Vintage Holiday Quilt Along

On a whim a few months ago I decided to join in with the Vintage Holiday Quilt Along organised by Heidi at FabricMutt. I pulled all the green fat quarters from my stash, plus half a dozen red ones and began to cut, the blocks came together quickly and I think they're really cute. Because I wanted to put this on the wall at Christmas rather than snuggle under it (it's pretty warm at Christmas here in Melbourne) I decided to leave off the border and piece a scrappy sashing together instead, it's backed and bound in a solid red and even the batting was from my cupboard, the only thing I ended up buying was thread when I ran out about 3/4 of the way through quilting.

I love how the colours worked together, and that even though I didn't use any specific Christmas fabrics it still turned out Christmassy.

 I had a lot of fun with the quilting on this one, it was a bit anything goes. I recently did Angela Walters' Craftsy Course on free motion quilting so I pretty much had a go at all of the quilting patterns she went through in the course which was great practice for future projects.

Thanks Heidi for inspiring me to actually get it done, it was a great fun quilt-a-long and now I have another lovely to add to my Christmas collection. There are some lovely quilts linked up on Heidi's blog.

Groovy Rainbow Quilt

Have you been following/joining in with the Groove Quilt quilt-along at Pile o Fabric? Alyssa is doing a fantastic job hosting this quilt along and she's such a new convert to sewing but it's pretty obvious she's already addicted, here's hoping for our sake she stays that way!



The top for my Groove quilt is pieced. The concept was cloudy grey skies with a touch of sunshine and blue peeping through. I plan to quilt the greys with some kind of cloud like swirls and the rainbow sections with something to represent raindrops. I had to alter the piecing method to fit my rainbow sections so it was bit fiddly putting it together. The fantastic pattern comes from Emily Cier at Carolina Patchworks.

There are some fabulous looking quilts appearing in the Quilt Along flickr group.

A few things I discovered - improv. paperpiecing is fun, all greys are not equal, it's very difficult to buy grey fabric online, you never quite know if it's going to work out until it's done, and my husband is about 4 inches too short...

Typewriter Laptop Cover

Here's the new cover I made for my laptop to go travelling in. It's kind of like a sleeping bag for laptops. It came together in about 3/4 of a day, obviously if I hadn't decided to piece it it would have been faster. I used Elizabeth Hartmann's tutorial from SewMamaSew for the construction and pieced the sections based on her measurements. I did add in an extra layer of wadding to make sure it was super snug in there.

 The typewriter fabric is from Melody Miller's Ruby Star Shining range purchased at my real lift Local Quilt Shop Amitie and following my success on Rachel's Handstitched course I decided to try a little embroidery as well... I would highly recommend the course if you have the time to commit to working through at least a few of the projects and the class quilt.

I was really pleased with the result and now my baby can travel in style.

Handstitched Class Progress

I am doing the Handstitched class at Stitched in Color. 8 weeks of hand stitching projects from applique to paper piecing to Sashiko embroidery.

The main project for the class is the beautiful Medallion Quilt, and here is my progress so far.

It is basted and ready to go. Handquilting starts tonight.

Birthday Butterfly Cakes

I made these for Beth's 4th birthday a couple of months ago. They were seriously easy, and seriously effective, and delicious. I found them on Pinterest, but the link didn't work so I had to copy the picture, but I was very pleased with the result.

Just a straight cupcake mix, a butter icing and slices of strawberry cut in half to make butterfly wings.

This is the first photoshop edited picture I've posted on here, just playing around at the moment to see how it looks, hoping to get some better pictures coming in the next few months, if I ever have time to blog.

Here's the original

Might have slightly overdone the red...

And this was the real cake

Selfish Sewing - Cherish for me

It's been a while since I've made something for myself, and even longer since I've made something I will actually wear!

The newly released Cherish pattern from Crafty Mamas is a great quick sew. I managed these in about 2 hours on Friday night from printing and cutting the .pdf pattern, to sewing the hem. Crafty Mamas also offer a printed pattern piece if you are not in need of instant gratification or don't want to tape all those pages together.

I dug out my overlocker which has been packed away in it's box for being naughty for probably a year now (must not be afraid of the overlocker) but as soon as I started doing a test piece I snapped a needle (which reminded me why it ended up in it's box), only to discover that the spare overlocker needles I bought don't fit my machine. So I decided to sew it up on the sewing machine anyway and after checking the manual (now why didn't I do that before) I discovered the fantastic stretch stitch and it all came together very smoothly after that.

The fit isn't perfect. I think I might need to go up a size on the bust, but it's comfy, and I don't think it looks half bad. Well not as bad as most of my other t-shirts do anyway. The fabric came from Spotlight, it's a cotton knit, but I think it probably has a fair amount of viscose in it. Just trying to decide what colour to make next...

p.s. Overlocker has gone back in it's box, and will be found on ebay shortly if it doesn't behave itself...

Dortje Trousers

How cute are these! And you can see my EBNQRR quilt in the background. Should have ironed the trousers though...

and they look even cuter on. Two more pairs made since.
From Sewing Clothes Kids Love.

Sailing Boats

This sailing boat quilt was a kit from the Fat Quarter Shop, it came together beautifully, a relatively quick and easy pieced quilt and their kits are so generous I almost had enough left over fabric to make a second quilt!!! Certainly enough to make some cushions or something or a matching pillowcase if you felt like giving it a go.
It was made as a gift for my new nephew, born in the middle of April and has already travelled across the world to meet him even though I haven’t yet myself. I hope he enjoys rolling around on it in the coming months and years.