Daily Quilting Report

 

Today I finished the binding on the cushion cover and tried it over one of my lounge cushions. I plan to keep this cover and use it only on the bed with the quilt. I will have enough spare blocks and backing to make 2 more cushions. That will leave me 81 blocks at the end to make a 54" square quilt just from the 6" blocks. I only need 3 of the 12 from each kit for the big quilt.

I got out the fabric for the April kit and piled it in order ready to cut tomorrow.

Cheers,

Val

Opening Glass Applique

For the past 3 months I have been having a lot of fun making little fused glass beauties. When My husband said he wanted to buy a kiln my first thought was "Yay! I can make my own buttons... or glass quilt blocks....or zipper pulls! What fun!"
I have done a lot of surfing the web and visiting craft shows but I have not seen quilt themed fused glass items. After playing around for a while I realised why. It is very fiddly but it is also satisfying. Since my first thought is to make something to go with my sewing I don't mind fiddly. I like to try to copy the different quilt block designs or just try to make something cute and pretty.

This one is flying birds.

My husband was keen to try his skills at making detailed animal pendants. He has the skills with the tools but just needed the right outlet to use them. His interest was in the sparkly dichroic glass to highlight the silhouettes. Of course I saw pretty sparkly buttons.

I made this shirt from my Short and Stout range.

Just with fabrics I never seem to have enough glass colours and a big trick with the glass is that what you see is not what you get when you fire it. Also if I don't like something I have to make a new one and glue bits one day, then fire it the next day, then look at it the next day. It takes three days to try something. It is like crafting in slow motion.

Since I liked many of the pieces I made and I hadn't seen much like them around I thought maybe others would be interested, so I have joined my husband in the shop. I make quilt block pendants, buttons, zipper pulls and brooches all with a bit of a patchwork and applique theme.

I bought some very pretty fabrics to make some small projects from Fort Worth Fabric Studio.

I thought it would be easy to make some things to showcase my buttons and zipper pulls.

Not so! I can make a great pouch. This one is from Sew4Home with a few changes. The fabric is the feature not my zipper pull. It seems I need a whole new way of thinking to use the pieces I make.

I then made a little frame purse. The first one I made had little owls on the outside. Once again I had made the fabric the feature. Back to the sewing table. I tried the brown and orange piece with the new arrangement. You would think it would look OK but it still got lost in the fabric. I then tried the little cream letter and I think it looks great.

I didn't fully close the jump ring because I am putting this one in the shop.

Finally I am asking that you go and have a look at all the things we have made over at Glass Applique and maybe pin a picture or two from here or from the shop.

Happy Quilting and Crafting,
Val

Short and Stout Tote

I have so gone off making quilts and have just gone crazy buying fabric to make little things. I originally bought the Short and Stout to make a quilt but I don't really want to start another quilt and I didn't want it to go in the cupboard so I made a tote bag.
I subscribe to Sew 4 Home and they had this pattern featured a few weeks ago. I added an outside zipper pocket and I made the phone pocket into a zipper pocket for extra safety. I also put a wider zipper pocket above the open pockets on the other side. I am quite an expert at inserting those pockets now.

Wouldn't you know that even though I have made lots of glass buttons not one was the right colours. I don't have too many glass colours but I thought this combination would look OK. The colours change slightly when melted. I put together a zipper pull for the outside pocket too. These are waiting until I get a few more pieces to fill up the kiln.

I am thinking I will make the fabric flower to put on the bag as well.
The link will take you to the page with the Tim Hiltz tote and a few other items. I also love the Eclectic Elements fabric.
Eclectic Elements projects

Happy Quilting and Crafting,
Val

Cute fleece fabric

Went into Brisbane for a lovely lunch with my mum and my two daughters. I took the opportunity to visit Lincraft for their half price sale. I decided I wanted some polar fleece to back my Debbie Mumm sampler and I found a cute owl pattern. While looking I found a beautiful coral fleece (much softer than polar fleece) with a Christmas pattern. They were both $6.99 a metre and I bought 3m of each. I think I will use the Christmas one to back my Welcome to the North Pole quilt.

I also couldn't resist a nice tea box from The Tea Centre.

On Saturday I am going to Aldi bright and early to buy a down jacket for $49.99. It has duck down in it. I saw a duck down jacket reduced to $200 at Kathmandu and the goose down jacket was $500. I guess the Aldi jacket is quite a bargain. I have wanted a down jacket for a while because they are warm, light and squash into a small space. It will be perfect for holidays involving plain trips. Mum and I have started saving up for the Australian Sewing Guild trip to Sydney next July. It will be great for that.
I finished a knitted dog for DD1. Sadly I forgot to take a picture of the finished article. I have now started a cat for DD2. She tried to knit her own but got thoroughly confused so I have borrowed her book Best in Show - knit your own cat, to help her out.

I completed my first crochet square from my new book. I made it first with a 5.50 hook but it was just too loose and open. I pulled it undone and did it again with a size 4.00 hook and it looks just right.

Happy Quilting,
Val

WIP: Cat Quilt

Such a flurry of activity since last Wednesday. I did a bit more on Nanna's Farm but great progress was made on the cat quilt. I now have some of the rows sewn together and when I make a note of what has been doe so far I feel like it is under control.

Bug Fabric had a great sale last week so I bought some cute cat fabric for the backing and cat words fabric for the 1st and 3rd borders. I probably should have bought another yard of the backing fabric but I so wanted the bird fabrics and I had to get a yard of each. Seven yards is the limit in the post pack before the postage jumps and I couldn't afford to add another seven yards. It worked out at about $7.55 per metre (since we talk in metres) even with postage. The bird fabrics are Nature's Walk Journal and Nature's Walk Birds by Clothworks. I will post pictures when I make something with them.

So far I have sewn two of the sides of 4 1/4 inch squares for the 2nd border and have the other two piles ready to sew. Ages ago I pieced the binding and ran it through my Simplicity binding and bias machine to fold it.

I have been doing quilt as you go by putting wadding on every block and quilting around the applique. It is quite easy to sew the blocks together and press the seam open. I will do the borders in strips with wadding and quilt them before sewing them on. I will then spray baste the backing on in one piece and stitch in the ditch down and across the blocks to hold the backing on place. The quilting is not as glamorous as long arm quilting but I like to do it myself.

I was looking at Pinterest and found a lovely Christmas quilt that comes in a book. With practiced ease I clicked over to The Book Depository UK and bought the book with Paypal. I didn't even have to move. I so love internet buying. I paid $15.39 and free postage.It's called Welcome to the North Pole. The picture will take you to their site.

I was wondering if anyone else had this design and would like to work on it during 2013. It is now my latest WIP . The pages are nearly all stuck together with drool. Not really. I like to keep my books like new. But I just love all the little houses.

This week I am linking up with:

WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced

and Applique Thursday at A Quilting Reader's Garden

New Fabric and another book

I was very excited today because I got my parcel from eQuilter. com. They had a sale and I got 4 yards of lovely fabric and four panels for only AU$44 including the postage. I signed up for their newsletter so I won't miss any sales they have. Even their full price fabrics are sometimes $2 cheaper than other online stores.
I have wanted to buy more Mrs Greenthumbs before it disappears so I bought 2 yards of the hats at US$3.58 a yd and 1 yard of the seed packets at full price of US$8.95. The panels were US$2.60 each. There was so much there that I wanted to buy but I have to save my money for my trip. Funny isn't it! I will be so glad when my trips are over so I can start spending my pocket money on a whim. Not really. But it is hard to keep my money for things I haven't seen yet. I didn't think $44 would blow the budget and it was for things that I have wanted for a while.

The post cards were too nice to resist :)

One of the blocks on the Mrs Greenthumbs panel

Another panel that I couldn't resist!

I have been playing with the little triangular thread catcher pattern. I put the link to the tutorial in my sidebar. I didn't read the instructions very closely so I made 3 big triangles with wadding in them and thought 'How is this going to work?'. I need another triangle. So now I have 4 sewn big triangles and I thought it was time to check the tutorial. Well, what do you know! You only need one triangle to make the thread catcher. It is very tiny. I don't think it will be suitable for me to throw threads in but it would make a great container for loose change or ear rings on the bedside table. I have several that I will show for Christmas through the year. I also finished another item for 1 Xmas item a month.

I took my sewing machine and overlocker up to the quilting group so I could make a pair of trousers. I classified them as quilting because I need them to wear on my trip to buy fabric. I nearly finished them and now all I have to do is the hems. I will do pictures of my travel clothes later. Today I have to work on the woolen blazer.

Yesterday DH thought it would be nice to take me to a fabric shop that he learnt about from a lady he sat next to while he was waiting for me at the post office the other day. It is called East Coast Fabrics.
This will really only interest the Brisbane ladies.

Springwood Warehouse
Unit 3B, Pacific Place
10 Old Chatswood Rd
Springwood Q 4127
(Next to Tender Disposals)

Phone: 07 3208 1930
You have to get onto the service road from Chatswood Rd.
They had a large range of quilting fabrics at $5.99/m and lots of dress making fabrics. Some lovely silks for $7.95/m.

I have joined up two book clubs online. One requires the 6 titles to have particular words in them and the other is 50 books in 50 weeks. I have just finished my second book this year. Even Money fits the 'something carried in your purse' criteria. I picked it by running my eye along the library shelf til I found one of the key words. Surprisingly, I really enjoyed it. It was a bit humorous as well as being a murder mystery and the characters were very likeable. A great read if you like coffee table mysteries.
I think I will have to get more than one book out on my next library visit and because I have to do a bit of catchup I might also have to get some shorter books :)

Finally, I have another pattern that I will share on the 25th. I made it up when I discovered that the triangle thread catcher was a bit small. I may even tizzy it up a bit with some stitchery.

Happy Quilting,
Val

A Gift from Fiona and More Adelaide

Fiona has done a marvelous job of keeping track of all the pincushions and I was surprised that she sent a gift thanking me for being involved. Thank YOU Fiona for organising the sew along and thanks for the lovely key keeper. I put it straight onto my hand bag. I normally hang it to the inside.

I think I said I didn't buy much in Adelaide but it seems to have made quite a pile on the ironing board.

I bought a few notions. I paid $2 each for the open ended zippers. I want to try using them on tote bags so the end of the zip doesn't restrict getting into the bag. Melann's Sewing World had lots of zipper pulls. I love the little panda one I got. We had a demonstration of how easy it is to sew on stretch binding. It looked great on all sorts of knit tops. I haven't seen it before but she will post it if I can't find it. I also bought leather needles for my lamb skin leather. Horne Leather gave us 20% discount and I only paid $16 for the skin. I want to make a wallet. I finally bought a water soluble pen for tracing my stitchery patterns onto fabric. I used to use lead pencil and try to sew to cover it up.

The ribby edge is the stretch binding. It folds over like bias binding.

This is my leather. It is fairly thin so shouldn't be too hard to sew. 

We got lots of free things in little gift bags at most of the shops. Sewing kit, ribbons and laces, embroidery threads, pin cushion, note pads, sewing books, thread cutter, mini cutting mat.

I bought three lots of fabric to make jackets.

Two suede look polyesters with shiny backs. Camel and burgundy.

A lovely wool with lining fabric and dark brown polyester for trousers.

And two blouse fabrics. One white in 100% cotton with a pretty flower self pattern and the other is a cotton poly mix giving it a nice sheen. They were a bit hard to photograph.

I also bought some harmony. I just love the feel of it. It is 100% polyester and drapes beautifully. I plan to make a short sleeved jacket and capri pants with a floral shell top.

I bought some quilting fabrics and shiny oriental fabric to make some zippy purses. We visited several quilting shops. The tea pots and tea cups look lovely on the black background. The roll with orange spots is little pumpkins and the pale roll has little white tea cups on it.

I love the tea pot fabric in the back.

I also love to knit so I couldn't resist some cream alpaca to make a loose knit scarf and a ball of Jigsaw that knits up into fair isle. I have been wanting to try some socks and the jigsaw looks fascinating.

I wanted a panda mug from the zoo but they looked pretty ugly so I bought some playing cards in a nice tin. I loved seeing the pandas.

Funi

Wang Wang

Now I can play solitaire like Mrs Pollifax :)

We visited the Botanical Gardens and I was fascinated by the lily pads. These are a giant African variety and I didn't know they had such mean spikes underneath! The stems were all spiky too.

The edge is just turning up and you can see the spikes.

Inside the Museum of Economic Botany (MEB) we found the most interesting work of art by Fiona Hall Grove . It included a peep hole with a beautiful light show on animal and plant shapes. It is hard to describe but it went for several minutes changing colours and positions of the lighting. It was past all the dried seeds in long glass cabinets so unless you liked that sort of thing you wouldn't walk in and see this magical peep hole. It is part of a larger timber art work.

I left this as a big file so if you click on it you will see it better.

Funny how the birds in the south are the same but different. This White-Backed magpie is only found in the SE of Australia. We have Black-Backed magpies here in Qld. They are almost the same but ours only have a white collar on the back of their neck. The picture shows the white going right down the back. This sort of thing interests me.

White-Backed magpie from South Australia.

Nearly forgot to show me having high tea at Newman's Nursery. I am wearing the coat I made for the trip.

I have definitely used up my Friday post quota so I will post my crazy block tomorrow.

Happy Sewing,
Val