It's another WIP Wednesday!

Source: etsy.com via Amber on Pinterest

I did warn you all that there would be lots going on on my blog this week! I'm having such a lovely week, lots of sewing, lots of time with the kids and Himself...what's not to love!

As an aside, isn't this the most AMAZING April ever? I don't think I remember such warm balmy sunshine in April...ever!! The kids are loving being out in the garden all day, I'm loving being out with them, or in the kitchen with the windows and doors open sewing while listening to them off adventuring as only 3 and 4 year olds can. Is this only a Cork phenomenon or are other parts of Ireland getting it too? Hope it lasts. I might even BBQ this evening!

Ok, so down to business. Unsurpisingly, its been productive here in my little patch!

Completed this week:

Drum roll please.......I finished my Cosmo bag!!! Woohoo!! I almost can't believe that it has left my WIP basket (having accumulated some serious fluff along the way, that navy fabric shows up every strand of thread making it not as practical as I would have thought!) and become an actually-very-nice finished bag. What do you think? It's made with the Memento midnight fabric from Amy Butler's Love range. The green contrast and the lining fabric are from my local fabric shop, I was sorry I used that green in the end as it was slightly heavier than the other fabrics and made the final sewing on the handles quite tricky.

 I do love the bag but there is no way that I would rate it as an "easy" pattern as it is in the "Style Stitches" book. A lot of the construction is very straightforward, but the handles and the curved band at the top are really not beginner level sewing in my opinion, and definitely the edge stitching around the insides of the handles at the end was quite tricky and I poked myself with pins a gazillion times. If I had tackled this a few years ago as a beginner I would never have managed it and I would have totally lost my sewing confidence I think! I didn't have a quite big enough button for the closure, but I think its ok and I like the effect of using the Memento fabric instead of the green for it.

 

I only did the inside pocket on one side as I ran out of the lining fabric. This is a big, roomy bag and I added some very stiff, cardboard like interfacing to the bottom to strengthen it a little more. I think I'll be using this when I'm out and about, its got good weight and structure and is really very pretty :-)

I also finished this little tag comforter once I got to do the hand embroidery:

In Progress:

I now have 2 quilt tops awaiting quilting - my Dresden from Lily's Quilt QAL

 and my It's a Hoot/Walk in the Woods for my goddaughter.

I really want to quilt the Its a Hoot using free motion quilting so need to get in some more practice in the next couple of weeks before I try it. I was going to do the Dresden in the circular quilting Lynne used on the original QAL block, but now I might FMQ it for practice instead. Still thinking about this one.



Started:

Remember a couple of weeks ago I won a giveaway for about half a Sherbet Pips layer cake, courtesy of the lovely Kristie? Well, I have been trying to decide what to do with it for a while now and finally made up my mind this morning. My 3yr old daughter E is insanely jealous of the quilt I'm making for my goddaughter! She keeps asking for her own and loves the picture of this "The Burbs" quilt from Material Obsession

(which I plan on doing later in the year), but that would be a detailed and time consuming one to do if I was to do it really nicely and do all the hand quilting and E is not a lady to keep waiting! So I got thinking, and realised that the Sherbet Pips has 3 of E's favourite things - swings, scooters and - mostly importantly - dogs. I showed her the fabric and she absolutely loved it.

 

This morning I cut the layer cake squares into 5" charms and I intend doing a simple pinwheels design. I will need to cut some more white charm squares to balance the colours but now that I've made up my mind I'm itching to get started piecing!


Still Stalled...

The stupid curtains are the major item still in my basket awaiting attention. Now that I've gotten a lot of progress on other stuff I am determined that I will have made progress on them by next Wednesday.


As always I'm linking up with WIP Wednesday over at Freshly Pieced and some other great blogs!

WIP Wednesday # 6

 

Can you believe its almost April? I can't quite understand where the days are going. Its been super busy in my life this week, mostly in life outside this blog, with work being particularly demanding! It sort of feels like I haven't gotten a lot achieved, but actually I have.



In Progress:


Friday Night Sew In was a success here and I have made good progress on the Cosmo bag. I have the exterior pretty much totally completed and just need to do the lining and the button at this stage. I really like the colour combo too now that its made up (I wasn't sure I would when I cut them).

I also got started with picking my fabrics and cutting in the Lily's Quilts Quiltalong. I'm very happy now with the fabrics I chose, and the blue background came about purely by chance but I think it will work. That brown bundle of fabric in the middle is to see if an extra internal circle would work in the middle and I think it will. I need to start piecing it next.

After spending all last night working out measurements, I finally started a new quilt tonight with my It's a Hoot layer cake. This quilt is for my goddaughter; she will be making her First Communion in May and I thought that a keepsake throw quilt would be a nice gift and something she could take with her through her life. The Its a Hoot fabric is perfect for what I want. I'm doing a simple design, alternating 2 different blocks. One is a 5" square with 2 layers of borders; the other is a 4 patch square with borders. The finished blocks will be 9" each. I'll add white sashing of about 3" betweeen each of the squares to make them stand out.

Tonight I cut all my squares and border strips:

Then I made up a trial block of each. This is the first:

 

And this is the second:

I love how these turned out, and I love how the fabrics interact with each other. Tomorrow will be my favourite part, laying out the fabrics and figuring out how it will all go together!

That's my little report - I think its going to be a very quiet week this week as I'm visiting my parents at the weekend and away at a work conference early next week. So my apologies in advance! But hopefully after that I'll be picking it all up again!

I'll be linking up as always to WIP Wednesday over at Freshly Pieced.

Lovely weekend

 

I know its still only Saturday night, but I'm having such a lovely weekend I thought I'd do an update! Even though it seemed like I was one of the few people in the country who had to work on Friday, it feels like an extra long weekend because of St Patrick's Day. Its been all about family and friends the last few days. We took the kids to a small parade on Thursday, and they absolutely loved it. When we were there, we met up with some friends and then brought the kids to see their grandparents when the parade was over where they were spoiled rotten, as always.  Today, we saw both my brothers, their other halves and my little nephew which was fab, as I hadn't seen them since Christmas. Its starting to feel like spring and the kids are loving being out and about in the fresh air. I took the picture above earlier today when we were out on a little walk. I love how the kids' energy is captured in it! They had so much fun. So, its all good here!

I also wanted to report on what I achieved in my Friday night sew in.

My plan for last night was to see how much I could get done on my Cosmo bag from Amy Butler's Style Stitches. Having cut the fabric for this in early January, I then managed to let it slip into my "stalled" list for a long time, mostly due to the fact that I couldn't face all the interfacing! But I rescued it from UFO land almost 2 weeks ago (when I needed something to take out my bad temper on and decided the interfacing was a perfect target!) and it was all ready to go last night:

The first part was the exterior. I love this Amy Butler Memento fabric and paired it with a lime green solid for the handles. This pattern is the first in the book and is rated as easy, but I have to say that I would have had difficulty with this pattern as a beginner. The band and handles require some sewing knowledge to get right - I used loads of pins on the curved seams (and I am not a pinner where I can avoid it!) and had to read the instructions a couple of times before I was sure what I was doing. An extra diagram or 2 would not have gone amiss here to be honest. But the effect is lovely. I used a lavender coloured thread and it contrasted nicely with the lime green handles for the top stitching.

I got both main sides done and made up the side pockets. By then it was getting late, and although I would have loved to get the exterior finished, I only managed to get the side panels attached to one main panel before I left it for the night. But I was really pleased with how much I got done and will definitely be up for the next Friday night sew in. It was lovely to think that in lots of places around the world, some of my bloggy "friends" were also sewing away happily! That feeling of connectedness was very strong.

Tonight I flew through the remaining exterior seams and ended up with the exterior finished:

Then it was on to auditioning fabric and starting cutting for my Dresden plate mini block which I'm doing for the Lilys Quilts Quiltalong. I did a bit of agonising over what fabric to use here. The pattern uses a layer cake and I have an Origins layer cake that I'm just itching to use. But because I'm only doing 1 mini block (due to time constraints), I didn't really want to break into the layer cake and use only part of it. Eek! So, off I went (to Himself's dismay) and pulled out my 2 big boxes where I store my fabric stash. 20 minutes later and there were fat quarters and half yards strewn all over the kitchen table while I chatted away to myself and tried out colour schemes and combinations. Eventually, this is what I came up with:

I still don't know what I'm going to use for my backing fabric and the circle centre! I have some fabric that might work, but there's not enough of it. Any ideas? I'm thinking a cream base with a small floral print or something similar. The leaves mix a heap of different fabric ranges from different designers and ranges so I'd like to keep mixing it up.

I'm pretty happy at this stage with this arrangement; I tried out lots of combinations of the leaves before settling on this one. All I need to do is head off with E tomorrow to shop for some backing fabric!

Amy Butler's Style Stitches Bag Challenge!

One of my aims for this year is to get involved in some online sew-alongs and quilt-alongs. They seem like a great way to challenge myself to learn some new things, broaden my technical knowledge, get to know other bloggers and crafters and also to have some, hopefully lots, of fun! So I was really excited a couple of weeks ago when I saw a bag challenge over on JemJam, particularly because I had just bought the book the day before. So I entered there and then, bought my fabric and then did precisely nothing on it till tonight!

This challenge is to make all the bags from Amy Butler's Style Stitches book in 2011. Yes, every single one! All 17 of them. Eeeek!

Pretty challenging, not least because some of the bags look to be quite difficult technically, and Amy Butler's bags tend to be huge so I foresee a lot of money spent of fabric this year. (*sigh* I suppose if I have to I'll just force myself to go online and find some. No, I am not secretly doing a dance in my head. Really, I'm not. Really. OK, so I am!! I am going to start a new Pinterest board with fabric ideas for these bags. More anon....)

The first bag is the Cosmo bag above, which is listed as an easy make although I'm not sure, from reading the instructions if I would think it terribly easy! Although this might be because I realised (too late!) that the instructions in the book are not accompanied by pictures or diagrams for the most part. When I'm working with fabric and patterns I tend to be a very visual person so fingers crossed that I will be able to get my head around the written instructions. So possibly this will be just fine and striaghtforward to make, but I freaked out a little at the pages of instructions!

This is the fabric I am using:

The main fabric is "Memento" from the Amy Butler Love range and I adore it, the colour is deep purple blue with aqua, lime green, red, cerise and orange flowers. I have cut the main pieces tonight and happily have enough left over to make another small bag & other bits and pieces. The lime green solid is the contrast for the handles etc, and the small floral print is for the lining. This fabric is more lavender in hue than it looks in this pic (where it looks pink for some bizarre reason.) I'm hoping to get the remaining fabric and interfacing pieces cut tonight and then to start making up tomorrow for the deadline of the 31st January.

I also finally got around to getting my Pinterest account up and running this week. Have you heard of this site? It's my latest favourite thing! It is, in essence, a virtual pinboard where you can save pics, links, and all sorts of things. I have set up a few boards already - one for keeping track of the tutorials I love, or want to try. Another for my favourite fabrics. Also, an essential, an inspiration board. And an Owls board because, as you know, I love owls in my fabric and little softie owls (will have my own design coming soon!) So, a board for keeping track of my ideas for fabrics for the various bags makes perfect sense :-) I have a link on the sidebar so pop over and take a look at my boards! And join up, its great. I have had so much fun browsing through people's boards - and there is so much to explore, fashion, art, interiors, food, all sorts really.

Right, back to the cutting board here......