Remakes and Repeats

July’s makes have a sense of familiarity about them. First up are yet more masks – four for ourselves and four for friends.

There has also been another tunic from the McCall 7800 pattern – this time in a Liberty jersey I got from eBay. As I knew this would be v neck from the start, I decided to learn a new technique and used an overlap v neckband by following instructions from alinadesignco.com. This went well and I can see myself using this technique on other patterns. As is becoming the norm, I also made a matching facemask from the offcuts.

In a move back to days of normality, a few bargains have been found this month. I went to the silk sale at Adamley Textiles a few weeks ago and came back with a bag of silk remnants which will be useful for mask making. There has also been the chance to look round charity shops again and I found four part-used cones of overlocker thread in colours that I needed at £1 for the four.

Finally, because this month’s sewing was done without the aid of Now-our-cat, here’s a photo of him contemplating what to do about a hedgehog.

He decided to ignore it.

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Delayed Delivery

I started making these two quilts for Project Linus at the beginning of last year and it has taken me over 18 months from cutting the fabric to getting them delivered. It is a good job quilts don’t have a use by date.

 

The corner triangles add a splash of colour and a little bit of interest for the quilting. As I use fleece for the backing and no wadding, I don’t have to worry about quilting distances and so a simple one way diagonal was enough to hold the layers together. With the exception of the binding, the fabrics and batting were from my stash.

As a change from the usual washing line photos, here’s an attempt at a styled photo of one of the quilts on the garden bench. In addition to the dinosaurs, there are also bees, birds and stars on some of the squares.

To make further inroads into my stash (which in theory should be getting smaller, though any change in size is not obvious yet), I made some more sheets for Alder Hey from fabrics that had been stashed and unused for several years. My local Project Linus co-ordinator not only takes in quilts, but also sheets, so it was nice to add these to the quilt parcel.

In contrast to the slow progress of these two quilts, this Mr Men and Little Misses quilt was cut, quilted and delivered to my godson in less than a week. This cheap and cheerful quilt is made from two charity shop polycotton duvet covers and I was certainly "Little Miss Make-it-up-as-I-go-along" when it came to working out what size of irregular sashing was needed.

The shape and bold outline of each character was ideal for FMQ and had the bonus of creating "ghost" figures on the back of the quilt.
 

Now these three quilts are completed, I can think about what to make next. A friend's daughter is 4 months old, so if I start now, she might get a quilt for her first birthday!

Wonky Crosses and Wobbly Spirals

I think this quilt is my final finish of 2014. It’s another quilt for Project Linus and the starting point was a pack of red squares I bought from the Project Linus stand at a quilt show.

There were 24 squares in the pack, but I managed to lose one, hence the “feature” blue square. The crosses were cut from two charity shop 100% cotton shirts that were amongst the many I bought when I started quilting.

It is backed with a layer of fleece and the quilting is my new stand-by pattern of an off centre spiral.

I’ve hand stitched the binding to the back, but as this is for Project Linus I’ve decided that I will reinforce the bindings on this and my other charity quilts with a line of machine stitching.

Some holiday charity shop finds

I love searching charity shops for any sewing relating finds, but I have come back empty handed from my recent trips to local charity shops. However, my luck changed when I ventured further afield whilst on holiday.

My first finds were a vintage pattern for £1, nearly 5m of black out lining for £5.50 and a scarf for £1.50 which I found whilst spending a few days in the Lake District. I’m not sure of the age of the pattern, but it is certainly pre-1971 as it is priced at 4/-. Although I don’t know if I will make the dress for myself, I love looking at the old instructions and seeing how things have changed.

The scarf design looked familiar (given my slight obsession with Liberty prints) and sure enough, there was a Liberty label on it. Unfortunately the previous owner of the scarf was obviously a smoker and there were no washing instructions on the label. I decided to risk a gentle handwash in cool water with a delicates detergent and looking at the water afterwards, I’m glad I did! I removed most of the water by rolling the scarf in a towel and then line dried it which got rid of the last of any smoky smell.
 

My second find was one that I thought I had missed. I first spotted this quilt block encyclopaedia for £4.99 in a shop at the end of August. At the time I decided not to get it, but then spent the next few weeks regretting the decision.  Knowing that we would be visiting again in September, I decided to leave it to fate and was delighted to find the book still in the shop on my second visit. I follow various blogs by Barbara Brackman and know that this book is now out of print and not easily available from UK-based sources. The illustrations are hand drawn and it is very much a reference book rather than one with complete quilt patterns, but with some modern technology (such as Touchdraw or Quiltography for the iPad) I’ll be able to try some virtual quilt designs using the blocks.

As I said at the start of this post, I struck lucky with these finds. You definitely need perseverance when hunting for sewing items (or any specific items) in charity shops. When visiting a town, I can easily check out half a dozen charity shops (or more) and come away empty handed, but occasionally I end up being in the right place at the right time.