Small Makes

I have spent the last week making some little things for a Christmas Fair this Saturday. I may add some to my folksy shop (see right) too. If you have visited my blog before you know I love using up even the smallest pieces of fabric.

The brooches are about 5cm tall and are made from scraps of silk, cotton, net and ribbon on a pelmet vilene base. This is then embroidered, backed with felt and sewn with blanket stitch around the edge. Here are a selection:

These are the Christmas Tree brooches

I also made some needlecases which are about 10cm with two internal pages to hold needles and/or pins. Again made from scrap strips of fabric on a calico base they are embellished with stitching, lace and buttons.

This is an equipment roll for the friend I am doing the fair with that I have made using the same sort of technique for the outer fabric. Inside it is quilted with pockets for different pieces of equipment and two pages for needles/pins

Grannies Garden - using hexagons

If you've been following my blog you'll know that when I travel I take hexagons with me to stitch. These travel easily in a small bag and can be sewn on planes, coaches, in hotel rooms, etc.

As you can see the way I normally work produces a very random design.

I showed you this quilt made from 70's fabric in August and decided I would try this Grannies Garden design whilst I was travelling to Portugal.

I realised that I have never told you the size of these hexagons. The ones from the 70's are 3.5cm to a side. All the recent ones I have shown you are 2.5cm to a side.

I decided I wanted all the centres to be the same colour and the flowers would be set in cream. Each flower would use only one fabric for the petals.

As you know I like working in strips so here is my method. You need one centre hexagon, six hexagons for the petals and five cream hexagons for each flower. You will create three strips: 

a) one cream, two petals b) two cream, one petal, one centre, one petal, one cream c) one cream, two petals

When you sew the strips together they will look like the one below. You repeat this several times.

You can then put the flowers together

I have sewn about 50 flowers together and need to do about 50 more to make a quilt to fit a double bed.

When I was cutting out these hexagons before travelling I happened to glance in my wastebin at all the bits of fabric in there - surely I could do something with them. How about smaller hexagons?

These little ones are 1cm to a side. I have about 20 of these - a step too far do you think?