Another wedding gift, with hearts and a single this time!

This quilt was made for my beautiful pretend cousin, who was sharing her wedding day with her even more beautiful daughter and her christening. The brief was she wanted a blanket for the sofa to snuggle under, the more colours the better (my kind of blanket) and she likes cath kitseny type fabrics.
 

I saw a picture on pintrest of a blanket with hearts all over it and pinned in, then she liked it too so I thought we must be on to a winner! As i'm still practising with shapes and applique I thought I would do some kind of paper piercing as another challenge for myself. I wanted the hearts to be large so I made each square 30cm tall. I used the table to size my squares up on the blog link here.

I picked which fabrics I wanted to use and set about cutting the shapes out. Cutting is the bit I hate the most so I cut everything out at once. I had one large rectangle of patterned fabric, a large square of plain fabric and two small plan squares. The sizes for these are on the blog link above.







Once the sections we all cut out I set about making the heart panels. You need two sets of what's in the picture above. if you place all the squares right side facing the patterned fabric you can then sew a straight line across the diagonal of each one. Once they are sewn you can fold the fabric over and iron it leaving you half a heart as below.

You repeat the process for the second half but make sure your diagonals go the opposite way say they match up and look like a heart together. You can then sew down the middle of the heart and iron that seam open at the back so it lays flat.

I then repeated the process I uses for the other quilt as I then had a square panel ready for joining together. In order to make the hearts stand out I used mostly plain fabrics so that it really became the focal point of the quilt. It also meant that I didn't need to make as many hearts as I could bulk out the quilt with plain fabric.



Once the topper was all complete I quilted it together with one piece of backing fabric. I free motioned quilted the patterns onto the plain fabric pieces using Guttermans thread that changes colour as it goes through, you can't really see in the pictures but I gave the free motion quilting a nice edge to it as it all changed shades of purple. The pattern I used had hearts in it too. I didn't draw the pattern on as this made it too hard for me to follow the plan, so I just quilted as I went along. I also did their initials in quilting on one side for a bit of a personal touch. I binded the quilt with some extra wide hessian floral print, which added even more floral patterns on and I think really finished the blanket.

After I managed to finish the final touches the morning of the wedding I made them open the blanket while I could see them and I think they loved it!

Poppy covered oven gloves

So I made these as a gift for my poppy mad Grandma, but now she thinks they are too pretty to use! Typical! Anyway i made them like this...


First I laid the patterned fabric out on the table and measure it with my current over gloves for width and length. I bought a meter of this poppy fabric and I have plenty left to make Grandma the apron to match she so subtly hinted about for Christmas.

So once I had two of those, I cut out the special heat proof wadding I had bought to be sandwiched between the two at the same size. I then with my matching thread just run straight stitched down the length of the sandwich and at four points side to side to quilt it all together.

I then used 1 fat quarter of red fabric and made the pockets. I copied again the size of my current over gloves but made the corners square. What I did was I doubled the length required of red fabric so I could fold it over the wadding and not have a seam at the opening. So I cut two sets of the red and sandwich that with heatproof wadding again. I'm not sure if you needed to use heatproof for the pockets but as it was for my Grandma I wanted to be safe. I quilted these together with a row or two of the fancy stiches my machine does which hopefully you can see on the top picture.
Please note a basted these with the spray glue left over from my quilts but there wasn't much left so it got a bit gloopy and left marks on the fabric where it settled. I won't use it near the end again as it left greasy marks on my red fabric.

I then sewed the two pockets on by doing a square all the way around the pocket attaching the pocket to the poppy sandwich I previously made.

I the trimmed the edges and put red bias binding all the way round to finish it off, and popped it in the post! The best bit was when the post office lady asked what was in my parcel... oven gloves! What a funny look I got!

The infamous 'Walkaway dress' Butterick B4790

After seeing this dress on The Great British Sewing Bee I instantly fell in love! My personal style is very retro and flared dresses like this flatter my curves well.
I bought the pattern on a whim when it was half price thinking I'll get round to it when I'm a bit more skilled, but no I decided to go head first on this one!

I was a bit daunted by the amount of fabric I needed to make this, so I thought if I mess it up it's going to be a huge waste of money. So whilst in Dunelm I saw that their plain block coloured duvets and sheets were on sale! I bought a bright pink and a bright turquoise double duvet for the grand total of £9! Perfect for messing things up I though!


I started by Ironing out the pattern pieces as this was my first go with a proper pattern so I was following all the things I had learnt watching plenty on YouTube! Once I have ironed them, I taped them to our living room floor then taped tracing paper over it. I copied out all the lines for my size then cut it out. I carefully folded my pattern back away and from then on only used the tracing paper and the instructions that came with the pattern.

Now as I was using a duvet the normal pattern placing on my instructions didn't quite work as my fabric wasn't the usual width or length. I made sure the folds were in the right places and I cut out enough of every piece.

Tia wasn't very helpful in this stage!

So after I cut all my piece out. I followed the instructions in the pattern to the letter, and I ended up with something that resembled a dress! Please keep in mind I am a beginning so I didn't move any of the darts or change the pattern in any way and I have since learnt it definitely needs to be done on this dress as it's a vintage pattern which doesn't fit modern bodies as well.

I then had the task of the miles of bias binding! I decided rather than buy a specific amount which I would probably end up messing up and needing to source more, I bought a 20m roll from ebay as the fabric was very plain I bought some polka dot bias binding to jazz the dress up a bit. I bought extra wide binding, half because I wanted to make life a bit easier and less fiddly and half because I wanted it to stand out.


I watched a tutorial on ebay about bias binding on clothing as I have only put it on quilts so far so there is much more of a sandwich involved. The video suggested ironing the binding in half reading to be slotted over the dress edges already ironed in place. I ironed about 4m of binding and started to put it around the dress starting on the corner of the piece that is at the back and covered by the skirt. I used my quilting clips rather than pinning it as it stopped it from being a bit too fiddly. This also helped me just keep moving the clips further down as I went the whole loop around the dress. make sure you leave extra binding along the back to tie the back panels together. I let about 20cm on either side which is enough to leave a small bow under the skirt.

I started by putting buttons in the front, but because I hadn't tweaked the pattern at all it didn't quite close properly in the middle and it wasn't very comfortable. So instead I took the buttons off and replaced it with some extra bias binding which I tie in a box at the front making it much more comfortable, and perfect for going out for a meal and overeating as it expands!

Ta daa! A very awkward looking me in an unruly looking garden!! As you can see the top it really baggy about my boobs and you may not see by under may arms is quite low and shows my bra so I would need to tweak the darts next time I make this. I'll have to learn how to do that first though! ;)

A less poofy much more wearable skirt, with elastic waist

 

 


This skirt was the result of a facebook post on one of the sewing forums asking for advice on the easiest was to make a comfy skirt.

I had this fabric from the Knit and Stitch show in Birmingham I had been to a good few months before but I was saving it for something I would wear so I risked it with this!

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I had 2m of this fabric and 2m of 1cm wide elastic. I measured the length i wanted the skirt to be, ie waist to calf. Then i cut two rectangles 1m wide by thr length i measured deep. 

I cut the same pockets as before and sewed one to each side of the fabric. I then sewed the two short sides together, following the edge of the fabric including the pockets. I then hemmed the bottom up all the way around, this would be easier if i didnt have an iron aversion so try ironing the seam first.

I then sewed the top in a very similar hem but i left a gap on one edge still open. This is for me to feed the elastic through. I cut the elastic to the size of my waist learning from the last skirt about stretching it a little. I then attached a small safety pin to either end of the elastic and attached one end to the fabric of the skirt. The other end i fed through the top channel all the way around allowing it to gather as I went along. 

When I had both safety pins back out the skirt i machined the two ends of elastic together. Then finished hemming the top of the fabric.

I could then wear my new skirt for the family BBQ! Fabulous!

Poofy skirt with elastic waist

Another make from a sewing mag this time Love Sewing!

I followed the instructions in the mag for this one, which was issue 15. It basically involved 2m of fabric and some wide elastic.

I drew round the pocket template in cream and sewed one on each straight edge of fabric. I then put the straight edges together and sewed the up either side, going around the pocket edges also.

I hemmed the whole thing up in a loop. Then I zig zagged the whole top of the skirt, then did a long stich all the way around which I pulled on the bobbin end to gather it.

I then attached the elastic without stretching it.

If I did it again I would use less elastic so that it needs to str3tch to fit and it will lie much nicer.

Kimono style jacket

This was the first thing I had made for myself properly. I used a rough pattern that was in Simply Sewing.
I bought 2m of jersey floral fabric off ebay as usual and set to work.

I folded the two meters in half right sides together and sewed 1" seams either side leaving 15cm for arm holes. I apologise for my mixture of metric and imperial my brain works in cm by my sewing machine works in inches!
I then cut all the way up the middle and across the top in a T shape. The top of the T was  20cm but it could have been much smaller.

I then put it on an felt like I was wearing a dressing gown, so I trimmed the bottoms about 30cm on each side to make it the length it is on the picture.

Ta daa! easiest and quickest make ever!

The wedding gift.. the final touches!

I then just had to bias bind the edges! I went with blue on Grandmas recommendation (check out the first post about the quilt about having boys under it!). I bought 9 meters of this extra wide binding as I though wide gave me more error space and a meter for mess up!

I sewed the back edge all the way done about 1/4" from the edge of the quilt making sure the rest of the binding was pointing towards the rest of the quilt. You can sort of see at the bottom of this picture how it is sticking out at the bottom, this is because I then brought the binding over my first stitch and clipped it on the front. This way you can only see one set of top stitched (in theory).

These clips were a god send, free with Simply Sewing mag! It saved it faffing around with pins and I could just slide the clip down! I then sewed all the way down and folder the corners over keeping the binding all one piece.


I made this panel for the back of the quilt with same ribbon from our wedding and some bits I bought which I thought gave it a great gift tag!





There we have it one finished quilt! Which she loved by the way :) Boy am I glad of that!!

The wedding gift continues!!! Basting

So I have it all stuck together with minimal glue (remember use lots!) and it has been moved upstairs ready for me to sew it all together in some the hottest days of the year! yay!
I decided to use a swirly random patterns as it was supposed to look random so it wouldn't show any mistakes I made along the way.

I watched a few videos which said if you have spray glued your 'sandwich' you can start basting anywhere in the quilt so off I set in the top right hand corner. I wouldn't recommend this as because I hadn't used enough glue I ended up with some squiggly bits with extra fabric in the middle like this.

 I made sure my feed dogs were down and just swirled the fabric around trying desperately to keep it taught and at an even stitch rate. I had real issues holding on the fabric whilst keeping it taught so my lovely husband whilst on a trip to Wickes bought me some building gloves with gripped palms. This made life sooo much easier as I could push it through with very little effort. Good job hubby!

I managed to sew right through my free motion foot though which bent my needle and got it stuck into the foot. This was because I was going too fast with the material I think and pulled it whilst the needle was on it's way out.

 It's quite hard getting a big quilt through the 'throat' of a home sewing machine. So I started rolling up the bits that needed to go through. As you can see. This left me spare to work on the square I was working on at the time whilst everything else was rolled up. I worked on a panel at a time in a patterened fashion, so I started with the top right, then I did one down and one across working my way diagonally across the quilt ending in the bottom left corner.

Hopefully you can see the difference in this picture between the bits that are basted and the bits yet to be done. It just shows you what a lovely texture it gives the finished product.


 Whilst doing this I caught the backing in my stitching a few times which left it rucked. I would recommend that once you have used plenty of glue to stop it moving always check your edge spares are hanging over the edges or they may get caught in the mix. I then cut all around the edges leaving the topper, wadding and backing all the same size.

The wedding gift... once the blocks were done!

So after a small eternity I had 9 sets of blocks. I sewed all these together by pinning the long side and doing a 1/4 inch seam. This wobbled slightly due to the extra fabric from the long panels that I wasn't counting on but it looked ok! It left me with the rather large piece but still not quite a double!


I had promised my self it would be a normal size but I couldn't bring myself to make another set of squares or 3 so I decided to make a cream border for round the edge which will frame the panel. So I made strips of cream 30cm wide and 1m long. I sewed two together then sewed that the the edges. This made it almost the right side and framed the lovely fabrics really well.

Now comes the time to 'sandwich' it. What they don't tell you is you need a bloomin' big space to be able to do this comfortably! I had popped into the shop Sew much to do and asked for help in how to baste my quilt as I had watched so many youtube videos I was confused! She suggested spray glue and helped me pick some wadding that would be best for my project. I would have to say Sew much to do is my favourite fabric shop so far as the staff are soo helpful and friendly and they are always willing to answer my silly questions! So I came away with a spray can of glue, 2.2m of wadding and 1m of muslin (for another project!).
I was looking at the extra wide fabrics everywhere for the quilt back but I didn't want anything to detract from the lovely fabric on the front, plus it was all very costly just because it was 'extra wide!'. So I bought a king size plain cream flat sheet from Wilkinsons which was lovely and soft and will do the trick just nicely!

The key was to have the bottom backing slightly bigger than the wadding, then the wadding slightly bigger than the topper so you can see what it's all doing.

I laid the sheet out on my kitchen floor, there wasn't really enough room and my puppy's were very interested in what I was doing so they were relegated to the garden! I then sprayed the top half of the sheet with the glue and laid the wadding on top. I smoothed it out then sprayed the wadding with glue and laid my topper onto it. I then folded the wadding and topper back on itself and sprayed the other half and repeated. I later learnt I didn't use enough glue as it started to come apart after a while so don't be frugal, spray away!

I then carried it upstairs very carefully ready to be basted on my machine.. I'll save these tips for a new post!

The beginning of the masterpiece wedding gift... The block

It's at this point I thought I rally ought to get on with making the wedding gift for my cousin I had planned... with 8 weeks to go...!

My cousin has recently bought a little cottage with her soon to be husband and they were renovating it ready to move in after they were married. She loves all things 'country kitchen' and vintage etc so I thought the perfect thoughtful gift from me would be something hand made, so I thought I'd make her a quilt!

I didn't really think this through, but hey I was going to try my hardest to finish it! I didn't know what size bed she was going to have either but I would be damned if I was going to try anything bigger than a double for my FIRST quilt, so I decided not to ask...!

I sourced my fabric, 4 different colours of the same rose fabric, 4 solids in similar colours and 4 other random ones I liked the look of. I bought a meter of each and I have plenty spare! I took my Grandma with me to buy some of the fabric and as I was picking out lovely pastels (the theme of the wedding!) she said to me 'You do know there will be a boy under this blanket Rudy you'll need some manly colours...!' Cheers for that image Grandma.. Queue blues being added! Most of my Fabric is from a facebook seller or ebay, though some is from Bobb in and Sew near where I live and some from Boyes again in Goole.

I found this blocks idea on Pintrest and it is now that I look back on it and see how the colour run through in lines, I didn't see that before! So mine really was a rough copy of this in rather large form.

I cut 9 15cm squares of each of the fabrics I was going to use as squares, and 9 of each double size squares 15cm wide and 30cm tall. This was the most boring bit!! I then decided that my squares would look a bit like this..

So I set about sewing all the squares together, trying to put similar colours at opposites. Then I sewed a pair of squares to a long panel giving me 4 corners of a square. I pinned two bottom sets together on the shortest sides and sewed down then in a straight line (please bare in mind you will have extra on the long panel as there inst an additional seam). I did the same with the top the sewed all the way down the middle. Be careful at this point with you seams, it may be useful to iron them to where you want them to stay though I have aversion to the iron so do as little of that as possible!

Ta daa one square.. only 8 more to go...! As you can see it didn't quite stick to my plan but random is good sometimes :)

My biggest project pre sewing machines...!

As I mentioned in my introduction I am heavily involved in Girl Guiding. As you probably know us guidey types LOVE to collect badges! Then we like to put them in little piles and hope the badge fairy comes and sews them onto our blankets....
Sadly this rarely happens!

My blanket is my pride and joy and the little history of my guiding life, all 22 years of it and I'm only 27!

My blanket started as a little pink fleecey thing I bought cheaply in dunelm as a guide, before I really realised how much I enjoyed guiding. It soon ran out of space and it infuriated me how all the badges were out of date order that I had earned/gained them so I set about making a new one.

I borrowed my sisters sewing machine, which I know now the tension was all out and that's why it kept getting in knots, and a fair amounts of wonder webb was involved and 3 meters of orange fleece fabric from Boyes near where my grandparents live.

I cut a hole in the middle like any good ponchos and decided I wanted to make a hood for it. please bear in mind this was at least 6 years ago so I had very little sewing knowledge despite having all the books... So after some reading and googleing I made a hood! I then couldn't work out how to attach it to my blanket as I couldn't get the blanket in to sew it, so I wonder webbed it and hand sewed a sort of fleece collar around the edge to keep it neat. Suprisingly it's still attached! but at least now i'll know how to fix it!

I then hemmed all the edges, which was pointless as it's fleece and won't fray, but who was I to know! and made a pocket shape and ironed that on too.

Then I had the monstrous task of re-sewing all the badges back onto my blanket! Luckily, if you look at it that way, I then lived on my own in a 1 bed flat and I couldn't afford the heating so one winter was spent hand sewing each badge back on whilst it was on my lap. Nice and toasty I was too!

Waiting for the badge fairy.....!

These days its a panic rush to get it all up to date before going on a trip! This last time (before taking the girls to sleepover at the sealife centre!) I tried putting them on  with my machine!

The square ones are easy with a lovely zig zag though badges are getting all shapes and sizes now! So I started using my free motion foot and just wiggling around the edge of the badge. No where near neat, but stays on my better than my hand sewing! Though the main issue is shoving my huge blanket through the machine!!

Now just to re-sew all my dodge hand sewing/wonderwebbing......!

Hairdressing scissors pouch

My sister is a trainee hairdresser at night school and she has worked tremendously hard at this and passed her first year! I wanted to get her something to help but she had already bought all the books and equipment she needed, so when she asked me to make her something I jumped at the chance. She had found this, again on Pintrest, which is obviously for crochet hooks and asked it I could do something like that for her scissors so I set about a plan!



When I was at Fabritastic (see last post about fat quarters sales!) I picked up this great campervan fabric! Both my sister and I are beach bums and love all things beachy, campervany and scooters!


I decided I ought to put some wadding into it other wise when the sharp scissors were in they may stab her through the fabric. So I laid out the fabric and measure my sewing scissors across 4 times and added a bit more for good measure. I then added wadding on top for about two thirds of the length as I didn't want double wadding on the pocket. Then I measured the polka dot fabric to match the campervans.
I sewed three edges leaving the bottom where I was going to put the pocket and attached the lace into the seam as it was going round. I folded the pocket up to the level I wanted it then sewed four channels leaving gaps for her scissors.
I then zigzagged the bottom edge to seal it all up, though I wasn't very good at the (must practice zipzag!) and it looked a bit messy.

I then hand sewed on the button in the right place for the lace fastener.


And there you have it!

Then it was easter...

As you have probably guessed at the moment I'm mainly catching up on previously completed projects, so I made us a table runner for our easter table as we had all the family round (and some more pretend family that we love too)

I searched around for some Easter fabric but didn't have too much luck, so I went to Fabritaastic in Peterborough who were very helpful and were having a sale on fat quarters... I mean who can resist fat quarters!!

So what I did was I purchased 4 FQ's and 1m of cream fabric that I was going to use for the backing, along with 1m of wadding.

I cut the FQ's into 15cm Squares using my rotary cutter and cutting board so they were all the same and patch worked them all together into a random long pattern. Our table is very large as you can see so I just kept bringing it back to the table to see if it was long enough and added a few more rows on.

I then cut two strips of the cream and attached it to the blocks and the wadding by sewing round three sides. Leaving the middle to turn it right side in. I did this on both end and was left with a flap in the middle that I was hoping would be like a pillow case flap, though it looked weird!

So I ended up sewing all the way across the middle to join the two flaps together, It didn't matter so much to me as it was only for my and my table, but if I were to do it again I would make sure that the two piece of fabric match up and a square join so I can 'stich in the ditch' and make it look neater.

A slight aside from sewing - My singer sewing table!

Shortly after the last make I moved house, so I finally had a dedicated area for my crafting!

So I sourced on ebay this stand and restored it for use as a sewing table. Just thought I'd put a post up with all the different stages!
This is how it arrived

 
 
 

As you can see, caped in dirt! I got it for £20 on ebay and it had clearly just been in the garden for goodness knows how long!
















So we pressure washed it...



And re painted it black to keep the rusty bits at bay

Then my husband painted gold on the wording to make it look beautiful

Don't you think it looks great? I then attached an ikea table top to it and it's perfect! I'll take a picture when there isn't so much creativity going on in my craft room... aka mess!