Block Patchwork Quilt

It's half term again! Hurrah! Time for crafting, and I had some very important crafting to get on with.

There will be a rather important arrival before Christmas, and therefore lots to make.

So, I started with a quilt. I've never done any quilting before. I bought a book to show me how.

Had a quick flick through. Completely disregarded the information and did it my own way. No one actually reads instructions anyway...

The difficult bit was to choose the theme and fabric, I don't know the sex of the Baby yet, so it had to be something gender neutral, (and although it meant taking out a small bank loan) I wanted  to use a Michael Miller fabric, essentially because they're pretty lush. I may have had to order some Christmas fabric at the same time...

So after much deliberation I chose this Circus fabric, and then some coordinating grey chevron fabric and yellow fat quarters.

 

Then I had to do some planning... uh oh... but I managed it quite successfully, and worked out how big to make each block and the order to put the different fabrics in. Some proof that I didn't just go ahead with scissors!

I choose to make it 40x48" in the end, from 8" squares, apparently when quilting you only have a 1/4" seam allowance, which was helpful because I had only just enough of the chevron fabric to make enough blocks for my plan!

 

Next to start joining the blocks together into lines

 

Then join up all the lines to complete the front, pressing all the seams as you go

 

Then layer it up, this was quite tricky to get everything to stay flat. Initially I bought thick wading, but this was a total disaster, too thick to go through the machine and just messy. I thought it would be nice to be thickly padded so it could double up as a floor play mat, but it just wasn't happening. Another visit back to the fabric shop to buy "Quilters Dream" which just looks like thick felt, and very expensive - but you get what you pay for, and it looks much better made up.

Next was to do the actual quilting, I don't have a walking foot on my machine but at this thickness my regular foot worked ok. You then just follow all the join lines on the front of the quilt.

 

I cut some corners by not using bias binding, the thought of making 5m of bias binding was not a thought I liked, so I just cut my backing fabric 2.5" bigger all round, and folded it over to make the edging.

 

Ta dah!

The finished quilt:

 

 

 

Decoupage hanger

After the success of decoupage furniture I thought I'd have a go at a hanger for my Nanny's Birthday.

A bit more tricky cause of the shape, and gluing onto varnished wood, but it still turned out well, in a rose fabric with a matching pink paper rose.

I think in future I'd sand the hanger first, I might have a go at some more for Christmas presents this year.

 

 

Knitted Christmas Stockings

The fact that it's the middle of May doesn't make a difference, I am still making Christmas stuff...

I've been having a go at a bit of knitting lately, and have made a few things including Christmas stockings. They appear to go from one extreme to the other....

 

 

I've made a few tiny ones as Christmas tree decorations, in plain red and sparkly white wool

 

 

And then this rather enormous one, my first attempt at circular knitting. I'm pretty pleased with it.

Only another 6 and a half months until they can be displayed....

 

 

 

Lace Edge Applique Cushion

Oh look! Another applique cushion! These seem to feature fairly frequently on my blog...

Anyway this one is actually for me, I don't usually keep stuff I make.

This one is made with a large applique rabbit, using bondaweb and free motion embroidery for the main body, in a Liberty print fabric none the less! Then the fur tail was added with zigzag stitch applique.

After the success of the bobbles on the butterfly cushion I thought I would experiment with adding other things into the edges, and went for some lace in this one, it took several attempts to make sure it was caught in the seam the whole way along, but I think it's quite effective.

I used an embroidery stitch in a darker colour on the hem of the envelope on the back this time as well.

Ribbon Flower Cards

These cards were made from kits I bought at the knitting and stitching show I went to in March, from a company called Ribbon Box.

They're made using different ribbon, mostly wired, which is cut and sewn in certain ways to create petals, and then glued together with beads etc. added to make the centres. I thought they were really pretty, I didn't expect mine to turn out how they looked at the show but they did!

 

Pansy:

 

 

 Anemone:

 

Football Shirt Name Garland

Another one winging its way up north to Charlotte, for Louis this time - I felt that he'd been a bit left out so far, so I made him this football shirt name garland. Unfortunately he's a massive Liverpool fan, hence the red shirts. Hopefully he'll be impressed.

I cut templates for the shirt and the letters and cut them all out of felt, leaving small tabs at the top of the shirts so that I could thread them onto ribbon to hang the garland.

The letters are zigzag appliqued on, the edges of the shirts are sewn up with a zigzag and then ribbon is threaded through the tabs.

 

 

Ta dah!

Round Applique Cushion

Another one for Chelsea, a round cushion for her chair that she requested about a year ago... oops. Well anyway here it is. Unfortunately you'll have to wait until you come over to get it, seeing as posting things costs ridiculous amounts.  

 

 

I discovered bobbles! I feel that everything I make from now on will need bobbles...

This time I used free motion embroidery to applique shot silk/two tone shot silk butterflies, rather than the usual zigzag style applique that I usually choose. I quite like it, it gives a bit more of a sketchy looking finish.

 

 

 

And a bit of bright ric rac across the back