Appliqué for Men

Hi all! Long time, no see. Life's been busy. Anyway, today I bring you the Patchwork and Pins guide to 'what to do if someone else buys your husband the same present you'd bought him and gives it to him first'.

Step 1 (optional):

Get all worried/stressed/pull your hair out.

Step 2:

Put together the fact that your husband likes Lego and you like appliqué and start to come up with a master plan.

Step 3:

Remember that he needs new pyjamas. Develop the master plan.

Step 4:

Buy pyjamas. Optional extra - for bonus points - make pyjamas. Wasn't gonna happen for me!

Step 5:

a. Check fabric shops for bright yellow material.
b. Discover cheap fabric shop has bright yellow material, but it's very thin.
c. Assume expensive fabric shop will have bright yellow material and speed-walk across town after work to get to it before it closes.
d. Find expensive shop has no bright yellow material.
e. Run across town back to cheap fabric shop.
f. Buy material and matching thread.

Alternative method - go to cheap fabric shop and buy fabric and thread.

Step 6:

Create a Lego version of your husband's head using this website.

Step 7:

Do some satin stitch.

Step 8:

Remember how much you hate satin stitch.

Step 9:

Remeber how much you love your husband.

Step 10:

Do more satin stitch.

Step 10:

Appliqué lego head onto pyjama pocket. Realise this will sew up the pocket but decide not to worry as pyjama pockets not known for usefulness.

Step 11:

Spend a large amount of time searching the internet for a side-view of a square Lego block. Find none. Take your own photo.

Step 12:

Zoom in on the photo on your camera and measure the distances. Multiply by three to make lego brick template.

Step 13:

Appliqué lego block onto back of pyjamas.

Step 13:
Give pyjamas to husband. You now have a very happy husband!

 

Coming up next week: the Patchwork and Pins guide to 'how to buy a flat, get ready for Christmas, finish two quilts and hold down a full time job at the same time'. Well, if I figure out how to do it anyway...

See you soon!

ETA: Linking up to Made By You Monday :)

Hustle Hustle

Do you remember I signed up for Kelsey's 100 Day Hustle? Well, we're now half way through and it's time to check on progress. Here's how I'm doing!

1. Finish frog project
Lots and lots of progress made. Can't wait to show you guys, but this is a secret project! Here's a quick peek of some squares which will be joining my frog:

2. Start and finish London project
Only minimal progress made. This one's a 'definitely need to finish' project though, so it will get done.

3. Start and finish Mouthy Stitches bag and keyfob
Done! I very much enjoyed making the tote and keyring, and I'm very pleased that Sadie liked them.

Photos taken by Sadie

4. Pick out fabrics for a quilt for hubby and I
Discovering I much prefer choosing fabrics in a shop to picking them out online, so I need to plan in some shopping time.

5. Maybe make some little things for people for Christmas
It's only November; no way I've thought about this yet!

6. Make my Texting While Sewing block into a cushion
Hasn't happened yet, not completely convinced it will. We'll see :)


I'm not sure how much sewing time I'm going to get between now and Christmas because... hubby and I are buying a flat! It's all happened so suddenly, it's the first place we viewed, and now we might be trying to move in before Christmas. Eep! All of a sudden, evenings are filled with mortgages and solicitors and 'can we live with pink carpets or do we want to change them' rather than fabric and sewing. Sad times, eh? I'm still making progress on the (slightly epic) frog project every so often though :)

Anyway, off to bed for now, I'll be linking up to the half-way point of the hustle tomorrow :)

How Exciting!

My Orla Kiely quilt has been nominated for Favourite Applique Quilt at the Blogger's Quilt Festival!

If you fancy popping over here to vote for me, that would be great! It's a bit less than half way down the page, search for 'Orla Kiely Quilt' to find it easily.

Thanks so much!

Pink Daisies

Do you remember I mentioned that I won a giveaway from Karen at Blueberry Park? Well, a package arrived two days after my birthday with these lovelies in!

Aren't they great? The main event is this lovely makeup bag:

I've been meaning to make myself a makeup bag for a while now, but it never quite made it to the top of my To-Do list. So it's really lovely that someone's made one for me :)

I love the little mini purse as well (you can never have two many mini purses), and look how cute the mirror is:

I'm a very happy bunny. Thanks so much Karen! If you'd like to buy some lovely things made by Karen, check out here shop here.

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...