Sewing attire……and some real concentration

We’ve been very quiet in the past few days with all the back to school prep and visits to grandparents. However, sewing has not been forgotten. Cupcake Princess in particular has been very busy working away with her Doodle Stitching book – she’s far more studious and patient than I am when it comes to projects

What do you wear when you’re working on your sewing projects? Apparently CP’s pooh hat helps keep her hair out of her eyes.

Do you have a concentrating face? Does anyone know why sticking your tongue out helps with concentration?

Updates on what we’ve made coming soon ……. hope you like scooters!!

Look what I got….I’m so lucky!

After all the frantic effort of getting my swap items out in the post the job of waiting starts. You stalk the postman, leave the porch unlocked just in case he comes while you’re out and get grumpy when another day goes by with nothing for you. Then finally you look into the porch and there is a package for you……hallelujah its time to see what you got!!

This week I received two amazing packages …I have some amazing sewing to share with you. I’m just so lucky to be the new owner of the beautiful items.

1) Brit Quilt Swap. ( http://www.flickr.com/groups/britquiltswap/pool/ ). This was a swap for quilters living in Britain. My quilt came to me from Sarah. ( http://pingsneedles.blogspot.com/ ). I watched her sneak peeks during the swap avidly as like me she was trying out some new techniques. I absolutely love the quilt as it is right up my street. The extras are nice too! All the quilters named their quilts and this is called Harlot’s Web!

The quilting is amazing and its interesting from all angles – back and front.

2) Spicing up the kitchen swap. ( http://www.flickr.com/groups/sutk/ ). This was round 2 of a swap for kitchen items. My partner for this swap was a member of one of my quilting bees Locowodo ( http://meliketocraft.blogspot.com/ ). When I saw this posted on the group flickr site I instantly fell in love with it and ordered the book that some of the patterns came from – Cups & Saucers by Maaike Bakker. I really hoped it was for me and when the parcel arrived and I saw the sender I have to admit to squealing with delight. Take a look…its amazing!

Even the extras were great…a family cookbook full of delicious looking recipes goes down well in my house.

Aren’t I a lucky girl??

Phew…everythings in the post!!

With all the recent swapping activity I seem to have been on a constant mission to get items finished and in the post. This week was no exception with the deadlines for Spicing Up the Kitchen and Brit Quilt Swaps.

Luckily my items were finished last weekend and all I had left to do was to pull together some extras, make a label and find something to pack them off in.

The first one was easy as I had picked out my extras a little while ago for the Spicing up the kitchen and the Brit Quilt Extras came from my stash of fabrics/ribbons/hexies.

The second one , which was to label my Brit Quilt, wasn’t a difficult task but involved me having an hour to just sit and sew…thank heavens for sunny evenings when the kids are down at the park! I did a simple sewn label with threads that matched the colours of the quilt. I fused the label to the back of the quilt but didn’t sew it on aswell as I was worried I would end up spoiling the front. I have quilts that I have received where the labels are just fused on and they have stayed on fine.

The last thing to was the hardest…packaging. How do you package your quilt so that it is protected but also so it can actually be sent in the post. I wish I had taken a photo of my Spicing up the kitchen parcel before I wrapped it as I ended up using an old cornflake box. It was such a perfect size to slide the table topper and extras into…and I suppose it goes with the kitchen theme….

My brit quilt was a little easier as I had a tube that I had received a poster in which seemed ideal. However it did mean folding my quilt in half and rolling it which I wasn’t happy about but figured it was that or I would have to spend ages traipsing around trying to find something else to send it in. With a bit of jiggery pokery I got the quilt into the tube and also managed to cram in some extras. Unfortunately I couldn’t fit in the card I had bought so I ended up sending it separately ……. unsigned, so my partner couldn’t guess the quilt if the two pieces got split up in the post.

Brit Quilt swap

So that’s it now no more swaps in progress. I have put my name down for the Doll Quilt Swap 11 but its in no way guaranteed that you’ll get in as its so over subscribed. Now I’ll have to concentrate on catching up with my quilting bees and helping Cupcake Princess with her projects….

 

Brit Quilt finished and a new skill learned

It’s been a busy weekend here at the Palace whilst I’ve been trying to finish off my Brit quilt. You may recall from last weekend that I had appliqued the top and added a scrappy border but I still needed to decide whether to do add another linen border and how to quilt it.

During the week I had feedback on here and flickr which led to my decision to indeed add another border of linen….I may have made the linen border a little larger than I should have but I think on reflection it was the right decision – so thank you everyone who made the suggestion.

For the quilting I had in mind to do some pebble quilting after watching a demo on Handmade by Alissa. I was also pointed to some other blogs with demos/instructions which made me think that I could have a try. On Friday I took some scraps from the quilt and made a couple of little samples. It was actually easier than I thought it would be to get a reasonable looking pebble effect – I’m sure the experts out there would see plenty of flaws but I was happy enough with what I managed to do.

Needless to say using the technique on the actual quilt turned out to be more challenging as you have to manoeuvre the quilt in a circular motion…….however I did enjoy doing it even if it left me with some rather sore shoulders.

It did take me a couple of hours but I was really pleased with the final effect. The quilting made the applique pieces stand out and also added some rigidity to the quilt.

There were only two final pieces needed then - firstly some quilting for the border…….straight lining quilting seemed the most appropriate.

Secondly a scrappy binding. The binding itself was fine but I was extremely irritated as the corners just wouldn’t go right. I’m normally really good at the corners but these were a bit of a disaster…I think because I made the binding a bit wider than normal I didn’t leave enough room to turn the binding around the corner properly. It was passable and I left it on but didn’t meet with my own personal standards!! I did try to undo some of it but I realised I was going to make it worse and risk spoiling the quilt top.

So what do you think of the finished quilt?

I’m really pleased with how its come out and I just hope my partner loves it as much as I do. I have learnt a number of new techniques whilst working on this so I feel like I have pushed my quilting boundaries.

I may have to make another one of these for my own house as I have a feeling it would look perfect up above my mantlepiece – I will have to include an inquisitive little bird like this one as it reminds me of the cheeky little birds pecking in our vegetable patch!!

Sneak peek at the brit quilt….

I’ve started working on the machine embroidery for my Brit Quilt Swap quilt. Machine embroidery isn’t something that I have much experience in and I’m sure someone with more experience would spot all the flaws but I think its coming on ok.

I’m planning to add a scrappy border and do some pebble quilting (first time!!) so there’s still plenty more challenges to get through!!

Here’s a few photos of how its going…..

Brit quilt started……

Since I received my partner info for the Brit Quilt Swap I have been pondering what to make. My partner seems to like some applique designs and as you will know if you have followed this blog I love applique.

I flicked through various books that I’ve got and kept coming back to Piece O’Cake Designs Applique Outside the Lines. I made a quilt for Cupcake Princess last year that was a hotch potch of elements from some of the quilts in this book and it looks really great. (Photo below isn’t great but you can see the feel).

I’ve decided to base my quilt on the border of the fabulous Tree of Life quilt.

I recently bought some plain and teal linen from Seamstar which I thought would be perfect to incorporate into the back ground and binding. Pulling fabrics to go with it took up much of yesterday afternoon. Unfortunately a lot of the fabrics I would have used aren’t really a favourite of my partner but I think I managed to pull a good range that gave me the blue/green feel of the original quilt.

I took the original quilt pattern and drew up a version that would fit the size of quilt I am trying to make. I added a few more swirls and flowers to fill up the space more. I’ve started to fuse the pieces to the linen background but there is still more to come…maybe a bird perched on one of the tendrils….still pondering!

As it’s a rainy Bank Holiday Monday I’m hoping to get a chance to carry on working on this today…just hope my partner is going to like it.

Book quilt blocks start to arrive home…..

Last week I received back the first two blocks of books from my quilting bee friends.

The first set were craft books from Lynette Russell Designs:

 

I really love how she’s used all the different fabrics to make them look like sewing books. I also appreciate all the lovely embroidery.

 

The second set were cooking books from cce181:

 

There’s some fab embroidery on these books. The initials are the initials of the group member who selected the book.

 

Crystal also made a vase to go on the book shelf which I will post when I’ve added a piece of background fabric to it…didn’t send enough out in my package. I may also add some flowers in the vase…..I’ll see how enthusiastic I’m feeling about doing some embroidery tomorrow.

 

I laid the blocks out to see how they would look together.

 

I think they blend together really well as a shelf of books.

 

Here they are with my block added on…..

Blocks 1 -3 together

 It’s so exciting to see this quilt coming together after all my planning. I’ll let you know when some more blocks get home.

Bee Library Quilt

So April is nearly here and I need to get my quilting bee friends ready to work on my quilting bee month….the Bee Library Quilt. You’ve already seen some embroidery and sneak peaks but this morning I have added a new page to the blog called Bee Library Quilt. In here I will add updates on how the group are getting on with the blocks and pictures of the blocks I receive back. I have also added a page with some guidance on how I put my block together.

I have also got an inspiration gallery in flickr with photos of some amazing book quilts and blocks that I have found out there….they are so creative.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/49053002@N02/galleries/72157626051602103/

Sunday sneak peek 2

I have been working on my sample book quilt block….take a look:

Sunday sneak peek…..

Have a peek at what I have been working on…..

Just to prove it isn’t all sewing at the palace…….