St Nikoulas Swap

Oh No! this was supposed to post automatically yesterday and there seems to have been a glitch. Please mentally take a step back in time and pretend it is the 6th of December as you read this.

For those of you not from recent Central European descent, like myself, a quick explanation of St Nikolaus/Nicholas/Nikola (St N for short from here) day.

Depending on the country in which you are celebrating the tradition St N's feast day, the 6th of December, is also a day where children are given presents (in the same vein at Santa visiting children who have been good all year) as, among other groups St N is the patron saint of children.

St N and Santa : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Nicholas#Central_Europe

Although this day falls early in the Advent season the gift giving has little to do with Christmas. for children that have not been good they receive, instead a visit from Krampus, he will leave a rod for the children to be disciplined with. Depending on the country or family traditions may of these details, including the date, may be different. Gifts are left in the child's boot, left near a window or some other accessible area.


Krumpus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krampus

In case you are wondering, in the experience of my friends who grew up in these areas this is your gift for this time of the year, Santa doesn't come 3 weeks later.
It just so happens that my partner comes from one of the Central European countries, that he doesn't 'get' gift giving at Christmas times but loves this tradition, and that St N's day also happens to be his Name Day (another long story for another day). So when I saw this swap I wanted to join, I thought about how busy I would be around this time, how many other things I wanted to be making over the last few months and how it might make me really stressed, and then I joined anyway.

It was only a small swap, 14 people and most were from America, as seems to be the case in Flickr swaps. But the person I was making for happened to be the Swap Mama, from Germany.

Which meant a few things, 
1. I couldn't post sneak peaks - Anything I showed my partner would instantly know was for her. 
2. I had to make a decision if I was going to go with the Christmas (St Nicholas American style) theme that was developing or make items I thought my partner would like, not necessarily Christmas-y, which was my understanding of her original plan for the swap. Her inspiration email helped a little, as did some of her early descriptions for the swap. 

I decided to go with a mix of Christmas and everyday, with the focus on everyday. 

So this post is pictures of what I made, for my partner to see. As there was a slight mix-up with the addresses I couldn't post until the last minute and with the distance and the Christmas mail is probably a few weeks away.  Hopefully these pictures will deliver some excitement during the wait.

The first item is a decorative reindeer, from a pattern by Melly & Me.

Hopefully he or she can adorn an area and watch over the Christmas festivities. As my partner has young children I left off the buttons for safety and made the horns a little shorter for durability.

My partner also suggested something for the sewing corner, and I came up with this mat to protect the table from the machine vibrations. 

It has this cute vintage tape fabric for borders on two sides, and plaid style straight line quilting on the machine surface.  

 

The right hand side has a little removable pin cushion that can be removed by undoing the buttons for carrying to the ironing board or cutting table as well as a little pocket some some small snipping scissors.

Hope you like it partner!

The final sewn item is a magic cushion featuring a linen fabric that my partner said she liked to add to the extensive cushion collection she mentioned. The blocks that make up the cushion are reasonable geometric and show off the linen well. It is a large lap size and includes a pocket for folding at the back. This doubles as a great foot warmer when having a little rest under it!

Front



Back

The undone view is a surprise!

The package is all labelled with these cards, I sewed some fabric to some card stock and wrote on the card side.

There are a few little extra bibs and bobs in the envelope as well, so careful when opening!

Now to wait patiently for my own package to arrive. Unfortunately it looks like there will be a little delay on this too but good to know so I don't scare the mailman with my stalking!

Scrappy Mug Rugs - A happy Sunday

A little while ago I joined the Scrappy Mug Rug Swap group on Flickr. And about 10 days ago I got my partner for the second swap round, my first.   

I have been spending the time since then playing around with some ideas.

Last weekend I made these...trying out some design ideas.

I made this one just for me....cause I never do that.

I really like the back too.

I think I have finalised the design for the Swap rug, and I know how I want to quilt it. Now I just need to choose the fabric and make it!  

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.