Happy New Year! I like to make three crafting resolutions each year to keep my hobby interesting and challenging. Last year I decided to:

1) Learn to use the ruffler foot for my sewing machine... and do you know what? I still didn't use it so I guess in a whole year of sewing clothes for all of us, I just don't need it. I think maybe I have had it for so long that now my girls are in their teens, I have possibly missed that gathered-pretty-phase of their clothing choices. I can put this one to bed I reckon and never speak of such a thing again.

No regrets.

2)Make a dent in my fabric scraps especially the thin strips... this is actually going very well in the background although not to completion. I have made a strip quilt topper but it is a shade off a single bed size and now that I like the concept of it so much I want to make it into a double bed topper to store as a future wedding present. 

3)To sew a raincoat... Total success here, I made three. One for me, my mum and my youngest. It is the Eden raincoat by Tilly and the Buttons and Meg's was from a vintage pattern.

For 2022, I would like to improve some of my making.

1) To work with different fabrics. I have never used silk before because I am frightened of cutting it out so I would like to overcome this fear and of course have something beautiful to wear.

2) To stop knitting on when I know that something has gone wrong. I am an absolute sucker for it. Fudging each row until it gets right never happens but then I am always a little disappointed when I know there is a mistake. I am going to become a frogger starting with this yoked sweater. The black dots are all the mistakes. The one massive mistake is that the coloured yarn is too thin against the brown so I started making mistakes and not loving it enough to unpick them. 

3)To Crochet a chunky throw that has straight sides. I have been gifted some lovely yarn and I would like to use it well and keep my stitch count correct for each row. Sometimes I do slapdash crochet too!

Generally this year my sewing has improved in quality massively because I have been recording my makes for Minerva for freelance media content which will be released later this year. There is nothing better than videoing yourself sewing for others to learn from for making you sew properly! It has been my dream job and I am so looking forward to sewing more. 

Has it made you think of something you would like to finish, start or improve?

Happy New Year! Jo xxxx

It's All About the Scraps

It has been such a finishing kind of week. You get those sometimes, where knuckling down and getting things to the very end seems woeful in your mind but then it doesn't really take very long.

I think I have falsely shown you this as a finish in the past but really I knew after 'finishing' it that the large grey border swallowed up the patchwork centre and needed more work. I started to machine stitch it but it just made a huge pucker at the end of each row. This is when I might have shoved it in a bin bag for a day when I felt more motivated/less sweary.

I got it out again earlier this year and began hand quilting it. I really made some progress and then, as any hand quilter will know, I got a touch of RSI in my hands. Away it went, for a second time, back in the black bin bag.

Things started to get a bit more crucial of late because this quilt is for my friend's son on his 18th birthday which is a week away! Out is came for the third time however, to my surprise, it took me one more evening of stitching to finish it. The back features some of his old shirts which he doesn't know his mum gave me for the quilt. It will either feel like a big surprise or that I have been stalking him by stealing shirts off the washing line! All wrapped up and ready to go now.

Finishing something arduous always makes me believe I can do anything. On Saturday afternoon the girls had a friend to play so I had couple of hours thinking about how to join these scrappy strips together which the girls and I made in January 2021 school lockdown. 

I hope some of the followers here can spot some of their gifted fabrics. These are the long strips which I collect from sewing;anything rectangular gets sorted into the 'strips' box. At the end of the afternoon I had sewn the ready-made long strips together and assessed that I need about four more to make a single quilt. A long way off yet but a very satisfying afternoon of enjoying the quilting process rather than the eventual outcome.

Another scrappy Ski hat (Free pattern) flew off the needles this week. One more for the present box. Making the pom pom even used up the last of some balls completely without a scrap of waste.

Finally, for myself, I have completed a crocheted sock yarn shawl. The pattern is on my sidebar if you have scraps of sock yarn or 4 ply to use up but it would work for any yarn. It has been a year long project (from last Christmas I think) to use up all of the sock yarn ball ends. Between larger projects, I would add a row here and there to use the yarn up to the very end. Recently, I have added some of the 4ply wool from Heidi's fair isle jumper and leftovers of leftovers from the socks. It is finished with some bought pom pom trim. Well why not?

Honestly, I think I love creating with the leftovers more than the initial product choice! Are you making for Christmas?

Jo xxxx

On the wild side and getting wilder...

 

I thought I would bring you an update on the wild jeans. They came about because I needed a new pair of jeans before lockdown March 2020 and hadn't got round to going shopping for some. Then of course there were consecutive lockdowns. I will not buy a pair of jeans unless I can try them on and all changing rooms have been closed even when visiting shops became available. I have momentously bought new jeans in the M&S sale this week.

The patching started with a little weak spot on the knee and progressed every month for sixteen months. Sometimes they just needed a little embroidery and other times they needed a full patch. This is where they are now. You can see the front crotch patch which is not the prettiest but it had to be done to save them. I have also made a severe dent in all the little iron patches I bought when the children were small but never used. That is how I came to have a water melon on my bum!

I always get comments about them when I wear them - all good so for, or maybe that is just my inflated sense of self-esteem! Anyway the journey continues. My new fabric belt looks well alongside them and I will be making more of these. If anyone is interested, the top is a super easy pattern from Maria Denmark called the day to night drape top perfect for the summer sunshine.

Have you got any visible mending achievements, do tell? 

Live Green, Love Green, Quilt

This project has been a long time coming. I dragged this post from drafts dated way back in January 2019. Here is this quilt's story as it was written piece by piece so the tenses are all over the place because I have added bits here and there:

 Starting a new quilt is always exciting. My girls get the same feeling when they choose a new reading book. For me, it starts with looking at what fabric I already have to use up. I had a lot of green but then it is my favourite colour.

There was fabric from my cameleon summer dress; sixteen fat quarters I bought at a NEC craft trade show for £1 each in 2016; donated fabric from my friend Michelle and various other tit bits I had gathered along the way. 

The design I chose was from a magazine which I have since lost during our house move but I started cutting this in January 2019 and luckily had the foresight to make card templates. I had previously supported my friend along in making this design for her first quilt so I knew it would look pleasing.

With a little more quiet cutting here and there I only needed another three fat quarters to make the required amount. The triangle feature pieces were cut from navy quilt sashing offcuts and a little more from the magic 'Michelle Lockdown bag'

 In my mind it was going to be a lighter weight quilt for our bed because the one we have is very heavy. It turns out our new house is so warm we don't really need a quilt in the summer at all so I kind of lost the impetuous to complete it.

The topper came together very quickly making a generous double bed size in November 2020. I remember sewing it altogether while the heating engineer commissioned our hot water system at the farmhouse. Next I had to decide how to back it and quilt it.

By January 2021 we were back in lockdown. I asked if I could use the old school rooms in the village to spread out my quilt. The old school is used as a village hall and is opposite our house. The girls were at home so I knew I would have some helpers, albeit very cold helpers. I remember this day as being so very very bitter that I could hardly use my fingers to put in the safety pins. The girls wore gloves and brought a flask of hot chocolate with them.

Fast forward to June 2021 and the quilt was still folded up, all sandwiched but not sewn. Then my nephew's wedding plans got back on track and I decided to make it for their wedding present. They have a little camper van which they are going on their honeymoon with because they can't go abroad. Unfortunately of late I have had a bout of tennis elbow meaning I could not hand quilt it together. For one determined day, I machine quilted the whole lot, made a date plate and added a binding.

The binding was attached right side to right side for the first machine pass on straight stitch then folded to the reverse of the quilt and sewed with a zigzag which gives a little room for error but makes a nice flat border.

In my mind it has several 'camping' uses: an extra layer on chilly nights, a beach blanket, a picnic rug, a lap blanket or for simply wrapping round a couple's shoulders for drinking beers in deckchairs. 

 

I put it on our bed to spread it out and remove the safety pins.

For sure it would have been better hand quilted but it just wasn't to be and I think they will really like it. The happy, but slightly stressed-covid-wedding-planning-couple are coming to eat with us tonight so the quilt is wrapped with a hessian tie all ready to go.

That is the story of the Live green, Love green quilt.

Thanks for dropping by. I hope this story shows that if you have a long lost half made quilt, there is a chance that it might make it to completion one day.

Jo xxxxx

It's Been a Long Time

It has been a long time coming this postage stamp quilt. In fact some decent weather to photograph it has been a long time coming too. It was my new years resolution to finish it in 2019 and it is now complete and completely gorgeous.

The topper was finished in October but I just didn't seem to get around to buying a sheet and batting to complete it. Anyway, I did in the end, and here it is.

Some burning questions you may need answering:-

The quilt is for a single bed size

It has 1400 little squares that are cut at 5cm and sewn with a 0.5cm seam allowance

It is hand quilted with embroidery threads and running stitches.

The backing is a new flat sheet from Dunelm.

Some squares are fussy cut to reveal a picture and others are cut to squeeze the last out of a tiny piece of fabric. There are houses, birds, dogs, fungi, butterflies and flowers.

It has a name plate called 'All the little bits of you' 2020

It is for my god daughter for her 18th Birthday (she is 14 in April!) Oh yes, ahead of schedule.

The fabric is from everywhere. Take a look, some might be from you: Christina, Linda, Shirley, Helen and many others. Thank you to you all. The key to this quilt is not quantity but variety. Each block has 64 squares so you need as many different fabrics as possible in each block. Some, not all, have 64 different ones in! 

You can only really achieve this by sharing fabrics or buying scrap packs. There are many  pieces from Christina at Colourful life. We did a fabric swap and sent each other some tiny scraps in the post. This meant that most of the orange/mustard/ocre tones which would have been missing from my quilt were represented and lifted the other colours significantly.

The other key to making this quilt is to be as free as you can allow yourself to be. There is no planning, no procrastinating you just sew tiny squares together with gay abandon. I had one rule and that was that two fabrics could not sit next to each other - and then I spotted one when it was finished!

I used an extra wide binding from frumble which was left over from another quilt so all in all I bought the wadding and a flat sheet. I also had a gift voucher given to me when I left a job in December and I bought this little stab thingy called a micro stitch. It fires out tiny plastic ties (like you get on new socks but much smaller) It is perfect for quilters to hold your layers together when you hand quilt. Then you snip them out and put them in the plastic recycling.

Hope you like it. If you want to check out Christina's version click here to see more riotous colour.

Jo xxxx