UFO no 2 – felted purse

UFO, WIP, NFO whatever you want to call it, it’s finished!

To be honest this one hasn’t been in the queue that long, but still it’s good to complete it especially after a poor start.

As usual things didn’t go to plan. I sat down this afternoon with a couple of hours free, thinking that it would be done in one, but it wasn’t to be (no rhyme intended..ha ha).

My intention was to line it, stitch the sides, make the button hole and add the button. Simple no? Well, no.

Lining the felt was fine see…….

I also reinforced the top and bottom edges using the freehand embroidery foot and zig zag stitch. I don’t know if there is a better way of doing this. If there is please let me know.

Lily’s Quilts – Small Blog Meet

It can get a bit lonely being a new blogger [sobs]…..no, don’t feel sorry for me, I’m ok.

However, I am always on the look out for new ways to connect with other bloggers so i don’t feel quite so small and this week I stumbled across two great new ways of doing just that.

No 1 is Love All Blogs which has a special section for new bloggers. You can both add links to your own blog and search for others under different categories.

No 2 is Lily’s Quilts – Small Blog Meet. If you are a blogger with fewer than 50 followers you can add this button and then link up with others.

I do feel a bit of a fraud signing up for this as I don’t have a huge amount of quilting going on here, but hopefully that will change soon……………when I get paid!

 

Now off I go to check out some new blogs.

Quilted Bag – Step by Step by Step

Like I said yesterday, before I went away I made myself a bag for my buys. I don’t know about where you are, but in Wales (not England) we have to pay for any shopping bags and my current ‘bag for life’ is very uninspiring. Making my own is something I have been meaning to do for some time so I’m happy that I can finally tick it off my list of things to do.

The inspiration for this first attempt came from a market day bag I saw in a recent issue of ‘Mollie Makes‘ magazine. As I can’t resist adapting patterns I decided to use this as an opportunity to practise my quilting. I discovered as I went along that a number of changes were required because of a lack of materials, lack of time and sadly lack of organisation!

First step – choosing the materials

I very much want to make a bag, quilt, cushion anything really out of this:

Kaffe Fassett – A Life in Colour

I’m back!

I bet it feels like I’ve never been away. No, really I bet it does, but I have …honest. I’ve been on a little trip to London. It was very very cold, but still nice to get away and see some lovely things.

I was hoping to do some fabric shopping and really wanted to stop by The Village Haberdashery as it’s one of my favourite online shopping stops, but unfortunately it just wasn’t possible with a frozen four year old in tow and limited time. However, I did manage to get to the Fashion and Textile Museum for the Kaffe Fassett exhibition which was great…..a cocoon of colour, texture and pattern; what more could you ask for?

Experiments in Felting

So………………you know I said that I was going to concentrate on felting for a while, well, I have done some, but concentrating on one thing isn’t something that comes naturally for me, my brain doesn’t like it. You can guess what this means, yes this week I have been mainly sewing…again!

Anyway let’s get to the felting as that’s what I promised. Following the two prefelts I discussed last time I made a few more, this time I managed to keep them plain. I didn’t really know what I was going to do with them as my only real inspiration was the colours themselves which came from watching my daughter doodling the other week using the same pink, green and yellow. I was struck by how beautiful the colours looked together.

Prefelts

Although the last post was sewing again, I did say I was swapping to felting for a bit and mostly that’s what I’ve been doing this week.

As I mentioned in my ‘About’ page felting reignited my passion for making. I love felting because it is so hands on. I love the feel of the felt, the colours, the fact that you can cut it to shape and then layer it up, you can add fabric, needle it, dye it (although I haven’t much tried this) and even mould it into 3D shapes (again something I haven’t really experimented with).  So whilst sewing fulfills my desire to produce something functional for me felting offers freedom and versatility, the activity is an end in itself. Nevertheless, there is no reason why sewing and felting cannot meet both those needs so in the following months I hope to attempt this by combining the two in more experimental pieces.

This week I have been making prefelts to be used once I’ve decided exactly what I intend to do with them. Here are a couple of prefelts prior to felting. They were meant to be plain, but I can’t help myself!

Mmm…..yummy just like clouds of candyfloss.

Sunrise wool tops

Dusk wool tops (bit of a horrid photo, sorry)

UFO no 1 – New Look Pattern 6705

Over the past few months I’ve noticed my many unfinished projects are multiplying. I’ve tried to tuck them away in a box on a shelf in a corner but I can see that box now looming over me. Even if I try my hardest to ignore it it’s still there and every time I start something new I hear my projects saying “Remember us, you haven’t finished us yet”! As I mentioned in my previous post I intend to work on some felting for a change, but as this is the worst for giving birth to new UFOs the time has come to tackle these tasks. I have promised myself that each weekend I will finish one of these projects and first in line is the New Look Pattern 6705. Now all I had to do with this was sew on a button and hem the bottom of the shirt, but had I done this… no. My main excuse was not being able to find a button that matched, but to be honest I hadn’t tried that hard. I looked through my button box, none were right. I bought one, that wasn’t right. I put it in the box and vowed to look online, that didn’t happen. Eventually I stumbled across a button that seemed to work and finally I could finish it. Here it is:

New Look Pattern 6705 — The first top I’ve ever made!

Perfecting Purses

I haven’t had much time to produce this week as I went to stay at my sister’s over the weekend with daughter and school ted in tow. It wasn’t the most relaxing of weekends as it involved National Rail, Primark on a Saturday and freezing temperatures, but fun was had by all and made even better for me as I finished two successful sewing projects prior to going.

No1  was the Moda Quilt Along trivet I described in my previous post and No2 was the last, so far, in a long line of ….well, ok only four…. purses. Here’s where it started:

First Attempt at Patchwork Quilted Purse

Moda Friendship Quilt Along – Block 10

You can probably see that I’m not exactly quilting along more like quilting a bit. As my attention span is short and my fabric supplies limited I thought I’d best focus on a block at a time to make something small, but usable and finished. So I was googling patterns for pan mats or what I now know are called ‘trivets’ (yes, I’d never heard that word before either…what, you mean that’s just me?) and stumbled across a blog called cotton way. This site not only had lovely pictures of trivets, beautiful – really want to buy that – fabric, but also mentioned the Moda Friendship Quilt Along.

This started another 3 hour trawl of the internet looking for the ideal easy, but not too easy block. I opted for no 10 and in order to avoid ultimate wonkiness I took my time……..three blocks in one day, more like one in three nights! What? I’ve got NCIS to watch.

Modern Quilting Cushion – Constructivist Stylee

This post is a bit late, in fact so was the cushion. It was intended as a valentine’s present for my boyfriend but he had to make do with a card instead.  In the end it was only a week late so he can’t really complain I’ve got a cardi that’s been waiting 2 years to be finished and I only need to restitch about two inches of the collar…how bad is that?!

Fabric for cushion.

Before Christmas I had hardly sewn a thing in my life so I decided to start my sewing practice with cushions. Cushions are small, flat, square and to my mind shouldn’t be that hard. Sadly that’s not the case and something still manages to go wrong, but hey I persevere and they’re getting better.  I’ve made a few recently, both patchwork and quilted, and have been looking for opportunties to make more hence the valentine’s cushion.