Finished projects, "Me Made" items and future plans

The first piece to be finished this week was mum's quilt. I returned it to her on Friday and her first action was to put in on her chair ready to settle down cosily. An old friend returning home.

She found it hard to see exactly where the repairs had been done. Just as I had hoped. It was lovely to see that the quilt was welcomed so enthusiastically.

My cardigan was finished on Saturday. I replaced the orange ribbing strip with this beige shade. It seems to work so much better. I was lucky to find these buttons during the week. They are shell buttons with a printed motif.

The final item to be finished this week was completed only today, Sunday. My blue denim trousers just need a good final pressing before I can wear them. Hot Patterns 1217 Weekender Utility Cargo Pants. These are the third pair I have made.

I have challenged myself to wear a minimum of two "Me Made" items each day as a way of finding out which clothing items I really enjoy wearing. This is based on "Me Made May", an online event which encourages dressmakers to take photographs of them selves wearing clothing which they have made as well as making more projects. One particular collection could see me wearing both my newly completed items. For the moment, Aggie is modelling the clothes for me.

I think the only problem with making this idea public is that I ought to take photographs as a record. Hopefully, I will be able to remember.

The fabric shown here is a two metre length of navy Ponte Roma. During the Moulton Sewing Group meeting on Wednesday, I heard about a shop I had never heard of. Weaverdee is an online site with a base in Middlewich, which is opening as a shop. Travelling to visit mum on Friday, I took a minor detour to see if I could find this shop. It was well worth the visit. The shop sells sewing machines, does repairs and also sells haberdashery and fabric. The ponte roma above came home with me in company with a collection of sewing machine needles. I really enjoyed looking round.

The ponte is destined for one of these tops - shirt 121 from the September edition of Burda Style. I also have the blue floral jersey fabric waiting to be made up into another top. The plan is to get around to making these very soon. Well, as soon as I can get a couple of projects finished. One of these, the MEG block has to be finished by Friday ready for the next meeting. 

September 2018 edition of Burda Style

I have three toiles to complete within the next two weeks. The first is an amended toile for the fitting course whilst the others will be trial runs for the Vogue fitting shells. We have decided to try these as well as working on the pattern supplied with the "Sew the perfect fit" course. The course is really demanding and I find myself learning a lot. It will be interesting to see how these patterns relate to the course.

Repairs and other possible disasters

Mum's quilt before work started

 The past week has seen me planning the repair of a quilt I made for mum a few years ago. Called "Square Dance", it had been much loved and regularly washed and it had seen daily wear since being handed over.

One of the damaged areas

There were a few areas of damage where the fabric was beginning to break down. I must admit that I really hadn't expected the quilt to have shown so much wear so quickly. Since mum was rather upset to see it in this state, I agreed to repair it and then return it. I intend to make another quilt for mum so that this one doesn't get the same amount of wear in the future.

After chatting it through with some friends at the Moulton Sewing Group, I went ahead and drafted a few designs to patch the damaged areas. You can see my original sketches in the photo above and this close up.

The quilt is currently being stitched and I plan to hand it back on Friday. There is still quite a lot of work to be done, with all the footprints needing to be bondawebbed in place and then stitched. The squares have all been attached and quilted in place to add strength to the damaged areas. There will be more photos once the work is all complete.

I have been getting on with some of the mending in my pile, as mentioned last time. It is not an interesting task but I will be glad to see a gap where that particular collection of objects currently sits.

My scrappy cardigan has now been stitched together and is nearing completion. The strips for the button and buttonhole bands have also been knitted and stitched into place. I am really unhappy with these. As you can see the bands are pulling almost as if they are too short. This is the nature of ribbing, unfortunately. Although this is exactly as the original design instructions stipulate in the pattern, I really don't think it works. I shall be unpicking these pieces and knitting them with the ribbing running 90 degrees from the current position. Why is the ribbing in the orange? Well, I don't have enough of either the cream or the white, or even the pale grey. I must admit that I don't think the orange colour works, so will use this opportunity to try a different colour. Ah well, back to the drawing board on this one. Hopefully I can get it finished before the cold weather comes creeping in.

Textile fun - printing, knitting and sewing.

I've been printing again. The grey painted fabric was left over from the last session. This time I had made my own little stamps out of cardboard and the expanded polystyrene packaging from a pizza. I went to a meeting of the NWCQ (North West Contemporary Quilt) group yesterday and we were all making printing blocks. Good fun!



This next little stamp has been made out of miracle sponge. I was lucky enough to have been given a small piece to play with since I hadn't seen it before. It starts out looking rather like cardboard, but when it is soaked with water, it becomes a sponge. The fact it is so compressed makes it easy to cut into shape. I used scissors.



I just loved the way the sponge didn't react the same way each time I printed with it. Some images didn't print as clearly as others. Possibly my faulty technique, but I love the result.



I need to add some more printing to this piece when it has dried.

The last piece was just playing around using up the last of the Setacolor Opaque dye I had been using.



I printed using the foam brushes I had been using to spread the dye out on my printing tray. (It used to be the base from something edible I bought years ago.)

A few days ago, I finally got around to finishing off my bag. As you can see from the link, it had been in the UFO pile for almost three years! It just needed sides, handles and pockets. I need to clear more of my UFOs this year.



Continuing with the theme of completing UFOs, I finished knitting Mariah.



I slightly modified the way the neck joins on to the hood, making the hood come close in round my neck.



I also continued the cabling all round the edge of the hood. Next, I am planning to line the jacket with this fabric.



To keep the jacket cosy even with the chill winds we get round here, I shall be quilting the fabric before cutting out the pieces. Luckily I thought to make a pattern for the lining before sewing the jacket together. I bought myself a nice sturdy open-ended zip to complete the jacket.

I also managed to complete the December page for the Traveling Pages project - "The Goddess Within." This one is winging it's way off to Australia. Happily, it is going to someone not directly affected by the dreadful floods afflicting the east coast at present.

I started another pair of socks. These might be for my husband, but I have a horrible feeling they might be a little tight since the cables draw the legs in quite close - more to do with my tension when knitting cables, rather than the design. The pattern came with the sock knitting booklet attached to the September 2010 issue of Knitting Magazine. It is a pattern by Martin Storey.

I had some fun putting this together too. This is based on the delightful weighted pincushion design by Elizabeth of "Oh Fransson". I made the original design some time ago, but gave it to my elder daughter, since she rather liked it. This time I have made the same bag, but made the pocketed area rather bigger. It is joined to a double layer of white heavyweight (pelmet weight) vilene sewn to the top. This is then held in position by standing the sewing machine on top of the vilene. It seems to work quite well. As you can see I have used some of my collection of selvedges to make the bag. I added a couple of silly cat buttons too, just for fun. Elizabeth's excellent instructions make this a very quick item to sew.

Last, but not least. Here are the photos I promised of mum's finished quilt. It is called "Square Dance". There are two reasons for this. Firstly, my mum teaches English Country Dance. Hence the footprints.

Secondly, I was messing around with a square block made up of squares.

This is the back. This is fleece, and yes there are two colours. I didn't have a big enough piece when I had finished messing around with the quilt top. However I did have some large remnants of cream coloured fleece which I was able to piece to the darker light brown backing.

Mum is delighted with her quilt and uses it every day to cover her favourite chair.

A new year and new projects.

Now where can I start? It is such a very long time since I added anything to this blog. Apologies to all. It has been busy here.

First, a very happy New Year to you. I hope the weather is kind to you and everyone you know. A belated Happy Christmas too.

I have been working at completing my mother's quilt, a jumper for Simon, two hats, eight Christmas decorations and four present bags since I last wrote here. Oh yes, there was also the November page, some work on a December page and preparations for the January page of the Traveling Pages project. There was also a pair of dungarees for a neighbours daughter too. I also started a second jumper which now only needs to be sewn together and the v-neck ribbing to be knitted. This last jumper uses yarn left over form the first jumper I knitted for Simon and will be either for my husband, or for myself.

January has started with painted and printed fabric.

The first piece is the result of painting fabric and then overprinting using old cotton reels and various bits and pieces.

This second sheet is my cleaning rag. I think it look even more interesting than the printed piece.

This piece was an experiment using pastel dye sticks. I've never tried using these before. This piece just needs to be ironed to be fixed. It was fun to doodle with these brightly coloured sticks.

Some of this fabric is destined for the January page (Fairy Tales), and the rest just because I felt like having some fun. It is so dull and wet outside. Our beautiful snow has disappeared and been replaced by fog and driving rain. The walk we usually enjoy on New Years Day abandoned because of the weather. Never mind, there is always tomorrow.

Some explanation is probably needed. The decorations were an experiment which came about to solve my quandry over what to make for a challenge laid down by the United Kingdom group on My Sewing Circle. We each had to make something for another member of the group for Christmas. A previous challenge had been to make an apron. I found myself cutting out paper shapes at lunchtime one day. These turned into the decorations. They were good fun to make. Then the latest Selvedge magazine had a delightful pattern inside for a reversible present bag. I made a mistake in cutting out the first one and turned it into a small bag with a handle instead of a small bag with a tie. I made four since they seemed so easy and quick to make whilst being incredibly useful for presents.

This is the reverse of the bag.

One little bag was sent off containing four of the decorations I made. The other decorations became presents, as did the remaining bags. One bag held the completed hats which were a present to Simon and Liz, a secret since the jumper was an expected item. A further little bag held gifts for my younger daughter. The last was given as a gift to my friend Hilary.

The first hat is Hot Cuppa Joe by Jennifer Lacey. The pattern is available on Ravelry here.

The second hat has the wicked (naughty) title of "Ribbed for his pleasure." This pattern, by Tinksdarkerside, is also available on Ravelry here.

I like to think the fabric bags may be used in some way, or given as the container of a gift to further friends. Each little bag is large enough to be a small prject bag - perhaps to hold knitting or an embroidered piece.

The dungarees were an unexpected project. My neighbour became very worried since she was not able to find a suitable costume for her daughter who was taking part in the school play. Time was short. I heard about it and offered to help. A bit of research and a suitable design was decided upon. Eleanor, the eleven year old daughter, and her mother came round to help. Eleanor was delighted to be able to help sew the muslin for her dungarees. She was shown how to use my serger and had a wonderful time sewing a couple of long seams for me. With the muslin completed and altered to fit, they left me to get on with things. Luckily, I had exactly the right fabric in my stash. The following evening I was able to go round and present the completed dungarees to Eleanor and her mum.

I shall have to wait until the Traveling Pages mentioned have been received by their owners. The December and January ones have still to be completed, but hopefully they will be completed within the next few days. All the previous pages I have made for this project can be seen here.

Mum's quilt was finally completed on Thursday 30th December. She was delighted with it. Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of her with it before she left to go home. (She had stayed here for the New Year celebrations, coming with Simon and Liz.) I shall take photos later in the week when I go to see mum again.

Thanks for reading this far. I wish you a very happy, enjoyable and creative 2011.

Textile pages and sewing.

I was delighted to hear that latest page for The Traveling Pages group had finally arrived. Above you can see the Lion and the Mouse under way. I am stitching through water soluble fabric here. Such useful stuff. It tears off easily as well as dissolving well. So handy when I wasn't sure how fragile the layers were going to be.
For the differing layers, I used netting, loose woven white cotton and a densely woven fabric I found in my stash. All embellished with FME. (Free Machine Embroidery.) The figures were copied from photographs found on the internet. Sadly, I didn't find one with a lion next to a mouse........ I wonder why...

This is the finished page. The background is painted using colours from a wonderful photograph I found on the internet showing an african sunset. It also had the silhouette of an acacia tree which I used for the back of the page. For this I used sheer brown voile attached using FME.

I sent it off with a simple retelling of this delightful story. The original fable was written by Aesop and is one of my favourites.

As you can see, Gayle's theme was "All creatures great and small".

Oh, I've been busy with mum's quilt. This was the pieces all placed on top of the fleece I shall be using for the backing. Since this time I have been busily piecing the backing for the smaller pieces. I have been having a lot of fun with curved piecing. I'd never tried doing that before. Sorry about the lack of photos - there just has not been enough decent daylight for a good enough photograph.