Blue Butterfly Bag - Ta-Da!

This is my Blue Butterfly Bag by Australian designer Gail Pan.  I first saw this bag on a Facebook group and fell in love with it.  I sent away for the kit and pattern and it sat for a couple of months in a drawer while I got on with other things, but then I was going on holiday and I wanted to take something small to do to while away a few hours sunbathing on the cruise ship, so I marked up the panels and took the embroidery sections with me. I didn't actually get much done but when I got back I carried on with it and the embroidery was soon finished.

 Having finished the embroidery I was keen to get on and make the bag and not let it lie around unmade.  I tend to think things over for far too long and then lose impetus but I just bit the bullet, took the bull by the horns, and just got on with it.  I'd ordered some supplies online and they were delivered very quickly so I had no excuse.

The outside of the bag was a fairly easy make, just simple cutting and stitching by machine.

I adapted the original pattern a bit. I added Bosal foam interfacing to make the bag stand up on it's own. This did make the seams a bit thick so if I use it again I will cut it slightly smaller than the top piece so that it's not in the seams.

I also added a zipped pocket inside. I used my friend Youtube to find a suitable tutorial of how to insert a zip and found one that was quite easy to follow.  It does help when I can see somebody actually doing it, rather than just written instructions and a picture. I also added a facing to the top of the lining.

I finished the bag with some big stitch hand quilting and some grey ric-rac to cover the joins.

I wish I had added some sort of fastening to close the top but I thought I would just be using this bag as a carry bag for taking a small project to Craft Group, but it's actually just the right size for using as a handbag when I go out for the day.  I might try to think of some way of adding an afterthought  tab closure to the top.  Next time I will try an inset zip closure along the top. 

I've got a lot of French General scraps in reds so I'd like to make another in that, with my few adaptations.  I might even find a different bit of embroidery too.

Star Sampler Quilt - Finished!

I started this quilt back in 2013 and it is, at long last, FINISHED!

The journey began on this one because I had a lot of the blue scraps left over from another quilt I had made.  They are all from the same line - Chambray Rose by Shabby Chic. I didn't want another blue quilt so I searched around and found the red fabric, which seemed to match the shabbiness.  The red is Clermont Farm by Moda.  I kept the background nice and simple with Kona Snow.

It started of as a Combined BOM for 2013, using blocks from many different BOMs, but then I hit a stumbling block as there were some block designs that just didn't seem to fit, so as I found a block I liked, I included it in this quilt.  The early blocks all seemed to have a star-like theme so I continued to find other starry blocks. 

The quilt top was finished in June 2013 and I decided to quilt it by hand.  I found a cotton quilt cover in Ikea in a lovely Toile de Jouy print that made a lovely backing.  It was a fairly thin cotton with a not-too-tight weave, so ideal for hand stitching, and it only cost about £10, I think. I chose a luxury bamboo batting to see what it was like.  It's so soft and silky and quilted easily.  It's wonderfully warm, too.

  
I thought it would take me the winter to complete it.  How wrong was I!  It's easy to get bored with the same project, and I had other smaller projects that needed my time so it got put on the back burner for months at a time.  When the summer came it got put away completely.  It's no joke trying to sew in the heat with a quilt on your lap.

The quilting is fairly dense all over, and I realise now that it needn't have been.  Mostly it is straight lines following the patterns in  each block, but for the sashing I used a template.  For the border I went back to straight lines.

I didn't have enough of either the blue or the red fabric to do a binding, but then I came across this super easy flange binding.  Because the strips are cut narrower and then joined together I just had enough.  The joy of this binding is that it is all completely sewn on by machine.  Definitely will use this method again.

All of the pictures were taken in my daughter's gorgeous garden.

Cup of Tea and a Catch-Up!

It's so long since I last blogged, I hardly know where to begin, so I've made myself a large mug of tea and will just get on with it.  Please excuse me if it comes out in a bit of a ramble as it's all unrehearsed and I'll write it as I think of it.

My last post was the November Round-up and I was busily making a crocheted baby blanket for my daughter to gift to a friend.  This was completed and posted off up to Yorkshire in time for Christmas.

I then had to turn my attention to finishing the hand-quilting on my grandson's Disappearing Nine-Patch quilt and getting the binding on so I could gift it to him on the big day.  It very nearly didn't get finished as my eldest daughter asked me to do some invigialation for exams at the school where she is Vice Principal, so instead of spending two weeks leisurely stitching away I was spending my time 'watching paint dry'.  Well, that's what it felt like.  I just had to watch a room full of students beavering away at their exams, hand out spare pens and more paper, and give a bit of TLC to a few nervous pupils.  I don't think I've ever been so bored in all my life.  No reading, talking, writing or anything, just watching.  I spent my time making lists in my head of everything that needed to be done for Christmas but promptly forgot them as I couldn't write them down.  The one saving grace is that I will get paid for it at the end of January, so a bit of extra cash to spend on some fabric!

Harry's quilt did get quilted and bound, washed on Christmas Eve, dried overnight and wrapped on Christmas morning whilst the turkey was in the oven.  I asked, in a previous blog post, for names for this quilt and Kelly over at My Quilt Infatuation suggested 'Boys at Work' as the orange reminded her of construction workers.  I changed it slightly to be 'Man at Work' to reflect the grown-up nature of my nine year old grandson.   It's made from old shirts, orange fabric from a charity shop, backed with a fleece throw from Ikea, and bound with strips cut from an old bed valance.

Needless to say, he absolutely loves it and it's getting loads of cuddly time on the sofa in the chilly weather this month.

Christmas came and went in a flurry of activity.  Tree and decorations were put up on Christmas Eve, gifts were wrapped on the same day whilst watching 'It's a Wonderful Life' and contingency plans were made for cooking the turkey in case we were without power due to the bad weather.  I have a gas hob with an electric oven so would have been well and truly 'stuffed' if I had had a power cut.  Youngest daughter has a gas oven and would have cooked the turkey and potatoes for me and transported it over, but we were lucky and didn't have to use the back-up plan.  Two streets away from me weren't so lucky and were without power for four days. I went to Midnight Mass, bed at 2am and up at 6am to put turkey in oven.  Lunch at 1pm for nine went off well, pressies opened and choccies eaten whilst watching Downton Abbey. The post-Christmas Turkey soup was made and was a huge success on Boxing Day.  The tree and decorations came down the very next day, as I was getting too stressed out trying to keep Molly (daughter's 10mth old puppy) form eating it all.

Now that we're into January I've started sewing again.  I've made two blocks for the Farmer's Wife Sampler quilt.

#1 - Attic Windows

#29 - Economy

I had got a couple of week's behind with the Quilty Fun Sew Along but I'm all caught up now.

Week 5 - Flying Geese

Week 6 - Mini Chevrons

Week 7 - Coffee Mugs

Week 8 - Trees

Week 9 - Quarter Square Triangles

I'm continuing to hand quilt my large Starry Sampler quilt in the evenings.  At the rate I'm going it will take me all year so I really must overcome my reluctance and learn to FMQ on my machine or I will never get another quilt finished this year.  So my next job is to review 2013's New Year's Goals and set new ones for 2014, but that will have to wait for another post.  My tea's getting cold.

November Round -Up

This month has been about making two Disappearing Nine-Patch quilts for my grandchildren for Christmas.  I've completed one and am almost finished hand quilting the other so have high hopes they will be ready for the big day. I've also started Lori Holt's Quilty Fun Sew Along and have completed the first four blocks, and I've managed a couple of blocks for my Farmer's Wife Sampler quilt.

Pretty in Pink Ta-daaah!

All finished and ready to wrap for Christmas.

I am so pleased with how this has turned out.  Ever since I started quilting just over a year ago I've been longing to make a pink scrappy quilt for my little granddaughter, but I've had to wait until I had collected enough scraps.  The scraps have come from old sheets, a shirt or two, oddments from friends and a few bits of old dressmaking stuff. I love this little patch of Alice in Wonderland fabric.

I added some Kona Snow and some pink spotty stuff from Ikea to tie it all together.

I used the Disappearing Nine-Patch pattern which is so easy to do.  Just cut squares, stitch them together, cut them up, turn them this way and that, restitch and then you have a pattern that looks far more complicated than it really is.  I wrote more about how to do this here.

My grandchildren love to sit and watch TV with a blanket on their laps.  At the moment they usually drag the crochet blankets I made for them off their beds, so I thought it would be a good idea to make them a quilt just for TV watching.  I've made this quite light weight as it has no batting, just a light fleecy throw, from Ikea, for a backing.

The quilting is a mixture of hand and machine.  I used the machine to stitch-in-the-ditch six inches apart across the length and width and then big-stitch-quilting a quarter inch in around all the white blocks using a pink top stitch thread by Guttermaan.  I would have liked a slightly darker pink thread so that it showed up a bit more, but I had to go with what my local shop had.

I finished it off by binding it with the pink spotty stuff from Ikea.  I must get some more of this 'cause I love it so much.

I've now started the hand quilting on the boy version of this quilt for my grandson, so as it's big-stitch-quilting it shouldn't take too long.

This week I've also made the next block in Lori Holt's Quilty Fun Sew Along.  This week it is Twinkling Stars.  I spy some more of that pink spotty stuff.

Pretty in Pink

After finishing the scrap sorting last week I was eager to start a new project, so I decided to make a start on using up some scraps..  Do you remember the pile of 5" squares I had cut?

There were 80 squares in that pink pile on the left and were calling me to make something for my granddaughter whose favourite colour just happens to be pink.  I wanted something that would be scrappy, but still have a unified look to it.  I hunted around the internet, and my Pinterest boards and decided on the Disappearing Nine-Patch block.  I already had two charm packs of Kona white so they could be used, and I found some pink and red spot fabric in my stash I'd bought in Ikea earlier this year.  The white and the spot would be in every block.  I made each block using four scrap squares for the corners, one pink spot square for each centre, and four white squares for the outer middle squares.  That sounds complicated but as a picture paints a thousand words here's one to show you what I mean.

I made twenty blocks like this. Chain-piecing them meant they came together so quickly.  I really surprised myself how quick it was.  Then came the fun part.  I cut through the middle of the block, both vertically and horizontally like this.

Then I rotated the top left and the bottom right squares through 180 degrees, leaving the other two squares alone.  They now looked like this.

This was then sewn together to make the completed block.

The block measured 13 1/2" square, which when set in a 4x5 formation and sewn together would be just a bit too big for the fleece throw I want to use for the backing, so I trimmed the blocks down to 12 1/2", making sure I measured 6 1/4" from the centre line on all four sides so that I kept the pattern equal.

 The completed top. I love the way the cut white blocks form that cross pattern.  I'm thinking I'll hand quilt around the inside of those crosses to emphasise them a bit more.

 Although not completely made from scraps, I'm putting this down as another item for the Scrap Challenge.

Wellies & Watering Cans

Last April I made a bag for my eldest daughter's birthday and my youngest daughter really liked it, so as it's her birthday this week I've made her one, too.  Catherine's was made in a lovely bicycle print as she loves cycling, but I've made Sarah's in this gorgeous Wellies & Watering Can print as she is always gardening.

The lining is just plain olive green.   It measures 13" tall x 19" wide.

On the FWQ front I've managed 3 blocks this week.

#1  Attic Windows

#88 Star of Hope

#92 Streak of Lightning

My tally so far is 34 blocks.  I'm only making a lap quilt size so need 16 more.  Should be able to manage that by the end of next month, I think.

And now especially for Molly's Fan Club

Five months old, and feeling oh so very sorry for herself.  She follows my daughter everywhere and tried to sneek into the bathroom with her, but the wind caught the door and slammed it shut, catching Molly's tail in it.  I didn't see the carnage as it was at her house, but she said that her bathroom resembled a murder scene and she half expected police to arrive and cordon off the area with yellow tape!  The vet's is quite close so she whisked Molly down there straight away.  They had to shave off her newly grown feathering before they could clean and glue the wound and gave her a painkilling injection and a course of antibiotics.  Molly is not entirely happy with having to wear her new fashion accessory.

Scrap Challenge Project #3

Do you remember the crumb block I made last week?

Well, I liked it so much that I made three more, joined them together, added borders and binding, and now have a rather nice runner.

And the super thing about it is that it is all made with scraps.  In the centre piece the scraps ranged from 1" to 2 1/2" wide.  I stitched the scraps onto pieces of paper, cut from the telephone directory, 2 1/2 x 6 1/2".  Three of these strips were then sewn together to make a 6 1/2" block.

The borders and binding were longer scraps but they still needed to be joined to get the length I needed.

I pieced some scraps of batting together, backed it in a piece of the leftover Toile de Joue duvet cover (from Ikea) that I used to back my Starry Sampler quilt and did some simple straight line quilting.

It measures 31 1/2" x 13 1/2".  All of the scraps are from the Chambray Rose collection by Shabby Chic, mixed with some Kona Snow scraps.

It's new home is in the bedroom on the chest of drawers.  

More Scrap-Busting and FWQ blocks

Continuing the challenge to use all of the scraps from my Chambray Rose quilt I've made a couple of coasters this week.  These are for my computer desk in my dining room, so I will use them every day.  I sewed the scraps directly onto a piece of batting, backed them with a scrap of the  Toile de Joue  duvet cover I used on the Starry Sampler quilt, and bound with some really old spotty dressmaking cotton.  They measure 4 1/2 inches square.

I had such a lovely time making these that I thought I would do a bit more crazy piecing and made this block.

I pieced this on paper torn out of the telephone directory.  I cut 3 paper strips 2 1/2" x 6 1/2" and stitched directly onto the paper, using stitch length 1.5.  I made all 3 at once, using the leader/ender method of feeding in and cutting off at the back to save keep on cutting (and wasting) thread.  The paper tore away really easily.   I then sewed the 3 strips together to make a 6 1/2" square block.  I don't know what I'm going to do with it yet, but I'm going to make a few more as they're such fun to make.

I've made another 9 blocks for my Farmer's Wife Sampler Quilt using the gorgeous "Marmalade" by Bonnie and Camille.  I am just so loving making these.

# 69  Practical Orchard

#70 Prairie Queen

#71 Puss in the Corner

#72  Railroad

#73 Rainbow Flowers

#74  Ribbons

#81 Snowball

#84 Spool

#87 Star Gardener

Here are the nine all together.