A Doily Bag

Over fifteen years ago I  was given a pile of un-worked stamped doilies by one of my students. Would I ever work them? Certainly not all of them. So I went through them all, kept the ones that I liked, and gave the others away.

At the time I needed a holiday project, so I picked one, chose some colours that I liked and started embroidering. I finished the stitching, then the piece sat there for many years, hidden in my UFO cupboard until I found it in a clean up at the beginning of this year. All it needed was a crochet edge to be finished!

I have lots of crochet thread in my stash, so I picked out a colour, and finished it off in a few days. Now what to do with it? Did I need another doily? Certainly not! Then I had this brilliant idea to decorate the side of a bag. So I rummaged through my fabric stash, found some scraps in similar colours, cut strips, joined them together, appliqued the doily to it, quilted it, them turned it into a bag.

It's a little smaller than I would have liked, but it will come in handy for my knitting, or taking books to and from the library. Wherever I use it, it will show off my creativity and some of my skills, embroidery, lace making, and sewing.

'Umbrella Hills' - A Baby Quilt

Back in November last year I was given the news that a new baby was arriving in the family early this year. I had this fabric in my stash so decided that I would use it to make a quilt.

There was not enough time to piece a top, not with holidays and Christmas in the mix, so I decided to quilt the piece of fabric as it was. I wanted to echo the design on the fabric, so started quilting around the umbrellas. From there I chose a line of the clouds and quilted along those.

I had always been taught that quilting needs a maximum distance of a fist width between the quilting lines. The back of the quilt is in a plain lime green fabric, and the quilting lines I had done already showed up easily. Some of the areas between the lines were greater than a fist width, so some more quilting was necessary. Still working on the back, I put some pins in where I felt some more quilting needed to go. I then turned the quilt to the front, and picked out some more cloud  lines that were close to the pins. After stitching these new lines, all the quilting was done.

The bind is in the same green as the backing, and there is a digitised label on the back saying that I have made it and the date it was completed.

This quilt will now be with its new owner, and I am sure he will snuggle under it in the coming months.

Grace's Garden

"Grace's Garden" is the name I have given to my latest finished creation. It is a quilt that I made for a family member for her birthday. The quilt was born of scraps, with just one added fabric of flowers that blended in with the scraps.

The tiny coloured squares were produced by cutting strips,  sewing the strips together in an order, then cross cutting. This produced a strip of coloured squares separated by white ones.

Overall, the quilt was planned in my quilting program, which is attached to my digitizing program. I could insert fabrics, work out the size of the strips to cut, and have a virtual vision of what the finished quilt would look like.

As I worked on it, the quilt started to talk to me as to how I would quilt it. The flowers won out. Stitched in pink, they were stitched through paper on which I had drawn the design. The paper was then easy to tear away. The sashings were ditch stitched.

The label took nearly as much time to do as the quilt itself. It has been digitized, and I wanted to continue the flower theme into the label. It was these flowers that took the time. I wanted them to 'radiate', and this meant learning about the 'star fill' feature in my digitizing program. In the meantime, my PC crashed and I had to sit patiently and wait for it to be fixed.

The PC is all fixed now, the quilt is finished, and has been gifted. Hopefully the new owner will get plenty of warm cuddles from it over many years to come.

A New Work Bag

Behold, my new work bag!

This bag was born out of my local sewing group. One of the ladies had so much fabric she decided to cut up a huge pile into squares, and the members of the group could piece together colours of their choice into a bag. At group day, I chose my pieces, and got them all sewn together but one seam. It them came home and sat on my sewing table. I had one brainwave that my bobbin lace fish could adorn this bag, so set out stitching him onto one blank square, then promptly left the bag rolled up, unfinished, in another bag, on my sewing table. I found it again in my clean up last week, so decided to finish it.

It only needed one seam to sew, lining, quilting, a bind and some handles. The lining was scraps, donated by the lady who cut the squares. There was enough of it, it just needed to be be joined to make a piece large enough. The batting was scraps left over from other quilts that I had made. Once again joined to make a piece big enough for what I wanted.

So I made my quilt sandwich -  backing, batting and bag outer, and pinned it all together. I even checked that my fish was in the best place for viewing. Then I decided to have a play with the quilting and do something I had not done before. Because I had added my bobbin lace fish, I thought it might be fun to quilt fish shapes and waves on the bag. I had quilted  plenty of straight lines, shadow quilting, and stitching in the ditch, but stitching shapes and other lines like this was something new. I had tried once before and outlined the marks on a quilt in pencil.  As a dressmaker I should have known better because the pencil has never washed out, and as a result I have stayed away from free form quilting. This time I traced the fish shapes and waves into a tear-a-way, and quilted  through that. Wallah! Fish shapes and waves and no pencil markings! Why didn't I think of this before?

I was on a roll, and my bag was looking good, until I started to join it together into the bag shape. My bobbin lace fish that had taken sooooooooo long to do, was sitting at the bottom! I nearly cried! He couldn't stay there, he would wear, so he had to be moved. But how? All his working ends had been taken back through the green fabric and finished off. There were dozens of them, so he was not moving from that piece of fabric. The only choice was to move the square, but that meant unpicking quilting! So that's what I did, unpicked the quilting, swapped two squares around, then re-did the quilting. Sounds easy right? Took me a while, but I got there and my fish can now be viewed well and is safe from wear.

The bag was formed, seams on the inside bound, once again out of scraps. Then I made my handles, once again out of scraps. They contain slotted waist banding for strength and ease of making, and a layer of batting for some padding.

All in all I am happy with my new work bag, and will use it with pride. Amazing what can be made from other peoples unwanted fabric and one's own stash of scraps.

Pooh Bear & Friends

There is nothing like a new baby arriving in the family to spur on some sewing. This little quilt was made for a little one born yesterday, & congratulations must go out to S.... & H....... on the birth of their son.

I have only met the mother of this child a few times, & don't really know too much of her background. But every new child born into this world deserves something special, so I decided to make a quick & simple quilt, something that could be loved & cuddled into for many years to come.

To make it quick, I was on the lookout for a printed panel that I could just quilt, rather than taking lots of time in cutting & piecing, let alone applique or digitizing. After many visits to the local fabric stores, I found this piece of Disney print featuring Pooh Bear & his friends. Perfect! I could just layer it with some batting & backing, quilt it, then bind it & wallah! Done! Well, so I thought.

When I bought the fabric, my first thought about the quilting was to do it in straight lines, between the rows of patterned squares & circles. But when I had it layered on the table ready to pin, it started to talk to me. It must have been the angle I was looking at it, all layered on the table,  that made me notice the diagonal lines. The little patterns are all printed in either a circle or a square, and if we look at them straight, they alternate, one circle, one square. It is only when we look closer that we notice that the alternating patterns produce diagonal lines of all square or all circles. Mmmmmm......... maybe I could quilt it with diagonal lines. No, that would go through the printed patterns & spoil them. So my mind when one step further, making a line going around the outline of half a square, then a short diagonal line to the next square, then around the outline  of half of the next square. Much better!

After making this decision, I thought I would be able to continue each row with only going around half the square. It would certainly be enough machining to hold the layers together for washing. But something wasn't right, it looked incomplete. So then I decided to make a second row, still linking the squares together in a diagonal line, but this time going around the other half of each square.

 It took me a long time, longer than I thought, with each diagonal row of pattern requiring two rows of quilting. I am so glad I quilted it like this. It not only made an interesting pattern of stitching on the back, it made all the little designs pop out of their background on the front.

Lesson learned, take note of the design and explore all options for quilting to achieve the best results.

Flutterby Dreams

Well, what can I say, it's been a while! We might just skip over all the Seasons Greetings stuff (hoping everyone had a good one) as we are way past that now, and just get on with the creativity.

I have been creating, ( those that know me well know that I create something with textiles every day !), I have just been creating things that I couldn't show here for a while. Most of what I am creating at the moment are for the new little people arriving in the family.

This quilt was created for a new little girl that arrived in the family late last year. I knew she was arriving, but it still took me by surprise when I got a phone call to say she was due "next week". That sent me in a spin, what do I do? In the same phone call I was informed of another little person arriving later this year! I might add here that this phone call was the night before I was going on holidays, how could I think? My mind was in a spin. The phone call was from the mother of the baby expected later this year, so at least I could ask her what she wanted. Mmmmm..........anything. What colour? Mmmmm...........whatever you feel. I was after inspiration,  so I had to look elsewhere for that, and I was going on holiday, no time to look through my patterns and books! For the whole trip in the car ( I was passenger) my mind was thinking, I could do this, or that, no, little fingers get caught in the holes, this would be better. What design? My books are at home! Then I remembered about the two creative shops in the little town I was going to. One of these shops is a patchwork shop, selling a great range of fabrics, patterns and general sewing stuff. My kind of store! I would just have to go for a visit to see what inspiration I could pick up there.So visit I did, and came out with a bag full of fabric that said "baby". Then it was onto the other store for more inspiration, but there will be more about that in a later post.

OK, so I had fabric, now to a design. I would worry about that when I got home (or so I thought),. I had other stitching with me to do.

While we were away the message came about L____'s arrival. A little girl! Mmmmm....... I had lots of pink fabric............... and white................ mmmmmm...........enough for a quilt? There were lots of other colours in the bag too but this was a little girl, she needed pink and white. So the paper came out,  the designing started, then the calculations. Mmmmm.......... I would just have to go back to that lovely shop to buy more pink fabric!

The quilt needed to be done as fast as possible, after all, L_______ was already here. So just quick squares were the answer, but it was looking to plain, how to jazz it up to give it some oomph! Some machine embroidery! Butterflies for a little girl! That would be good.......and quick! Well relatively, considering Christmas was around the corner. But it would all have to wait till I got home.

Upon arriving home I set out to see what butterfly designs  I already had , after all it is the digitizing process that takes all the time. I found a few, but only one I thought was anywhere near suitable. The shape was nice, but the heavy stitching wasn't, it needed to be light and delicate. So I set about changing it. I took all the heavy stitching away from the wings and inserted a filling stitch, placed at an angle to give more interest. Then I set about changing all the start and end points of each component of the design. If they are in the wrong place, the stitch out will have nasty looking jump stitches that cause problems. As any digitizer will tell you, this may sound simple but in reality takes time, then it all has to be tested to make sure it works.

The butterfly above is what I came up with.

Once the design was tested, I then had to think about how to execute it to fabric. I could cut out all my squares ready for embroidery, but they wouldn't fit in my embroidery hoop, and would need calico stitched on all four sides to make them fit. Mmmmmm........................time consuming. So then I thought about marking the squares onto the fabric, and  positioning the embroidery design in the hoop to fit within each square before the fabric was cut. Much better, less sewing, less time. So all 33 butterflies were stitched onto the fabric before it was cut.

Once the butterflies were done, the cutting and piecing were quick. Then I just had to think about the quilting and that was a no brainer. I had set the design off center to add more interest, and added the quilting lines to reflect it. Just straight line quilting, nothing fancy, pink thread on pink fabric, white thread on white fabric. Quick and easy, followed by the binding.

The quilt is now being cuddled by it's new owner, hopefully for many years to come.

Quilting For Charity

My new sewing group is on the road again, sewing quilts for charity. This one was embroidered and  pieced by one lady from donated and cut squares , and I offered to quilt and bind it. It is now finished & ready to be donated to a deserving cause.

Sharing the work load of a project like this is interesting. Some of the squares were cut on bias and  some of the strips were not cut straight. Therefore the quilt top is pulling in all kinds of directions because the different grains are fighting against each other. We knew this from the beginning, but we figured it was going to be loved & dragged around for comfort by some grateful child so we continued. The quilting was fun because of all the grain changes, but I still managed, and the bind may not be quite straight, but we figure it will be loved anyway. I have two more to do, both need to be pieced, so they are next on my agenda.

I might add here that our new sewing group is going great guns. We have 16 members on our books, ranging from beginner sewers to experienced dressmakers, and we have plenty of room for more. So if anyone would like to come and join us, all info is on the Australian Sewing Guild website. Just look under the "groups" tab, then click the drop-down arrow in the "select a group" section. Scroll down and select the Georges Hall Sew'n'Sews, then click the "select a group" button. This will give you meeting times, dates, a contact, and also a map of how to find us. We'd love for some new members to join us.

Georges Hall Sew'n'Sews - Our First Day

What a great morning I  had yesterday. It was the first meeting of our new Australian Sewing Guild group, the Georges Hall Sew'n'Sews. We were all a little anxious, being a new group, a new venue, wondering how it would all go and what we were going to do. In hindsight we shouldn't have worried at all, it was just a fabulous meeting. We had thirteen in attendace, 1 appology, and one person walk in off the street to see what we were doing. By my maths, that makes 15 people, and they are all talking about comming back. Yippee!

The first adventure was unlocking the door and getting it to stay that way. In the end we just clipped the door back with the hook provided. It was only a door into an entry, and as there was another door into our hall space, the cool weather oustide wasn't a problem, especially when we found the airconditioner button. Once that was pushed it wasn't long before we were all warm and cosy.

The second adventure was the lights. So many light switches! They were all labelled, it was just a case of finding the ones that we required. Easy to find for the next time.

Then came the tables and chairs, and I am pleased to note that everybody helped. At first we only got out three tables, thinking it would be plenty for the people we knew that were comming, but it wasn't long before we were putting up more to accomodate all the newbies.

Now that was just the setting up, the real guts of the meeting was yet to come. We talked about what people wanted to do, what they wanted to get out of the group, and came to decisions as to how the next few meetings would go down. There was show and tell aplenty, including the quilt blocks at the top by Margaret. So bright and fabulous, all made from scraps.

This quilt was also by Margaret, full of beautiful applique.

Jenny J was off to a special function and had made this stunning outfit to wear, including the matching bag. Somthing that would cost $$$$$ in any little boutique.

There were also these fun tissue box covers by Jenny J that will be for sale, great for that special place or person.

 Then there were the conversations, so manyof them I couldn't keep up with them all. There were conversations about quilts, quilt blocks, quilting and how to get quilting designs onto fabric. Paper pieceing, mitered corners in binds, making personalised dress forms, how to choose  threads, pants fittings, taking patterns from a garment, how to read commercial pattern instructions, sewing machines, sewing machine mechanics, scissor sharpening............and that's just what I was a part of. There were conversations happening all morning, everyone was chatting and it was all about sewing. All the new people were made welcome and were included in on conversations. Just fabulous! In the end we were havng to push people out the doors because our time was up. Now that's what I call a sewing meeting. May there be many more to come.

Acknowledgements:-
Photography - Helen N

A New Scissor Case

The sewing group that I mentioned in my last post made scissor cases back in April and they were asked for this month so they could all be photographed. So at the last minute once again, I whipped up this one. The pattern was supplied, and the idea was to cut an outer fabric & a lining fabric, stitch right sides together leaving an opening so that it could be turned through. Once turned through, the case was then folded ( & stitched) into shape, giving a pocket for larger scissors & a smaller pocket for something else.

Mmm....... I could do better than this. My original plans were to do something fantastic, like some digitizing, but the month got away & I found myself with just one day left to make it. So I layered two fabrics together with some pellon between, free machine quilted all over, cut to shape, then bound. Wallah! New scissor case. I'd still like to do another one, maybe with some bobbin lace trim, or some digitizing on it somewhwere. We'll see.