Baby boy quilt finish

As well as having my own gorgeous little new baby girl, I also have a new baby nephew, born just 7 weeks before my darling. So, obviously, he needed a quilt from his auntie Sarah. I picked out the fabrics after he was born  - already dreaming of bright and cheerful spring colours with boyish tones - but was unable to do too much with them.

Last week I pulled them out again and very quickly cut and pieced them.



I used Elizabeth Hartman's baby charm quilt pattern and its definitely one I'll be using again for last minute quilts, so simple and easy and because its about 33 x 40, very quick to baste, quilt and bind too. I decided to embroider his name in the bottom corner, using a simple running stitch in perle cotton. I traced his name using washable marker and it worked very well. I fused a small piece of very lightweight interfacing to the back of the fabric before starting to stablise the stitches a little.

After quilting it using a random stipple with some little hearts around his name, I picked a blue heart poplin print for the binding:



And a green hippo print from IKEA for the backing.

And in no time at all, it was done and ready to give to my sister today just in time for his Christening.



It's good to have my sewing mojo (or my sewjo as I saw it referred to during the week!) back again. I'm busy getting my list of projects for quarter 2 of the Finish A Long ready to post on Monday. Hope you're having a great weekend!

Learn to Sew: Free online sewing classes

Have you been inspired by The Great British Sewing Bee? Keen to try your hand at sewing, dressmaking and quilting? If so you're in the right place!

I learned to sew in 2008. I did a basic night class (how to turn on a sewing machine, that basic!!) for a few weeks, and then I started reading sewing blogs. Pretty much everything I know, apart from how to thread my sewing machine, and a little bit of basic dressmaking, I learned from free tutorials on the fantastic sewing and quilting blogs out there. I had never done Home Economics/Domestic Science in school, and had never sat behind a sewing machine before I bought a machine in Lidl in August 2008. I'm pretty amazed at some of the things I've managed to make and how many skills I've acquired in the intervening 5 years - I even have a quilt pattern featured in a book being published this spring! 

But more than that, I am constantly amazed at how much I absolutely adore sewing. I really, really love it. I love making pretty things. I love the processes and the satisfaction at getting something right. I love how challenging it is, and how I can constantly push my skill levels to achieve more. The internet is still my go-to source for all sewing related techniques and questions and yes, you can learn to sew from it - I absolutely did!

So - if you are ready to be hooked, what next?

Last year, I ran a very popular series of sewing and quilting tutorials and classes here on my blog for beginners. I called it {Sew} Get Started. It started by explaining the basics and then progressed into a series of tutorials/classes aimed at helping the complete beginner to learn to sew and increasing in complexity as the series progressed. Tutorials were contributed by my very talented sewing friends, who all have blogs of their own.

They're all listed on this page:

If you're not a complete beginner, you might want to dive in with some of the tutorials. But if you just want to learn to sew, start at the top, and work your way down...and then get out there and explore the wonderful world of sewing blogs!

A new kindle cover...

I've been incredibly drawn to a wintery cool colour palette in the last few weeks. It started when I bought a couple of quarter metres of fabric for different projects in the fabric shop on Mother's day - a minty aqua green and a deep grape purple, both with tiny dots in white - and when I stacked them on top of each other on the shelf, I realised that they belonged together in a project. I actually couldn't take my eyes off them, and there was a lot of fabric-strokery going on in my house! After a few days of mulling it over, I decided to add some greys and a few other fabrics in similar colours and hey presto, I got this lovely bundle of cool prettiness:

That was my starting point, but I needed a project for them that would be quick and easy for my time-challenged existence. When I got my Kindle last year, I had intended to make a few different covers to swap it in and out of, but it got away from me, so I decided to do another one - the bonus being that as it was all for me, I could do whatever I wanted with it and not be wondering if someone else would like it.

This was one of those projects that took shape in my head. I had a really clear idea, once I pulled the fabric bundle, what I wanted the cover to look like - randomly pieced squares and rectangles and dense straight line quilting. At first I attempted to work out a little pattern for the piecing so I would get my measurements right but it didn't flow, so I resorted to cutting out pieces and putting them together improv-style as I went along.

Here's where it started:

But the middle was too dense with colour, so I switched it around as I pieced until I got an arrangement I was happy with - no pic as it evolved kind of organically.

I moved quickly on to quilting it very densely with straight lines spaced only 1/4" apart, using my faourite Aurifil 50wt thread in a silvery grey:

I loosely followed Clover and Violet's tute, but got the idea of an elasticated strap closure from another tute (can't remember which, apologies). I also added a fabric casing over the elastic, as my elastic was strong, but not pretty at all. I like how the fabric casing looks, I wasn't sure I would as I thought it might be fussy but I don't think it is. I also added some very stiff sew-in interfacing in the panel under the Kindle to give it a bit of structure - I found it in my interfacing box, its almost cardboard like in texture.

The only thing I was a bit unhappy about was that I slightly undermeasured the height, and hence my binding and elastic were affected a bit, and not as even and crisp looking as I wanted, but I think once I am using it I won't even notice, and I'll definitely be making another cover so I can adjust it a bit then.

All in all, I'm really happy with how it turned out and even happier that I can look at this fabric combo every day!

Also - for those of you moving blog readers, you can now follow my blog easily through Bloglovin by clicking through this link:
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Woohoo! First quilt finish of 2013 :-)))))

 

Those noises you're hearing and wondering what they are? They're the sound of me doing a happy dance that I have finally - almost 3 months into the year - managed a quilt finish. Yippee!

It's a very small quilt - a baby size pram quilt - but a big milestone. Finished this morning as my baba hit the 10 week mark - can you believe how fast the weeks are flying by?  (A hell of a lot faster than the last 10 weeks of pregnancy which were pure torture!) After she was born, I bought a couple of Posy charm packs and when they arrived, I stroked them for a couple of weeks while I was deciding what to do with them. I've wanted to try a tumbler quilt for a little while now, and as the charms lent themselves so easily to cutting into tumbler shapes, I made quick progress once I jumped in and started cutting. I used about 1.5 charm packs - or slightly less - on this, primarily picking the brightest fabrics from the packs.

Back in the Black Friday sale, I bought a yard of Happy Ever After fabric from The Intrepid Thread just because I thought it was lovely - it was one of a few boys and girls fabrics I bought to make sure I had some lovely fabrics in my stash when baby arrived. I really like how it works against the quilt top - totally different, but sweet and girlie also and able to stand on its own enough to make this functional as a double sided quilt.

I quilted it in a random stipple using Aurifil 50wt thread in a light pink, adding in lots of hearts for my gorgeous baby who has truly stolen our hearts! I like how the quilting shows up on this picture I took in the sunlight this morning before washing it:

After that, all that remained was to bind it. I auditioned a few binding choices over on Instagram,  but wasn't really happy with any of them. So I popped off to the local fabric shop and while I was looking at fabrics, noticed they had a premade bias binding in precisely the colour I had been searching for in the fabrics.

I really am happy with the deep purple binding, it works well with the Posy colours and kind of grounds the colours and frames the quilt. (I also might be in love with the premade binding, this was the nicest I've found and super easy and quick to work with. Anything that makes the process easier at the moment!)

And ta-dah, it's done!! I hope you'll forgive me the number of photos for such a small quilt (25 x 36"), but as you can see, I'm very excited to finally have a finish to show you. And here's the lady herself, kicking around happily on it this evening!

I'm working on a few other things - don't forget to pop over and follow me on Instagram where I am posting regular pictures of my work in progress and enjoying looking at what everyone else is working on.
 

Linking up to Fabric Tuesday over at Quilt Story:

Naptime Sewing

 
It's been a busy 6 weeks here, but I've managed to squeeze some sewing into R's nap time in the last week or so, and its amazing how great it makes me feel. I didn't realise how much I had missed the process of making things - it does my sanity good! It might seem like its impossible to sew with a new baby, but I am finding 15 minutes here and there and making progress steadily working in bite size chunks, so to speak!

When I was browsing around looking for cute tutorials to make things for R, I found a great tutorial to restyle a little girl's tshirt into a dress and decided to try it on a tshirt E has had in her wardrobe, unworn for months now. I haven't done any garment sewing in a long time, so it was fun to tackle a different project.

Ooops - of course, I discovered the reason she hasn't worn it when I started sewing - its more than a full size too big for her, but by the time she fits it, the Moshi Monsters will no doubt be last year's fad. So I kept going and added some ruffles. I used a knit, a cotton and a seersucker to give some different textures.

 

When I pinned this, I thought it would be a simple enough project, but I found sewing the ruffles on in layers a bit tricky. But I got there in the end and I think it turned out pretty cute.

Next I moved on to making something for my baby girl. When I saw the peasant dresses that Toni sewed for her baby girl last summer, I made a mental note to make some myself if I had a baby girl. So I ran up one in the last few days, using a pretty cotton print I found in the local fabric shop, and a little bit of one of my stash fabrics (Hope Valley I think?).

 

I used this free tute, although I might buy the pattern so I can size it up as its very pretty. I even added the ric rac edging!

The pattern is great and easy to make. The only thing I realised - at the very end - is that the sizing is quite small. I only noticed that even though its 0-3 months, its up to 12lbs - most of the 0-3 month clothing here in Ireland goes up to 13.5lbs at a minimum, even 14lbs sometimes.  Some my chubby little lady is already nearly at the weight limit and I'd say she'll get only a couple of wears out of it.... I'll just have to make another in a bigger size! :-)

The last project I've been working on is a tumbler quilt with my Posy charm packs. Here's a sneak peek...I have the tumblers all pieced and just need to add some borders to have a finished quilt top. I'm loving working on this and aiming to get it finished maybe next weekend, it will only be a small pram sized quilt but very pretty.

Getting the time to write posts and upload pics is still a bit of an effort, as is commenting on other blogs. But as I have my phone on me most of the time, I am snapping what I'm working on and posting it on Instagram (sewfairyface) and my FB page, and following others on the same apps that I can browse easily while cuddling or feeding a baby so if you want to keep up with me, you might like to follow me there. And if you leave your Instagram name or link to your FB page in the comments I'll be able to keep up easier with you too :-)

Catching up on some Bee blocks

I've finally managed to do a little bit of sewing when R has been napping in the last few days. It's so lovely to get my machine out again.

The very first job I had to do - before I started cutting into the Posy or Little Matryoshka fabrics I got to make stuff for R - was to catch up on some Bee blocks I was very behind on. The foggy haze of late pregnancy meant that I just couldn't do these before she arrived - I had no concentration whatsoever!

First up were some scrappy heart blocks for Karen. The first was a pieced scrappy heart, and the second could be anything we wanted along that theme. I really love the fabrics Karen picked, and for the second block I decided to do some applique hearts - they were fun to do and turned out as nicely as I hoped.

Next up were some scrappy triangles for Fiona. She sent us a little pile of scraps and asked us to make 3.5" equilateral triangles with them (paper pieced). I really had fun with these - I loved  choosing the fabrics, and they were really easy to run up. They're so vibrant and happy!

 

Fiona wanted an extra triangle with our own scraps, and I had so many that I couldn't resist making 3. Aren't they pretty? And a fab way of using up scraps!

Now that I'm caught up - I'm ready to make February's blocks next - I can really start thinking about quilts. I feel like I might be able to finally get down on the floor to fix the basting mistake I made in D's quilt so that I can do the machine quilting in the ditch and then take it into the sofa to do the hand quilting here and there when R is napping. This quilt is sitting there since last summer and needs to be finished!f

And of course, I need to start making a quilt for R - I have some Posy as you know, and also a FQ bundle of Little Matryoshka to play with. Can't wait to cut into it!

Hanging out with my gorgeous girl

Life is good these last 3 weeks. My lovely baby girl already feels like she has always been here! With my older two in school every day, I am loving spending quality time with her, doing important things like tickling toes ❤❤

It's fab to have the benefit of having already had 2 other babies, and so knowing what I am doing (as much as you can really "know" with a brand new baby who has her own unique personality) but the luxury of having lots of one-to-one time with her.

R has such a content, sweet little personality she is easy to adore and I am completely in love with her!

Not much any sewing going on, but I did make some purchases to make some quilts for her when my machine comes out again, including a bundle of Little Matryoshka fat quarters (which should arrive next week) and these Posy charm packs which arrived today:

I am itching to get started sewing again - a sure sign I am beginning to feel like myself although what with all the time spent feeding and changing R, not to mention looking after my other 2 kids, I have a feeling it will be slower than I would hope!


Thank you all for the congratulations and good wishes on my last post. I haven't had a chance to reply to people individually but I loved reading them all xx