teeny tiny teeny tiny

Leave a Comment

I'm playing along with the fabric ATC swap organised by Ali at Very Berry Handmade. I've been feeling a bit on the uninspired side lately, mostly due to having too much work to do, but a good old rummage around in the Flickr group helped give me the requisite kick up the backside. Finding something small enough to fit the tiny format was tricky - the ATC is only 3.5 x 2.5 inches.The theme is "something new" which got me thinking about babies of all kinds, and especially eggs in a nest. Hence, I made an applique of some eggs in a nest.Sometimes my thought processes are deep. And then sometimes they aren't.

Assorted secret sewing

Leave a Comment

Daniel's teacher is wonderful. She is fun and enthusiastic, and at the same time has absolute control of the chaos associated with 30 seven-year-old children. Very impressive. So when I heard that she is pregnant and also moving to Australia I thought a quilt was in order.I bought a couple of metres of a really nice check recently, just for the hell of it because it was on ridiculous sale. Then I bought matching Kona solids and cut them into 8-inch squares. Each child in the class made a hand print and signed their name, and that was that. I'm going to sash them with turquoise and then hand quilt around each square. Nice and simple, but a sweet reminder of her last class One child was [Read more...]

*sigh*

Leave a Comment

We have just got back from a short break to possibly the most beautiful place I have ever been - the Scottish Highlands. Wow. It is breathtakingly, achingly, incredibly gorgeous. We stayed in a fantastic guesthouse in Oban, which looks like this (but without the peculiar v-shape from the panoramic photo, obviously):Unfortunately we only had two nights there, but did manage to hire a car at the last minute and spent the day driving around with our mouths agape in awe at scenes like this:Glen NevisThe trip was way too short (aren't they always?), and of course now we want to move to Scotland as soon as possible. Although my sensible side reminds me that it barely gets light in winter, not to [Read more...]

Bloggers’ Quilt Festival

Leave a Comment

Hello, and welcome to those of you visiting from the Bloggers' Quilt Festival! Pull up a chair - I'll cut you a slice of cake and put the kettle on.I've decided to enter my Emerald City quilt into the Two-colour Quilts category. I realise that some of my followers may have seen this before, but I am really proud of it so you will have to suck it up ;-)Emerald City was made for the Pantone Colour of the Year challenge. I had bought a stack of Kona greens a while ago and I loved the way they were organised by value, so wanted to recreate that in a quilt. I cut a whole load of strips without using a ruler and pieced them together in colour groups to make the ombre panel, then surrounded it with [Read more...]

Putting the machine through its paces

Leave a Comment

I finally (ok, I'm exaggerating a little, but I really had been wanting to make this bag for a while now) got round to making an Aeroplane Bag yesterday. It was one of those perfect situations where the fabric arrived on a day when I actually had some time to sew, and I also happened to have all the other required bits and bobs on hand. Including the British equivalent of Annie's soft and stable, which according to various sources is functionally the same as 3 mm scrim foam used for car upholstery, and easily available for not much money on Ebay. Win.The fabrics are a selection of Field Study linens in the Charisma palette, with these gorgeous feathers for the lining. I added an [Read more...]

ahhh, (semi) instant gratification

Leave a Comment

I have a feeling that doll's clothes are going to be my new scratch-that-making-itch sewing project. Lucy is going to a birthday party tomorrow for a fellow American Girl doll addict, so I thought it would be nice to make a dress using the pattern that I bought at Market last October. I even broke into the DS stash for some Shelburne Falls.(Speaking of the DS stash, I refolded it all the other day and discovered that I have even more than I thought. Don't know how that happened.)I am *almost* ashamedIt's so much fun making clothes without having to worry about the fit, the possibility of itchy seams or having to sew a zip. As far as I am concerned, all dresses should do up at the back with [Read more...]

Not-at-all-wordless Wednesday – the one with the new machine

Leave a Comment

I'm in love. With a machine. And it is so quiet and smooth (totally vibration free, in fact) that my husband can't raise an eyebrow (for once, Kelly, your dirty mind is totally justified). I've been putting up with my old Janome for a while now. It was bought fairly recently but was a poorly considered purchase made before I started quilting in earnest. The tension was a bit crappy, there was no automatic thread cutter, it had a tiny throat space, and it was annoyingly "blessed" with a gazillion unnecessary stitches.Enter the spectacular Juki TL-98P - a straight stitch only semi-professional machine that does not mess about. It has adjustable foot pressure and can sew through massive wodges [Read more...]

No surface is safe

Leave a Comment

I don't have a terribly extensive yarn stash, but every now and again something jumps out at me and makes me buy it. I'm sure you know what I mean. I've had a beautiful skein of beaded silk yarn knocking around for a very long time - I bought it on a whim in New York about seven years ago, with no immediate plans of what I could use it for. Clearly. So I took it along to my knitting class a couple of weeks ago and asked Monica what she thought I could do with it. As chance would have it, she had just submitted a project to a magazine that also used a beaded yarn. A brilliant project. A project that made me both giggle and want to make it at the same time.this is all that remains. I'm [Read more...]

What do you do when the world goes a little mad?

Leave a Comment

I don't know about you, but when bad things happen I just want to wrap people up in love and good wishes and hugs. The Boston Marathon bombing is a case in point. Not only was the attack itself a terrifying event, but the lockdown of the whole area during the manhunt must have been beyond awful. The "To Boston With Love" campaign has been organised by the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild with the aim of creating a public exhibition of beautiful handmade flags with messages of love and peace. All the details are available here on the VMQG blog.I will be sending a few, and I'm going to rope the LMQG into it as well. Bunting of love. That's the best kind.