Marshmallows

It's done! Ta-da! I finished the table runner this morning :)

The little extras I mentioned last time were some cute little coasters. I used Svetlana's tutorial for the basics of coaster making, but scaled mine back to 4 inch squares.

They have two layers of batting in them, which makes them wonderfully poofy! Squidging them reminds me of the texture of marshmallows... mmm... Don't worry, I haven't actually drooled over the coasters.

Here is the set in action. I'll be quite sad to let it go. Thankfully the first coaster I made wasn't perfect so I'll be keeping that one, and I made it a friend. So I have a souvenir of a project again :)

PS I had so much fun making a mini version of my header for the back of the label!

ETA: Linking up to Made By You Mondays and Manic Monday. Also table-runner tutorial is here :)

Still Running

To make the wedding present table runner I'm working on a little more special, I offered to add some embroidery to the back. I love personalising projects in this way - it makes them a bit more special than things you can buy in the shops. One day I'd quite like to get some 'Patchwork & Pins' labels printed to add to quilts I make. That's probably a fair way in the future though!

Anyway, here's how the embroidery turned out:

I'm pretty pleased with the result. For the first time I decided to use an actual font (traced from my laptop) rather than free-styling and I quite like the effect. It was less tricky that I thought it would be to add the little flicks onto letters. I used my new toy for the tracing - a blue quilter's pen whose ink disappears with cold water. I already can't imagine how I lived without it!

Below are a few more in-progress shots. The completed project should be popping up here before too long, along with some little extras I've been working on tonight :)

I'll be linking up to Fabric Tuesday and Work In Progress Wednesday when the appropriate days arrive :)

Green, Blue and Purple

Do you remember my in-between projects post? Well I've started work on one of them :) My friend asked me to make the runner with green, blue and purple fabrics. Those of you who are on the ball will realise those are the same colours I used for my own table runner. I was keen to use different fabrics for this one, so I decided to go with brighter, cleaner colours this time rather than the 'murky' colours in my one. Side note - is there a 'nice' way of saying murky?! 

Here's what I came up with:

I love how I just about have enough of a stash now that I can create something new and different with fabrics I already own. In order these fabrics have been used for:
- Decorating a notice board
- Oven gloves
- Own table runner
- Lots of things (I have a bit of a thing for beige, is that weird?)
- Not much yet, but looking forward to using it lots
- Own table runner
- Border on one of the twins' quilts

I also picked up some white, sqiggly ribbon (which is apparently called ric-rac or rick-rack) to use between some of the stripes. I love the idea of having some white in this runner to brighten it up. Idea from here.

Here's how it's looking so far. I'm really excited about how this is going to turn out!

Linking up to Work In Progress Wednesday (which seems to have arrived a day early!)

There's a hole in my runner...

... dear Liza, dear Liza. Does anyone else remember that song?

Anyway, my table runner had, rather unfortunately, developed a hole. I made it before I had a rotary cutter and hence my rectangles weren't too neatly cut, and I hadn't much in the way of sewing skills back then! Despite its many imperfections this runner is very dear to me and so since the hole was bugging me, I decided to try to fix it.

You can see where the fabric's not properly sewn together in the middle :(

As with many things in life, it had to get worse before it got better:

When it came to sewing the new, properly sized piece in place I found a neat 'trick' way of doing things. I sewed a proper seam between the blue and cream fabric, but simply slipped the edge of the blue underneath the purple:

I then sewed the purple down on top, as close to the edge as possible, to keep both the purple and blue fabrics in place, and added an extra quilting line on top of the blue.

Ta-da! Good as new. Machine-sewing the binding back on was a little tricky, but I managed. I tried out using hair clips to help with the hand-sewing part, which worked pretty well. You can just about see from the left of this photo that when I originally hand-sewed the binding on I hadn't understood that you were meant to slip-stitch so that the sewing couldn't be seen. I really love this about the runner, as I love many of the imperfections.

And so I have a non-holey table runner back :) Question is, do I do it all again to get rid of the candle-wax stain?!

 

In-between Projects

I'm afraid there isn't much sewing going on that I can post about at the moment! I'm making progress on the wrapping paper quilt - the top is finished and I'm now working on the back. But other than that I am:

Wondering how to move forward with this project

I had planned to make a picnic-rug-quilt with these fabrics, but the design I put together requires pretty much complete accuracy to work. Considering that I made the first blocks in my pre-rotary-cutter days and I haven't yet resolved my 'foot isn't actually 1/4" wide' issue, this might not be the best way to go! So I'm not quite sure what to do here. The quilt definitely needs pinwheels though - they're so summery :)

 Love the pink pinwheel!

Thinking about cushion covers

Having had our cushions for nearly 3 years now, they're starting to look a little worse for wear. I picked up a couple of cheap cushions from Ikea so I can have a go at cushion covers. Wondering about going for sparkle punch (love the name and the design, don't know if I'd have the patience for an entire quilt so a cushion cover might work well) or some cathedral windows (I'm hoping these aren't as tricky as they look!). Laurence prefers the cathedral windows, what do you think?

Possibly making another table-runner

A friend has asked if I could make one as a wedding present for her friend. Exciting times! Hoping to meet up to pick out fabrics soon.

So all in all there's not a lot to show here! But I'm sure there will be more, all in good time...

Where it all began

Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start.

Well, perhaps not at the very beginning (I sewed a couple of bags and failed to make placemats earlier), but at the beginning of my quilting journey. So, here is my very first 'quilt'!

 the mark in the top right is from candle-wax, can't seem to get it out whatever I try

It's technically a quilted table-runner, but it involved most of the principles of patchwork and quilting, so I think it counts. It's based on a 'Diary of a Quilter' tutorial. I saw her pictures and thought they were absolutely beautiful. Such pretty fabrics! I didn't have any fabrics that lovely around, but I did have some good solids left over from the failed placemat project (picked out to match our lounge cushions) so I gave it a go. And I've never looked back!

with the vaguely-matching cushions

I loved the process of putting it together. One of my favourite things about quilting is the variety: choosing fabrics, choosing or designing a pattern, patchwork, quilting and then binding. Even if you're not enjoying one of the stages, the next is never far away :)

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed hand-sewing the binding on at the end. I originally tried to sew it on with the machine but broke a needle in the process (woops) so was forced into giving it a go. It was quite a relaxing process. Surprisingly the join (the most difficult part) went much better for me on this, my first attempt, than it did in later quilts. I've now however found a different binding tutorial which makes the process much neater, thank goodness!

So that's where my quilting adventures began. Since then I've made a few more quilts (proper quilt quilts, rather than just table-runners) which will be popping up here sometime soon.

Bye for now!