Living in the Moment

One of my new year resolutions is to spend some time each day enjoying the 'now'. A couple of things I try to do each day is forget everything and savour the first couple of mouthfuls of a meal or become aware of sensations on my skin as I sit and dream for a little while.

I am also trying not to get nostalgic about the past. Sure, everything is fast paced and 24/7 now, but no mobile phone, no internet, no spin dry, no air conditioning! I like the present times.

To celebrate the things I like I have drawn up some kitchen art. I have started stitching it but realised that I needed better glasses to see where I am going.

The small writing is a bit small for stitching so I need to modify it a bit yet for general consumption as a stitchery but it could be just art for now.

Happy Quilting and Crafting,
Val

Woolly Thinking

Woolly thinking is a super power isn't it? I am really good at it sometimes. But this time I mean thinking about wool and felt and being creative with it.

Wool fabric and felt is so nice to work with and so forgiving of my stitching skills.

Thanks to Madame Samm and Pauline for this great blog hop.  
Thanks to DMC for sponsoring the hop.

I would like to share some of my woolly work with you today.
I made this one especially for the blog hop. I intend to make it into a cushion cover to place in my favourite places so I can look at it.

I had a lot of fun with this design. It is from the book  Fanciful Stitches Colourful Quilts by Laura Wasilowski. I used variegated stranded DMC threads for all the stitching. I love my collection of DMC embroidery threads. I bought the whole lot a while back when cross stitch was my favourite thing. I needed the variations of one colour for the shading affects so I decided I needed them all.

Another felty piece I just finished is the the little scene I blogged about here.

I am also working on Summertime a lovely felty quilt. I have a separate blog for this quilt. The link is in my sidebar.

My first attempt at designing my own little scene is this pin cushion I made. Blog post and free pattern.

I love it when there are give aways on these blog hops but instead of one winner I thought I would finally upload a pattern I have designed onto Craftsy and make it free. I hope you like it.

Applique Sheep Farm

If you are not already a member of Craftsy please join up through my affiliate link below. Craftsy give me a small commission if new members sign up through my link. It is free to join up.
(The easiest way to get the pattern is to come back here and click the Visit my shop link)

Join Craftsy here

If you have already joined you can download the free pattern from the link below.
When you visit my Craftsy shop please click the follow button to follow me. This means you can see when I put up new patterns or project ideas. Some I will charge for but I love to make free designs.

Get the pattern from Craftsy

There are lots of great super powers out there. Visit today's blogs below. Clicking on the Blog Hop button will take you to the complete list for the hop.

THURSDAY APRIL 17

Kathy's Quilts
Made by Me in Red
life, quilts and a cat too
Val Spiers Sews - me
Quilt Doodle Doodles...
Quilting My Way-5th Generation Quilters Blog

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Happy Quilting and Crafting,
Val

Up the Garden Path Stitchery - January

I love the pretty stitcheries from Fee so far this year. They are free each month. I have struggled to sit and stitch though. It is a bit hot here at present so it makes for sweaty stitching.
I bought some whisper weft to use as interfacing but have since learned that it must be rinsed in very hot water before using it because it shrinks. I used it on the pockets of my pyjama shorts because I thought it would stop the knit from stretching. I now have very puckered pockets. I am so glad I didn't use it on outer wear.
So, the back of my stitchery is unwashed whisper weft so I will have to make it into something that only needs a cold rinse sometimes so it doesn't pucker. Maybe even a little framed picture. I have a spare embroidery hoop to frame it.

I have started another blog about my Mom's ToolBelt Planner Folder and what I put in it.
I am gradually getting through my sewing goals for February.

I love being able to keep this blog mostly sewing and just start another blog when I find a new subject to journal about. I also like having the quilt diary blogs for my non BOM quilts. Maybe in 100 years one of my household quilts will end up in a museum and they will be able to find the story of it in a computer data base!

Happy Quilting and Crafting,
Val

Little Christmas bits 9

So many things to do. Sewing is only one of them so here I am behind still with the posting. I had a great time putting Michelle Ridgeway's Ginger Tea stitchery into a project. I like anything to do with tea and I love having fabric mats to put my teapots on while making tea. There are three new cute Christmas stitcheries for free on Michelle's side bar now.

My design process is a bit haphazard. I was looking for some background fabric and a cream layer cake piece just fell out of my homespun bundle. It was perfect. I looked through my floss for some ginger and spice brown thread. I opened my box of 'small fabric pieces' and three spicy pieces were just sitting there together so I pulled them out.

I did enlarge the original pattern a bit but I knew the stitchery was too small to feature by itself so I decided to put it towards the top of the square and settled on echoing the heart theme with some applique hearts underneath. Luckily my 'small' pieces were big enough to make the border too.

I am not big on taking time to quilt all my projects but this one needed something. I remembered I had a heart quilting design on my Quilt Pinterest board so I looked it up and copied it onto the mat. I used my pink chalk pencil to get it set out then went over it with the blue water washable pen. There is still a touch of pink there but a turn through the washing machine should fix that.

Instead of finishing this in one day I took two. I spent time looking at the travelling tea cosy show (from the 2010 Miles competition) at Beaudesert Community Centre. Not many cosies but fun to look at. Here are some.

Later I went on the hunt for some knitting needles and ended up in the Endeavour charity shop. Saved several dollars on knitting needles and bought a knitting pattern book. I still dream of knitting some nice jumpers and cardigans. We get at least 5 cold mornings here in winter. Then I went to Big W and bought season 2 of Covert Affairs. So I had to watch some of that too.

Two more small things on the go today so hopefully I will catch up.
I am having much more fun playing with all these small projects instead of finishing my Christmas quilt. I had to take a forced break from my North Pole quilt since we bought a block of land. I just can't afford more wadding and border fabric before Christmas but this means it will be back next year to be blogged about :)

...and if you don't have time to leave a comment on my many blog posts this month why not pin it (I have the hover pin button on my photos) and +1 it.

Happy Quilting and Crafting,
Val

Little Christmas bits 8

Getting behind again! I did finish the stitching yesterday but had to spray it with water and let it dry before sewing it.
I found 4 delightful 'chickies running around getting ready for Christmas' stitcheries at Bee Tree Designs quite a while ago now. She has a page of free patterns. If you scroll down a fair bit you will get to the chickens.
I made a tree decoration with the baking chicken a few years ago. This time I stitched the present toting chicken and made it into a slit and turn hexagon coaster. Nearly forgot - I enlarged the original design to 125%. I find bigger designs easier to stitch.

Happy Quilting and Crafting,
Val

Needle book and fabric

When I sewed the stitchery to the front of the hollyhock needle book it went a bit crooked and the tiny prairie points went a bit skew. I thought the best way to get better is to do it again. I loved the poppy stitchery from Red Brolly so I made that up to make a new needle book. I didn't think it needed inside pockets so I have used some of the aplique elements from the SKOW book. I have yet to sew it all together.

I was very surprised to get my new fabric so fast. Just 8 days from America. 40 half yard pieces of Audra's Iris Garden. I worked it out to be $14.75 per metre. I was pleased I found the shop selling the 1/2 yard pieces. It was much better value than the fat quarter bundle. It will be perfect for the Go Wild Garden quilt from Country Cottage Quilting that I will be making this year. It is a nice subdued range, quite a bit darker or duller than I am used to.

I have been wondering what I will have as a home page after Google shut down iGoogle. I decided to go with my blog page. I have added some links to sites I like to visit then I made a list of some shops I often check out. It is now more like home. I set my browser to open my blog page, my email and google plus as tabs on start up. The computer is such a cool tool.

If you are not ready for Google+ you can comment from my Facebook or Flickr.

Val Spiers on Facebook

Val Spiers on Flickr

Happy Quilting,
Val

Country Cottage Quilting SAL

Shirley from Colours of a Butterfly and myself are sewing some projects from Country Cottage Quilting by Lynette Anderson.
We have started with the Hollyhock Sewing set. The needle case is first.
We plan to post each two weeks. Next fortnight we should be finished the needle case.

After the sewing set we will probably do the Garden Pillow then finally the Go Wild Garden quilt. We haven't really thought about a timeline for the quilt. We will just see how we go to start.

I finished the stitchery for the front of the needle case. It is early days for me and needle turn. I quite  like the way it turns out. Nicer than visible stitching. Not sure I would bother doing a whole quilt this way. The Go Wild Garden quilt is raw edge applique and I will do the blanket stitch on the machine I think.
Anyone with the book thinking they might like to join in just let us know and we can sew together.

If you are not ready for Google+ you can comment from my Facebook or Flickr.

Val Spiers on Facebook

Val Spiers on Flickr

Happy Quilting,
Val

Country Cottage Quilting SAL and the rest.

I just love a good sew along and I am a sucker for a good BoM so I have quite a lot on the go. I seem to be fitting things in quite well so far. I have even made some extras like the fox and my crochet gloves.
I am determined to finish all my May obligations before the end of May and earlier if possible. As soon as the new owl came out I whipped him up ready to sew. My sewing machine is making some complaining noises so the sewing will have to wait a bit.

I got another block from "Summertime" glued down ready to sew and I will try to get a couple more ready. I am making a square wall hanging from 9 blocks.

I got the April Adventure block out and put it onto a little bag pattern. I will put the May block of cute post cards onto a zippy purse.

I spent some time working on my much overdue photo album from my trip last year. It is fun to look at the photos and remember stuff.

I like to use the iPad in bed just before I get up so I made some fingerless gloves to keep me warm.

I am making the needle book from Country Cottage Quilts with Shirley from Colours of a Butterfly. We are warming up to make the quilt with the watering cans on it. We will be posting some progress every two weeks. I did a bit of cutting and sticking to get started.

That's it for another week. I feel much better about blogging once a week. I seem to have more time for visiting and commenting on other blogs.

I am linking up with Applique Thursday.

If you are not ready for Google+ you can comment from my Facebook or Flickr.

Val Spiers on Facebook

Val Spiers on Flickr

Happy Quilting,
Val

Needle Keep with magnet

Busy, busy I was, making a secret Santa gift for the Beenleigh Quilters Wednesday group Christmas party. The lovely lady likes flowers and pink and green and I wanted to do something a little more than patchwork so I found some cute garden themed stitcheries and one piece of green fabric with flowers. I had to rack my brains for what else I had in my stash and I thought of the batch of little scraps.

I drew up a plan and thought it might be best to have a simple closure that didn't require any manipulation. I find it a pest doing up bows or using buttons. I decided on a small magnetic clasp and when it was finished I realised that the magnet was perfect for holding a needle while cutting thread.

I had seen on Pinterest all those cute felt flowers with beads on them so I added a bead in the centre of each flower. What I need now is a way to make the little flowers more perfect. I just cut these ones out with scissors but there must be  one of those cutters that has a little flower template.

I was quite happy with how it turned out. I think my stitching is improving a bit :)

The mailman delivered two great parcels the other day. One was some felt I had ordered from the States and the other was from a generous blogger Glenda at Patchwork Dreams . She had some silk left over from a project that I commented on and she sent me a nice piece. It's gorgeous.

I have only just started looking at the Birthday give away blog hop at the Quilters Fun blog.

Visit my give away post and all the others in the hop. There seem to be some great give aways.

Book bag with teacher angel

I was scared I would lose the quilting club books if they didn't have a special bag and I didn't want to get on the wrong side of the librarian.
Owls are very bookish so my Christmas gift from mum was perfect. Then I received the Teacher Angel from Helena and thought she was lovely. It think this stitchery means 'Once a teacher, always a teacher'.

Happy Quilting,
Val

Christmas through the year

 I have made a couple of triangle containers. I thought they would be good to put on the bedside table to hold jewellery or coins. I have lost quite a few single ear rings when the cat has jumped up and things have rolled off or they just get pushed under things and I never see them again. So I have one for myself and two for gifts.
I showed my mum the first one I made and she was happy to take it home. I showed the ladies at the quilting group the second one I made. They liked it a lot so I offered it to one of them who said to her friend 'It's your birthday today. Why don't you take it' and she did. So it seems they are quite a hit. Mainly for their cuteness rather than their practical value :)
I found two sites that had photo tutorials and one is in my side bar. I don't think this is a pattern that anyone owns so I have drawn up a page of basic instructions and the triangle shape to print out. I used a layer of wadding in mine so it doesn't fold up and it is probably a bit smaller than just an interfaced one but I like it.

I was able to borrow a couple of cute applique books from the quilt group library on Wednesday and when I put them down at home I thought that I really needed a dedicated quilt library bag otherwise I would lose them.
I pulled out some owl fabric that mum had given me for Christmas and the tote bag pattern piece that just sits in my bookshelf for a quick make and started cutting out. I am a bit crazy I think because my half finished pure wool blazer and pieces were spread on the table and I was just cutting my bag on top of them. I did make an effort to clear a space when I put up the wadding or I would definitely have had a blazer jig saw.
I wanted to put some stitchery on the front but had no real idea of what to use so I was pleasantly surprised when Helena of Crazy Cats BoM fame sent me a cute teacher angel. I thought it would be perfect and started stitching immediately. I only half finished and left it out overnight. It is so humid here that my soluble pen lines have disappeared. I have to pop up to the sewing room and redraw the lines and this time get it finished quick.

Only half done. I will show the bag when I finish it.

Happy Quilting,
Val

Valentine's doves to stitch

 I can't believe I am back to stitching since my sewing machine is taking another break. It seems the globe blows then nothing works. It is very frustrating since I have been working on my first scenic applique. Anyway, it gave me a chance to play with the little doves I had ready to go. I am not quite sure what I want to make them into. The square is 7 inches. I might cut it out in a heart shape and put it on a little bag to put jewellery in. If you click on the drawing and save it, it should print out at the right size. Sorry I forgot to rub out the pencil lines and I also forgot to put my name on it. I am not in the mood to rescan it. It is just too hot.  Maybe later.

Happy Quilting,
Val

Just some cool patterns

I have been sewing little things and working on the knitted pigeon and surfing around. Here are some of the things I have found latley:
The bird card in the side bar was just beautiful and could probably be used for applique too.
http://mmmcrafts.blogspot.com/2011/05/make-momma-bird-card-or-two.html

She also has the most amazing 3D owl.
http://www.skiptomylou.org/2010/06/20/3d-paper-owl-from-mmmcrafts/

Then I found the fabulous paper snow flakes. You have to print them out then fold and cut. The cutting is surprising easy compared to the lovely pattern you get. mmmcrafts links to the patterns but she also has a good tutorial on how to do it and a blank snowflake fold pattern so you can make your own designs.
http://mmmcrafts.blogspot.com/2009/12/snowflakery.html

There is a felt or paper flower template with several layers of petals and a stuffed toy monkey...
Have a look at all her things. And the lizard is really cute too.
http://mmmcrafts.blogspot.com/p/free-patterns-and-tutorials.html

There is a cute chicken stitchery here. Click Freebie in the menu.
http://www.memesquilts.com/memeindex2.htm

There are some lovely stitchery patterns and applique ideas here. The menu on the right has all the categories.
http://www.french-knots.com/page/4/

There are some nice stitchery patterns here.
http://zuill.us/andreablog/category/embroidery/free-patterns/

There is a cool pieced pumpkin pattern here.
http://www.fvqg.org/05archiv/1005.htm

There are some cute doll patterns to buy here. I like Hattie and Homer Hobart :)
http://www.amongcountryfriends.com/patchwork.htm

I came across this site while trying to find where I got something else from and found the cutest scottie dog mini quilt. The site is about the history of quilting and is very interesting.
http://www.allcrafts.net/fjs.htm?url=www.womenfolk.com/baby_quilts/american-girl-dolls.htm

I liked this cute set of cat blocks.
http://www.allcrafts.net/fjs.htm?url=web.archive.org/web/20080116230112/http://quiltmaker.com/patterns/patt2/

I imagine that this site is not new to most but I found it had some good patterns. This is where I got the link to the cat pattern above.
http://www.allcrafts.net/quilting.htm#Pieced

I also had time to follow the Moda Blog hop that I found links to on Sharon's blog. I printed out a few on card, cut them in half and sewed the block and recipe back to back. I need to get some more card now to do the rest.

I found a different looking little bag pattern here.
http://quiltworld2.blogspot.com/p/instructions-for-quilts-crafts.html

I know you all have plenty of time to play on the computer so I hope you enjoy collecting some of these patterns.

Happy Quilting,
Val

Little birds

I have had a lot of fun making little birds to hang on the tree. I used the bird designs I found on the web to get the shapes then made them all from felt. They are not heirloom items and will probably be good for next year too but not much more. I have decided not to buy any more tree decorations. I will just make what ever takes my fancy. Last year I had paper houses and handbags. I still have those and will put them on this year too. I threw away the paper hearts I made with beady dangles as I took them off the tree. They were quick and easy to make so I had no problem discarding them. I have to have room for all the new things I have made.

I have started on the tea cloth and love it so far. It won't take too long to finish.

You may have noticed that I have borrowed some pictures of free patterns and linked them to the site with the pattern. These are on the top right of my blog. There are the strippy triangle blocks, the apron with the built in pot holders and the fabulous crochet hat and some others.

Lastly but not least, a big hello to my new followers. I love it when new people find my blog.

Happy Quilting,
Val

Tabby

I stitched 'Tabby' and put her on my travel diary.

I have made a PDF with the basics of what I did to make the diary cover. I have included the 100% cat and the 80% cat I used for the stitchery.

I would have loved to use some nice travel fabric but I had to stick to the stash though I did lash out this week and bought a few patterns from Cookies and Cream.

While I have been making small things and felt things my new best friends are freezer paper and 505 basting glue. The freezer paper makes it easy to cut out fiddly felt pieces because it irons onto the felt. Cause the felt is fuzzy you can only make it stick once but I have a whole role so there is a bit to spare.

You can download the directions and cat patterns from my Google docs.

Happy Quilting,
Val

Pumpkin Tea Towel

I have made an applique pattern of a pumpkin and vine that I have used on a tea towel. I have made this one to put away as a gift.
I wanted the vine stitchery to stand out so I tried Pekinese stitch. I used fusible applique paper and machine stitched a narrow satin stitch  (3) around all the edges and did the detail with a narrower satin stitch  (2).

Because one of the leaves overlapped the pumpkin I have changed it slightly to make it suitable for stitchery as well.
You can view and download the pumpkin applique and the pumpkin stitchery
Just remember to trace the applique in reverse if you want it in the right hand corner.

If you use my design unmodified please give me credit - Design by valspierssews

Happy Quilting,
Val