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

Something Old, Something New

I had four old things that I pulled out of the cupboard to finish in March. Each had a bit left to do and they had sat there hiding for ages.
The granny bag I finished pretty quick. It was just a matter of sewing in the handles. I had to settle for the round handles that I had instead of the semi-circular ones specified in the pattern.

The wool bag was meant to have bought handles but they cost $14. When I finally sat down to do the handles I remembered I had some wool felt binding strips that I bought from Pendleton Woollen Mills on my trip to Oregon. The pink matched nicely. I folded the edges to the centre then folded it in half and sewed nearly to the ends. I rounded off the ends and sewed them in place. It is quite a little bag but will carry my keys, phone and purse to the shops OK.

Next there was my journal cover. Instead of hand quilting I just zipped it up on the machine. While at mum's I used her Bigshot to cut out some fabric flower shapes to bring home. I put some on the front of the journal, lined it and folded in the ends.

The lady with the french knots hair is still going. I decided to continue with the french knots so just a bit more to do there.
Didn't get to do much free motion applique but I did a bit on the journal cover and played with a cat applique sketching in some of the details with thread. It is filed away to be made into something later.

It was hard to find something for this month. I have pulled out a few more old things hiding in a box. The blue spotty pieces were meant to make small thread catchers but I plan to combine them to make one bigger fabric box. The triangle will make a little thread catcher and the cat fabric will be a zippy purse.

I am a bit stymied for something new but I am thinking I might do a bit more sketching or try to prepare some of my free patterns for adding to Craftsy.
I have remembered FNWF this month and will be signing up. I think I will be doing some felt stitching.
I am linking up to Something Old, Something New over at Never Too Hot to Stitch. Joining in is a great way to get motivated to dig out those old UFO's and finish them off as well as plan to try something a little bit different.

You can comment through Flickr or Pinterest.

There is a great tutorial for the little wool bag of squares design here.

Happy Quilting and Crafting,
Val

Let's Book It

At the time of posting this I haven't quite finished my Book It project so I won't be linking up until I get it finished. Hopefully I will make it in time. Make sure you look at those who did manage to get their project finished already over at Vrooman's Quilts with Sharon.

This month I was a bit busy away from home for two weeks but wanting to link up prodded me into making a cute little felt scene from Anni Downs that I fell in love with the minute I saw it and just had to buy the booklet.

I love the quilt too and would love to make it one day. All the projects use the same theme. There is a stitched book mark and a stitched needle book as well.

I plan to use this scene I made as a plaque on my sewing room door. I thought the title was perfect and I will always think about the world being as it should be with me in my sewing room. I know this is a bit of a stretch from conservation but I am into conservation too.
This is just the bathroom door in the rental but you get the idea.

I like my water tank done in silvery grey rather than black.

The sheep are just cute.

The bird is done in woven wool felt. I had a few pieces with interfacing already on the back. I don't like the way it tends to fray.

I would love it if you follow me on Bloglovin when you visit and hover and pin any pictures you like.
If you don't comment with google plus you could follow me on flickr and comment there. I have a few flickr friends who usually comment on or favourite the photo there after reading my blog post.

Happy Quilting and Crafting,
Val

Christmas Critters

I just noticed that there is a linky party for these cute little critters over at Mocking Bird Hill Cottage and also at Creative Cain Cabin.
The patterns are PDF and free and simple to make. Two each month.

I made the owl yesterday and the cardinal and sheep today. Today I used the good felt. It is much thicker and nicer to work with. It is 100% wool.

The owl is out of 80% wool and 20% rayon? I think. It is much thinner and not as nice to handle but it is cheaper and not quite as 'squeaky' to work with as the acrylic felt.

I had to make a little English Suffolk sheep because they look so cute.

Visit Flickr or Pinterest if you are not into Google+ comments.

Happy Quilting and Crafting,
Val

Sew, sew, sew. Blog, blog, blog

I am so glad I am retired and have time to sew and blog.

Lots of positive things happening .

I received a lovely gift of some woven felt wool from Mel at the House on the Side of the Hill. It was a nice welcome to the Summertime Sewalong she suggested earlier in the year. There are not many sewing along because it is a fairly piecy looking appliqué and even I have decided I will only make 9 of the blocks to make a square wall hanging. It is nice to play and sew with felt.

I purchased some new fabric called Avalon from the Fabric Patch online .

A lovely lady sent me some photos of two block keepers she made with my cat appliqué on the fronts. I was so pleased she liked the patterns. You can see them at Mairsmusings.

I had a great time meeting some of the people behind the blogs at a sewing meet we had for the Brisbane Stitchers Inc. It is basically Brisbane bloggers but all sewers are welcome. Believe it or not I won the lucky door prize of a lovely pattern and a pincushion made by Maree of Ollie and May

I had my first go at needle turn appliqué when I started the Holiday lap quilt from It's Quilting Cats and Dogs. I have nearly finished two of the blocks. They both have some finishing off to do. I plan to make the quilt from the Avalon fabric.

 

I have also been doing more of the Debbie Mumm sampler . Some little log cabins, the fish and I have started the stars.

 

And the weather is just perfect today.

Happy Quilting,

Val

 

Posted with Blogsy

Christmas house

I have managed to make a felt decoration to put away for Christmas in between all the cleaning of the house and boxing up my home. It is so weird in the house with just the furniture. The only personal items I can see are some treasures I have left in my display cabinets. After the agent takes the photos I am definitely putting my tea things back out in the kitchen.

I so love my felts and I couldn't resist the gingerbread house that I found on Pinterest. It is a free pattern at Craft Ideas
I did it in thin felt so I will have to prop it up a bit with some cardboard inside.

I have been adding progress posts on my Summertime quilt blog. It is a wonderful felt quilt. I posted some house pictures on my housework blog. The routine has suffered a bit with the extra packing up and some maintenance required to make the house perfect. I will be falling back on the routine to keep things looking great til we sell.

I am definitely going to start a new free stitchery BOM called Adventure found at Pretty P and Mamma B Designs

We have another sewer joining the North Pole QAL. Donna has just got the book and is keen to start. When I looked at Donna's blog I saw that she is crazy about BOM's and she is making some wonderful quilts. She has a thing for Christmas quilts too. Check out her blog.

A big thanks to Narelle of Pins and Whiskers for hosting 1 Xmas Item a Month. It is like a Christmas sew along and really helps me to focus.

I have just been thinking...
I tend to use my computer a lot:

• I have been using Google plus just to make a quick post about something I think my blog friends might be interested in. 
• I have been using my quilt diary blogs to post about every little bit of progress I am making with my quilts this year. 
• I use my housework blog to make me feel good about the work I put in to make my place clean and comfortable. 
• I use the right side bar to remind myself of things that I must buy or must make.
• I use Pinterest to collect 5 lifetimes worth of things I want to make.
• I also use my 'save image' a lot on my ipad to collect pictures of finished items and ideas to save in 'Photos' in lots of 'albums'. A bit like my own Pinterest but I don't need the links.
• Paypal also gets a bit of a beating and I just love internet banking.
• I use Flickr to store most of my blog photos. Even with the free version where you can't see all your photos they still show up on my blog posts because the link still works. I recently took the free upgrade to Pro for three months that they offered as a Christmas present and will probably pay to continue it. I have uploaded lots of photos of my possessions to keep safe for insurance purposes in private sets and will most likely upload all my photos to store online as well as keep a backup on DVD.
• I am considering buying a drawing tablet so I won't need to have visual diaries for my designs.   Shelf space is hard to find.
• I have just thought that I really need to scan all the design bits and pieces I have into the computer. I have trouble working out which folder to put things in. Then I can't find them later and just forget about them. It would be much easier to have a nice written list of categories for folders on my computer and it is also possible to search for files at the click of a button. Would I be game enough to throw away all my paper pages then? I will definitely have to think about that before I do it :)

Time for a computer break now.
Happy Quilting,
Val

Another new project!

As you all know it is impossible to walk past a cute project and even though it was in the very expensive Magic Patch quilt book I just had to do it which meant buying the book.
There are actually several cute wool projects I plan to make after the bag.

It didn't always look like this. After carefully sewing all the squares together, I cut the lining , sewed it on and started the running stitch on the squares. Why doesn't it fold up right, I thought. It took me ages to realise that I had sewn the squares together in the wrong shape. It had to be unpicked and fixed. Luckily I had only done a few of the running stitch squares so I just undid the lining on the other end, unpicked the offending squares and across the centre so I could fit them in the right place. I am so glad it looks fixed.

Because it was now a different shape I had t cut off some bits of the lining and add bits on the end. You can see where I put the extra bits.

I ran out of brown thread for the running stitch so it is not quite finished. I can't afford the thread til next fortnight because I spent all last fortnight's pocket money on DMC stranded floss.

One of every colour plus the variegated ones.  From Cross stitch World online. Can't wait to get them all sorted.

Happy Quilting,
Val

New Applique Patterns

I was very excited to win the lovely wall hanging design on Buzzing and Bumbling. A design from Linda's shop was the give away prize on her post in the In Your Words blog hop.

Fabulous isn't it! I have already printed off the pieces.
Thanks Linda. She has other nice designs for sale too.

The other pattern I have bought with a view to joining in the QAL is Summertime from the pattern spot.

You can find the post about it on The House on the Side of the Hill

I have just printed off the little house at the top to start today.
I chose some felts to match the picture and decided to stitch it with the machine just straight around the edges. I have discovered a use for the zipper foot that came with the machine. It is useless for putting in zippers when the zipper pull is anywhere near the stitching but it is great for edge stitching.

You can clip it on either side.

It holds the fabric firmly and I can guide it along the edge.

I am happy with how it looks so far.

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.