...a quilt for K

It is a strange thing. Over the Christmas/New Year 2011/12 break we had in Perth I blogged a lot. The most recent break - hardly at all. 

Which means that although I took (sometimes pretty ordinary pictures) of all of the gifts that I made they have't made it here. In the last few days I have been cleaning out my camera and temporary image folders and come across them again so I think there may be a few catch-up posts!

I have a group of friends that have been friends since high school. Since then we have remained friends through extended international trips, interstate moves, weddings, children - pretty much the events of life that can lead a friendship from teen years to fizzle. Because we are all origionally from pretty much the same place we all tend to end up back in Perth at the same time for big events, like Christmas with some additions since high-school of partners and children. 

In the last few years we have implemented a 'not-so-secret-Santa' gift swap over lunch in the week between Christmas and New Year. This year K was to be my gift recipient. She had mentioned earlier in the year that she might like a quilt for Christmas and I have a sneaking suspicion the Santa drawing was not so random this year. 

The inspiration for this quilt came from a shopping center floor - I was sitting having something to eat in IKEA and looking down at the floor below and snapped this image. 

After a couple of different design options were tossed about in my mind (all squares on point or 9 rectangle blocks?) I made a decision and went about choosing fabrics that were true-ish to the image and would match K's couch. 

Once the top was complete I quilted the 'tiles' into the background with cross hatch squares and hand quilted inside each of the 'pattern tiles' in perle thread.

Because it was a gift I thought is also needed a gift bag. This is from Melody Miller's Ruby Star Wrapping - with a few variations.

Because I used batting scraps rather than the fusible fleece in the pattern I quilted the outer and batting layers. On the top I used the spots as star centres and quilted the petals in.

On the base and the bottom of the sides I quilted squares around each of the circles.

Pressed into service immediately! Later discovered to be 'fully machine washable' and with proper pre-wash prep strawberry doesn't stain!

SMS Rec'd: Quilt down, Quilt down!

...The Circle Game: Episode 1

Ages and ages ago (about August 2011, I think) I signed up for the second round of the Circle Game BOM by Amitie textiles.

I got block one, I was determined to sew it by machine. After 3-4 goes I had this. It isn't perfect and I wish the points met better in the middle but I couldn't use any more of the fabric on another try!

I started on Block 2 and it was immediately obvious to me that there was a reason it was suggested that this quilt be pieced by hand.

So as the packages came and I stacked them dutifully in their Circle Game box. Sometime last year I figured that it was about time that I do something with them. After the hand piecing lesson and a few more weeks spent convincing myself it was possible a re-started block two and have been working sporadically but with determination since then.

Quite a few blocks were done over the Christmas and New Year break in Perth, including on the flight over.
I am more confident with the strength of the hand sewn seams now than I was (which was really what was holding me back) and I think that the more I sew the more small and even my stitches will become and the stronger the seams will be.

I'm working on Block 8 now - almost halfway done with the blocks! Which reminds me...I should take some more pictures...

...having a go at hand piecing

On the last school holidays (or is could have been the ones before - these things tend to get away from me) a  took a few days of work and worked my way through a reasonable jam packed 'Crafty things I would like to do/try that I never have time for'. It was the best holiday I have had for a long time - at home, with purpose.

One of the things I did was attend a class on hand piecing at Amitie with Jenny. I have been interested in hand piecing for a little while but apart from the EPP projects I hadn't sewn anything together with just needle and thread (ie sans machine).

Frankly, I didn't trust my stitches to hold up over time - even just the time to get the top together, let alone quilting and years of use. And I couldn't bear to think of it falling apart as I was sewing or soon after and have all the hours of stitching wasted.

The class lasted the morning and I took along a small bundle of fabric and a new acquired pattern (Galaxy by Trish Harper) that specifically recommended hand piecing and the normal odds and sods of sewing. To that bundle I added a new 1/4 wheel, a sandpaper board and and needles recommended for hand piecing.

And the process was much as I had imagined but a little demonstration and encouragement can go a long way when you are learning something new. I pieced the center section of one star that day and have just now started working on it again. It think this block will became a cushion cover as I am not quite convinced with the fabric choices I have made for this one.

But in the meantime of course I bought the Green Tea and Sweet Bean pattern booklet and starter pack and I have started it!

I've drawn around the templates and then added the seam allowance as directed and stitched and stitched and now I have the first block for this quilt.

My two biggest decisions with this new technique developing now are
1. What project to take with me to Perth over the Christmas break, Green Tea and Sweet Beans or the unfinished Circle Game?
2. How I am possibly going to find time to start, let alone finish even half of the hand piecing projects I how have my eye on!

...another Hexy MF update

On Friday night I sewed the last (with the exception of a few for the borders) of the flowers. There are 70 there - seven in each of the fabrics.

For those that are mathematically minded interested (I am sure the minded can work it out for themselves) that is 490 basted 1.5" hexies and 8820" of hand sewn seam. 

I spent some time at the inaugural Sew Shells event laying them out on the floor and mixing them up until I was happy with the placement (there were a couple of changes after this picture was taken but it is the one I am working from)

The background is ordered (Robert Kaufman Quilter's Linen in Beige) along with some samples for the stems and leaves.

Better get to adding more columns to these to then!

...Green Tea and Sweet Beans

So yesterday I went to pick up my pattern and 'starter' pack from Amitie.

I am really really looking forward to starting this one but I am thinking of completing it by hand so I am making myself finish a few things first to free up a project box.

I don't know about starter - there sure is a lot of fabulous fabric in there! 

Can't wait!

My sewing evolution – Book review with some navel gazing

The past week or so have seen me in Melbourne with not as much to do as I thought I would have on my plate. Don’t get me wrong, I have been busy and there is still a lot to do but we are sort of a bit stuck until it can be arranged to get all our furniture and boxes out of storage and the unpacking and homemaking can begin in earnest. This is the time I thought I would frantically be looking for a place to live and then arranging leases and unpacking but the house and lease part happened almost as soon as I got here and now we are just waiting (somewhat impatiently on my part) for the unpacking.



I’ve kept myself busy though, visiting IKEA looking for storage and furniture ideas for the new sewing room (if anyone knows a good furniture op shop in the St Kilda to Chadstone area please let me know. I need a new sewing table and the kitchen table I used before was great but is still needed in the dining room to eat dinner off…) and finding my new locals, quilt shops, bookshops, Spotlight and shopping centres. That sort of thing.


I picked up a new book for a quilt shop, Amitie in Bentleigh, dangerously close to where we live for my bank balance. Weekend Sewing: More than 40 projects and ideas for inspired stitching by Heather Ross wasn’t an impulse purchase. I saw it one afternoon when I quickly ducked into the store as I had been driving past. Not as strange as it seems, the store was recommended to me and I had a spare few minutes. I didn’t get it then, rather I went back again the next morning, bought some fabric and left without it after some consideration, only to go back again that afternoon to claim it for myself.

I’m not really sure what drew me to it; I think it may have been the large number of projects and the glimpses through the book of many of Heather’s very early fabric designs. It could have been that many of the projects were clothing, I’ve been on a bit of a clothing kick lately but none of those are the reasons I love it so much now.


It really comes down to the two page introduction, which I, somewhat shamefully, admit to reading stopped at successive sets of traffic lights on the way back to the hotel after buying it.


Heather talks about learning to sew knit and craft as a child and how, as she grew to adulthood the time for getting lost in sewing was overtaken by life deadlines and responsibilities. I’m paraphrasing and I hope she doesn’t mind, but this is the message that stuck in my mind. She goes on to explain that the book’s name ‘Weekend Sewing’ is in reference to her idea that some of her sewing time is just for her, for fun and not for commercial interests and in her mind this is called weekend sewing.


And now for the navel gazing. This struck a huge chord for me. I don’t remember learning to sew, or knit though I can do both, knitting less well than sewing. Since I have started to sew a lot more in the last year or so, and since I have started reading blogs and especially since I started writing this one, I have tried to remember when I acquired these skills.


I do remember getting by first pair of knitting needles (they are a fat purple pair, about 15cm long and came in a pack with an equally fat crochet needle); I just don’t remember how old I was. Certainly less than eight. I also remember helping to sew my school uniforms (by actually sewing seams), one in particular I wore in year one, which I started when I was five. I remember tracing out multi size patterns for Mum and cutting fabric for clothes for me, my younger brother and sister for her to sew later. I know I made dolls clothes, first for my dolls and later for an antique doll that was my great aunts, then my mum’s and now mine. I distinctly remember this one because I did it, taking over from Mum when I got frustrated she was taking so long. This is the first quilt I made, sometime when I was at uni, for my dog when she was still a puppy, I didn’t realise then that it was a quilt though.

I took sewing at high school but I stopped after the second year, everyone else was still learning to thread the machine and finish a seam when I had finished the whole garment. I didn’t feel challenged.


But as I went to uni, and then when I started working I stopped sewing. There was the odd project, some curtains for a friend, a costume for my parents wedding anniversary party but for the most part the machine was packed away in it’s own case and stored away in the spare room.


Then last year my friend announced she was pregnant and I sewed up a storm. It happened to coincide with a purchase of a new machine. This might seem a strange purchase given what I have just said but my mum bought herself a new machine, gave her used, but not old one, to my sister who live a short drive away and gave me some money specifically to buy a new machine. And so, with a purpose for sewing and a new machine that was not so loud you wondered if there was a whole room of machines sewing at once I had means and a motive. It could have stopped there but then my partner told me about Etsy and then I found blogs and flickr. The motive stayed and I discovered a community spirit, but most of all I had rediscovered the enjoyment that creating something gives me, and the sense of calm and wellbeing I get while sewing and on finishing a project.


I don’t think it is a feeling I could describe well to others, especially others that don’t sew or craft. In fact I’m sure it isn’t, because I’ve tried. I work long hours, often 10 full on hours a day but a few seams, a finished quilt block, a look or email of gratitude, refreshes me in a way that sleep, watching TV or doing some other stationary traditionally considered ‘rest’ activity can’t.


But that is my weekend sewing moments, after work, on the weekend, in the evening and even once or twice very early in the morning. It’s obviously not all, or even the only thing, I find re-energizing and invigorating. I is, however, one of them, an important one, and I hope I can continue to find the time to ‘weekend sew’ and not forget the enjoyment it gives me again.


So I thank Heather, and her book for echoing my thoughts so well in her introduction, for 40 projects and much inspiration. I’m planning a shirt for some lucky little boy

Pair of slippers for each of our Christmas time guests

A zippered bag, just cause you can never have too many of them

And a pair of garden gloves, just because they are cool, and because I have a great new garden.

Do you think if a made a pair for my partner as well he would garden for the second time in 10 years and help me out?