Jumping on the bandwagon - Tilly and the Buttons Cleo Dungadress

Ta Daaaaa.

I finished my new Dungadress, and I think I am in love! The Cleo by Tilly and the Buttons is fabulous. It is the first time I have used dungaree clips, and the first time I have done any top stitching so I am still working my way through all my firsts.

I ordered a meter and a half of Denim fabric from Sew Crafty Online which was more than plenty! I still have quite a bit left and was thinking of projects to stash bust with some hard wearing denim. I already had some top stitching thread, which to be perfectly honest I had ordered a good while ago by accident as I needed some normal thread the same colour for my Daisy Dress and didn't realise there were different types of thread! This is how far I have come in the last year of so, yet this project taught me I probably needed a top stitching needle but I managed ok.

The denim was easy to work with which I was surprised about and it wasn't too thick so I used a normal need rather than a denim one. The hardest part I found was turning the straps the right way, so I got out my giant knitting needles and it did make it easier.

I only did one line of top stitching mostly because I ran out of thread, but also I think it makes it a bit more unique. I didn't even have enough thread to do the hem but actually I love the frayed look! I have done a line of zip zag in an inconspicuous black just above the hem so it won't fray too far.

Here is a picture of the whole dungadress with added Murphy dog the cockerpoo! He loves it too.

The Butterick Retro B6318

This was another project from the lovely people at Sew Crafty Online the fabric is absolutely beautiful and all my scraps have been carefully saved for future quilting and small projects as I couldn't bare to throw them out!

My Butterick Retro pattern has caused me a few headaches. Mostly in the boobage area! My first issue was my measurement didn't really fit the sizing. So I just made the on the was going to fit my top half with the hope the skirt would be floaty enough to survive.

As you can see even on the mannequin this appeared to be a strange shape but my hope was the waist band would pull it in a bit. Which it did beautifully on a real person, the mannequin doesn't do it justice.

I think if I were to make this again, I would take the top in slightly across the boobs as it doesn't have any dates to give the top any shape. I think they shape would be perfect for a the larger breasted lady though i'm afraid mine were a little lost!

Once the tie is around the middle you really can see the shape it is aiming for which is beautiful, though I think I have learnt to stay away from Kimono tops as they don't fit me properly. I found the tie quite hard to attache and the instructions weren't great but after some perseverance I think I cracked it.

But seriously whilst the fit isn't perfect on this dress it is absolutely beautiful because of the fabric. The flowers are so cheerful and wonderful it brightens up any day in the office! So all in all a successful escapade.

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!

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!!

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.