2010 in Stitches

Well, that's 2010 nearly all sewn up (boom boom!) and I think I achieved a fair bit, sewing wise:

• I completed my Jacob's Ladder quilt top, started late 2009 and am part way through quilting it. It's taking a little longer than I originally expected mainly because I made the decision to hand rather than machine quilt. I have counted up, and I have completed 59 out of the 80 blocks. Estimated time spent hand quilting this so far = 24 hours. Yikes. Think I will stick to smaller projects and machine quilting.



• I have nearly completed quilt tops for both Gman and Waif.  Gman's red and black quilt centre is complete, and I working on some wonky square blocks for top and bottom borders (all will be revealed in time).  Waif's village quilt is waiting for a few more trees and lots more fences.



• I made a few mini quilts:  a beach hut themed one for my mum's caravan; a scrappy Army Star/Split Nine Patch for the back of the sofa and recently a little hexagon quilt for Waif's Guinea Baby toy.



• I made a start on a hexagon charm quilt.  Lost momentum a bit on this one TBH, but might pick it up again in the summer, cos I was very partial to sitting in the garden with these!  Bring on the summer.



• Made a nightie.  Think my dressmaking career endeth there ;-)



• Made a load more Morsbags...current tally stands at 137.



• Started to learn embroidery with the help of Sharon's Stitch Files.



• Bought an embellisher machine and made a few cloths with this, plus a couple of little pouches.



• Helped Gman to make two quilts himself, and Waif to make a little drawstring bag.

All in all a sewtastic year :-)

So, goals for 2011?!

• Get the Jacob's Ladder quilt quilted and bound - hopefully within the next two months.


• Complete quilt top for Gman.  Should have this done by the end of January, or hopefully earlier.  Then to decide how to quilt...?


• Complete Waif's liberated village quilt top.  This might take a bit longer...


• Continue learning to embroider with the help of the Stitch Files.


• Make something with a zip.  (this was a goal for 2010, but never seemed to have gotten round to it)


• Have a go at some free pieced letters a la Tonya Ricucci


• Make a journal quilt each month (in collaboration with a new quilty friend).  Watch this space for more info...

I also have a hankering to make an art doll after borrowing Jan Horrox's book from the library.  Yes, I quite possibly have lost the plot :-)

Basically, I just want to continue to learn all I can about quilting, embroidery and all things textile.  And to have fun doing it!

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

Morsbags

The arrival of the Morsbags winter newsletter spurred me into action and I whizzed up these two Morsbags this avo:



They have been cut out and ready to sew for far too long - think the sparkly stretchy material was putting me off, but it wasn't too bad to sew up after all and is a bit festive :-)

A Thrifty Week

Ooh, it's been an exciting week of bargains, charity shop finds and swapping stuff.

First of all I spotted this book for sale in a charity shop:



It has some sweet projects in it (though really not sure about the patchwork shower cap ;-)) and quite an extensive section on English paper piecing, including this picture of an antique English quilt from the 1830s which I could gaze at for hours:



Even better, there was a leaflet inside from The Quiltery (not dated) all about hexagons:



I was quite intrigued that both of these referred to simply backing the hexagon patchwork, rather than actually quilting it.

The second excitement of the week was receiving this fab selection of 2.5inch squares from a scrap swap on Flickr.  Thanks Jan!  25 more hexies for the price of a first class stamp!



And thirdly, drumroll please......................................................

I am now (thanks to a lovely lady on Freecycle) the proud owner of a 1940 Singer handcrank sewing machine.  70 years old and she works beautifully.  Can't wait to use her for some Morsbagging.

I have mostly been...

...making Morsbags



...and sewing hexagons:



I have decided to sew together hexies into individual flowers of similar colours as I go along so I don't have a huge task of sewing them all together at the end!  I am not sure how I will be arranging them but will just see when I've got enough, whether they look better grouped together by colour or laid out randomly.

100 Bags, a Dotty House and a Star is Born

First of all, I have to share my latest liberated house.  It has to be my favourite so far and is also Waif's favourite:



I loved the door so much I made a matching tree :-)

In other news, I have made four more Morsbags which takes Snoozepod's grand total up to 100. Yes, I have made 100 bags.  Woohoo!



I have decided to take a new direction with Gman's black and red quilt.  Since discovering the joy of liberated quiltmaking, the conventional stuff seems, well, a bit boring...so I have sewn together some of the log cabins I have already made into a star formation and I am going to transform into a medallion quilt, taking inspiration from Gwen and Freddy.  I think my first border will have to contain some liberated stars, then who knows where it will go from there..?

11 Days Without Broadband

And yes, I have been sewing!

Bits for Waif's quilt:



More blocks for Gman's log cabin (now have 25)



And of course, a few Morsbags - these are my faves:



Morsbags total is now up to 97, so I think I may have to sew three more pretty soon.

Warm and Fuzzy Morsbags Feelings

I must admit, I haven't been doing much Morsbagging lately, for a few reasons.  Firstly, because I have been so busy with my patchwork/quilting but secondly because I was beginning to feel that I had given one to everyone I could think of, and more than one to some people (!), and that I was too scared to hand them out willynilly on the streets!  My experience with Transition King's Lynn of trying to give things away for free (fresh veg in that instance) wasn't altogether a positive one.  People are very suspicious of free stuff!!

However, this week, I took a Morsbag in to Sara at Nourish Cafe (a local wholefood cooperative cafe) and she loved it and asked if I could let her have some to give to customers in the shop.  First off, she wanted to buy some, but I explained the ethos of Morsbags and the fact that it remained very important that they were given away for free.  She suggested putting a poster with them explaining Morsbags and that she would be happy for the cafe to act as a collection point for people to donate their unwanted curtains, sheets etc for future Morsbags.  Newly inspired, I set to work and made loads of  Morsbags this weekend:







The second warm, fuzzy Morsbagging incident occurred in the local sewing shop.  I was buying some blackout curtain lining for Gman's curtains and had a rummage through the remnants while I was there, looking for morsbaggable material.  The lady at the counter remembered before that I made bags from the bits and asked me about them - I happened to have a couple with me, which she exclaimed over "they're beautiful!" and "look at these, aren't they wonderful?" to passing customers and other staff.  So of course, I had to give her a bag (even though it was one of my personal faves lol) and she was gushingly happy with it :-).  I came away with a lovely glowing feeling of having made her day!

Morsbag tally is now up to 88 so think I will have to make a couple more this week, just to get to a nice round 90.

Mini Morsbagging and More Patchwork

I have had a session of mini-Morsbagging this week - that is, a session of making mini Morsbags, rather than a mini session of making Morsbags :-) Having unwrapped last week's Layer Cake, I couldn't quite bring myself to part with the woven Moda ribbon that tied it up, and thought it would make some handles for a little Morsbag, so I made a couple using the ribbon as handle, plus a couple more while I was in the mood.  Here they are:



Just the right size to take a paperback and some sunglasses to the beach.  Ha ha, chance and fine thing spring to mind!

Jacob's Ladder

I have made five more blocks for my Jacob's Ladder quilt:



Of course, it would have been six blocks, were it not for this "Whoops!" block!



I thought about unpicking it and sewing the units together again, the right way, but thought this might distort the material and mess it up, so I'm just going to keep hold of it, maybe use it in the backing or something.  It's a bit of a bugger, cos I think it's the neatest block I have sewn so far and it's got a couple of my fave fabrics in to boot.  Must pay more attention.  Must pay more attention.  Must pay more attention.

I have got four more four patch units ready to pair up with some half square triangles too:



Stay at Home Quilt

For those that saw this post, I conducted a poll amongst friends and family and option 5 was definitely the overall favourite so this is the one I went with.  Having looked at what I've done so far, I am sort of wondering whether to stop with one more border and turn it into a quilted cushion cover, rather than keeping going to make a full size quilt.  This is because (a) I want to get practising some actual quilting soon so a full size quilt isn't my first quilted project and (b) cos it looks so nice against the green of our new sofa:



I will wait and see what next month's magazine brings - if the border looks impossibly hard I might just put a plain border round and call it a day!

Birthday Layer Cake

I have been a lucky birthday sewist this year, receiving a Moda Layer Cake (Vine Creek) as well as a lovely book, "Layer Cake, Jelly Roll and Charm Quilts".   I have chosen a quilt to make from this selection, but haven't had the courage to cut into the fabric yet...

In other news, I have been feeling guilty about not making any Morsbags since before Christmas (especially as, in the last week, a good friend plus my sister in law have both made their first bags!) so I knocked a couple up this week.  After mainly concentrating on patchwork just lately, it was nice to start and finish a project in one sitting!  The green bag is made from pretty heavy curtain fabric which my old sewing machine would never have coped with, so it was great to hear the Pfaff sew through with barely a murmur :-)



I've made a decision about the Jacob's Ladder quilt, I am going with variant 5, but haven't actually sewn it yet.

And I have finished a second flower for my Grandmother's Garden Quilt.

The Story Sew Far...

To start off my new blog, I thought I would list all the things I have sewn so far.  Until I listed them, I hadn't realised quite how much I had done!!  So here goes...

• 65 Morsbags


• 5 treat bags


• a cushion cover


• a draught excluder


• 4 stuffed hearts


• a felt ghost


• 3 felt gnomes


• an angel for the christmas tree


• fabric bunting


• a wallet


• 6 patchwork coasters


• a bizarre patchwork animal


• 3 crayon rolls


• numerous beanbags (the s0rt you throw rather than the sort you sit on!)


• 2 pincushions


• a cloth sanitary pad


• a pink felt purse


• several patchwork greetings cards


• a pinny out of a teatowel

And did I mention the 65 Morsbags?!?!?