Wednesday 27 January 2010

Long Time No Post...

I am determined not to start this post with "SO"...
instead I will plough right in...
I have been away for about a month, having last posted whilst away at my sisters in the states...America was amazing for Crafting and Patchworking. the fabric was SOOO Cheap, and the craft supplies plentiful and many bargains to be had!!!
Having finished the patchwork for my sister I have been focusing on a larger Owl for my friend. She commissioned me to make one for a friend of hers having a new baby. I posted a small owl a while ago, and this one is a bigger version...Here he is...
He is made from some lovely brushed cotton fabric I got in the States, felt and 2 buttons. really simple to do. I actually made a second one, as this one, which you can't really see on this photo, the blanket stitching on the sides pulled once it had been stuffed and didn't look great. So the next one I made I sewed a seam about a 1cm in from the edge and then used the stitching base as a guideline.
The second one I also added a weight to the 2nd one, to help him stand up a bit better.
Hopefully the new baby will love him...more posts to come...
Next project...a patchwork laptop bag!!!

Saturday 2 January 2010

All done, present given!!!

SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO....after MUCH, MUCH, MUCH hard work, perseverance, cutting, measuring, stress over material, money and SEWING, I finished it!!! my 1st completed full size Patchwork quilt.
I made it for my sister and brother-in-law who have moved to America recently, and I bought it out for their Christmas present. They didn't know it was coming, and I wanted it to be a surprise, which can go some way to explain why I haven't been blogging that much. All my time has been going into making this, but as my sister looks at my blog, I couldn't post about it!!!
I made it from some fabric my Mum gave me from years ago when she was into making patchworks. So I started with that, lots of the pinks, purples and greens were hers, I'm not sure where they came from but some are Laura Ashley. I cut these into 12 x 12 squares, meaning with a seam allowance of 1cm, each square on the quilt was 10x10.
So these were sewed together (see my earlier post), into strips and then the strips joined together, then I decided to make it slightly larger so added a boarder of the blue paisley print round the edge.
I struggled for ages to choose a backing fabric. I think traditionally you are meant to have a plain backing, but this fabric was FAR too beautiful to pass up. It's by Amy Butler, who makes gorgeous fabrics, I found a stockest here in the UK, and couldn't resist using it.


I finally sewed a white binding on, and got our other sister, mum and grandmother the sew a bit of it...just so we can all say we helped make it!!!