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?

Christmas is coming ..

As I was looking in the attic for the quilted advent calender I noticed how tatty my quilted tablemats were. Well they're over 20 years old and looked very sad. I have several Christmas fabrics so I decided to make some new ones - it will also help in my quest to use up some of the fabrics that fill several boxes in my workroom.

Random strips of fabric were sewn together. I used a heat resistant wadding which was lovely to machine. As you can see the quilting is very close together which produces a really firm surface. I have made ten and am in the process of making a larger one for the centre of the table. They measure 30cm x 24cm each.

We have a cat and he has a quilt to sit on in the living room (well, okay he has three as we've had three cats). I noticed that these are a bit worn now - the oldest is about 25 years old and decided that he should have a Christmas one. So that used up more fabric.

As you can see - a very simple design with simple outline hand quilting.

I thought I would also keep you up-to-date with the progress I am making on my machine quilting. The next two pictures show printed and quilted samples which I featured in August but now you can see that I have finished the edges.

Since returning from Portugal I have started work on the larger piece of fabric but got sidetracked by the Christmas goodies and other things. This is as far as it goes .... 

 I have stitched round all the motifs and completed all the text. The vermicelli (the wiggly stitching) is about half completed. Its fun to do but I really need to do it in good daylight.

Duxford Quilt Show

At the beginning of the month I went to a show at Duxford Air Museum. It was quite small compared to others I have been to this year but there was some lovely stuff on show.

I really liked this simple but effective adaptation of a quilt design by Karin Hellaby from her book 'Magic Pillows, Hidden Quilts'.

Another simple but effective quilt was 30 @ 30degrees by Maggie Howell. It seems as though it would be good for using up scraps of fabric.

One of the guest exhibitors was Greta Fitchett. She produced some wonderfully detailed work. This first one is called 'Aberdeen Harbour' and I love the way the image has been divided up as though it is reflected by a window. I also really liked the close machine quilting, I have been using this in my work a lot lately.

Another beautiful quilt was 'Venice Water and Glass'. The use of colour is stunning.

'Moroccan Pots' had so much detail in it that I have included a close up photo as well.

'Volubilis' is another quilt with so much detail. I really love the use of lots of brightly coloured hand dyed fabrics, net, buttons and the mixture of machine and hand stitching.