Solids Swap package received

Yesterday evening when I got in very late from work, I found a big envelope waiting for me. I pulled it open straight away and did a little dance right there in the hall. Look what I got!

My package came from Elaine (Dashasel) who, funnily enough, was my partner for the Scrappy Mug Rug Swap last year where I made her a rainbow hexie mug rug. I really had fun making that for her, so it was nice that we were paired up in the opposite direction this time.

I will be honest and admit that when I saw this popping up in the group pool I really hoped it was for me as I had asked for a laptop sleeve, and I just loved the colours and the design. When I got it into my hands, I was totally thrilled, it's beautifully made and quilted, and it's a perfect fit for my laptop.

Don't you love the interlocking stripes? And the quilting? I love how cool the design is, and it's in my fave solid colours too  - aqua, pomegranate, coal and ash. You can see how nice and snug a fit it is for my laptop, just perfect :-)

Elaine also sent me a gorgeous covered mod bloom notebook :

Isn't this pretty? I need a fresh notebook for my project ideas and this is perfect! Plus, the pages are squared, rather than lined, bonus for the quilting plans!

And, I admit I gave a little extra squeal when I saw this little bundle of DS fabrics:

It's so hard to get hold of these from here in Ireland, so I am thrilled!

All in all, this was a great swap (again!) I really love working with solids, they push you to think about your design differently. For the 2nd time I have been super lucky in what I received with a really fab, generous swap package that I love and I couldn't be happier. Thanks so much Elaine, I am thrilled!

Under Construction.....

So, I'm sorry I've been pretty absent here for the last week or so. Life is busy at the moment! Until today, I barely sewed a stitch for the last 10 days, having work home with me lots of nights. I hardly managed to get online most nights either so I'm very behind in everthing. Eeek! Hope I get to catch up a bit today and tomorrow.

The only thing I have been working on has been my big swap item for the For the Love of Solids Swap. I decided to make my partner a messenger bag, and am following loosely the pattern in Lisa Lam's The Bag Making Bible. I'm not making it a laptop bag, as I think I would really need to use home dec weight cotton for that, so I've tweaked some of the detail in it, and I've added a pieced front, back and flap.

 It's almost a year since I last made a bag, and I forgot how much I love making them! There is a lot of prep work with interfacing etc, and that can be a bit tedious, but its nice to have a change from making quilts, and making something three dimensional is a different kind of challenge and lots of fun. This book was recommended to me by more than a few people and it really is great, with good explanations of lots of new techniques, to take you beyond basic bag making skills.

First, I made the flap for the front of the bag. I pieced some strips of coloured solids, in a variety of different lengths. The strips are 1" wide finished. I pieced these to 2" strips of Kona Ash, and then applied fusible fleece to the back. I quilted it in straight lines in the Ash, and then I decided to bind it in the same colour as the lining fabric for a bit of extra detail and I am very happy with how it turned out:

Next I made up the front, which will be underneath the flap, so not too much detail here:

And for the back, I stuck with the same theme but changed the layout a little, using 3 unfinished strips to give it some additional movement:

I sewed on the gusset then (seriously hate that word!) and I have the exterior of my bag done, yippee!!

I have the lining all interfaced with fusible fleece, and pockets inserted. One for a phone and the other for pens, wallets or keys. The colours aren't coming up too good in this but its a lovely shade of green and I've used aqua for one set of pockets and a brighter blue for the other.

All that remains is for me to sew up the lining pieces to make the interior, attach the outside flap to the exterior, sew the lining to the exterior and finish off with the strap and the magnetic buttons. I should be ready to post this by the end of the week :-)

I hope my partner likes it, I think if it all continues to go smoothly it will work out to be a nice swap item. I still have to think of my small item though!

And I promise I will do my best to reply to emails and catch up on my blog reading this week, I feel like I have been AWOL for far too long!

A discovery....

Over the weekend I have been doing a lot of thinking about the swaps that I'm currently in, Mouthy Stitches and For the Love of Solids (2). Oh - and not forgetting Doll Quilt Swap 12. (But the posting date for that is not till April so its not my main focus at the moment.) The main thing occupying my mind at the moment is zip pouches and solids. There are actually a lot of people taking part in both these great swaps, and keeping up with the progress pics is a full time job in itself! But it is very interesting being in both swaps at the same time, as ideas in one are informing my thoughts for the other and vice versa.

I have been playing around with ideas for a good while now for my partner in Mouthy Stitches. I was super lucky with the partner my swap mama assigned me, she is very talented and also really lovely and I SO want to make something she will love. I've been stalking her on Flickr and her blog and lots of ideas have been flitting through my head.

 

First up I did a mock up using a rainbow theme and natural linen. (please forgive the crappy indoor photo). This was kind of based on some of her mosaic ideas. I have to say that while I like this myself, it turned out a bit more blocky and with less movement than the idea I had in my head.  I haven't done anything else with this as I'm waiting for some more perle cotton to arrive to hand quilt it.

Then, I was browsing in the FTLOS group and saw a great mini quilt based on the Japanese x and + block. And I decided to try it out using some of these fabrics, using this tute :

And I just love how it turned out. I had seen these blocks on blogs, but never really was that into them. Until I made this. Swoooooon. I love it! I totally understand the attraction and this is definitely on my list of blocks to make a quilt from. Total discovery for me!!!

I thought about hand quilting this - I'm still thinking about that. Some of that perle cotton that is currently in the post should be the perfect green for this block. But, being me, I was too impatient, and I dug around in my thread bag, finding a variegated red and pink thread and decided to see how that worked.

I used fusible fleece for the first time that I got from Gone to Earth. I love the low loft but I think I kinda messed up when applying it, using an iron that was too hot and too much steam, as it wasn't as smooth as I anticipated when I was quilting it. Next time I will pay attention to the instructions!

However, luckily, it didn't reflect on the front and I am pretty happy with how the outline quilting turned out. Not perfect, but it makes me smile, and I hope it might make my partner smile too. I added some extra linen sashing around the block so that I can give the pouch a flat bottom without hiding some of the block on the bottom of the pouch.

I know this block is quite pink - and that some people are allergic to pink! But I love bright pinks, and I think that paired with the green here, it works nicely and is fresh and pretty. But we'll see what my partner thinks. I have plenty of time to run up something else if she doesn't like either of these options.

On to FTLOS and I have been doing a LOT of thinking about this one. I don't think my partner wants a mini quilt, and I am strongly tempted to do a bag for her. The question in my mind is tote bag or messenger bag? I found a few great tutes for messenger bags recently when looking for myself, and it just struck me today that I could do one for her too. But I'm not sure if the quilting cotton would be strong enough for the exterior. Do you think it would be? I could interface it and use fusible fleece to give it structure? Do you think it would work? Because I actually have a good plan for this and think it would look really great. But I don't want to do all that work and for it to be too lightweight at the end.

Opinions on both swap ideas gratefully received!

For the Love of Solids Swap Mini Quilt

Well, now that my package has (at last) arrived all the way over in Canda, I can finally reveal my swap items for the For the Love of Solids swap! Felicity was a really great partner to have - so active in the Flickr group and lots of hints about what she liked. But as someone whose blog I have admired for quite a long time now, I was pretty anxious that she would like what I made!

Felicity's swap info told me that she loved improv piecing and letters, as well as grey fabric. I checked out her blog and saw she had made a fabulous quilt from free pieced letters. It was so cool, I just had to give it a try and decided to go for something very modern using letters as a starting point. This was a pretty big departure for me. I've never done improv piecing, never done letters and never used a grey backing. I did a fair bit of scouring the blogosphere looking for instructions and inspiration, but didn't find a huge amount of instructions, it being improvisational (doh!). I did find one site which showed me how to make a letter A (can't remember it now!) - not much use to me for the word I wanted but it gave me a starting point and I had a surprising amount of fun making these letters. I love how wonky and irregular they look.

Then I started thinking about the rest of my quilt and how to pull it together. I found this quilt by The Girl Who Quilts  which gave me some inspiration re: improv blocks and how to utilise them. (It also gave me the inspiration for the quilting.) I decided that rather than trying to improv piece the whole quilt top (the thought of which had me petrified!) I would do improv blocks and piece them into the quilt top.

So I made up these little blocks, having a lot of fun doing them I might add!

I really wanted the blocks to be irregular in size and shape, and used some of the crazy piecing techniques I've learned lately to set them into the Kona Charcoal background fabric.  Then I began the process of laying out my top with these 3 blocks, but I just wasn't happy with how it was working. An hour or so of panic later and I realised I needed a teeny tiny 4th block. Once I did that, Iit all came together for me, and I fell in love with it. I moved onto thinking about the back then. I didn't want to go for a totally plain back, and some regular strips would not have fit with the front. So, I did a central block made of randomly cut strips, just for fun! I set this into a vibrant bright teal-ish blue colour (the name of which I can't remember!) backing and I think it works nicely against the front.

After doing a small bit of FMQ on it, which really didn't work, I decided to go back to my inspiration and quilt it in random, angular straight lines to reflect the angular nature of the piecing. It really worked, I was thrilled. Then I noticed that Felicity had used that same quilting technique on her FTLOS small swap item and that made me smile :-) I bound it in the same Kona Charcoal fabric that I used for the background.

Last but not least, I got a rare sunny hour for some photos! Here it is in all its glory! I was afraid to publish any pictures of the whole quilt top, because I thought that the letters might give the game away to Felicity! So its nice to finally be able to show the whole thing off, having only shown partial views in the Flickr group so far.

I then parcelled it up with the Circles Mug rug and sent off to Felicity.

 

The very best thing about swaps though is that you get something in return! And this is the package that arrived all the way from Australia for me last week. Kirsten is someone I have chatted to on email and I loved the look of her progress pics in the Flickr group. So when I saw her name on the return address on the envelope I did a little dance of anticipation in my kitchen before I opened it. And look what I got!! Amazing :-)

I asked for a sewing machine cover or a  mini quilt for my big item...and I got both! Kirsten was amazingly generous. My sewing machine sits on my kitchen table as a permanent fixture, in against the wall. And it has a big ugly white hard cover. But no longer - its now got this lovely double sided cover - with a rainbow on one side and gorgeous straight line quilting and colourful squares on the other.

Then there's the warm/cool HST mini quilt - I'm STILL debating where to put this one, its so pretty.

Lastly, there's a matching little fabric basket which was immediately put into use to keep my essentials beside the sewing machine. How lucky am I?? You should definitely go check out Kirsten's lovely blog - she has great projects! Thanks so much Kirsten, I'm still in love with my swap items!

I have said it before, but need to say it again. This was a GREAT swap. The challenge of working with solids only was really interesting and certainly made me push outside my comfort zone. So thanks Felicity for providing such great inspiration :-) I'm so glad she likes it! And thanks Kirsten for sending me such gorgeous goodies! I'm definitely keeping a close eye out for round 2!! I'm linking up to the mini quilt linky over at Fresh Lemons.

Wednesday WIP update

Another week gone, where does the time go? August is always a busy month, this year more than ever. Can't believe that my little boy is off to school next week. He is all kitted out with his uniform, his books, and his schoolbag. He looks so grown up with the uniform on! I am torn between excitement for him moving on to this new stage in his childhood and wanting to cry that he is growing up so quickly when I see him!

So here's the progress this week:

Completed this week:

I finished my mug rug for the Haiku themed scrappy mug rug swap and posted it off last Friday. I don't think my partner will receive for another few days, and I don't want to spoil the surprise, so here's a little sneak peak of the front:



And the back:


I must admit to shamelessly stealing the idea for this card from Susan who sent me a similar one with our little fabric swap a few weeks ago. I loved it so much, I've made a few versions for friends, and as I did a rainbow theme for this mug rug, I thought it fit in quite nicely. Inside the card was my (pretty amateurish) Haiku -
"Rainbow of colours
Like a smile after the rain
To brighten your day."

Which pretty much sums up my sentiments about this mug rug. I will reveal all later in the week.

I also finally sat down and pieced my Bee blocks for August - they're here. I really liked this double pinwheel block, once I got over the fear of messing up, and I even had enough leftovers to do 2 nice 6" blocks for the back for Jenna.

In Progress:

Besides the mug rug and the Bee blocks, this week was about two things for me - our Across the Sea QAL, and my solids swap item.

We are cutting the fabric for the quilt front this week for the QAL and next week, the fun really starts with the piecing. I really love the simplicity of the block and the way it lets the fabric shine through. Here's my trial block - I just love this print from Just Wing It!



I also made good progress on my For the Love of Solids swap.


My partner has liked some improv blocks showing up in the group pool so I have tried to piece some for her.


In addition to this first one which got a lot of comments at the weekend, I have pieced 2 more. This is going to be a mini quilt, with a Kona coal background. The 4th block element I can't show as I think my partner would realise immediately it was for her.






This is my first venture into improv piecing - I don't really know what I'm doing but I think it looks ok. Would love your feedback :-) I'm sorry about the pics which were taken indoors and the lighting isn't great. There are nine different shades of Kona blues in these blocks, and they do create contrast all by themselves, but I really like the pop of cerise/hot pink.

Last but not least, I'm guest blogging today over at Sara's fab blog Sew Sweetness about essential sewing supplies.


So if you are new to sewing and you want to know what you need in your sewing basket to get you started, head over right now and find out more!

I'm linking up to WIP Wednesday over at Freshly Pieced where I know I will be in some super talented company, so head on over there and have a look!

Blocks, blocks, blocks!

Sunday is a dream day for sewing in this house. After a day off on Saturday and (ususally) a good nights sleep, the extra energy coupled with daylight always give me a boost. So this morning I tackled my Sew Bee Blissful blocks which I have been avoiding for the last couple of weeks for fear of ruining them.

Jenna wanted a double pinwheel block, and, to be honest, it was very straightforward once I figured out what fabrics I was going to use where. She sent me these bright and colourful fabrics and I added a little white as well.

This is the first time I've used starch, strangely enough and I think I overstarched the fabrics for the first block. It very possibly could stand up all by itself (sorry Jenna!). But I think it turned out ok, here it is:

The second one is my favourite:


Jenna asked us to make 6" blocks for a strip on the back of the quilt with any leftovers. I had quite a few scraps left as I used some white, so I made up 2 blocks for her. One a simple pinwheel to echo the front, the other a crazy pieced block. I hope she likes them, I really love how they turned out.


I also got started on my solids project for the swap. My partner has really responded to some improv blocks in the photo pool so I thought I'd try this for her. I've never done it before, but I quite enjoyed it. The unstructured nature of it appeals to me! (Surprise, surprise!) So I did this block plus some other bits - but I can't show them because they would totally give the game away as to who my partner is! I'm using Kona Coal as the background fabric on this mini quilt. Can't wait to get to the next blocks now. What do you think of this? Does it work, or not... bearing in mind that its supposed to be random and improvised? Let me know. (yes, I know its not a regular shape.....that's part of its, eh, charm!)


On another note, are you exited about the Across the Sea QAL?? I know I am. The Flickr group has jumped into activity with over 60 members so if you're still on the fence, come join us! Fabric cutting instructions will be posted tomorrow so check back then :-)

I'm linking up to:

WIP Wednesday

I haven't done a WIP post in a little while, but this week I'm in the middle of so many - with no completed projects to show off - that I thought it would be nice to catch up. So here we go:

Scrappy Mug Rug Swap: After last week's craft fail, I recut my hexies and am working through the handstitching. Its actually quite pleasant sewing them sitting on the sofa and chatting with Himself, rather than sitting out in the kitchen by myself! Need to get this done and in the post this week so its more sitting on the sofa for me :-) I'm much happier with my hand sewn hexies, they are more even. Still figuring out how to finish this one. I think I'm going to put a cool/warm wonky log cabin block on the back of it to make it double sided, so not sure how best to quilt it to make the most of both sides.....

Sew Bee Blissful August Block: This is my very first month participating in a Bee and I'll be honest, I'm petrified of messing up!! See this lovely fabric Jenna sent me?

I never worry about messing up my own stuff, but the thought of cutting someone else's fabric and it turning out terrible is proving more nerve wracking than I imagined... Need to get off the fence and actually do it - again, by early next week.

Yay! I'm hosting my first quiltalong and am very excited about it. Its kicking off this week, so if you haven't checked it out, follow the button to find out more! This is a joint project run by myself and Jennifer, and we would just love if you wanted to join the fun. I'm doing the baby size quilt and have done my first fabric pull - this lovely bunch of Just Wing It FQs.

I'm considering taking away some and adding in a few complimentary FQs from other fabric ranges...need to make a decision as we'll start cutting soon!

For the Love of Solids swap: I have my fabric for this fab solids swap and I'm pretty clear on my idea now. I'm lucky to have a great partner who is commenting lots in the group and its such a help. I can't wait to get sewing with this project, it will put me out of my comfort zone but in a good way. This is the stack of solids I'm using - aren't they pretty? I have to say that I am loving this swap group - its so active, so imaginative and I'm learning lots. Definitely exactly what I think swaps are all about.



The Skittles quilt top is sitting in my basket waiting to be basted and quilted....hmm, I think it will be September before I get to it.



Lastly - don't forget to pop over and enter my blogiversary giveaway for this lovely Amy Butler fabric. You'll find it here!


So, that's my update. Want to see some other fab projects in progress? Head over to Freshly Pieced and have a browse through some of those talented ladies' blogs!