Christmas Through the Year - December

Sorry about the terrible photo, but it's evidence, right?

I whipped up this little drawstring lingerie bag for a certain person, who shall remain nameless in case she reads this! There's some pretty undies to go inside of course...



Hop on over to Allie's blog to see what other folks have made this month.

Fenced In is Finally Finished

Ooh, I do like a nice bit of alliteration.

Yes, Waif's quilt "Fenced In" is finally complete and on his bed. He is chuffed to bits with it, and so am I. It has to be my favourite quilt so far (sssh, don't tell his brother). A bit tricky to get a photo that shows it off in all its glory so here are three:



After months of laboriously and lovingly hand quilting with pearl cottons, I passed it on to the Binding Fairy (aka my mum, aka Spidergran) to sew the binding on. Didn't she do a great job?

This is the first time I have used a pieced backing on a quilt and I quite like that too:



although sometimes the multiple seams did make it a bit tricky to get the quilting thread through.

In other news, I knocked up a little penguin Christmas ornament:



We have all been enjoying watching the BBC's Frozen Planet and Waif in particular has formed quite a love for penguins. I thought it only fitting that we should have some penguin ornaments to hang on the tree. I stumbled across A Creative Dream blog and June is sharing 15 days of 15 ornaments, including two penguin ornaments amongst others (santas, snowmen, moons, an angel...they are all gorgeous). The tutorial for this particular penguin can be found here although you may notice I have made a couple of lazy stitcher amendments...French knots instead of beads for eyes, and my penguin has a plain scarf...

Waif likes it anyway:

Christmas Through the Year - November

Yay, I finally got round to finishing my last Chrismtas name panel! I procrastinate terribly when it comes to finishing off projects - I hate binding - but then find it never takes as long as I think it's going to take.

Anyway, here it is, just in time for November's Christmas Through the Year challenge:



Check out what other folks have been making here. And a big thanks to Allie for hosting the Christmas Through the Year challenge! I never would have managed to get all these presents made without the encouragement and support of being part of this challenge.

Christmas Through the Year - August

This month I made another name panel for the Christmas Through the Year challenge:



I have now made panels for 5 out of 6 of my nieces and nephews. I just have Harry to go...

This week I also made a little present for a friend who has been poorly. It's a housewife needle case and the pattern is from Kathleen Tracy's book "Remembering Adelia". I didn't make it in civil war repros, as you can see!



Inside:



It may have been a mistake to use a directional print though, as the teapots and cups are upside down on the front (but not the back!) - doh!

I enjoyed making this and my friend loves it, so I'm thinking I might make a bunch of these for sewing friends for Christmas. Watch this space!

Christmas Through the Year - June - Gift Tags

I'm a bit embarrassed by my paltry contribution to CTTY this month, but every little helps, right? And anyway this is counted thread embroidery and it takes ages. Well, it takes me ages anyway ;-)Eagle eyed readers might spot a few miscounted threads...I prefer to think of this as 50 stitches in the right place rather than 1 or 2 in the wrong place!





The trees were from a cushion pattern in an old blackwork book.

For some real inspiration, including Allie's super cute Christmas pudding decoration, head on over here.

Christmas Through the Year - May

Phew, another nephew's name panel finished for this month:





This time, instead of sewing on a hanging sleeve, I did "fast triangle corners" as recommended by the Alzheimers Art Quilt Initiative. The quilt is just a little one, 13 x 10 inches, so think this will be a fine and dandy way to hang it.

I have now made name banners for four of my six nieces and nephews - just Charlie and Harry to go.

Hop on over to Allie's blog to check out what all the other Christmas Through the Year participants have been crafting up.

And talking of challenges, I have decided that I will join in with Daisy Yellow's Index-Card-a-Day challenge this summer. The idea is to do something creative on an index card each day throughout the summer - be it drawing, painting, doodling, poetry etc. The boys will also be joining in on this one, so I will be posting updates on this blog as well as on my home education blog here. Why not join in too? It's achievable and should be fun :-)

Christmas Through the Year - March Finish

I have finished Ellie's name panel!



I ended up machine quilting cos the hand quilting spider's web with pearl cotton I tried went a bit pear shaped. I think the lines and spots on the fabric made me too cross eyed ;-)

I feel like I need a break from making name panels, so will be doing something different for April's present...watch this space...

Unruly Letters for My Unruly Niece!

I've pieced the letters for my next Christmas name banner. This one is for my niece, Ellie. Ellie is a bit of a pink princess - but more warrior princess than Disney princess :-)- and she loooooooves bugs, so this pink spider fabric is just perfect for her. I might even hand quilt this one, cos I've been itching to have a go at some Baptist fans but too scared to try on a big quilt. So, I'm thinking pearl cotton (what else?!) but should I go for pink cotton, white, or a different colour entirely? Hmmmm....decisions, decisions. What on Earth did I spend my time thinking about before I started quilting?!

Christmas Through the Year - February

This month, I made a couple of Christmas presents. The first was a couple of luggage tags (posted about here) and I have also made this name panel for my nephew, Ewan:



My sister reckons he'll be thrilled with it cos it's hard to get hold of things with his name on in the States as the name isn't popular over there. Let's hope he likes it as much as I enjoyed making it :-)

Christmas Through the Year - a February Finish!

First day of February and my first gifts for this month are completed.  I made two luggage tags, using some lovely African fabric I bought last year.  The directions for making the tags were in one of the free Quilting Arts ebooks. 





Not sure who they are for yet...maybe whichever of my jet setting family or friends shout "meeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!" the loudest ;-)

Christmas Through the Year - First Finish

Thanks to Allie, I have been motivated to start making Christmas presents early for this year!

And on 25th January, 11 months ahead of time, I completed this:



It's a name panel for my youngest niece. Here's the back, showing a hanging sleeve so she can put it on her door, her wall, or wherever:



I hope she likes it.

As this was such a small piece, I was able to quilt by machine and thanks to a top tip from my mum, was able to quilt a pattern onto the black fabric without having to mark. You trace your pattern onto greaseproof paper, pin that onto the quilt then just sew right throught it. When you're done, you can just tear it away. How cool is that?

Not Very Unruly Letters

I had my first go at making some unruly letters a la Tonya.  It's the beginnings of a name panel for my niece:



I think it's maybe a little bit toooooo ruly!  And I'm not altogether happy with the Y...should have used wider strips for the top part...but I'm liberated, she's 3 years old, who's judging?!!

I am planning on making little name panel quilts for nieces and nephews for next Christmas so hopefully I will get this one quilted, embellished and blinged up in time for the end of January to share over on Allie's blog.  Then I can start on the others.  I did Lily's first because she has the shortest name - lazy, moi?

Birthday, Books, Bargains and...Christmas

Oh well, the alliteration nearly worked...

As some of you might know, I've just celebrated my birthday and I do like to treat myself to some new books in honour of the occasion :-) This year my chosen books were Tonya's "Word Play Quilts" (of course!) and a fabulous book called "Creative Quilting".  Added to that, mum bought me Gwen Hedley's "Drawn to Stitch" which is full of innovative ideas to try.

The Creative Quilting book is all about Journal Quilts and is full of eye candy like this:


Together with a new home-ed friend, I am going to make a journal (8" x 10") quilt for each month of 2011 and this book is chock-a-block  with inspiration.  Each quilt illustrated has a brief description of the story behind the quilt, some with techniques used too.  It truly is a lovely book and one I would thoroughly recommend to anyone interested in art quilts.

So, that's Birthday and Books...now on to Bargains.  Each month our local library has a used book sale.  I have no idea how they decide which books to sell, because I have previously bought books from them that seem in perfect condition.  This month's bargain book was the best yet.  It is this hardback book of Embroidery Techniques and Projects:



I have borrowed it from the library several times before and found it very useful, with incredibly clear step by step instructions for loads of different stitches, like these:



And I bought it for the princely sum of 50p.  To say I was pleased was an understatement :-)


And now on to Christmas:

I have decided to join in with Allie's Christmas Through the Year Club - you can read the rules on her blog here. This involves making Christmas presents throughout the year and the incentive is, if you post pics on your blog of your hand crafted gifts by the end of the month, you get entered into a draw to win a small prize. I think this is a great idea and will save the last minute gift making panic that ensued this Christmas :-). The only problem is that a lot of the family and friends I might make gifts for are also readers of this blog. This limits me to the very young, very old and IT-illiterate amongst them...either that or I'll make some generic gifts and whoever posts the nicest comments about them gets them for Christmas hehehehe.  How's that for an idea?

The Stitch Files - Running Stitch

Sharon has released part four of the Stitch Files - you can download them here.

One of the stitches this time was the humble running stitch and I have had fun with it. First off, I challenged myself to stitch with colours that do not normally form part of my palette (pastel, muted, pink - feminine!!) and made this little felted piece:



I actually quite like it, and so does DH, cos he has pinched it for a mat to put on top of one of his speakers!

Then I had a play with whipping and interlacing rows of running stitch, and I like the way they look too:



As well as working on my stitch files I have also been doing a bit of holiday related stitching. Some I can't reveal as the recipients may well see this blog first, but I can show you this, which is a little embellished and stitched piece I created to affix to a sketchbook for my much loved stepdad:



I think this is my favourite piece of embroidery so far, I especially love the effect of the chain stitch tree trunk. I was inspired to stitch this by some of the lovely brooches made by Kayla coo - check them out on her blog.

I am also busy making a mini (doll sized) quilt using some of my hexagon flowers. Waif has demanded a quilt for his soft toy guinea pig - the imaginatively named Guinea Baby - and apparently Guinea Baby insists on hexagons and a red/orange/yellow/brown colour scheme! I don't have time to piece a whole hexie quilt, even this size, so I am hand appliqueing the flowers to square blocks which I will then sew into a four patch. The first two are yellow and orange flowers on red backgrounds, the next two will be red/brown flowers on an orangey yellow background. I think it will look pretty nice :-). Let's hope Guinea Baby approves!