Sew Together Bag...finished.

 The thing I love most about blogging is the inspiration you get from friends. After I posted my stalled progress on my Sew Together bag last week I got lots of suggestions which got my mind ticking over, and soon, driving to work on Tuesday morning, I had the lightbulb moment. Funnily enough, in those weird coincidences that occur when you're on the same wavelength as your friends, when I got into work and put my phone on my desk, an email popped up on it from Cindy with almost exactly the same idea I had just decided on. That made me sure I was on the right track.

So I got stitching with some little hexies I had in my stash. I did a line across what was to be the front of my bag, and then I decided to do a hexie flower on the back. Some hand quilting with perle cotton and I was all ready to put together my bag.

I was anticipating that putting on the final zip would be the most difficult piece of this bag, but it turned out easier than I expected. My binding isn't perfect but it's not bad either. Actually putting the little tabs on the end of the zip was the fiddliest bit of the whole thing.

I really love how this bag turned out. It's a great concept and a lovely pattern. My only (small) gripe is that there are very few pictures or diagrams in the pattern and without the help of the sewalong run by Quilt Barn I would have struggled in parts as I'm not great on reading instructions that require good spatial sense. But I would definitely recommend the pattern

I love how this looks like a simple little bag from the outside, and then you open it and see all the detail on the inside.

I'm very happy with the choice fabrics I used on the interior of this and how they work together. One of my favourite little details is the exterior lining fabric which is a sewing notions navy print.

All ready now to fill it with my hand sewing stuff.

Linking up to Finish it Up Friday over at Crazy Mom Quilts.

WIP Wednesday

I've a few things going on right now, despite the madness of trying to get ready for back to school and fitting in visits and activities for the kids before the end of the holidays. The biggest of them is this baby girl quilt which is a custom order. If you follow me on Instagram or Facebook you'll know I found the quilting very challenging on this one for a number of reasons. Thankfully I'm past it now and ready to hand finish the binding over the next couple of evenings.

I also started to piece together the hexies - thanks everyone for the great suggestions. I'm thinking panel for a bag is what I'm going to do but might change my mind, and I probably have enough to do some of the smaller suggestions too.

After making lots of projects for other people, today's sewing is going to be for me - another Swoon block which I almost have all the lines marked on ready to sew. Today's other project is to try to troubleshoot my machine problems - see how nice she looks here? But she has turned into a monster the last few times I quilted on her so I need to spend a bit of time sorting her out.

Thats about all the WIPs! Don't forget to enter my great giveaway for Stash Fabrics here.

Linking up to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced.

A Hexie Conundrum

In the evenings, I have been slowly, very slowly, basting these little hexies I cut from my scrap basket.

There's about a hundred 1/2" hexies there. The big question is what to make with them. Any ideas? Answers on a postcard please.....

 

Oh - and if you'd like to win a little pile of die cut hexies slightly larger than these, also cut from my scrap basket, don't forget to enter my giveaway here - it closes tonight.

 

Celebrating 3 Years - a big giveaway!

 It's hard to believe that 3 years have passed by since I nervously started blogging about my sewing.

It's been a fantastic, fun journey where I have made lots of new friends (you know they're proper friends when your husband starts referring to them by name instead of calling them the internet people) learned about a million new things and discovered a lot of stuff about myself along my way.


I made lots of beautiful things - these are some of my favourites:

Most importantly, it has made me happy :-)

So, to celebrate and say thank you to my lovely friends and readers, I'm having a giveaway. This is not a sponsored one, everything I'm giving away is from my own stash and I hope you like what I picked!

Firstly, 3 beautiful FQs of Nordika in the Alpine Valley colourway:

Next, from my (if I do say so myself) scrap bin of loveliness, 100 die cut hexies (sides measure 1.5" unfinished). I fussy cut quite a few of these to make them even more fun. There are loads of gorgeous fabrics in here.

A copy of the Modern Baby book:

And lastly, I couldn't resist putting a little handmade something in there, so I've included a phone/camera cozy.

I think its a lovely bundle, and I hope you do too. Here they are, all together:

One lucky person will win it all! To enter, its very simple, all you need to do is leave a comment telling me where you follow me - whether its Bloglovin, Feedly, Facebook, Instagram etc. New followers are more than welcome :-)  You can find the links to follow me in various places up on the top right of my sidebar. For a bonus entry, share this giveaway on your blog, Facebook page, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest etc and let me know in a second comment where you shared it.

I will post worldwide. The giveaway will close on Monday evening 19th August. I will choose a winner randomly shortly afterards and will announce the winner by editing this post. Please leave your email address in your comments, if I cannot contact the winner within a reasonable time frame I will redraw.

**Giveaway now closed. Winner will be announced on this post shortly**

Edited Tuesday 20th August.

Thank you everyone for your lovely, lovely comments on the giveaway. I loved reading them all. There can be only one winner however, and that was no 147,

 who is Jan. Congratulations Jan, I have emailed you!!

WIP Wednesday

Its been a productive week here at FairyFace HQ, I think maybe the sunshine is making things flow easier and faster! In any case, I have a lot of projects that I've managed to finish/make significant progress on.

In addition to some very satisfying finishes, I have been making progress on my Made to Measure quilt (from the Handquilted with Love book).

 

This is the first medallion quilt I've made and I'm really enjoying the process.  After making the centre and the first border, I decided to add a teal/aqua border with orange and purple pops as I didn't want to get stuck in a pink and orange colour scheme. I doubted this choice a bit, and I really wasn't sure about the purple border 3 when I was making it. But now that I've put on the grey Loulouthi last border (I have been hoarding that print for just the "right" project for a long time!) I am delighted with how its looking, I love the jewel tones. The next border is going to return to pinks and oranges again - the brighter the better! But all those HSTs, especially the teeny tiny ones for the star cornerstones, make for a lot of work so I might take a break for a few days.

I've also been basting hexies in the evenings when I'm sitting down in front of the tv. I cut these from fabrics in my scrap bin one weekend using my Go! Baby when I was trying to make some room in it - I have over 400 of them! I gave some to a friend, and started basting the rest. Not sure what I'm going to make with them yet, but I need a new cushion cover for my sewing chair, and I'm thinking I may use them for that - particularly as there are so many favourite scraps from lovely projects in there. They're small - the sides are only 1" long, but because they are that size, they were perfect for some of the teeny tiny scraps I had.

I'll keep adding to them until I decide! I have a lot more than I need though so I'm running a little giveaway for 100 of them over on Instagram where I am @sewfairyface - head over there and check out my photo for details of how to enter.

This week's finishes include my Kona tumbler quilt:

And my triangular Echo placemats:

I also tackled one of Ayumi's lovely projects in her book Patchwork Please! - the Prettified Pincushion. I found this a little bit tricky to make - mainly because of the tiny little blocks, and working with the Essex linen was a bit different to cotton. (I also think baby brain had a significant contribution to my messing up the blocks more than once). But in the end I rescued it, and it turned out very pretty and is sitting proudly on my sewing table.

So that's my very productive week. Linking up to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced! 

Scrappy Rainbow Mug Rugs

Now that my swap partner Elaine has received my mug rug, I can finally reveal :-) Elaine's swap info told me she liked rainbow colours, light backgrounds and texture; a little bit of Flickr stalking later, I realised that she had lots of hexie projects in her favourites. Of course, being still in the honeymoon period with my Accuquilt Go! Baby (can it really be a honeymoon if there is no end in sight?) I had easy access to hexies so I decided that this was the way to go. Better still, I had recently received my rainbow charms (thanks to my QAL partner-in-quilting Jennifer) so it was really a no brainer.

I took out my Go! Baby hexie die and decided to use the medium size one. (If you're interested in receiving free patterns/the Accuquilt newsletter click here to sign up!). Five minues and I had all my hexies (I seriously love my Baby!) You'll all remember my first attempt at this mug rug - it suffered from over-trimming enthusiasm and I also wasn't totally happy with my machine piecing accuracy.

So I went back to basics and decided to recut (because, why wouldn't I? lol!!) to hand sew these babies next time round. Happily, I found perfect size paper hexie templates on this site - I printed off some sheets, cut them out and away I went, a few pleasant evenings on the sofa while I watched re-runs of The Sopranos (and yes, 10 years later it is still as good!).

My mind then turned to the back...for some reason, I had in my head that I wanted this to be a double sided mug rug, but I didn't have a fabric print that totally worked for the backing and I knew I wanted to do some simple echo quilting in the white space around the rainbow hexies, which was not going to work with a different design on the back.

In the end I decided to do a wonky rainbow log cabin block on the back. I tried to emulate a traditional log cabin block by keeping cool colours at one side and warms on the other and I used a linen/cotton mix to give a little extra texture to the sashing..

I got over the quilting issue by quilting each side onto its own bit of batting. I use Warm and White which is a nice, fine batting and putting the two sides together did not make it unduly bulky. I then bound using my Its a

Hoot dotty grey fabric which remains still my all time favourite binding fabric. Lastly, I needed to write my Haiku which was the theme for this swap, so I stuck to the rainbow theme for that, and then I made a little card with a row of rainbow flags (thank you Susan for the idea) to write it in.

Then yesterday, I received this package from JohannaBF all the way from Florida:

How cool is this? I couldn't belive my luck with this great package - two, TWO lovely mug rugs - one a hexie rainbow one (SWOON!!) and the other a wonky block with a fab embroidered owl (yes, I know you know they are my favourites!) in the centre. All the way from sunny Florida :-) Thanks so much Johanna :-)))

Craft Fail: When at first you don't succeed.....

Listen to your body and your tired little mind and STOP!!

I kinda wish I had read that sentence a few hours ago to be honest. Let's just call this a cautionary tale in which a viable idea got destroyed because I couldn't just leave the sewing alone and go sit on the sofa!! Want to see my craft fail?

Well, it starts with this pretty little layout for my scrappy mug rug swap. Perfect little hexies thanks to the Go! Baby.



I'm pretty sure my partner likes this whole vibe, so decided to get sewing up the hexies last night. I machine pieced them, but didn't feel I did a great job - some of the seams are a little bulky and because I found turning on the corners a little tricky, I think some of my hexie shapes are not as perfect as I would like...eeek. That's without even mentioning the number of times I had to rip back the hexies.... I debated just starting over, but I hate giving up on a project.



I decided that the quilting might even out some of those problems so decided to press on tonight with the backing. See this nice, simple little backing?


Looks very straightforward, right? You would think so...but no. This was the 3rd attempt at making a backing on this tiny little mug rug. My brain was so tired after a rotten day at work that I couldn't figure out my measurements on the first. And the second. Then I messed up the cutting. I really should have thrown in the towel at that stage. But remeber that sentence back up there - you know, hating giving up on a project, you see, I just couldn't let it go. So I got this done at last and was happy with it...and got a rush of blood to the head, deciding (foolishly) to keep going.

I FMQ'd it (obviously, without pinning because it was so small, and you know, things were going so well for me at that stage ...) and I knew when I turned it over it wasn't good. So I decided to trim...to make it look better... and fell foul of the classic cutting-your-kids-hair trap (you've never done that? really? ) trimming off little bit after little bit to even it up and realising too late that I'd gone too far. Except here, there is no hairdressing equivalent of a quilter to fix my stupid mistake. The top hexie is too close to the edge for me to do a proper binding.......


And the back is crooked...but not crooked enough to make it look properly, intentionally wonky......


So its a bit fat fail for me... and back to the drawing board on the mug rug.

So, my wise friends, other than your virtual sympathy, could I have your opinions please. I have plenty of fabric to recut the hexies and start over. What do you think, will I give it another go? Should I handsew the hexies this time? Any other advice?

And is there anything I could do to retrieve this one? (Remember the whole never giving up business I mentioned? Lol!!) I do think its quite cute and if I could fix it a little bit I would happily keep and use myself despite its imperfections.

On another happier note....next Monday is my 1st year blogiversary and I have a really exciting project to announce that day!! It involves a good friend and lovely fabric and I hope you'll be as excited as I will be about it.... Plus I'll have a little follower giveaway later on in the week!

Sewing Fun..and a sneak giveaway preview!

This week I just couldn't get into anything big I was working on. I didn't have the mental energy and had lost a little bit of creative spark. But I was panicking slightly, needing to have something ready for my Sew, Mama, Sew! giveaway post on Sunday. So, Wednesday night I sat down with some scraps and an idea I had from my little notebook and decided to just have a bit of fun. By yesterday afternoon, this is what I ended up with:

A cute little cozy for an iPhone!

Now, I'm going to shamelessly post lots of pics of this, not because I love it so much (although I do!) but because my friend Helen is staying with me for a few days, and she's an amazing photographer, and I just love the photos she took. She also gave me a crash course for dummies in how cameras work, light, shutter speed etc, and, even better, where to find all these things on my little camera. She wandered around adjusting things, muttering about depth of field and light and I ended up with about a million fab photos, not just of my stuff, but also, as always, of my kids!

Its made from a natural coloured cotton/linen mix, paired with some tiny red scraps from my basket. I quilted the main fabric using some scraps of cotton backing. This is the front:

It's made to fit a phone with a fitted protective cover as I hate when I have to take mine off, the phone inevitably gets dropped when I remove if for 5 mins! I added a little tab so it can be hung from a handbag or a belt. This is the back:

I debated what to do closure wise but ended up covering a button with one of my last Bliss scraps, and made a fastening loop from the main fabric:

And I lined it with one of my favourite fabrics, Ta Dot in Berry. I think its the most versatile yet striking fabric I've used, works great on its own or blended, can be background or the main feature. It really brings life to anything you put it with, I just love it!

By the time I finished it, I was back to my normal addicted-to-the-sewing-machine self and full of energy again!

This is my handmade item for the giveaway, which I'll post on Sunday {link is here}. I'll be adding some fabric and notions to it too, so be sure to check back in then! I'm also thinking of writing a tute on this one, if you're interested let me know!

Helen and myself had a little bit of a crafty evening yesterday and I showed her how to make a scrappy pincushion:

Of course, she's taking it away with her. I also had this little mini pincushion that I made with some hexies a while ago and kept for her:

Of course, I'm not sure what she's going to do with them...her being a knitter!

I'm linking this up to Fabric Tuesday on Quilt Story, Sew Cute Tuesday, Todays Creative Blog and a bunch of other great blogs, check out my sidebar for the links!