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?

An Oliver + S transformation

One Oliver + S size 5-12 Ice cream dress pattern


+

6.5m of sew in interfacing, several hours, a pen and a pair of scissors

=

A complete set (view A, B and C) in each size traced and ready to cut out.

Now I just need my machine and fabric out of the boxes!

Handsewing in the Hotel - Hexagons

I'm nothing if not a girl of contradictions. After not long ao declaring I didn't enjoy hand sewing now I've started a whole hand sewn project!

Generally, I’ve been busy the last week or so, the house was finally packed up and loaded on the truck, cleaned and then my Dad and I drove down to Melbourne with my dog to join my partner. Since we got here we have been looking for a house and signed a lease on Saturday for a house with room for a dedicated sewing space, I’m so excited!

Remember that ‘no new fabric until I’ve moved’ pledge? Well I almost kept it. As soon as the movers left I went down to the Remnant Warehouse sale. I justified it by needing something to do while I didn’t have access to my machine. I got some precuts and two different packs of Matilda’s Own Hexagon templates. I have since discovered there are a series of these (and am on the lookout for them) that each make 8.5inch hexagons across the widest point. They are designed to be used for machine or hand piecing but I have used them to make some English Paper Piecing templates and constructed them so far.

All of the pieces for each of the blocks will fit on a sheet of A4 cardstock and I have been cutting them form sheets of Whimsy layer cake I got in the sale. From 3 sheets I can get 2-3 blocks.

I completed this one first, I need to do another two of these with each of the colours in different positions but all the tiny triangles and diamonds are difficult to do and I can only get the point ‘pointy’ enough with the hair straightener method, but the tiny sixe leads to some burnt fingers!

These two were made with the same teamplate set but the templates offer two variations. Where as the first block took a week of short sessions these two came together in an evening. The bigger peieces certainly make the blocks go together more quickly but it is much harder to keep the pieces flat while basing when the edges are so long.

The plan is to keep these as a short hand sewing project, use up the layer cake and then see if I have enough blocks for a lap quilt.

September Block - Bee {a little bit} Japanese

September was Paula's month in this bee and she asked for wonky houses or other thinks to fit in a wonky town.

I had never made these before, and I was a little nervous about it. I love the look of wonky and improv blocks but the couple of times I had tried something similar it really didn't work out all that well, at least not in a way that I was happy with it. And after the less than finished block I sent back last month I was extra keen to do a good job.

I had seen this picture in Material Obsession but knew I didn't have the patience to even contemplate making a whole quilt.

But, in the last few days before the movers and packers came I needed to get it done and posted before I didn't have access to my machine and I needed a little bit of a creative time out.

So early one morning, and I mean early, I had another look at the great instructions Paula pointed us to, too a deep breath and cut and sewed...

I had had the idea I wanted to make a block that depicted the house I lived in until I was 12, a farmhouse that had been in my father's family for three generations. It had a distinctive green roof, paddocks to one side, a giant green yard and a huge orchard to the other side.

I came up with this

The green roof. It was the feature that was always described to anyone new coming to out house for the first time. The doors and windows in this house blend, because the door was hardly ever shut and absolutely never locked and the window was a giant one that overlooked a small garden. The little red strip is a small step that was in front of the door. There was a big orchard to the side of the house where the peas are now growing, this iscoincidently  the first seed type I ever remember planting in the veggie patch. The path between the big grass yard is littered with toys as my brother and sister and I often played there (you can see us through the doorway too). There was a small garden to the other side of the house from the orchard and a big paddock where out pet sheep lived. The sky at night had heaps of visible stars as there was no competing light to block them out....

I was much more inprovisational with this block, piecing together the scraps of the other block to make the second house.
I think it has turned out to be a very elaborate play house, with the dolls inside, some outside on the porch and a little flower garden in the front. It's also exceptionally ecofriendly, with a rooftop veggie garden.

All in all I enjoyed making these blocks - I don't know why I was worried!

Happy Campers Quilt

Remember the stack of pin-based quilts?

This was the quilt that inspired me to pull them all out and baste them before we packed. At least I had been thinking about it and this was one I pulled out, basted and started quilting a week or so earlier.

This was the first quilt I made without a pattern (I think) not that a pattern is really required with such a simple design.

I had bought a charm pack of the Happy Campers fabric by American Jane for Moda Fabrics and some quilting linen that I thought looked OK with it and kind of matched the asthetic of the print.

I really had no idea what I was going to do with it. This charm pack was the first in my foray into the world of pre-cuts and I also didn't really know how far they would go. I had bought Pam Linnott's book that included patterns for charm packs for some inspiration but quickly realised I should have look at the patterns more clearly before I bought the mfabric because I was going to need more than one charm pack to make a decent sized quilt. Unfortunaly by the time I realised couldn't find any more fabric bacause the range was reasonably old and no stores seemed to have any in stock.

So I cut all the squares in half (chopping of a head or two in the process) and paired them all with a rectangle of the linen cut slighly fatter to yield a 5" square. I joined 4 of these units together to make a block with the two halves of the original charm square opposite each other and the colours forming a pinwheel effect.

The backing was the next hurdle, I ordered so Happy Camper fabric online not realising it was a different range to the Happy Campers and the colours were quite different. Then one day I was lucky enough to stumble across some yardage online and I snapped up all that was left, which was just enough for the backing and a very narrow binding.

I outline quilted just inside each positive and negative pinwheel, which alarming looked early on in the quilting to cause little swastikas on the back. I was telling myself it was actually a symbol that meant good but then it disappeared as more of the quilting covered the back. Phew I'm not sure I wanted an ambiguios symbol on the back of my quilt.

I bound it by machine using a tutorial from Red Pepper Quilts. It is not the first time I have machine bound a quilt but it is the first time I have approached being happy about the way it has turned out. I do really love the suggestions for joining the last join and then sewing down the last part of the binding to the front but I would recommend leaving every bit as large a gap a recommeded, especially with a larger quilt. Rita's suggestion about starting with the larger binding width also appeared to have merit, with my narrow binding there were quite a few areas that I had to go back over as the stitching had missed the binding edge but i didn't have this problem with two other quilts I bound the same way the same morning using a wider binding strip.

Progress on a UFO - The Seasons Quilt

I started this quilt more than a year ago, and had been thinking about making it for a few months before that but, almost as soon as I had started piecing it a hit some stumbling blocks and all work seemed to cease.


My quilt is based on this pattern in the second book from Material Obsession. Material Obsession: Shared Inspiration is filled with two quilts made around each theme, with one being made by both ladies from Material Obsession the store.

In the beginning the quilt seemed meant to be. I bought the book on the basis of this pattern, mostly. While I already had their first book, and really found it inspiring, I saw this one at just the right time. I had spent the afternoon at a professional development session (I am a psychologist and work exclusively in schools) learning about a program that I was to implement based on seasons.  A lot of time was spent talking about developing environment in which the group was to be run. When I saw this pattern I thought {insert light bulb picture here}. I had this lovely idea of using the quilt to set the scene and having the participants from each of the groups over the years writing or embroidering their names on the back.

I knew I would have to alter some of the colours chosen to reflect the seasonal colours represented in the program and not to use so much purple but I thought those differences were easily accommodated and it was an achievable project.
[incidentally there is so much feature purple fabric in this quilt because it is the theme of this pair of quilts in the book. It is a Kaffe Fassett print, he handed it to the girls and challenged them to come up with a design around the feature fabric, or so it says in the book]

And so I bought the fabric, choosing browns to go with all the colours was not easy but I did it. And I sewed the 'leaves' of the trees and cut out the templates for the trunks.

And then I started the applique. I didn't think it would be a problem. I already knew I generally don't enjoy hand sewing but I can do it, it is fiddly and takes time but I find if I take the time I need and don't cut the thread too long in principle it isn't that difficult. But I don't enjoy it. I really didn't enjoy sewing the trunk I have already done. The trunks have a lot of sewing in them and a lot of really narrow branches and lots of corners and curves.

And I'm stuck as to what I'll use in the wedge sashing (between the brown that I have cut out but am not that attached to) and as the border.


For the backing I'd still like to use the signature idea, maybe having a pieced back and having a strip down one side of signature blocks without signatures in them, a sash and then the rest of the back in a solid piece. But what solid piece?


I still really want to finish this quilt. The idea of how it can be used when finished is still appealing and the techniques needed to finish are within my grasp. It is the motivation to get over the mental block about the hand sewing that I need to overcome.

My plan at the moment is to finish the applique when I am stuck in the hotel in Melbourne while we are looking for a new house and I'm without my sewing machine. But then again it was my plan to finish the hand sewing when we were in Perth for a few weeks last Christmas visiting family as well.


Hopefully, inspiration will strike in the meantime about the wedges and the backing, unless any of you have any ideas....

A stack of pin-basted quilts

I know I'm breaking a quilter's rule folding quilts after they have been basted and before they have been quilted but they have to go in a box somehow.


One of my goals for this past weekend was to get this stack of quilts based, and I've done it. I have had a pile of pieced tops sitting around since the April school holidays were I got as little excited and pieced a whole lot of tops. I had the vague idea that I would quilt one a weekend but somehow, on a Saturday or Sunday morning when there were other things to do moving all the furniture to base them on the floor was not the most attractive option.


But I did have all the bits for them and I really wanted to deplete the big roll of batting I had so it didn't need to get packed on the roll. So on Sunday afternoon I swept and mopped the floor, moved all the furniture and success!


Now I just have to work out how to quilt each of them, because I want to do that before starting anymore big quilt projects.

This first quilt is a twin size with a whole cloth backing that was bought at 250cm wide in a mottled grey. This is the second time that I have made this pattern, which was one of the free ones that Spotlight used to post on their website from time to time to coincide with a new fabric range they had in store. At the time I bought and made this quilt I was also planning to make a quilt for my friend to celebrate the birth of her first baby. Because that was a present I didn't want all the learning and practicing to be on the gift so I made this one for my partner (he really is just a big kid when it comes to pirates). So it was the first quilt I ever pieced but the second I ever quilted. Both the first two quilts I made were hand quilted in perle cotton, this one in the ditch around all the outer and inner squares and the Xs across the small squares and 2 across the smaller rectangles. Now I am a more confident with machine quilting I was thinking of outline quilting the squares and doing the same Xs on the machine.

This quilt was made with the best part of a layer cake, A Breath of Avignon by American Jane for Moda Fabrics, and a pattern from Layer Cake, Jelly Roll and Charm Quilts by Pam Lintott. I was thinking of quilting two parallel lines down each of the sashing strips and then echo lines inside the 'flowers' to simulate petals. It is a small quilt so I think that may be manageable on the machine.

This is another quilt made from a pattern in another of Pam's books, Jelly Roll Quilts. I scaled the size down and so had jelly strips left over for the border and some blocks used in a pieced strip down the back. The fabric used is Make Life for Moda. I think I'll outline quilt each of the coloured squares, some will overlap a little but I think it will look great. This is one of my favourite tops I've made to date.  

This simple square in square design was not made from a pattern, but I bought the fabric especially to make a 'boy' quilt. This one is backed on the print that is the outer border of the second block from the left on the bottom row so I think I'll, once again, outline quilt the blocks (I'll end up with those narrow parallel lines again) and then stitch across the blocks diagonally to reflect the spokes on the fabric print. This thing I can't decide about this quilt is what colour thread to use. A blending brown would be the most obvious choice for the outline stitching on the top but this won't blend into the back (and I don't seem to have much luck with different top and bottom thread colours) and choosing something for the diagonal lines is tricky!

I had just enough pins to baste this last quilt, although a little less heavily than I normally would. This was made with an Attitude Girls for Moda jelly roll from a pattern in Pam's third book Jelly Roll Inspirations. I think I might quilt inside the stars for this one and then I would like to stipple in the coloured 'block' sections but this is a skill I'm yet to feel comfortable in my level of mastery with. Perhaps I'll just have to practice on some smaller projects first. This one in backed in blue dots on white from the range with a strip made from the trimmed corner squares.


Phew, that should keep me busy for awhile! If anyone has any suggestions about the quilting please let me know. I won't be able to start on these for at least a few weeks....