on the bundle until Tuesday!

So armed with instructions and some cute fabric I whizzed up these

Lovely little baskets ready to fill with home-made cookies, eggs or whatever you can find in cupboard!

I love how they are round but only have a few straight seams. I didn't use the sizes given in the video, I just worked with what I had (I brought the fat 1/16th bundle so made 9" squares). I also played around with the distance I set the corner seams in to alter the height of the basket.

I like them so much I went off and ordered another fat 1/16th bundle from M is for Make as soon as I was done so I can make some for myself too!

Happy Easter everyone!

I'm off for some well deserved down time at the inlaws in the wilds of Exmoor for  a few days but I'll be back with some fun quilting how-to's soon. Apologies to anyone I haven't managed to reply to comment wise, with long shifts at work and lots of sewing to be done, not mentioning normal family life things have slipped a little! I hope the Easter bunny bestows lots of lovely choccy goodness on you!

Another day, another quilt and a winner!

I seem to be churning out quilts this week, good job too as I've put myself down for at least a couple for the Siblings Together quilt project.

This was a very quick little quilt/play mat for my new nephew who was born 6 weeks early!

I got the top pieced, basted and quilted in an evening. Then the poor quilt sat in the studio like a lost child, waiting for its binding. See, I had decided to be a Smarty Pants and do curved corners (talk about a contradiction in words) so I just had to have bias binding. My normal straight cut binding wasn't going to make it around those bends. So I fidgeted and got all worked up about having to go and buy some yardage just so I could cut it on the bias to bind this tiny little quit. 2 weeks went buy and I was messing about in the fabric cupboard when it jumped out at me

Buried and forgotten (how could I??!!) was this lovely bias binding from Karen at Blonde Design which arrived with her charms as a thank you in the recent charm swap I ran.

I wasted no time, I grabbed the quilt, threw the work I had been doing off the table and got set to binding. When I was done, it went straight from the washing machine, to the dryer whilst I text the un-suspecting new Mummy to arrange to deliver it. It is now in it's new home hopefully being admired and used.

I proudly unveil the mini i-spy quilt!

I've been wanting to try this quilting pattern for ever

Loving my curved corners

Pre-wash quilt label!

Quilt deets:

Mini i-spy quilt
Quilted in spiral
Machine bound with curved corners
Hobbs Heirloom 80/20 batting (1 layer)
Backed in a cotton sheet

now its time for winner winner chicken dinner! I had 17 comments plus Indie emailed me with some suggestions so 18 in total. Mr Random chose no 11, Cindy!

Cindy said:

Congratulations! Happy 100th. 

I have a pattern that is catching my eye, but I haven't tried it. It would be perfect for rainbow charms, I think :)

http://www.etsy.com/listing/77383133/zig-zag-rail-fence-quilt-pattern-pdf-by

Congratulations Cindy! I'll be mailing you soon, check your inbox :-)

p.s. did you spot anything different today ;-)

The quilting's the star!

Today I am tired, Easter holidays are tiring! So I'm going to give you lots of photos and a few words. Probably best that way!

Hugest thanks to Jenna at Sew Happy Geek, without her awesome QAL this wouldn't be here :-)

everyone casually drapes their quilts over the garden bench - right? Well they do when the 7 year old on hand is too short to hold it up!

Circle quilting, may not be the last time you see this!

FMQ squiggly lines

Ooops, so those quilt labels I printed are not washable after all ;-)

Obligatory folded quilt shot!

Backed in a £1 charity shop flannel sheet that took days of hunting for!

Quilt details:

Sew.Happy.Quilt QAL

Top Pieced in Denyse Schmidt Hope Valley

Hobbs Heirloom 80/20 batting (single layer)

Backed in Cotton Flannel Sheet from Charity Shop

Machine quilted in a circle pattern and FMQ squiggly lines in borders.

I have another quilt finish for you tomorrow! (no wonder I am tired hehe)

Finish Along 1st Quarter Round-up

Back in January I set myself the following targets in Rhonda's Finish-Along:

Bind the Crazy Christmas Quilt

Use the fabric Panel and make it into something

Embroider the vintage tea cosy

Finish the dresden cushion

Finish embroidering the Birdie Stitches June block



Well I managed to do them all! :

Bind the Crazy Christmas Quilt (sometime in January, I didn't blog about it so I can't remember when! Eeeek)

Use the fabric panel by 26th January

Finished embroidering the Vintage Tea Cosy by the 30th January:

Finished the dresden cushion (drat, didn't blog this one either but I know it was done by early February!):

And I finished the Birdie Stitched June Block and even got started on the July block:

A huge thanks to Rhonda, it was such a great motivation being part of this, can't wait to see what the second quarter brings!

Sewing to make you warm and fuzzy

What a wonderful weekend I had, I hope you did to!

Saturday brought an unexpected surprise. My daughter had a friend to sleep-over and we ended up having an impromptu sewing lesson. Her mum had only asked a couple of weeks before about arranging some beginner lessons for her but this was totally unplanned. If it had been planned I may have panicked about letting a minor loose on my precious machine and not enjoyed it so much ;-)

Not wanting to change a winning formula we made another pouch, this time a smaller purse size. She picked the fabrics and fussy cut, helped with the rotary cutting and aside from a brief demonstration did all the stitching herself with a little assistance.

I think she is going to be a natural!

Here she is with her creation, very proud!

The finished purse

Not wanting to be left out my daughter spent the time I was sewing with her friend busy sketching a design for her own pouch, which she wants to give to her school teacher. She also showed a blatant disregard for the limit of my skills and chose to make an egg shaped pouch. Cue me panicking about putting in a curved zip!

We did it!

She chose a fabric that is somewhat reminiscent of a psychedelic speckled egg, heaven knows how it got into my stash!

After all that fun we made pancakes and gingerbread men and rounded out the day with a very wholesome walk in the woods by a tumble down castle, ah perfect!

On Sunday I threw away all plans of a day by myself at the local quilt show in favour of more warm fuzzy feelings. I had come across this the previous evening and before I knew what my fingers where doing I was jumping in with both feet.

Lynne over at Lilys Quilts has done an amazing job rounding up many talented quilters (I'm excluding myself from that comment haha!) with the aim of making 50 quilts by the summer for the children of Siblings Together to take home from their camp to remember their experience by. Siblings Together brings together children separated by the care system. Having 2 siblings myself I know how special the bond is and was immediately moved by the work of the charity. I have pledged to make 2 quilts, possibly 3! But wanted to do something immediately to get the ball rolling so I made a few blocks for the group projects.

First up were some simple log cabins, although I must have had my sleepy Sunday head on as I kept getting the configuration wrong!

Then I moved onto a granny square, I only had enough white solid left for one of these, good job too as I could have spent all day making them, I am hooked! I had to get this one packed up as soon as I finished it or I would have had a hard time parting with it.

If you want to help head over to the flikr group here. You don't need to make a whole quilt you could make a few blocks, donate some fabric or wadding or backing. Perhaps even offer to put together a quilt from a top for someone who doesn't have the time. Anything will help.

Having topped up my warm and fuzzy feel good level to the brim I became wonder woman for the rest of the day. I grabbed my Sew.Happy.Quilt top and set to basting, quilting, binding and burying thread and had a finished quilt by 10pm last night! She is in the wash and I'm hoping to get her dry today to snap some pics before we loose the sun for the rain tomorrow!