Quilting against the clock... Part iv

Well, it has been a few days since I lasted posted... Work got in the way meaning that time I could have spent doing the project was spent behind a follow spot at a school concert!

I couldn't wait to get started on this next square... The kiwi for my parents very recent trip to New Zealand...

I couldn't find any brown fabric that I liked so I got some brown felt as I thought this would look okay.

The picture was another cartoon I found and it was easy to cut into blocks... A lot easier than the previous ones!

The biggest challenge for this was the felt as the bondaweb didn't particularly like being stuck to it so I did have to use a few more pins than previous squares.

This was an easy appliqué job too... So it was quite satisfying to complete it in a shorter time than usual!

Quilting against the clock... Part II

Update: My parents are not having their wedding anniversary 'do' until 26th July... This is a small mercy and I am grateful I have an extra week to work on the quilt.... It is still pushing it though!

The first square I wanted to tackle was the lemur one as I had found a picture that I wanted to follow.

The picture I found had lots of block colour which I could easily spilt for ease of appliqué...

Each of the designs was drawn onto the fabric and then bondaweb was ironed on the back. This was a particularly good move as the shiny silver fabric was very slippery and frayed easily so the bondaweb kept it together.

Before ironing on the main body of the lemur I back stitched the design of where the legs and paws of the lemur are...

I then cut out the main face and ironed them on the cream square.

Bit by bit I pieced together the black and white tail. This was a long and fiddly process and took a lot of concentration.

This is it so far... I need to appliqué it now...more updates soon...

Quilting against the clock... Part I

So, I finished a massive quilt a couple of days ago. And said that I would leave it a while before I embarked on something so big again especially as I have a busy term at school with three school productions and a young daughter who needs my attention.

Well, that has gone out of the window!

My parents will have been married 11 years in July and they are the absolute role model for a marriage made in heaven! My step father has stepped in and been a great father figure and my mum is so supportive and willing to drop everything for me even though she lives over 5 hours away.

So, I thought I would design and make them a quilt. And I have until 17th July to finish it... Now that's what I call a challenge!

My parents are just about to redecorate their bedroom so this was a great starting point for the design and I asked my mum to send me a sample of their wallpaper.

As you can see the wallpaper is cream with a deep red and gold... So I went to have a look around my local haberdasheries to see what kind of fabric might fit this scheme.

I found a few fabrics that fitted the criteria nicely so I then started sketching what I wanted to do.


As it is mega personal to them I wanted to include some designs that would reflect what they have done together and places they have been so the top half of the quilt is all the diy projects that they have done around the house and the bottom is all the places they have been.

The design is relatively simple as I am still on the basic square quilt thing.
The quilt, when finished should measure the same as a double bedspread... Enormous really! So, with lots of maths I worked out how big each of the square should be allowing for 2cm on each side for seam allowance. (41cm if you are interested!)

I made a template out of cardboard and cut it so I could have the outside edge and the seam allowance.

I was fortunate enough be browsing around my local haberdasher when I spied some cream cotton on sale so had to buy it as I was certainly not going to find it any cheaper.

It was then the pain staining drawing out... Not an easy task when you have a very small dining room table!

And now I have a pile of squares!

This is as far as I have got... I hope to post more as the squares progress and as each one is completed...  And fingers crossed I may get it finished before the 17th July!

Time for tea?

My daughters naming ceremony is in a couple of weeks time and I am slowly realising that there is a lot to do and not a lot of time in which to do it!

I also have very little money on which to spend it on as the ceremony has cost a lot more than I had hoped for so the ideas need to be quick, simple and cheap.

After the ceremony there will be an afternoon tea and I wanted to make it personal to my daughter.

A few weeks ago I made some name tags that I wanted to tie to the handles of the teacups. After making them I came back to them and I wasn't happy. So I would have to do them again.

This time I used some rubber stamp letters to spell out the names - taking time to make sure that they all fitted but instead of the names as I know them I did them from my daughters point of view. The black ink worked well against the tags I had bought.

On the other side I used letter outlines to have 'with love' in gold and stuck a giraffe that I had painstakingly made a couple of weeks ago (they were going to be used!!!)

The ribbon I bought was then threaded through the label.

I am much happier with the result ... So happy that the guests get to have a keepsake from, what I hope to be, a very special day!

Birdie perch

One of the many joys of living in York is that it is a crafters paradise. I wish I had more time and money to attend more workshops that many of the cities craft establishments host.

One I did manage to attend (a couple of years ago) was one held at an independent retailer called Birdies Perch. I simply love this place as it has the best cards and boutique-y bits and it is throwing distance from my place of work so it is a nice place to 'escape' to when some time out is needed. The staff are so incredibly friendly and make me feel like a valued customer.

After one of my many visits there they said they were running some trial craft workshops and was I interested. I signed on the dotted line! It was for decorating a papier mâché bird.

The workshop was led by one of the very talented people who work there who had made the base of the bird out of paper and wire - amazing idea - and we needed to choose the one we wanted to decorate.

We were then given acrylic paints, sequins, beads and parts of artificial flowers to decorate the birds.

The company was good and we all had crafty pursuits that we discussed... A nice way to spend an evening ... And look at the finished result!

A quilt down memory lane...

I am amazingly sentimental person. This, unfortunately, has many, many draw backs. The main of these is the fact that I do have a tendency to hoard anything that has anything and everything as I cannot bear to throw anything away. Over the years I have got better as my husband is the complete opposite and with the arrival of our little girl it has made room a little restricted.

The biggest thing I found difficult throwing away was a box of old t shirts. I haven't worn t shirt properly since I was about 11 it over many, many years I seemed to have accumulated loads of them from productions I've worked on and west end shows I had been to see plus my London marathon shirt (a feat I still can't quite believe I completed) and a few other random ones from my university years. It seemed a pity to throw so many memories away so I came up with the idea of making a quilt out of them.

I had never made a quilt before so I tried to base it on first principles. I cut out the bits of the t shirt I wanted and then lay it on my living room floor ... It took up most of it. I pinned together the pieces roughly and then measured how much material I would need for the backing... And I needed quite a bit!

Something I love it to is go around charity shops. As part of my day job I usually have to have a good root around for props and stuff for productions so charity shops are one of my favourite places - and you are giving something back which is always nice to do too.

I found a beige flat sheet in a charity shop and thought it would make a good back panel for my quilt. I also bought a couple of metres of bias binding to neaten the edges at the end. (As you have probably gathered from my previous posts I have discovered that bias binding helps with so much ... Give it a go!)

After pinning the pieces together I sewed together a row followed by another row until I had roughly five rows of t shirt pieces. The biggest challenge though was that I hadn't kept the pieces uniform which made keeping the rows together quite difficult! If I attempted this again I would keep the pieces uniform in size and length!

When I had the rows I started sewing the rows together until I had the whole thing.

What I hadn't planned for was the fact that t shirt material is quite stretchy so left a few gaps in the finished panel so I found some off cuts of some fabric I liked and filled the gaps with it.

I then pinned the back panel to the front panel and then pinned bias binding around the edge. I then sewed two lines of stitching around the edge to bind the panels together.
Simple as that!
This was an ambitious project. I think next time I will do something a little more simple!