Emily's Quilt...Chapter 2 and a half!!

...in which I finish the centre piece!! Yay!!! This is really just an "add-on" post to yesterday's...as I ran out of time to finish it off...So this morning on managed to squeeze in a bit of sewing...

...As I was joining the rows together I found it easier to manage by rolling the fabric and pinning...this way it was easier to manoeuvre through the sewing machine...

I know the finished item is promised to my daughter...but I am loving the colours in this one...so vibrant and "spring-like"...Next step is edging...and then I need to read and learn how to layer my quilt...oh and buy the materials needed...batting and backing...

Plus I have now got together a pack of fabrics ready to start a quilt for my son...I am hoping he will like the colours and patterns I have chosen...I am toying with a hexagon quilt...like this one that my sister in-law is currently making...

All of the above materials were from Kate's shop M is for Make...aren't they fabulous!?! Well that's all on the quilting front so far...next up...side and top panels...keep watching and reading...

Emily's Quilt...Chapter 2...

...in which I actually get some sewing done!! I made the conscious decision to crack on with Emily's quilt this week...I knew we were going to be eating "Out of the Freezer" for the majority of the week (As in eating all the frozen 'other halves' of the meals cooked in the last fortnight or so...) which meant I would be freed up to sew!!

Emily's Quilt...an update...

...Hmmm it's been a while since I got all excited about making a quilt for my eldest...Chapter 1 is here...In the interim period, time and life has passed us by at an astonishingly high speed, we are now 2 months down the line and all I have managed to do is wash the squares of fabric (84 of them)...

 Make a mess doing it...luckily I had the sense to bag the squares in an old pillowcase before popping them in the machine!!

However, the temporary stitches I put through them to hold the rows in their order (which I thought was a great idea) didn't work, so I now have 84 separate charm squares once more...!! At least I took a photo of the order they were in before washing!!

So my next jobs are trimming all the threads that are hanging from the squares and re-ordering the rows before starting to join them...hopefully next week will give me a few moments to crack on with it...don't give up on me...keep watching...this UFO will not get the better of me!! 

Emily's Quilt...Chapter 1...

Now that the pillow mat is finished I have a sewing gap in my life...although as I mentioned before I need a new cover for my sewing machine...but Emily (the 10  year old female smallish person) has a different idea! After visiting her cousins last weekend and seeing this...I was asked if I can make one for her...now I am going to start slowly (remember I am still wearing those L-plates on my sewing machine!) and have cheated by buying got a couple of charm packs from Moda, the lovely fresh colours from Kate Spain in her 'Good Fortune' series of fabrics...Emily 'helped' me lay them all out the other day to design her quilt...the results are below...

The Bag, part 4...

...The Bag becomes cushions!!


After yesterday's sewing, it became quite clear to me that The Bag was to be a bag no more! In fact when she came in from school, my 10 year old decided she would quite like to have the cushions for her bedroom!


So what happened today?...

 This...First of all, I want to show you the wrong side of the two cushion fronts...As this is the first real thing I have made using my sewing machine, (I really am a complete novice!!) I am really chuffed with how neat it all looks...yes, I know you don't see it when made up, but it just gives me a little sense of pride!!

The bag part 2...

...an update on how my patch bag is coming along...


Right where had we left off? Oh yes, I was in the middle of the decorative stitching on the first flower (the Cath Kidston one)...well this is what it looks like now...

As I think I said before, I was only going to use either a simple straight stitch, or a simple chain stitch as embellishments on the petals... 

...so that is exactly what I have done...

Taking the next step...sewing wise! The Bag Part 1...

Spurred on from the cute owls I have finally opened my copy of Cath Kidston's "Patch" and got as far as step 7. The original pattern and materials allows you to make either a dresden plate cushion or (as I have chosen) a dresden plate tote bag. The book came with enough materials to make a one-sided unlined tote bag...and as you know by now, I love to tweak things and make them my own. So I used yet more of the fabric from M is for make to duplicate the flower design on the other side of the bag. I'm currently thinking I prefer this side than the original one...









This is the side I prefer...the trickiest bit so far was actually more time-consuming than tricky, tacking the petals to paper inserts to get the shape sorted.

The original design...After all this hand stitching I think it might be worth investing in a thimble!