2011: First Quarter gone already

I saw a lovely post by Elizabeth over at Don't Call Me Betsy which got me thinking; she was looking back on her progress against her crafty goals for the first quarter. So I decided I'd jump on the bandwagon and do the same, and maybe get thinking about what I want to get done by the end of June.

Back at the start of the year, I was still too much in recovery from Christmas to write out any goals. But I did have quite a few actually - mostly short term focused. Here's a little summary:

1. To finish my Bliss Charm quilt. This was the first quilt I ever made, I started it over Christmas and completely fell in love with quilting while I worked on it.

2. To make more from my own designs and I definitely have done this with lovely quilts I made.

PictureBox quilt

I loved how they turned out, and even wrote up a tutorial for the PictureBox quilt, and at the weekend I got an email from Beverly who has made it - I'll post her version over the weekend. That totally made my day, as you can imagine!

Sophie's Dreams quilt

I also designed this handbag and must get working on more bags.

3. To take part in a Quiltalong....I had been reading about these all over, and was hoping one would come along that I felt experienced enough to take part in. Of course, like the proverbial bus, none came for ages and then 3 came at once. In recent weeks I joined up in the Lily's Quilt quiltalong. I'm loving doing the Dresden mini block, its so much fun!

Also, this week I decided that I'm going to take part in the Bottled Rainbows Quiltalong on a small scale. But sadly, I just couldn't commit to the Supernova quiltalong over at Freshly Pieced even though I'd love to do it - I just don't have the time.

4. To take part in the Amy Butler Style Stitches sewalongs over at My Crafty Crap and JemJam. I'm making pretty patchy progress with this one - the Cosmo bag (January) is half done, I didn't do the February bag (the big shopper) at all and I did one small Origami bag for March, although I'd like to do a few more. I'm looking forward to the next one for April, the chequebook cover, I badly need a pretty one.

 

 5.  To make a Charm Bracelets quilt using Kate Conklin's lovely pattern. I even have the Fandango charm pack. But I haven't even come close to starting it.

6.  To make the Alice quilt from Red Pepper Quilts - I just love this one and reckon I have enough scraps for it but again, no time (yet).

7. To take part for the first time in some Flickr swaps. I joined up for the Scrappy Pincushion one and loved taking part, in particular the lovely pinnie I received.  I'll definitely be looking forward to participating in more!

8.  To grow my blog and to take part more in the crafty blogging community - and I've really pleased I've done this. I'm really thrilled and flattered to have lots of new readers this year and I've made loads of new bloggy "friends" all over the world who have given me great advice and lots of inspiration. I love visiting their blogs every week to see what they're up to!


9.  To learn, learn, learn!! I'm new to quilting and this last 3 months has been a challenging and wonderful time for me as I learned new techniques, got to grips with quilting basics and browsed online resources, tutorials, patterns and blogs voraciously. I'm now completely addicted to and in love with the process and end result - roll on the rest of the year!!

I have lots of goals for the remainder of the year but think I will spend a little time thinking about them and maybe post them next week! In the meantime I'll be linking this up to Elizabeth's post and checking out everyone else's progress.

Style Stitches Origami Bag



Let me preface this post by asking: who hates putting zip in bags/purses? Seriously? How many of you are jumping up and down waving your arms (well, in your mind at least?) Yep. Me too!

I've had a bit of a dubious relationship with zippered bags for a long time. Zips in skirts, fine, no problem. I found a super easy tute on doing zips in skirts last year and never looked back. But zips in bags just freak me out. They never turn properly for me and they always look messy and untidy.

Now, I know the answer to this is practice, practice, practice. But that assumes some level of craft-fail and I'm not good at craft-fail, it totally discourages me and I HATE making something and then not being able to use it. That's why I do buttons in all the bags I make!

So it was with a little trepidation that I  approached the Origami Bag pattern in the Amy Butler Style Stitches book this evening. One thing about the patterns in this book is that they have a lot of written instructions and not very many pictures and diagrams. When it comes to sewing, I'm totally visual (mostly because I have very poor spatial sense, just ask Himself about my parking!) and I was interested to see how I found the pattern as a result. But, I have to say, the pattern was really well put together (as I would have expected!) and anywhere that I really needed a diagram, there was one, which was great.

After faffing about with fabric for a while trying to decide which to use, and chasing the kids back up the stairs more than a few times, I finally settled on these:

Alexander Henry's Willow Wren, Girl Friday Cosmo Cricket and Ta Dot in Berry by Michael Miller.

I found the pattern fairly straightforward to make, there were a few little tricky bits in it around the zip ends when sewing up the seams but nothing too challenging. And I even managed to sew my zip reasonably respectably! Its by no means perfect but its functional (a big step forward!) and looks ok-ish, it could be a bit tidier and less bulky, but I'm planning on making a few more of these so hopefully I'll have it perfect by the time I get to the last one :-)

I really like this Willow Wren fabric, its super cute, I have a half yard and will definitely be ordering more of it! And the Ta Dot lining gives is a great lift on the inside. This little bag is a good size for sewing notions, threads etc. I'm going to make a few of them for my sewing box in this size and the next size up. I also want to do one for my handsewing kit.

All in all, I'm pretty pleased. It was nice to follow a pattern for something like this and not improvise as I went along which is my normal approach. Even better, my bag turned out not a million miles away from the shape of the photo in the book. I'm going back to tackle the Cosmo bag later in the week - more about that later in the week!

I'll be linking this up to Fabric Tuesday on Quiltstory and other great blogs -> check out the links on my sidebar!