Catching up..

Goodness me! I've just realised that it's been a month since I last posted about something crafty on here! It's not for lack of crafting, let me tell you! Infact, it's probably exactly why I haven't managed to post.. aside from the fact that it's "that time of year" and things have been super busy with end of year concerts and parties as well as half a dozen birthdays, I've been spending quite a bit of time focussing on the actual crafting which has left significantly less time for the blogging. I've been lagging behind badly on my blog reading, too - falling asleep on the sofa has become my new normal.

So here's some of the stuff that I've been doing this last month...

Crochet "wine glass cover" #3 - about 3 rows to go.

My first completed "Split Drunkard's Path Star" (will blog tutorial)

2 stars plus the tumbler medallion.. Harry Potter Quilt still in progress

Quilt for Blossom's Kindy teacher, who is retiring.
Each child in the class decorated a square, and I put it all together.

Back of the teacher quilt.

Christmas table runner, complete!

I just love the backing fabric.. might even pretend it's reversible ;)

I also broke my fabric ban.. it all started so innocently.. with a voucher for $40 off at Spotlight when you spent $100... and I needed more fabric/batting for the quilt for Blossom's teacher, so it totally didn't count towards the fabric ban.. and my husband decided that I should make some "Minecraft Creepers" for Bean & Blossom (like these) so I had to buy fabric for those (because I seriously need ANOTHER project that has to be finished in time for Christmas!) and my SIL decided that she wanted a jungle themed quilt for her nursery instead of Peter Rabbit, and I found a gorgeously perfect panel..

And most people would leave it there. But not me... once the flood gates were open, it was on. It didn't help that there were a whole pile of Black Friday sales being tweeted left, right and centre... The first thing I indulged in was a 21 FQ set of Riley Blake's Delighted from The Intrepid Thread, which reminded me how much I love fabric designed by The Quilted Fish so I went hunting for some more Sweet Divinity to go with the fabric that I bought a couple of months ago (which will be turned into a quilt and accessories for Blossom's new room when we finally move)... and I found what I was looking for at two separate etsy stores.. A total of 10 yards, made up of 10x Sweet Divinity fabrics, 9x Sugar & Spice fabrics and the "Quite Contrary" Green Stripe by My Mind's Eye. Yes, way more fabric than I will need to make Blossom a quilt, given that I already have 5 yards of Sweet Divinity (5x fabrics).

My Christmas present to myself

And then I went back to Spotlight and bought myself a walking foot, some coordinating fabric for my SIL's baby quilt, some more fabric for the teacher quilt (because my backing fabric was an inch short and I decided just to buy another piece than mess around) and then decided that I was all binged out.

Harry Potter Tumbler Quilt & Christmas Table Runner Update

I finally finished cutting out all my tumbler blocks with Flo, my Accuquilt GO! (Not that it took a long time to do the cutting - that was a breeze! It was finding the time to retreat into my bat cave to sew!) And even better than finishing the cutting, I finally worked out how I was going to lay it all out.. well, the tumbler section anyway! The tumblers will be sashed with the material that will also be used for the backing, and then there will be a plain border around the tumblers and then something along the lines of the split drunkard's path stars as another border/section, and finally the Hedwig Owls will be incorporated into the corners of the quilt. I'm still tossing up whether to put them on point, or have them squared with their bodies pointing in.. I guess we'll see how it all pans out..

My tumbler blocks laid out (wadding is underneath)

 Yesterday was the monthly meetup for my local quilting friendship group, so I packed up Flo the GO!, the fabric for the sashing, my Christmas table runner fabric and my 2.5" strip die. My goal was to  cut the rest of my strips for the tumbler sashing and all the 2.5" squares for my Christmas table runner  (see post here)... I achieved both of those goals as well as doing another couple of informal demo's on the Accuquilt GO! (This time I wasn't really prepared for a demo, having only taken my strip die but no one seemed to mind... infact one lady even asked me if I offered a cutting service because she wants some drunkard's path blocks cut!)

My 1.25" strips (folded - they're not really that short!)

My table runner squares

 Another lady was also very impressed to see how quickly I was able to cut all the 2.5" square blocks - she hand cut 400ish 2.5" blocks only a week or two ago and it took her significantly longer!

I also spent some time sorting through fabric.. the quilting group put out all the donated fabric they'd received in the hopes that people would take some home for charity quilts. I found quite a bit of fabric that I think I can do something with.. once the Harry Potter quilt is finished, of course!

So when I came home I was rather eager to get those tumblers sashed, and here is how things finished up:

I still have to do the horizontal sashing, but I was thinking that perhaps I should cut some tumblers out of the sashing fabric, and then cut them in half to square up the tumbler section so that it's easier to add borders. Once I'm finished I'm considering writing up a tutorial on how to sash tumblers incase anyone is interested? Only because there doesn't seem to be much information about sashing tumblers floating around on the web as far as I can tell..

And then, even though it was REALLY late (nearly midnight!) I had to quickly sew some of my squares together just so that I felt like I'd made some actual progress on my table runner..

Then finally it was time to drive home and go to bed!

Holiday shopping trips...

I've done lots of shopping this last week.. whenever we head up to visit my grandparents there is a standard list of places to visit:

* The second hand bookshop

* Katies 

* Rivers Clearance store

* Good Sammy's (thrift store)

* Spotlight (I know this sounds weird considering there are two Spotlight stores within a 30 minute drive of my house, but it's just what I do!)

This trip Mum and I added the local quilting store, farmers' market and the regional patchwork & quilting exhibition to our list as well. And I must say that we've had a very "successful" trip so far.. we head home tomorrow and we've actually managed to cross almost everything off our list! While I haven't specifically taken photos of the other things I've purchased, I found a top & 2 pair of pants at Katies, 2 pair of sandals & 2 shirts for my husband at Rivers, a Fred Bare pinafore and a pair of Clarks shoes for Blossom at Good Sammy's and we managed to trade 2 and a half bags of our own books in at the bookstore ($100 instore credit) for a bag of new books with no extra to pay! Woohoo!

But I *will* share with you my fabric/sewing related purchases with you:

Spotlight shopping trip #1 (Thursday)

 The local Spotlight was having a sale, with 30% off new release Christmas fabrics, buy 1 get 1 free patterns, $6 off Fat Quarter bundles and $6/metre clearance quilting fabrics (amongst other things!). It also turned out that today (Saturday) is their 5th birthday celebration, so they were running other specials/prizes/activities today and haf even more quilting fabrics still to be marked down so of course I had to schedule another trip for this morning. But more about that in a moment (or another post if this gets too long)..

Have I mentioned I have a thing for Holly fabric?

Pillowcase dress & pants pattern & fabric

 I found some cute strawberry print fabric on the quilting cotton clearance table as well as some blue checked fabric and another blue fabric that coordinated nicely (not the same range specifically) that I just couldn't walk past but couldn't justify without a project.. so I went and trawled through the pattern books for like an hour until I found 2 patterns that I thought I might like to add to my immediate project list. The first pattern was a pillowcase dress/top/pants collection that I thought would be lovely to make for Blossom. The top fabric (above) will be the main fabric for the top, with the strawberry print as the contrast panel at the bottom (see image D below) and the blue check fabric will be the pants, again with the strawberry print as contrast. I still have to go looking for ribbon though.

Another apron pattern - I plan to make design B 

Much as I love the apron that I made, I think it's too pretty to use every day, and I had originally wanted more of a smock type apron so when I found this Kwik Sew pattern I decided it would be perfect. I plan to use the strawberry print fabric I bought a while ago (before I found the rose print fabric and got sidetracked).

$6.95 - bargain!

I'm not sure why I bought the "Flat Fats Bundle" aside from the price, at $6 off it came down to $6.95 which made it hard to pass up. The top fabric is the same as the one I used for the beaks on my Hedwig the Owl blocks, and it makes me think of my friend Phillipa's daughter Miss J who LOVES orange.

And last but not least I found this cute Belle cross stitch pack for $3 so I thought I might do it up for Blossom to hang in her new bedroom.

I'll post about today's shopping trip later - right now I have to run off to buy wine and go to a seafood BBQ at my Aunt's house! Yummo!

What a busy week!

So it's only been 2 days since my last post, but boy have I been busy! I might have to split my last 2 days into a couple of separate posts just to make things a bit neater & tidier...

First things first though, following on from Tuesday's post about the local friendship quilting group..

I packed up my bags with all my dies, Flo (the GO!) and some scraps, as well as my Christmas fabric, table runner pattern and my Hedwig owl (just to give them an idea of what you can do) plus some lunch and colouring books for Blossom. We turned up about 40 minutes into the day, and Blossom chose an unoccupied table for us near the corner windows (great views!)

The first thing I did after settling Blossom was to check out the display set up by one of the local quilting shops (there are two that alternate each month to come along and display their wares) which was clearly a big mistake as I went from browsing to thinking about buying a $3.50 "scrap" bag, to buying 4 fat quarters for $20, to going on a $75 spree in the space of about 10 minutes (I had to take Blossom to the restroom in amongst all the action!).. but I think it was money relatively well spent... I bought:

4 fat quarters

Three of the fat quarters are to go with my other Christmas fabrics for my table runner.. not because I need more yardage, but for more variety and to break up all the different hollies.. the end one is a forest green with a gold kind of basket weave, then a beautiful cream & gold poinsettia and finally some red & gold baubles. The last fat quarter is a beautiful gold star pattern that was too gold to go with my other fabrics but I just loved it and I thought it would go nicely into Bean's Harry Potter quilt (perhaps the Griffindor crest? or a border? or something else..).

7

A gorgeous travel cutting mat & ironing pad

Cool idea, yes?

Then the girl next to me was looking at this beautiful portable cutting mat & ironing pad (looks like an A4 notebook - I wouldn't have given it more than a passing glance!) and once I realised what it was, I just had to have one.

2x bags of "Allsorts"

 Then I figured that seeing as I was supposed to be doing a demonstration of my Accuquilt GO! for the group I could justify some scraps to play with and add to my stash.. and as an added bonus I ended up with quite the matched set of fabric scraps (below) between the two bags, as well as another two pieces of fabric in the right colour scheme to match the Christmas table runner.

Co-ordinated scraps

I was about to pay for all my bits and pieces when I noticed their pile of fabric panels and decided to sift through them "just in case".. initially I found a cute reindeer kiddie Christmas panel, but then I found an Advent calendar style panel. I've been wanting to buy/make something like this for about 2 years now and just haven't come across what I was looking for. With this one you button a decoration on each day until the tableau is complete, perfect! (And let's just add ANOTHER project to my list...)

The main panel

The daily decorations

After that I decided I had to walk away. Right Now. Really. So I went back to my table and started sorting out scraps to see what was there and what I could use with my table runner. My fabric range for the table runner is now looking pretty good...

My Christmas table runner fabric collection (so far!)

Now don't think that because Blossom and I were sitting in a corner by ourselves that we were lonely.. quite a few of the girls that I'd met when I was going regularly (3-4 years ago) came up to chat and express their disbelief that Blossom was no longer the 6 week old baby that she'd been the last time they saw her.. and there was a visiting quilting group on the table next to me that were there to gift some charity quilts to us to distribute to local victims of the bushfires that went through our area back in February, and they saw Flo and asked lots of questions (before my demo) about what it was and how it worked etc.

After lunch and show & tell it was my 15 minutes of fame.. and let me tell you I don't think it was my finest hour! I mean, I'm sure it was ok, but I know I could have done better if I'd realised that Lyn was actually serious about making me do a demonstration! All the girls loved the GO! and were amazed by how quickly it cut the shapes. The most frequently asked questions I was asked were:

1. Do I sell them? Err, no... Oh really? You should! (Yes.. certainly something to think about..)

2. Can you use it to cut fabric with Vliesofix? (My understanding is yes, but you must count it as a layer. I must have answered that question a dozen times - every time I finished answering someone else would walk up and ask the exact same question)

After my demo it was pretty much time to pack up and go home, so as far as *doing* anything constructive I didn't really do much.. unless you count sorting out/purchasing fabric for my table runner constructive. But I had fun, and they were really keen for me to come back next month (and with my crafty friends ;)) so it was a pretty great day overall.

After picking Bean up from school I then went and spent a couple of hours in my craft room being constructive, but that's a story for the next post!

Taking shape..

We went over to my MIL's last night for dinner, so after dessert I snuck off into my craft room to play with Flo (the Accuquilt GO!). During my excursion to Spotlight last Friday (previously referred to in my post on Needles in the Haystack) I found some textured white cotton fabric that looked perfect (if a little thin) to make my Hedwig owls out of (for Bean's Harry Potter quilt). 

I decided that if I added some interfacing to make it a little heavier, it would be perfect, and easier to manage than trying to double the layers for thickness. So I estimated the amount of fabric I'd need to use for Flo to cut all the pieces, cut a piece of interfacing to match and then ironed it before putting Flo through her paces.

All my Hedwig pieces cut out

 Two rolls through later, all my pieces were cut! And then I looked at my scraps and thought "I really should save the pieces that could go through the GO! again"... I trimmed them into pieces and popped them into a zip-lock bag for use at some other time. I impressed myself with my thriftiness.. pieces that I normally wouldn't have kept because they were too small for anything useful are now completely perfect for things like my Rose of Sharon die!

Left: To keep. Right: To ditch.

Then it was time to find some fabric from amongst my HP "coordinating" fabric squares to surround and finish off my little Hedwig blocks. Because I'm making 4x Hedwigs, one for each corner of the quilt I was hoping that I would have enough of one type of fabric to do them all. Sadly, I was ONE SQUARE short of being able to do it all in the sparkly dark blue fabric. But never mind, I can do two in dark sparkly blue and two in medium sparkly blue.

Blue sparkly squares waiting to be cut

And now all my blocks for Hedwig are cut! Look at me GO!

 I must say that I was super impressed by how little time it took me to cut my fabric.. I spent more time trying to work out which contrasting fabrics to use (I had other fabric choices aside from the plain blue sparkly, but I thought they might detract from Hedwig and that just wouldn't do!) than I did cutting them. Then I cut 4x 1" squares from orange fabric (from offcuts that Phillipa cut for me.. same fabric as the top shown on Needles in the Haystack) for the beaks and laid out all my fabric pieces so I could get a mental image of how she would look.

Hedwig with all her pieces (unassembled, obviously!)

Flo with her seatbelt on, ready for her first playdate!

Then today was Stitch 'n' Bitch Tuesday, so I took my crochet over to Kym's only to have the girls ask me if I'd bought Flo with me.. which I had not. So off I went to pick up Flo, a die or two and some fabric scraps so I could demonstrate her to the girls. They were impressed by her portable size - they'd envisaged something much bigger.. and were absolutely floored when I popped a few scraps onto my Rose of Sharon die, ran it through and then showed them all the flowers and leaves I'd cut in the space of 25 seconds. I forgot to take a photo of my scrappy flowers though! (And once again, I went through all the scraps and cut the small RoS circles out of the pieces that were large enough so that I minimised my waste! I'll have to find something to use all those flowers, leaves and circles on eventually)

Pinning the curves

After pinning my first piece of Hedwig together (below) it occurred to me that perhaps I should practice sewing the curves on some of my spare pieces, so one of my girlfriends, Nici, picked out two of my spare pieces (white & yellow, above) to be my test block.

One of Hedwig's heads (pinned) 

Looks like an egg, yes? Or maybe a birdie beak?

 I thought the white and yellow together looked like eggs, sunny side up. Nici saw a seagull. So then I "made" her a seagull by playing around with the block layout..

Head, beak, body, wings on the sides.. imagine two embroidered feet at the bottom

 Silly, I know.. but we had fun! And then sadly it was time to go to playgroup so we had to put aside our crafty projects, pack up and take the kiddies for *their* playdate!

Tomorrow is my local quilting friendship day, and I'm planning to go along (for the first time in about 3.5 years!) but I'm not sure what to take with me. I don't have enough pins (and it won't take all day just to pin) to sit and pin all my Hedwig pieces together, but I could pack up my sewing machine and take that with me and do pretty much what I used to do at the friendship day - sit in the corner on my sewing machine and not really talking to anyone else because I need to be near a power point!

If my tumbler die was here I could take Flo along and do double duty.. demonstrating how cool the GO! is to the girls at the friendship day, AND cut all my Harry Potter fabric squares into tumbler pieces. But I can't do that.. and I'm not sure yet what I'm doing to do with my other bits of fabric until I've seen how the tumbler pieces go together. (I really should get my husband to help me mock up an image of my quilt so that I can work it out properly instead of winging it!)

So what to take?? Maybe I could not take any quilting and take my apron fabric & pattern and cut that out instead. OR WAIT! I have it! I was going to wait for my strip cutter to come along so that I could do my Christmas table runner... but I could just use my value die to cut out my squares. And so, apparently tomorrow is the day that the Christmas table runner pattern that I bought at the friendship group 4 years ago will finally go from being a pattern to a project in progress. There we go.

I love the first Saturday of the month!

My mother-in-law is a very talented lady. Put simply, she makes soap - but what she does is so much more than that! Not only does she make natural olive oil soap from scratch (as opposed to melt & pour etc) but she also makes a range of face & body products that smell divine. And once I a month I get to immerse myself in her beautifully scented world when we pack up the car and head to the local village market day. You can find Wildthyme Natural Soap on their website, facebook and etsy.

Yesterday was one of these days, and I must confess I spend the whole month looking forward it! The weather forecast predicted showers throughout the day, but we were lucky that the first "real" rain that we experienced was at about 1:30pm (which admittedly put a premature end to the day, but only by about an hour).

My new holly fabric

One of the things that I love about going to the markets is seeing all the other things that people have made. The girl who has the stall next to us makes sock monkeys. They're super cute, but they're designed more for decoration than vigorous play so I don't think they'd suit Blossom & Bean! Not to mention that while I think they're gorgeous, they don't look hard to make, so I probably wouldn't buy something that I could make myself (if they were up to being played with in the vigorous fashion that Blossom & Bean employ!). BUT, she also had some gorgeous holly print fat quarters for sale and I have a small holly obsession so I bought the fat quarters as well as a couple of larger pieces of holly fabric she had with her. Guess who will be finally getting around to making their quilted Christmas table runner this year? Oh yeah! (I've only had the pattern since Blossom was about 2 months old!)

Another girl near us prints onto her own fabric that she then turns into rings, necklaces, earrings, bookmarks, notebook covers and so much more. I didn't realise that she actually printed the designs on to the fabric herself until I went to buy my MIL a necklace that she'd been eyeing off (and wouldn't buy for herself) and got talking to the girl about her beautiful designs.

Table runner pattern

And yesterday afternoon I discovered another hidden gem. While walking to the carpark  to collect the car so that we could pack it I got distracted by a stall selling painted signs and doorstops and key hooks etc. Normally while I think these look pretty I wouldn't stop, but yesterday she had these really lovely recipe book covers. It was a set of wooden panels that had plastic pages in between so that you could just slip in your own recipes, and she'd painted them with these cute chickens and roosters. I'm not a super chicken-y person, and if there had been one with flowers or something on it I probably would have bought one.. I might ask her next month if she would paint me a non-chicken one!