More teeny hexagons, sofa sewing station and preparing for Festival of Quilts

  (A WordPress version of this post is available here as it may be more mobile-friendly for viewing and commenting.) 

This month has been quite productive for making teeny hexagons. After trying various options to use as a stamp, I found a thimble that was just the right size and have been using this to stamp the circles for the hexagons. It is much quicker and easier than trying to draw round a coin.

One problem with hexagons this small is that they are very easy to lose on the sofa. Fortunately I found a child’s lap tray reduced in the supermarket that could become an ideal sofa sewing station. Unlike some adult lap trays, this did not have a rim around the edge making it easier to repurpose it.

I removed the plastic insert by sliding a craft knife under the edge and removed some of the stuffing to make it more squishy. I then glued a layer of quilting batting to the top so that the original design wouldn’t show through the top fabric which I stitched to the cushion in a similar way binding is hand stitched to a quilt. Finally , I made some modular accessories for the plastic insert - a small tray for threads, two spool pins made from screws set in a foam block and covered with unshrunk heat-shrink tubing, and a small pin cushion with an elongated edge for fabric clips. I also added a fixed needle minder beneath the pin cushion.

Preparations for my trip to Festival of Quilts have also included some teeny hexagons with me making a pair of earrings using some scraps of Liberty lawn.

Something that will probably be more useful for Festival of Quilts is the new app launched this year and available for Apple and Android devices. Features include a list of exhibitors, timetable of workshops/talks (including ticket availability) and perhaps most useful for me - a floor plan.

I’ll be there for Thursday and Friday and have three workshops/talks booked for Thursday and one for Friday, but should still have plenty of time for admiring the quilts and shopping. If you spot the earrings, do say hello.

Lots of sewing news in the shortest month

Unlike some previous months when I have had hardly any sewing news to share, this month I’ve plenty of sewing news to share.

First up are two FPP mini quilts I made to decorate a friend’s sewing area. They have just got a new Bernina machine to go with their Singer treadle and so I decided to make modern and vintage machines in FPP.

Next, I repurposed a full size iron cover which I received in a swap at Fat Quarterly retreat in 2013. This has been unused for a while as I no longer take a full size iron to sewing days.

I was very pleased to be able to resize this to fit my travel iron and have enough off cuts to make a cover for my craft iron too.

The last of my news is that I had a sewing-related day out to Southport. The main purpose was to hunt for some brown fabrics for a tiny nine patch project I’ve started (more on that next month) and I didn’t come away empty handed after visits to Crafts and Quilts and Sewcrafty.

I was also just in time to see the Quilt | Grid | Pattern exhibition at The Atkinson. This included some very old quilts from the Gawthorpe Hall Quilt Collection and some modern reinterpretations of historic quilt making. I particularly liked the mixed media displays of painted canvas pieces that had been stitched together to look like quilts.

After a packed February, I wonder what March will bring.

 (A WordPress version of this post is available here as it may be more mobile-friendly for viewing and commenting.)

Finish-a-long 2019 – Q4, finish 1

My first (and hopefully not last) finish from my FAL Q4 list is the shaker style box I got at last year’s Knitting and Stitching show in Harrogate and which first appeared in my Q2 list.  It had an insert to go in the lid and I needed something to decorate it.
 

 
I had bought a needlepoint kit at Festival of Quilts in the summer with the view to adapting the square pattern to fit the oval shape of the lid. However, while I was still thinking about this, I received a lovely hand embroidered card from a very talented friend and I realisaed that this was a much better starting shape.

(This was taken after I had poked around the edges to see if it would come apart)

By adding a bow and making the stems a little bit longer, the embroidery was just the right shape and size for the lid. I add a couple of layers of quilt wadding to pad the lid and laced the fabric across the back to secure it to the insert. The insert was then fixed to the lid with some double sided sticky tape
.

Even though my stitchy contribution to this project was very small, I’m so pleased to have repurposed this embroidery in to something that I will used. I’m planning on keeping sewing essentials (a pair of scissors, a few needles, some pins, and bobbins of threads in useful colours) in it so they are at hand for mending jobs etc so I don’t have to root around in my main sewing box.

(For 2019, I am trialling a version of this website on WordPress to see if it is more mobile-friendly  for commenting and posting. The WordPress version of this post is available here.)

2017 - my sewing year in numbers

This year has been more productive than last year and finished quilts actually make an appearance in my annual round up. Again, small and quick projects feature quite strongly and for some projects, a needle and thread has been replaced by glue and a brush. I've started a new EPP project (Lucy Boston's Patchwork of the Crosses), but progress has been slow and I have only got as far as chosing the fabric for the linking blocks, and have not started going through my Liberty fabrics for the main blocks.

Not too much fabric has been added to my stash this year, and now Standfast & Barrack no longer sell Liberty lawn in their factory shop, I can't see my Liberty stash increasing much in 2018. I did buy a few dressmaking patterns and fabrics this year, so perhaps some garments will appear in next year's montage.

In summary, this is what I have achieved this year:

• 6 spotty coasters sewn
• 5 boxes/cases repurposed and covered in Liberty fabric
• 4 quilts finished
• 2 garments refashioned
• 1 mini quilt stitched
• 1 cushion made and gifted
• 1 insulated lunch bag designed and created
• 1 bag customised with Liberty EPP
• 1 replacement iPad case completed
• 1 peek-a-boo pouch made
• 1 new EPP project started

Replace and Reuse

Just a couple of quick bits of sewing to report for this month. First up is a replacement iPad case for my godson who left his case (along with the iPad) on a train. This was a very quick make as I had only a couple of hours to make it while he was home from University. I adapted the pattern that is available in my tutorials so that the zipped pocket was quicker and used the first non-girly fabric that came to hand.

The other piece of sewing was to find a way of reusing a skirt of mine that somehow has “shrunk” while it has been hanging in the wardrobe. The length was never quite right on me and seeing as the waist was no longer right now too, there was nothing to lose. I chopped off the skirt just below the zip and made a casing for elastic using a length of Liberty lawn. (The skirt is needlecord which would have been too bulky to fold for a casing.)

Seeing as I never wear tops tucked into skirts, this was a quick fix and resulted in a skirt that is very wearable, but very difficult to photograph.



I might use this method again should any more skirts shrink in the wardrobe 😉.

A fast finish and a slow start

There's not much to report on the sewing front this month as again I've been spending most of the weekends in the garden centre or in the garden. I think all the clearing and planting has been done now and so hopefully it will just be a matter of a little light weeding throughout the summer, leaving more time for sewing.

I did have day sewing at Leeds MQG a few weeks ago and was able to finish a quick project of anonymising a chain store bag with some EPP. This was my first time using InvisiFil 100wt and early signs are quite encouraging. It doesn't tangle or snap as much as Aurifil 80wt and I prefer it to the Bottom Line 60wt which I had been using previously.

I have also decided on and started my new long term EPP project. I had two projects in mind and decided to go with the Lucy Boston Patchwork of the Crosses rather than more pieced hexagons. I have done the quilt maths as to how many blocks I will need and how much fabric is required, but have only made two fabric choices so far - the background fabric (Pure Elements by Art Gallery Fabrics) and the small squares for the joining blocks (a Liberty print from my stash).

I've not used the Pure Elements before and I really like how it pairs with the Liberty lawn. I have some plain Liberty lawn, but I don't think it would be ideal for EPP as the seam allowance would show too much with light coloured fabrics. I might be tempted to get some different colours of Pure Elements to use in the crosses blocks as it could get too busy using just Liberty prints, but first I need to raid my Liberty stash and make some more fabric choices. Given it took me several months to decide which project to start, this may take some time!

Springing into action

The days are getting longer, bulbs are flowering in the garden and I seem to be springing into sewing action. No major projects, but some stash busting has occurred and a long neglected project restarted.

First up were some sheets for Alder Hey Hospital’s intensive care unit. A plea appeared in the local paper for brightly coloured sheets for cots and incubators so this was an ideal opportunity to use some of the novelty prints in my stash. About 9 metres of fabric have been put to a good use and sent to Alder Hey.
  

Next was a quick tablet cover for an 8” tablet I use at work. I removed the pages from an old A5 hard back diary and added scraps of wadding to cover as padding. A new cover was made with a remnant of fabric and off cuts of fleece, with elastic hair bobbles being used to hold the tablet in place and to fasten the cover.
 

More stash busting with the next project – a quilt for Project Linus. I stocked up on microfleece in Abakhan’s sale and now I need to make the quilt tops to go with the fleece backing. This is the first of two I intend to make for the blue fleece in my stash.
 

Finally, I’ve gone back to the Liberty hexie quilt I started in 2013 and which has been left untouched since the end of 2014. When I started this quilt I had limited Liberty in my stash and the original plan was to make a bed size quilt in a zig zag pattern, but I had never decided just what size it would. This project stalled as the fabrics would not now be my first choice and not having a finished size made it seem an unending task. Time to SWAP (Sew With A Purpose) – I’ve decided to change size and designs and go for a lap quilt in a mirrored effect based on what I have completed so far. This means nearly half the quilt is done and having a final goal has spurred me on to getting the rest finished.
 

  
Here's hoping that the stash busting and sewing continues.

Sticking and Stitching at Stitchscape

Last weekend a group of us booked the Stitchscape sewing studio in Newton-le-Willows for an entire day and took along lots of  Liberty scraps and glue to try something different to our usual sewing. After unloading the cars (free parking is available next to the studio), we found that Diane from Stitchscape had made place names to welcome us and had the kettle on for cups of tea and coffee.

The studio accommodates six people and we used the large central deskspace our morning’s activities. Cutting tables, ironing boards and a sofa were also available so we had everything we needed to hand.
 

The morning was spent upcycling various objects by covering them with Liberty fabrics. A variety of tins, boxes and even an old cassette storage case were given new leases of life. I created a tabletop waste bin for my sewing threads, trim-offs, etc from a catering-sized coffee container and some of my Liberty scraps, before moving on to covering a pair of shoes that had seen better days.
 

After a break for lunch (there are kitchen facilities available including kettle, toaster fridge and microwave), some of us continued with the glue whereas others switched to a needle and thread for sewing projects, hiring a sewing machine from Diane when needed. My afternoon project was to cover a mini suitcase in more Liberty lawn. Liberty’s mini suitcase retails for £65 but a case at about a tenth of the price from Home Bargains and a jar of Mod Podge were more in keeping with my budget.
 

(Image from www.liberty.co.uk)

(Image from www.homebargains.co.uk)

I had primed the case in preparation so that the original design wouldn’t show through, but given my final choice of fabric this wasn’t necessary (if I do another, I’ll just sand it down with some fine sandpaper or wire wool). Covering the case was fiddly in parts, but a thin-bladed craft knife helped me to hide most raw edges under the brass hardware. I made good progress with the case at Stitchscape and just a bit more sticking and trimming was need the following day to finish the case. Once any stray primer had been removed (or covered with a metallic marker pen!), the final result looked quite neat and tidy.
 

We enjoyed our session at Stitchscape so much that we have booked it again for a day of Christmas activities in December. Stitchscape also offer classes, details of which can be found on their website along with contact details for Diane should you wish to discuss booking the studio for your group.

(Please note, our Saturday sessions at Stitchscape are booked and paid for by the group members and all opinions in this post are my own.)