2012

Review time!  Well I majorly failed in achieving what I set out to do at the beginning of the year!  I was going to make a dress every month of the year to increase my sewing skills and to increase my wardrobe! Well that didn’t work! For the first few months it went well I made 4 dresses and a cheating dress for Miss C all of which I’ve worn regularly over the year.

But then deadline was getting to me, I was making Simplicity 2588 in a lovely navy gingham and it just turned into a disaster when I got the the collar stage.  I’d even made a muslin of this dress which looked good and I had high hopes.  I spent ages making sure that the gingham squares would line up but I think I put the collar piece on the wrong way round and by the time I realised I’d trimmed the pieces and broken my heart!  Its all in a bag, maybe I’ll revisit next year…

So I decided to stop pressuring myself and take a break.  From then on the rest of the year was great, I sewed what and when I wanted, I even got into hand sewing and hand quilted a quilt.I found it relaxing and enjoyable to sit there in the evening sewing away.  This was why I at the end of the year I finally had some success with crocheting. 

My best successes this year were designing and drafting a costume for Miss M and making my Stripy Renfrew top although the kids LOVE the quilt!

I enjoyed the process of making a sloper/block for Miss M and the freedom to design whatever we wanted.  It made me go back to my long dreamed of ideal of having a basic block for me and adapting it.  I’m not going to set myself the challenge of doing this as from past experience I’ve found it doesn’t work, plus since last year I’ve now got 2 jobs and doing a Teaching Assistant course which tons of homework each week!  Hopefully I will be getting more work next year so I’m not going to put any more pressure on myself, but I would like to draft out a basic bodice and go from there instead of buying the same type of dress all the time and making similar adjustments all the time.  I’d also like to make more Renfrews as they are just great and perfect for work in school so I’m on the look out for lovely knits.  I’d like to try more crochet but not sure what yet, it was great to have a target and theme of Christmas for the bits I made but not sure what to do in 2013.  BTW this blog is now 3 years old!

So much to do so little time…

As I said before my life has gotten a whole lot busier lately, sewing has really taken a backseat but I did manage to finish one thing.  Way back in June I bought my self a Jelly Roll to make myself a full sized quilt.

Well eventually I decided to try the Stacked Coins Quilt from Moda but had to increase the size as it was for a cot quilt.  Well after lots and lots of calculations and research and head scratching I eventually worked out how much fabric I needed to complete the project so I ordered backing fabric Moda Bella Solid Sisters Pink, some binding from the Sophie collection Leafy Swirl Pink, some white Moda Bella and full sized poly wadding.

I’d already come to the conclusion that I wanted to hand quilt it as I’ve come to quite enjoy hand sewing (never thought I would say that!!) and we were going on holiday and I wanted a project to keep me occupied if we had rainy days (2012=bad summer!) so I set about piecing it together during the Olympics! 

With some trepidation I unrolled the Jelly Roll

and then started cutting and arranging into groups.  I didn’t have a set idea about how the colour/fabrics should be arranged so its purely random, I tried not to have too many of the same design/colours together within a strip. 

Once I’d started it was clear that I wasn’t going to get it done in time for the holiday so it went away again from a while.  Once I got it back out I realised I’d miscalculated the backing fabric and had to order more.  Now I was ready, so one Saturday whilst watching Strictly I laid out the backing, wadding and quilt top and with the aid of funny safety pins I put it all together. 

Then came the fun part, I sat there night after night, sewing it together.  I wanted to hand quilt because I thought the quilt needed either free-motion quilting in the white areas or stitch-in-the-ditch quilting.  Now, there's now way I was going to be able to do free –motion quilting on this quilt (I don’t have a walking foot, the expertise or the patience to gain the expertise) and I didn’t think my seam lines were straight enough or my sewing accurate enough to stitch-in-the-ditch by machine.  So I decided to stitch-in-the-ditch by hand this way I could control where the stitches are.  So I used pink quilting thread and the worlds tiniest needles to quilt the layers together and I have to say it was lovely.  I really enjoyed the excuse to snuggle under the quilt on the evening watching TV but still creating something.  It kept my hands busy instead of looking for something to eat!  I enjoyed the rhythm of the process, rocking the needle back and for, although I’m not convinced I had the correct technique, but it took me most of October to quilt it and then the binding just took a couple of days.  And where they big reveal you might ask….

extra points if you spot Miss C sneaking into shot!

sorry the pictures are a bit dull, they were taken at night although I’ve tried brightening then in Paint.net.  Here are some daylight shots…

backing showing the stitches coming through, don’t think I was very consistent in my stitch sized, in fact I preferred the look of larger stitches,

lovely colour and I love the contrast with white, I’m always drawn to the Modern Quilts which although I’m not exactly sure what the definition of Modern Quilt is they seem to have high contrast colours. 

binding shot I cut the binding 2.5” wide and sewed with a 1/4” seam allowance. In future I think I would cut 2 1/4” binding as I think its a little too wide, not enough to make me change it but a lesson for next time. 

isn’t ladder stitch great!

mitred corner – back

mitred corner – front

lovely colours in the sunshine!

Action shot!  Its already been used and loved, I’ve fallen asleep on the settee under it a few times and Miss C and Miss M argue over it (luckily its big enough for all of us, that's why I made it this size) and Miss C spent all day Saturday under it as she was ill.  So an all round success!

So there's my first proper quilt, I really enjoyed the whole process especially as it was so slow but I could leave it for days and come back to it and just pick it up straight away.  Very different to dressmaking which I find I can’t leave for days otherwise I forget where I was.   When I finished my husband immediately said ‘What's yours next project?” oh how well he knows me, the trouble is I’m just so busy at the moment with college and work and kids and birthdays and Christmas although I’m half way through making a Tudor dress for Miss M’s school topic!  Watch this space!

My First Ever quilt

Last Christmas (I gave you my heart…) I decided that the Christmas Tree needed a bit of jazzing up.  We have always used a large piece of green felt under the tree which looked ok when the presents were on there but afterwards looked a bit boring and makeshift (which it was!).  Due to Miss M’s late December birthday we don’t put any presents under the tree until a few days before Christmas so they are never there for very long and so the boring green felt was always there.  About Boxing Day last year I decided I would make a Tree Skirt and as there was bound to be Christmas fabric for on sale after Christmas I would get a head start on it in the New Year and not be making Christmas things in late November/December as I was last year.  Yeah right!  So fast forward to November 2011….  I’d been looking at tree skirts but realised where we put our tree and arrange the presents I didn’t want a skirt, more a rectangle so I decided to make a quilt!  I’ve always been scared of starting this as my main experience has been in dressmaking although I do read lots of quilty blogs.  I spent ages looking around at different ideas, I like the quilts usually classified as ‘Modern’ (even though I couldn’t define what that means) and eventually found this Moda quilt and used that as my inspiration.

(Source)

The biggest problem I found was working out the dimensions I needed, maths not being my strong point I had to try to explain to my husband how seam allowances work  and between us we kinda worked out the dimensions…. except we didn’t think about the footprint of our artificial tree!  I’d cut all the pieces, sewn the strips and pinned them together before we got the tree out and realised it was too narrow.  Therefore I had to extend the strips and after a lot of debate whether to match the strips or not I decided not to. 

I cut the coloured pieces 3.5” wide and 11” long, the  white totalled 15” and so was cut into 10/5, 6/9, 7/8 inch lengths.  I made sure these lengths stayed together and then put the coloured sections in between using the ubiquitous 1/4” seam allowance.  This resulted in a width of 35” and a length of 60”.

The backing was plain white with the traditional patterned insert, which I had to do as there wasn’t quite enough white!

Excuse the camera strap in shot!

The wadding was 100% cotton wadding and the only one my local quilting shop sells so I’m not sure if it was the best wadding or not.  As you can probably see I quilted it using the stitch-in-the-ditch method which sometimes was in the ditch and sometimes not!

I bound it with 2.5” continuous binding which I sewed 1/4” from the quilt top and then hand sewed it using a ladder stitch which took forever.  I thought I would sit down and catch up with a TV drama so I put on the second series of The Killing having watched the American version of the first series unfortunately I forgot that this was the Danish version and had subtitles which makes stitching small ladder stitches AND reading a bit challenging and therefore slow progress.  Nevertheless I succeeded in sewing the binding and enjoying the TV programme!

I added a label (which I’ve blanked my surname out) just so Miss M and Miss C can’t pass it off as their work in the future, Miss M has already said it will be a heirloom and passed through the family!

My thoughts on quilting: apart from the whole maths aspect, which is a bit mind blowing for me as this is most defiantly not my strength I found the whole process very therapeutic.  There's a beauty in repetitive tasks involved in quilting compared to dress making where every seam seems to be different and I have to keep referring to the instructions and have at many times sat there scratching  my head turning pattern pieces round in my hands trying to work out what the hell the instructions are trying to convey.  Whereas with quilting, as least with this one, the process was simple and repetitive, first sew the pieces to make strips, press the seams, sew the strips, press the seams, layer the quilt, pin the quilt, quilt the quilt, bind the quilt.  I quite enjoyed the process and not quite sure what I was so scared of beforehand so its given me the confidence to make one for myself.  Miss C is also eyeing one up as she kept using it as a blanket!

Here's an action shot!