Needles and Pins on Little Bird Wings

I have made a little bird pincushion! She is for  Le Challenge, a monthly crafty challenge which is organised by Lucy and Nat, and this month's theme is "Wings".

I knew as soon as I read the challenge theme that I wanted to make a bird pincushion, partly I suppose, because I have a bit of a thing for little stuffed fabric birds, and also because I needed a new pincushion that would sit comfortably on the arm of the sofa

My little bird is so proud of her wings that she lets me store my needles there.

She has a nice flat bottom (if only I could say the same!) so that she sits still amongst  all the crafty paraphernalia on my desk and she is firmly stuffed with Polyester filling so that pins push easily into her back.

 I have added an additional felt layer to the underside of each wing so that I can store needles there to keep them separate from the pins.

The wings are attached with spotty heart shaped buttons and the eyes are really tiny flower shape buttons - the type that you buy for scrapbooking and card making.

I embellished the tail with short lengths of ric rac, folded in half and sewn into the tail seam.

My little bird is going to get a lot of use, but when she's not needed for pins, I know she'll be very happy sitting amongst the ornamental branches in my lounge.

 I might even let her sit outside on sunny days - just as long as my cats realise she is only a stuffed bird of course!

I am hoping to get a tutorial written up so that can you have a go at making one for yourself. The technology is beating me at the moment. If anyone knows an EASY way to convert a scanned drawing into a professional looking line drawing using  Photoshop Elements or Touchdraw, please let me know. I found some tutorials but the learning curve was way too steep for me to tackle to get it done for this post. One day I'll manage it, hopefully!

A Quilt Finish

 

 

 

Yay! Ive finished another quilt. A very pink and girly quilt!

 

 This is made with just one jelly roll - Coquette by Chez Moi for Moda and some Kona Snow.

It came together really quickly. I didn't even spend ages arranging and re-arranging the blocks as I usually do - they just sort of fell into place first time round.
 

The backing is even more pink.... and I used the remaining strips of jelly roll to make a scrappy binding.





It is quilted with a simple straight line quilting 1/4" away from the seam lines.

When I bought the jelly roll, I didn't realise quite how pink it was. Too pink for this house and I don't yet have any "girly" relatives to give it too, so I think this would be a good quilt to donate to Siblings Together

 

As it's Wednesday, I also have a couple of Wishful Wednesday projects to share with you (the things I would like to make if I had a magical unlimited amount of time!)

First up is a knitted shawlette

Although I wasn't keen on them at first, shawlettes have grown on me over time.They are a quick way to dress up the jeans and T shirt that I'm wearing, when I'm off out and running late - a bad habit of mine!!

This is a free pattern and the equivalent yarn for UK knitters would be any aran weight yarn

 

And secondly, I have this crochet butterfly to show you.

 

I really must try and make time to have a go at these - I know they wouldn't take long. Again a free pattern (UK terminology) and you can find it here

The Le Challenge theme this month is wings - I've already planned my entry, but a few of these might just find their way into the photograph too! If I can tear myself away from the garden sunshine we have at the moment, that is...

I hope you like my pattern choices this week, and that the spring sunshine is filling you with energy and enthusiasm too.

Till next time..............Julie

 

Linking up with Fresh Sewing Day

 

Guthrie Ghani Grand Opening

 

If you have been watching the Great British Sewing Bee on TV, you are quite likely to know that one of the finalists, Lauren was opening a fabric and haberdashery shop, called Guthrie-Ghani, in Moseley, Birmingham on Saturday. Now Moseley is not too far from where I live, so I went down to join in the celebrations.

Fortunately I got there earlier than I had intended, but even so there was quite a crowd to witness the opening ceremony. A kind lady let me get near enough to take my photo. This is Lauren with her husband Ayaz.

Stuart another contestant was there to help with the cutting of the tape

 

and then we were less loose on the goodies inside. My goodness! What a treat that was!

Lauren has wonderful taste in her choice of fabrics for her own sewing and that shone through in all stock she had ordered. I didn't know which things to Ooh and Aah over first.

There were drinks and cakes and a delightful large cake decorated with all things haberdashery!

 

and so many visitors that some had to wait outside until there was space enough to be let in. Tilly arrived and helped Lauren serve and chat to customers.

 

The shop is beautifully laid out and even has a seating area where you can rest awhile, have a coffee and peruse the patterns. It even has THIS wonderful vintage treadle Singer sewing machine on display!

I remember my gran having one just like this. Funny, it looks smaller than I remember it, as a child. Guess I've just grown taller!

The queue for the till stretched round three walls of the room, but the atmosphere in the shop was so vibrant no-one cared in the slightest! Ermmm, that happens to be ME behind  Tilly with my arms full of books and yarn!

 People had come to visit from far and wide and I was lucky enough to meet up with fellow blogger Gilly from Gilly Makes. It was great meeting Gilly for the first time and she kindly took this photo of me and Ann, who was this year's winner of the Great British Sewing Bee.

Ann is 82 and makes all her own clothes. She has so much energy and enthusiasm and was encouraging everyone to give sewing a go, whether they were 5 or 55.  I want to be like her if I live to 82!!!!

Guthrie-Ghani is going to be a wonderful addition to the fabric shops available in the West Midlands. There is an amazing,  well-lit studio upstairs with beautiful oak beams where a wide range of sewing, quilting and knitting workshops will take place, and if you live too far away to visit, don't worry - they have an online shop too!

 

Farmers Wife Quilt

My Farmers Wife quilt is growing!
I managed another two blocks over the weekend.I think I picked just about the most complicated blocks in the book! Or maybe I've just got to step up, as I think there may be quite a few like this.
These pieces are so tiny!

That block on the bottom right of the top picture nearly got the better of me.

There are 33 individual pieces in one 6" block and you have to be so accurate - which you can see from the photo, I'm not :(
The un-picker tool got a lot of use this weekend!
Despite the challenges, the tiny pieces look really sweet, especially when chained pieced like these - almost miniature bunting.....

 

The blocks I completed this weekend were numbers 53 and 64

and here is an excert from the letter that goes with them saying why the author would be pleased if her daughter should marry a farmer.

"Nothing ever compels so sweet and deep a response in a women's heart as does strength. I hope my daughter's husband, strong with the sun-browned strength of a farmer, clean minded, true, may inspire in her the kind of love that will dare any obstacle."

I guess these days with modern machinery, it's not strength that the farmer needs, so much as determination - and in the UK, you're not going to get many sun-browned farmers, just wind browned ones maybe. The letters are providing interesting reading though.

I said on Friday that I hoped to spend some time gardening, and as Saturday was a glorious day, I spent the whole day in the garden.

I had a small plan to try and gradually raised the level of the lawn at the bottom of the garden as it flooded a lot over the winter and I lost a lot of plants. My son offered to help, and before we knew it the small plan had become a big one with levelling (we used a spirit level!!) and raising of the border, taking out plants, and ordering turfs.

Hopefully we can get the turfs down next weekend as it looks a bit bare at the moment, but I'm sure it will look great in a couple of months time.

Finally, it's Earth Day today, and as I'm sure you know if you've been reading my blog for any length of time, I love organic cotton, so if you are starting a new project, consider using organic and do your bit to help this earth of ours :)

 

I'm linking up with "Let's Get Acquainted Monday"  which is over on the  Quiet Play blog this week

 

Wishful Wednesday

My goodness, how quickly Wednesday has come round again. I've been busy in the garden (finally, Spring seems to be here!), seeing friends, doing jobs and suddenly here we are again!
The blanket above has to be the most colourful item for Wishful Wednesday yet.
It is from Elizabeth at  Another Vegetarian and is knit in Stylecraft DK yarn. My crochet skills are pretty basic so this would be a great skill-builder, if only I had the time!

picture from A Quilters Table blog

Second up on my list is a fabric version of the time homoured memory game. My kids loved playing this game, but we didn't have a bought version or a fabric version. I just sent them off running round the house to bring me 10 things that would fit under a tea towel (I was usually trying to cook dinner when we played this!) We then laid the items out, they tried to remember them, covered them up with a tea towel and I sneakily took one away. They then took the tea towel off and had to try and remember which one had gone. Aww, fun times, good memories!

The other version you can play is where you lay all the cards face down, pick up two at a time until you can remember where the pairs are. When you turn up a pair, you get to take the cards, and the one with the most cards at the end wins.Either game can be played with the sewn version, and all the cards fit nicely into the pouch. The fabric to make the cards and the pouch is available on Spoonflower and the tutorial for making the game is here.

 

 

Third is a knitted shawl or wrap. I'm not really a shawl person. I like the idea of knitting them more than I do the wearing of them, but I could certainly see myself wearing this on a summer's evening. It is a free pattern and the link can be found on Ravelry

 



 

Finally, no wishing for the quilting project ..... Actual commencement! My Farmer's Quilt book arrived, and I've downloaded and cut out the templates. Eeek! Some of these are so tiny!!!

Hopefully by Friday I'll have a couple of finished blocks to show you.

An amusing thought has occurred to me... This is a Farmer's Wife quilt. It's going to be made out of Liberty fabrics.... could I name it "Taking Liberties with the Farmer's Wife"? Hmmm, perhaps not!



Le Challenge #1 Geometrics

Finally the day has arrived when we show our entries for Le Challenge. This is a new challenge run by Nat from Made In Home and Lucy from Charm About You and the subject of the first challenge was Geometrics.You can use any craft you like in this challenge so no matter whether you are a sewer, quilter, knitter, embroiderer, paper crafter or whatever, why not take a look and possible join in with the next month's challenge.

This is my entry:

It is a table mat made using the paper piecing method if quilting. I had never done this type of piecing before so I headed along to Craftsy and found that This Free Class has a tutorial for the Circle of Flying Geese which I have had my eye on for a long time.

I had a bit of a pre-conceived idea that paper piecing was time consuming and fiddly but Amy Gibson, the tutor quickly dispelled that myth and I loved the technique. It gives such sharp and acccurate piecing lines, although I do think it's a little wasteful of fabric compared to rotary cutting piecing. I loved the technique though, and I know I'm going to using it a lot in the future.

I printed off the downloadable templates and chose my fabrics

I chose to use Klona Solids from Backstitch.  It's a very economical fabric at just £5.80 metre and there is a wide range of colours. This meant I wasn't going to stress if it all went horribly wrong - which I'm pleased to report.... it didn't! I did take the precaution of labelling all the fabrics with the numbered section they were going to be used for, and I'm very glad that I did.

First you unthread your machine and perforate all the sections of the template so they will tear off easily when the block is complete.

Next you sew you fabrics to the underside of the template along the marked lines, progressing from number 1 to number 2 etc until you have completed the block (which is actually one quarter of what you see on the finished table mat)

Once I had completed the block I treated it as a mini quilt and made a quilt sandwich with solid grey Kona on the back and wadding in the middle.

I shadow quilted around the geometric shapes, which helps define them and also produced an eye catching quilted star shape in the middle

I used some organic Happy Drawing Scribbles by Ed Emberley in Grey for the binding. I originally bought it from The Village Haberdashery but I notice that they only have a blue and green version left in stock now.

 

I like the look of the quilting on the back

 

I didn't really know where I was going to use this mat when I started, but at present it stands in pride of place on the coffee table, complete with a little bunch of knitted daffs from my pattern wehich you can find here. I'm so pleased I chose grey for the background. I started off thinking off white or black, but neither of those would have fitted in with the house as well.

 

I'm linking this post with Le Challenge and really looking forward to finding out what the next challenge will be.

Did you notice the new header and cleaner line to my blog? (Well, what else is a gal to do when it starts to rain on a Sunday afternoon when she hoped to spend it gardening?)

 

Till next time..................Julie

 

 



It's Wishful Wednesday Again!

Hi, It's Wednesday again, and time for me to share with you the projects I would make if I had all the time in the world.
Did any UK readers watch The Great British Sewing Bee last night? It was so amusing to watch them attempting to make a pair of man's trousers. I think they all did extremely well in the crazily short amount of time given. I love taking part in challenges, but the pressure of the time constraint would totally ruin it for me. It was sad to see Tilly go. She has so much creative energy, but the judges wanted flawless construction as well. Tilly has been putting her design skills to good use though and as well as a tutorial for a skirt on her blog she has a downloadable pattern for this blouse - it's a re-vamp of the blouse she made on the TV show, and so this is number one on my wishlist this week.
Second up is a really really gorgeous afghan.

There is a free pattern for this on Ravelry. It is knit in Noro, so it would be a luxury blanket, to say the least, but oh the pleasure there would be in being surrounded by all that lovely yarn creating those ever changing colour pennants. It would be something to hand down through the generations too, I think.

Third up is more achievable!

A crocheted baby jacket. Isn't this just so cute! I love the different coloured buttons. There is a free pattern for this here. It's from Canadian Living so the instructions will be in US terminology not UK.

 

Finally, I wish, wish, wish I could start this. They are Farmers Wife Blocks blocks found on Pinterest.

I soooo want to start my Farmer's Wife Quilt, but Amazon really dissappointed me by sending me an email to say my book for the quilt would not be here until Saturday :(

 

My fabric for it did arrive today today though

 

It is some more Liberty quilting cotton fat quarters (I have a sizeable stash of these already, but I tend to veer towards the pastels so I needed - yes, needed! - a few brights, and some reds to get enough variety . I shall just have to make do with looking at these until the book arrives!

Till next time........................Julie