Ooh, pretty!

As I came home from work yesterday I noticed the postman making his way down my street. I could see he had some packages in his arms. I may have got a little excited! He was a couple of houses away, so I let myself in and then waited in the hallway - I live in a top floor flat, that's a lot of stairs to go up and then down again! And sure enough, a package for me popped through the door. Wanna see?

When Mary posted a picture of the fabric she'd picked and then the bag she had made, I was hoping it was for me. And it was. Here it is!

My attempt to get a light photo involved hanging the bag literally on the window!

Isn't it beautiful? It must have taken her absolutely ages, all those tiny little triangles. The colours are outside her comfort zone, but very me - thanks Mary for being willing to take on a challenge! I love how the oranges and pinks she picked go really well together. And I love the beige/natural linen too. Win!

My photo of the inside didn't work out so well (how are people with full time jobs meant to take pretty pictures for their blog in Winter when there's no sun left when they get home?!) but I hope you can see that it's lovely :) I'll def use the bag this way round too, well, if I don't get it too grubby anyway.

So pretty!

Thank you so much Mary, I absolutely love it :)

Blogger's Quilt Festival

Hi everyone :)

Amy is running the Blogger's Quilt Festival starting today, so I thought I'd enter my Orla Kiely quilt.

As anyone who has read my blog before will know, this quilt began back in April with a piece of wrapping paper:

This was given to me by a lovely friend and mum-to-be as inspiration for making a baby quilt. They weren't planning to find out the gender of their little one, so this would have to be a gender neutral quilt. This was a new challenge for me, as was picking out fabrics by myself rather than using a set from a specific collection. Here are the fabrics I picked:

I'm so blessed that I have such a great LQS where I found these lovelies :) They sat on my desk at work after I bought them, and I kept peeking at them and grinning!

And here's what they became:

(an in progress shot, since I never got a full photo of the completed back in good lighting)

As you can see, I went for a simple lattice design for the front (loving lattices at the mo) and appliquéed the Orla Kiely pattern on the back.

I had some fun the details on this one - quilting a mix of straight lines and wavy lines to produce some fun patterns...

... and doing a little fussy cutting with the Sunkissed fabric.

 
I absolutely love this quilt, and was very sad to let it go. But it's in a good home now, and that makes me happy!

Blogger’s Quilt Festival Stats

Finished quilt measures : 1m x 1m approx

Special techniques used : applique

Quilted by : me!

Best Category : Applique Quilt, Baby Quilt

Right, off to browse some of the other entries :)

Mouthy Stitches - Complete!

I finished my Mouthy Stitches bag! Unfortunately the Autumn weather is not cooperating, so here's my rather lame photo of a hopefully not-so-lame bag :)

I'm pretty pleased with how it's worked out! As I've said before, the grey was outside of my comfort zone, but everything else is pretty me. I think the thing I like most about it is the hand-stitched detailing on the handles and the back:

I'd been planning to try something like it for a while, and the rainbow stitching adds some lovely colour in with the grey.

Here is the bag's second side:

I wasn't happy with the pink strip I originally sewed, so I'm really glad I changed it.

The original plan was to have one star in each rainbow colour, but I'm afraid I ran out of embroiderenergy (yes, that's a word) rather too early on. Sorry partner!

So, all in all, I'd say this project went pretty well :) I made a lined bag for the first time, and managed to complete a sparkle punch (albeit light) project. This is my first swap, and I've really enjoyed the process. I have an awesome partner who's been very mouthy and full of kind and encouraging comments for everyone - win! I really hope she likes what I've made for her. As is always the case, I've been noticing all the slight imperfections recently, here's hoping she doesn't mind *crosses fingers*

To go along with the bag we had to make a keyring. Here's mine!

Yes, that is just the back. The front would give away who my partner is. I was inspired to add stuffing/poofyness by Hadley's keyring. So glad I did. It's so cute and squishy!

Below are a few more pictures, captured in the dying light of 4.30pm on an Autumn weekday. If you fancy browsing the bags others have made (and perhaps taken better photos of...) check out the Mouthy Stitches group :)

Hope you like it partner! Now, I must get wrapping ready to post it tomorrow...

Spring Mornings

Alyce over at Blossom Heart Quilting is having a bundle-picking competition. It looked like fun, so I gave it a go. So, here's my entry!

I love the light, fresh feel to the combination. Not very appropriate to the current weather, but hey, spring will be back before we know it! The competition is hosted by Randi at Fresh Squeezed Fabrics; I've enjoyed reading her blog 'I have to say...' too :)

Coming soon - my completed mouthy stitches bag, which I finished earlier this evening. Woop woop!

Sparkle

Hi all :)

I'm very busy sewing at the moment. A fair amount of real life is going on too, so things are quite full-on! But anyway, this post is about my Mouthy Stitches progress. You may remember that a long time ago I was planning to try out sparkle punch on a cushion. That never happened - there were too many other projests with deadlines! So I was excited to give the pattern  a go on a project that would have to be completed on time...

My original plan was just to have a diagonal line of rainbow stars, so to make sure 7 would fit I made tiny little ones. I then re-read my partner's likes and thought she'd actually like more colour, so full on sparkle punch would be better. Unfortunately with the size I'd picked, that would have driven me absolutely crazy - so much work! So Sparkle Punch Light was born.

As you can see, I've spaced out the stars to save my sanity! There was still a lot of work to do though, so I was forced into learning to chain-piece. This is where you sew two pieces of fabric together, and then keep sewing onto the next two. I'd tried it once and failed, but with the help of a youtube video, I managed it!

So pretty!

After the front of the bag, I moved onto the back. Hoping my partner will like the colour choices:

Finally, the lining. The shop didn't have enough dragonfly fabric left, so I found a similar turqouise (part of Just Wing It by Momo). The pieced side of the lining (turquoise with a pink strip) looks far more sickly-sweet than it did in my imagination, so I think I might re-do it. The plain turqouise looks fine :)

One last thing to show you up close - the handles. I really love these! I've been looking forward to trying some hand-stitching like this for a while, and I'm loving the way it looks.

Next up, quilting and then bag construction. Wish me luck!

I'll be linking up to WIP Wedesday tomorrow :)

I should be so lucky...

... lucky, lucky, lucky. A week ago Karen at Blueberry Park had a giveaway and I won! How exciting! She screen-prints fabric and has made some gorgeous zip pouches of varying sizes with it. What with that and someone making a bag for me in Mouthy Stitches, I'm going to be getting some pretty great post.

A little while back I also won this giveaway at Lindy's Threads. It's a fun pattern, and I'm looking forward to sewing something where someone else has done the maths for a change :)

As I've said before, I don't like having posts without pictures, so here's a snapshot of my Mouthy Stitches progress:

I'll be writing a full blog post about it soon. Bye for now!

Part 4 - Orla Complete!

Right, back to my Orla Kiely quilt :)

Backing done, it was time for the quilting. When I first designed this quilt I'd hoped to copy the Orla design in free motion quilting in the sashing. Unfortunately this plan didn't work out because although my free-motion skills improved with some practice, they still left much to be desired! So instead I decided to go with a simple curve which I could achieve with my normal sewing machine foot. Plans made, I started marking the quilt:

How? My pretty Ikea bucket was the perfect size!

After a quick fail (trying to quilt curves with a broken sewing machine pedal does not work well, trust me), beautiful curves started to appear :) Cue lots of excited grinning!

As you can see, I also quilted two straight lines through each of the squares. I ended up with some pretty cool patterns:

 Flower

Leaves on a stem

And a simple square appearing in the middle of each block

And so, without any further ado (I first emailed Moira about this quilt back in June after seeing this post of hers!), here is the finished quilt!

 

 The front

Quilting close-up

The back

 Casually hanging out on the sofa

  Grow :)

Love that the two sides go so well together

 Label :) My first attempt at 'proper' applique, went pretty well

 Loving the Orla

So there we go! I fell in love with this quilt as I made it - is it weird to get that wrapped up (emotionally, instead of literally) in a quilt?! Anyway, it's well loved in a great home now. I hope you've enjoyed watching it appear :) Now I really need to get on with making a quilt for Laurence and I that I can keep!

On a less mushy note, here's an out-take from when I asked Laurence to help me get a picture of 'the back'. You can tell I married him for his sense of humour, right :P

I'll be linking up to Manic Monday and Made by you Monday when the link-ups appear :)

Anyone else...

... been embroidering penguins recently?

No, just me? Well, perhaps I'll start a trend.

October Begins

It's the first of the month, which means it's time for the small blog meet again:

Hi to anyone visiting! You're joining me at a time where I'm busy with lots of projects. While I work on those, some of which are being made in secret, I've been posting about by Orla Kiely quilt. This is where I've got to in my posts so far :)

The nearly-completed quilt top

The completed quilt back

I'll be posting pictures of the quilting and the finished product pretty soon.

One current project that I can get away with posting about is my Mouthy Stitches bag. I'm really happy with the partner I've been given :) Making for her has only pushed me the slightest bit out of my comfort zone, which is lovely for my first swap. The best thing is that she likes rainbowey fabrics. I've been wanting to make something rainbowey for ages, ever since I saw a really pretty rainbow zip pouch online (can't find it atm, will keep an eye out for it), but until recently I owned literally no red fabric so it wasn't an option! But as you can see from the above pictures, I now have some red, and was able to put together this bundle:

I absolutely love it, and will definitely be making something for myself with these fabrics too. The purple sneaking in at the bottom is the only new fabric I needed to buy. I was so glad to find a purple I liked - most of the purple fabrics at my LQS are pastel purples with patterns I really don't like, but hiding in the FQ bin was the lovely purple one you see above.

I'll be making a bag with a grey background (that's the bit that's outside my comfort zone, I really want to make it with beige!) once I've picked out the right grey. I made a practice version of the bag on Saturday with some of my ugly 'what was I thinking' fabric - it's pretty vile but I've proven to myself that I can make the bag, woop woop :)

Hope you're enjoying the blog meet, see you around soon!