Craftiness – Page 7

Friendship bag swap, bag sent and received

October 30, 2009October 30, 2009 Mirthful Leave a comment

I was a bit optimistic earlier this autumn and signed up for a couple of swaps. Well, let’s say I haven’t been able to stick to the deadlines completely. I am contrite, and consistently a couple of days late. I must resist the temptation to sign up for more swaps in the near future. Anyway, one of the swaps was the Friendship Bag Swap hosted by the Quilting Gallery.

Here is the one I made:

I used the pattern provided by Rachel Griffith, because I’m lazy and because it really is quite a nice pattern, and I was rather pleased with the result. The bag is wee, cute as hell. I think I’ll have to make another one to keep.

Here’s a detail:

And here it is all wrapped and ready to go :)

A few days after I sent mine off, I received this little gem in the post:

Made by the wonderful Maya.

It came with goodies galore, too:

And now to send an apology to my next swap recipient, I’ll be late…

Bundle of Love

August 23, 2009August 23, 2009 Mirthful 1 Comment

Can you tell I’m doing catch-up?

Well, I have dug through my fabric stash and now I have this pile:

And all I have to do is locate some thread and trimmings and the scissors I picked up at IKEA the other day (scissors are useful when sewing, right?), and perhaps I have some yarn, too? Anyway, it is then getting wrapped up and sent off to the Netherlands where it will enter the mysterious thing that is APO and hopefully, at last, end up being put to good use by an Iraqi woman (or man?). Stashbusting AND do-gooding all at once, can it get better?

Hurry, you just have time to join me! Go to the IBOL-blog for more info and to sign up.

Edited to say:

In case you’re wondering why I’m doing this, I guess you could call it paying forward. And I just found this piece written by the woolywoman via the IBOL blog:

Well, I hope somewhere in Iraq, someday, a young man who is hearing that he needs to blow himself up because the Americans are evil pauses back to the day that the American soldiers gave his mom a bundle of sewing supplies, and how happy she was, and that the bundle was sent over by a regular American woman for his mom. Maybe she will be making her sons some nice little shirts for school out of that green fabric, and they will remember, and the world will change a little bit. I remain hopeful. My kids remain hopeful. I am so grateful to the US soldier who gave me the opportunity to reach out to a mother across the world.

So I’m not American, but in this case it really makes no difference. This war was started in my name too, whether I like it or not. So here’s my contribution to a common sense attempt at making life just a little bit better for just a few Iraqis.

Refashioning, and not.

August 23, 2009February 26, 2010 Mirthful Leave a comment

I have to use one of these:

Because I purchased two dresses this summer. One for wearing to a wedding and one because I found that first, and really liked it, so caved, but I couldn’t wear it to the wedding because it was black. So. Both dresses were on sale, though I’m not sure I really think that helps. (Well, it helps my finances, obviously, but not the “do not buy new clothes” angle.)

But the dress was sleeveless and, well, Scandinavian summers can be a bit unpredictable, so I decided I needed a bolero. And I had two of these tops in my wardrobe, one grey and one purple.

As they were too short for me in any case, and what do I need two pretty much identical tops for anyway, I chopped and spliced a bit on the purple one and got a bolero.

From the front:

And the back:

What I did, if you’re interested, was to cut off the frilly bit from the bottom, then cut a reasonable bolero shaped bottom hem free hand then sew the frilly bit back on. Very simple, but very effective, and frankly it looks much better on me as a bolero than it ever did as a top.

Another quilt done, and given away

August 23, 2009February 26, 2010 Mirthful Leave a comment

The scrappy hedgerow quilt is done and gone.

First, of course, it has to be bound. By hand. I guess I could do it with machine stitching, but, no.

Here it is in all its glory. And I forgot to snap a picture of the back… Oh, well.

As you can see, I did pretty simple quilting on this one – well, I had to do it myself, for one thing. Just straight lines, one wide masking tape width apart, except in the corner, where I did an A, as the recipient’s name starts with an A (I used masking tape to mark out the A, too, and just sewed around it).

The essence of whip-up

August 8, 2009August 8, 2009 Mirthful Leave a comment

So. We were at my parents’ house, guests were coming and it was simply way too hot for the jeans she was wearing when we left home that morning. I guess a two-year-old would have gotten away with running around in her diaper, but it did look kind of silly. But my mother, though she sews very little nowadays, can be counted upon to produce remnants when requested, and so was born the ultimate whip-up skirt.

You take:
– 1 piece of material, approximately 30cm x 75 cm
– 1 piece of elastic
– 1 sewing machine stuck in the backwards mode

And you sew. One seam up (backwards) the side. One seam around (backwards) to make a casing. Luckily the remnant had a selvedge, so I didn’t need to hem it.

It took, literally, ten minutes. And it looked d***d good, if I do say so myself. The only thing I’d have wanted to change (apart from the direction of the sewing) is the width. I think another 30 or so cm of material would not have been amiss, but I was winging it, after all.

More WIP

August 5, 2009August 5, 2009 Mirthful Leave a comment

This fabric makes me happy:

So does this:

And these:

Not to mention these:

And this?

This puts a big silly grin on my face. Don’t know why. In fact, I’m considering whether it would be an idea to make a dress out of that last one.

For now, though, I’m combining it with the rest of them, as well as this lovely thing:

And these two:

Inspired by the scrappy hedgerow blocks from Oh, Fransson!

Note to self: Don’t start a scrappy quilt with all new fabric. It defeats the point, sort of. I didn’t have scraps to start with, but boy do I have scraps now.

So you can imagine how happy this makes me:

Which will be a present for a very special little lady who’s getting Christened in a couple of weeks. It should give little eyes something to investigate.

I’m in a quandry as to size, though. It’s already too big for a “baby quilt”, and that’s intentional, as I want it to be useful for a few years. But it’s definitely a quilt for a child, with the fabrics I’ve chosen, so it certainly needs to be useable nowrather than in ten years time. So how big is TOO big for a baby/toddler? My blocks are slightly larger than the tutorial suggests, they’ll be 13.5″ when sewn, and I have 12 of them. Even without sashing it will be 40.5×54 if I use all the blocks, and I’m thinking it will look better with sashing. Also, I need to quilt this one myself, and although I was thinking masking tape and straight lines, I still need to get the middle under my needle. How much fabric can I bunch up under the sewing machine arm before it becomes unworkable, I wonder?

Well, I’ll have to decide soon, I should get most of the work done this weekend if I want to finish in time…

Etsy inspiration

August 4, 2009August 4, 2009 Mirthful Leave a comment

I’m in the middle of a new quilt project (pictures to come) and needed some input on sizing, so I thought I’d do an Etsy search to see what other people have done. And boy, have they. Done things, I mean. I was expecting drool-worthy stuff, I must admit, and I was not disappointed. Here’s a selection, saved for future inspiration:

baby patchwork quilt from olivetreetextiles

Modern Baby Quilt by Red Pepper Quilts (knitknat)Mrs. Roy G. Biv Quilt Pattern from CarolinaPatchworks

1-2-3.

Ok, so now I have a Jackson Five earworm. Sorry.

I just ordered this custom ABC for the lass printed from Shutterfly. A few sample pages:

A is for Ape:

B is for Baby:

C is for Chili:

M is for Max:

I tried to keep the design clean and uncluttered. The background paper is by Creashens and the print alpha by Cathrine, both acquired from Catscrap.

Some words pose more of a challenge than others. Chili, for example, though certainly an ingredient in some of the food she eats is not a word the lass actually knows – yet. Also, since my setup was the “studio” picture with a white background I needed things that could be photographed like that, which is where the Duplo comes in.

The other words on the page include the names of friends and family and other words the lass is likely to know starting with that letter, and colours. The colours are also indicated by the type colour. I thought that was quite clever myself.

All in all I’m pretty pleased, and very excited about seeing it in book form.

Category: Craftiness