Wip Wednesday

Its been a busy productive week so far for me.

On Monday with lots of help from my friend Lyndi (Finally getting how she spells her name sorted) I loaded my monster quilt on the new longarm at our Patchwork Group's room. (we are very blessed to have a spacious area supplied to us by the council in its art and craft complex) 

We received the longarm as a result of a grant. Mine was the first quilt to go onto it - woot woot. It took a bit of sorting out (mainly from Lyndi lets be honest) but we got it on and then I quilted it. Nothing fancy or adventurous believe me. An all over stipple and that was it. 

We made a few mistakes but it went pretty well. I got it home and the next day I made the binding and got it on - machined front and back -

  and put on a label and it is all done and ready for a special someone's upcoming birthday. 

The weather here in our part of Queensland had been rainy and overcast for about a week (no one is complaining as we need the rain) but it means that its not good for photographing the quilt. I will have to lie it on the grass and take a photo from our deck to get the whole thing remotely in perspective and the grass is damp and muddy and even if it isn't the dogs are and they will run all over it as soon as I lay it down. So... better photos soon or at least eventually.

We have our stall coming up for Handmade With Love (HML or HWL depending on my mood) and I decided to make some bunting to decorate it. 

I won't be at the stall itself as I will be still making my way back from Brisbane from Kombi Boy's graduation. I have made a heap of stuff for them to sell already including fabric baskets, table runners, pencil cases and a stack of sugar coated peanuts and savoury sugar coated peanuts. But the bunting was an extra.

 Its not for sale. Its to go from stall to stall. I used the  this tutorial on Patchwork Posse to guide me and chose fabric in the rainbow spectrum... the school our group supports in Zambia is called Our Rainbow House.

Making the binding took the longest - or at least was the trickiest part. Cutting out 6" triangles was easy using my 60 degree angle ruler and sewing two sides was nothing... but folding over those sides and pressing them - that was tricky. Spray starch was my saviour.... and rolling it onto a piece of cardboard as I went kept the folds in neatly.

I appliqued letters on each flag to make the sign Handmade with love and put hearts between each word. I just hope that they are the right size - that I have made them so they can have enough loop without getting in the way. 

So far I have made 2 sets and have enough binding and flags to do a couple more but won't get them done in time for this stall as I go tomorrow and I really have to do a few other things today like washing, packing and yeah digging my sewing room out from the mound of fabric and projects scattered every where and piling up on my cutting table.  (Fixit guy was vacuuming on Monday whilst I was out quilting the monster quilt and he got to my sewing room and gave up. The vacuum cleaner is sitting in the door way - meaningfully. I better get it done before we leave)

I am going to take my sewing machine with me whilst we are away for the week. We have a fair few things on whilst we are away but there will also be down time and I will have a chance to do a bit. I want to take the patterns and fabric for our Patchwork Groups mystery quilt that I still haven't started. I also want to do the Repeat QAL from Elm Street Quilters. Its over now but I really want to do it. I have the pattern and paper piecing pattern printed off for that. Need to gather up the supplies to take with me. I'll also take my crochet with me to do in the car at least.

I got out the baby qulits that I need to finish up. I have four that need backing. I found I have some cuddling minky type fabric there that will do for 2 of them and some flannelette that can be pieced for another one. 

I love to piece backings but I want to get these done as they are bugging me. I won't take them away with me as I don't like to quilt on my little Gem. It would probably handle the small baby quilts but still... don't think I will. If I want to quilt something I could take "My Cat Likes to Hide in Boxes". Its all pinned and ready to go and waiting on my  sewing table. I had hoped to do it this week but I moved onto bunting instead!

I still have to quilt my Hexie quilt. I think I'll do that on the longarm. I have to make backing for my Amy Gibson BOM and quilt that. They are both WIPs but I'm not making much progress there! Maybe next month. I am away for the rest of this one sigh.

Wip Wednesday

I've had a nasty cold for the last 12 days. It has meant that one way and another I haven't gotten my WIPs or stash reports written for a week or 2 but you get that.

This last 2 week I have been working on a number of different things.

I have got the top of the last of the 5 baby quilts that I need to make put together. I have one pinned ready to quilt but have to make backs for the other 4 before I can pin and quilt them all. They are all variations of the Sparkle Quilt by Missouri Star

I have also been working on some Christmas table runners for our Handmade With Love stall at the Christmas in July Craft fair. Some of the fabric came from Handmade with Love and some from my own stash. I had found the pattern on Pinterest and adapted it to suit me. The pattern had it made from a charm pack but I cut mine from yardage for the most part plus some 5" squares in my scraps. I ended up making 5 table runners to the pattern. I photographed them before I sewed them together...

From left over hst I made another 2 table runners. I also made 4 log cabin blocks from the scraps that I put together into 8th mat. 

At HML this week I was able to get 3 of the table runners finished off. I hope to get the remaining ones done this week, or at least before I go away on the 22nd. I forgot to take photos of the finished ones before I handed them over. Silly me! I might take some photos when I go over with my other goodies for the stall on Saturday.

My sister asked me to make her grandson who starts school next year, a special pencil case for her to give him for Christmas. She had seen pictures of the ones I had made with the pencils on the pencil case and thought it would be great for him to have one with super hero pencils. The fabric she sent me really wasn't going to work on narrow pencils, given the size of the superhero's on fabric.

 I found a picture of another "pencil" pencil case on Pinterest but the website was in German and the translation ap on my computer didn't make it much clearer.

 There wasn't a full set of instruction on the site anyway from what I could tell.  I was able to sort of work it out and ended up making 2 of them, using up all the spiderman fabric she had sent me. (she sent me a selection of 6 fabrics but they were only 10cm cuts). It was a bit frustrating not knowing exactly how the designer had gone about making them.

The pattern I found was here. As I said - in German! Today looking at the website I realised that there was a link to the original tutorial on the pencil case ... in English. The tutorial is on www.GwennyPenny.com here. 

I contacted Gwen to find out about paying the reasonable licence fee and she kindly agreed to waive it for our group since we sew for charity. It was very kind of her.

The tutorial is great and it will be much easier to make them that way than how I did them.

It was a really exciting day today for our patchwork group. We took delivery of our new longarm machine, which was obtained via a grant we were given. The people we bought it from delivered it, set it up and then ran a workshop on how to use it. Its great to have. I have a couple of quilts I want to get done on it asap. One has a very definite deadline. My friend Lindi (who has a much younger brain than me) listened intently and has promised to help me when I do my first quilts (its good to have younger friends with a retentive brain)

 Lindi and the shop owner during the setting up time

Lindi on the Longarm.