Wip Wednesday - progress

I've been back to working on some of my larger projects these last few days now that my son has returned to Melbourne and the Handmade With Love stocks are high. (HWL is the craft group that I belong to that sews for a charity called Our Rainbow House. We sell our goods at craft fairs etc and to friends )

Having said that, this morning I got an order for another 2 sets of the Darlek pot holders this morning and worked on them at Patchwork today. I didn't take enough matching fabric to finish off the 2nd pair but they won't take long to do. I need to get some more labels from Handmade With Love to finish them off as well.

I have made some good progress on Strippy X, a Bonnie Hunter pattern. I added all the triangles to the corners of the strippy pieces. I chose a lavendar and it looks great. All the blocks are now done. Next up is sewing them together

I worked a little on Handwork Heritage. I started to cut to size the off cuts from the doilies to make the border. Turns out there isn't as much as I thought once I eliminated all the plain fabric - that wasn't going to make much impact in the border. I decided to not try to use the crocheted edging in the border as I have to back it and its a lot of fiddling about. I decided to make the border 5" wide but like I say - there wasn't very much once I had sorted them out and trimmed them up. I would like to work in some pinks into a piano key border. I'll see how I go.

Handwork Heritage Too is now finished! I had wanted to get it done to use in Church for Advent. Well Sunday just past was the first Sunday in Advent and it wasn't finished for that. However there is another 3 Sundays before Advent concludes on Christmas Eve! Today at Patchwork Group I put a dark purple around it - its finished at just under 2". Since it was to be a tablecloth I decided not to use an wadding but just to pack it. I didn't want to do a binding so instead I finished it via the "envelope", "pillowcase" or "birthing method". That is, I put it, right sides together and sewed a 1/2 seam all the way around, leaving a 12" gap through which I turned the quilt right sides out, pressed the seams and then stitched the gap shut. 

I am very pleased with how it turned out although its not laying flat at the moment. I think I will give it a really steamy press and see how it sits then. I will take it up to church on Sunday and see how it goes then

And then because it isn't as if I have enough quilts on the go... I joined in the newest Bonnie Hunter Mystery quilt that started last Friday. I have managed to complete the first clue - make 221 neutral 4 patches from 2" squares. I was wondering how I was going to manage the fabric for the rest of it when I am going to be trying to pull from my scraps (I am NOT going to buy any fabric) Peggy, our glorious leader at HWL has said I can raid the fabric bins up there. I sorted them all out a year or so ago so know that there is a nice box of purples and quite a few yellows. I am not sure that I will have much at all in the way of purple in my scrap bins as I have made a number of scrappy quilts featuring purple lately. Ah well....

How have you gone with your WIPs this week/Month?

 

WIP Wednesday

What a busy week it has been!

Up untill today all my sewing had revolved around the Christmas Craft Fair which is on this coming weekend. Handmade With Love has a stall there and I have been sewing things to sell there. I made up a bunch of tissue packet covers (25 in all) and hair scrunchies (27 I think) and a couple more pot holders. (Minecraft fabric this time but no photo. I forgot to take any before I handed them in to stall coordinator).

Today was our weekly Patchwork Group sewing days. We are very blessed to have our own room in the local council art's complex. I took up 4 of my project boxes and pleased to sew I worked on stuff from 3 of them.

Handmade Heritage Too
I assembled the strips together. 

I found one minor mistake that I decided to ignore 

and one more major one that I fixed up. 

I wanted all 4 corner pieces which I'd cut from the one doily to be going out, with the curved piece facing out of the corner... not like this.

I like how the centre is working out. HH2 will be made into a table cloth that I will use at church during Advent as it has lots of purple in it, the colour for Advent. That has put me on a bit of a time line to get it done - first Sunday of Advent is the 4th of December - just over 2 weeks away.

Stringen Em Along
This quilt, based on the pattern String X by Bonnie Hunter, had a little work done on it today, first time I've worked on it in over a month. I have chosen a lilac as the background for it. Today I cut out the squares that I will then cut in half to be the corners of the block. 

The instructions were to cut 4 and 7/8ths squares and slice them in half diagonally but I cut 5" instead... I'm NOT the most accurate cutter so always prefer to have a little wiggle and trim room.

Getting Along - the club mystery quilt.
Today I got the borders on. 

I am not entirely happy with it. Its too small to be much use I reckon so will add another border. I am looking at perhaps a wide orange border. I am not sure what I am going to do with this quilt. I'm thinking it may get tucked away for a birthday quilt for someone in a couple of years.

The project I had with me that I didn't touch was the bits and pieces for the border of Handmade Heritage. I was thinking I might start to trim them to a uniform size and start working on a border but I ran out of oomph before then. I hadn't taken my lunch with me, thinking I would leave at midday but then I was enjoying my work and wanted to get the last rows of HH2 on. I could have kept on working BUT I was getting hungry and I had a message to say that my new glasses were in at the optometrist so wanted to get them. 

I am really happy with how they look too. 

All in all its been a good week

PS I also made heaps of bottles of sugar coated peanuts, toffee coated peanuts and spicy sugar coated peanuts. And some jam drops too! No photos of the peanuts but here are the jam drops.

 Hope you have had fun this week too.

WIP Wednesday

Its been great to be able to get back to work on my Handmade Heritage project. My sister Joy sent me a parcel of doilies and other embroideries to add to the project. I have put together one quilt top centre (ie no borders as yet) with the pink strips. I wrote about about it in a blog a few days ago here

Having decided not to include the blocks onto which I had stitched purple sides in the first quilt I am now working on a second quilt which I will call Handwork Heritage Too. I have completed 56 blocks with purple strips and have sewn them into 7 rows of 8 but have yet to put them together.

As is my way, after I got the strips together I realised that I had 2 identical ones next to each other so did a bit of unpicking and rearranging. That resulted in 2 strips of the same colour being next to each other but I decided to just leave it. Ho hum

Today I put Getting Along at Patchwork on the design wall in the club rooms. With Lyndi's help I worked out what I had to do with the borders I had made to get them to fit properly - it didn't take much. I got as far as adding the dark cream inner board (1.5" finished) but packed it in and came home when I ran out of cream thread in my bobbin with about 20" to go. I finished it up this evening. 

Still have to add the crazy outer boarder and then probably another plain border in orange. I will bind it in orange as well.

I bought back a stack of items that are for our Handmade With Love stall at the Christmas Craft Fair coming up in 10 days. I didn't have any Velcro with me whilst I was away and I had also left the "Handmade With Love" labels at home. Tuesday at Handmade with Love 2 of the newer members of our group helped to get the labels stitched on whilst I sewed the velcro onto the hanging towels and bandanna bibs. Some others ironed labels onto some of the other items we couldn't sew onto. It was great to get them all done.

I finished off the Christmas stockings I was making under commission

 as well as the potholders, another commission which had needed their labels stitched on. I made another 2 sets of potholders to complete this order. 

I posted them off today.

I've been browsing through Pinterest to find some more ideas for things to make for our craft stall. I'm keen to try some scrunchies and tissue packet covers. I'm having fun looking anyway! I am also thinking about making a few more baby bibs.

I am under orders though to make some of my savoury sugar coated peanuts before I do any more sewing for the stall. I bought the peanuts and sugars today. I am going to have to look for the recipe I used last year. If I find it I will save it to Pinterest so I can find it again.

Hope you have had fun this week and working on lots of stuff.