Progress, fabric and a dilemma

Another week and another lot of pictures. I'm very impressed at just how much I am fitting in around work at the minute. I've got my sewing mojo back. I have an urge to make a really pretty quilt of some sort and I suspect this is because of all the fabulous quilts popping up in blog land this week due to a blog quilt festival.

Progress

What isn't pictured here is the Sorbetto top I made (again another practise one) but I've ordered some fabric to make a proper one. It was so easy and took me under an hour to make! my justification is that I'm between sizes. I think I'll go with the larger one though due to my large chest.

Next up is the paper piecing sew along I was on about. Here are my first 3 blocks! Can you tell what they are? Can you tell what the smaller one is? It's actually a tea cup and another practise on that will probably turn into a mug rug. the contrast is greater in real life when my phone hasn't decided to put the flash on.

I like paper piecing it's a great way to get cool looking blocks but I had nothing but trouble with the cupcake and the lemonade. The lemonade is actually back to front.I cut my charm square for the lemonade the wrong way because I forgot to turn it upside down so I had to do the whole thing with the printed side of the paper upside down which made sewing fun! the cupcake was all good apart from I just couldn't seem to work out what angle to sew that top strip of icing. What a nightmare that was. Hopefully week 2 will go well.

Then we get to the wedding quilt I'm making. I'm got about 30 squares made today (not all pictured) by being sneaky and using the quilting tactic of chain piecing and not pinning everything which is what my friend was doing last time she helped. Hopefully I'll get a few more done this week then it's back to cutting strips of fabric. I need about 70 of these things!

Fabric

Yes, you remember I said I went on a fabric buying spree to cheer myself up? Here is the result. Lots of pretty fabric! This 1st lot is from ebay. Just a selection of novelty prints. It includes some funky owls, some dinosaurs and start wars fabric?!?! This is the only package my sister has seen arrive in the house and as far as she is concerned I won it. Sneaky me!

Fabric number 2 I bought from Fabric rehab which had a lovely selection of pretty fabric. It was a struggle to not buy more. I have some nice blenders (continuing my collecting of grey fabric!), some very mini hedgehogs and owls and some pretty purple and orange owls. oh and some penguins. obviously! There was a charm back of Summersville spring too but that's already been chopped up for the paper piecing.

Dilemma

In the best way I have a dilemma  It's just me being stupid in fact. I've had thoughts for a while (well years infact) of studying to become an occupational therapist (yes I can hear you all asking what one of them is. Google it because it's a hard one to explain properly. Essentially it's someone who works with people who have health problems or are old to enable them to carry on living a normal life. Make sense? No? Google.)

I have a thing at my local university on Thursday called 'So you want to be an occupational therapist' It's a day to find out about the course and the job and meet current students. And it's only open to mature students. i resent being called a mature student at 28 but I guess compared to the 18 year old I am. How sad. I don't feel like a mature student. Anyway my dilemma is what to wear. Normally to a uni open day when I was younger I'd turn up in jeans and a nice top but I feel like as this is a professional course and it's for mature students I should look smarter? What to wear isn't helped by our weather at the minute either. Parts of my local city were flooded yesterday and roads had to be closed.

I guess we'll all find out next week what I do. Although any suggestions are welcome.

Oh and due to the bad weather There is still no good picture of the starry quilt. It's a bank holiday in the UK next weekend so I'm not holding out much hope for sun any time soon.

Till next time!

A finish at last!

That's right. I've finally managed to finish the starry quilt! Unfortunately the weather here in Newcastle has been rather rubbish so I haven't managed to get a decent photo of it but I promise I will once/if the sun ever comes out again.

The finished quilt yay!

Finishing the quilt should of been as easy as just sewing a bit of binding on but I don't know if it was the tiredness of not having a day off work since the previous Sunday or what but I managed to make it harder than it should of been. 

It all started when I was changing back to my cream thread and I lost a tiny little screw from my bobbin. Oops. It took me about 10 minutes to find it because it is so tiny and it fell on very thick carpet.

Just to give an idea of size. look how tiny it is compared to the pin head!

Next up was the shop bought binding. I thought this would save me time but it took me forever to get the pieces joined and for the folds that were already in it to line up. Grr. 

Finally I did it although I suspect my technique of sewing the full lot on with a sewing machine could use a little practise.

My 1st attempt at free motion quilting a quilt. If you squint you may even spot some stars that look like stars and not just pointy lines.

I have also had a try at paper piecing this week in preparation of hopefully joining the sew along that Ellison lane quilts are hosting!

Flying Geese. Not bad for a first attempt. Excuse the random fabric and that I've not squared it off.

On the clothing front not much has happened. I've downloaded the pattern for a sorbetto top from Colette patterns so I may make a fake one of them this week. I love that it is American sizing because I can take 2 size of my UK size. Always a confidence booster.

My friend with a bit of dress making experience also got to see me modelling my unfinished dress mock up and has concluded that when I put the facing in it the neck should be fine although apparently I could do with more darts in the bust. She offered to attack me with pins but I politely declined.

Oh and because I've had such an awful week at work with them cutting my hours with no warning I splashed out on some fabric. It's yet to arrive but there will be pictures when it does. (Well I need something for this sew along!!)

..and finally...
This week when browsing around all the new blogs I follow (sorry - I can't remember where I found it) I came across a wonderful tool - Palette Builder 2.0. It goes without saying that I played around and some quilts may appear in these colour ways at some point! I'm a huge fan of the one with the daffodils.

Until next time when I will hopefully have fabric and decent quilt photos!
Thanks for reading

Dress making part 2

Most people probably enjoyed a nice relaxing bank holiday weekend in the UK (Well, not the leader who took some of our Guides on a county camp. I suspect she enjoyed a very tiring weekend) but I was stuck at work for 2 of the 3 days so didn't get much sewing done. That's the problem with starting at 4am. I can never be bothered to do much apart from sleep after an 8 hour shift!

Sunday was designated a sewing day though and instead of choosing the sensible option of just finishing something I decided to go for part 2 of making the dress.

I put all my pattern pieces on my fabric - very impressed because I bought too much fabric so I have some spare that I'm sure can be used for a bag or something.

I then wandered to my sewing machine and sewed all my darts in and my pleats. Easy! the hardest bit that seemed to take forever was transferring all the markings to the fabric from the pattern. I must find a better way to do this!

Then it was time to join the tops and bottoms together. At this point I realised why instructions always say 'seam ripper needed'. I sewed this seam 3 times! The first time I forgot I had it on a very long stitch for basting. The 2nd time I caught the material when sewing (see pic) and the 3rd time I finally managed it. Luckily the other 3 pieces were done without as much hassle.

And look at this! the back of my dress all sewn together. Not quite the way the pattern says because I'm an idiot and ordered supplies after watching the Great British Sewing Bee so I ordered an invisible zip instead of a normal one. Never mind, I found it rather easy to insert after a quick glance at a youtube video and I think the result is a rather invisible zip! I've now decided any more clothing I make will have an invisible zip.

And look! Here is the dress on me and it actually fits! It still isn't finished though. I've yet to do the neck facing or the armhole facing but that shouldn't be too bad after the trauma of the zip! It will be my first attempt at playing with interfacing but that will be a good practise for when I make a bag. Because I am determined that I will make a weekender bag at some point.

My only possible problem with this dress is the neck. It just seems to have a lot of fabric loose around it but maybe the neck facing will sort that out. I have a friend who's mum is a seamstress who has promised to look at the pattern for me to see if we can't just make it a V neck instead.

So now I get to look around and pick fabric to make the real thing. I'm rather torn between this, this and this. of course I have no idea which is the best fabric for a dress and they are all very different!

I've also discovered bloglovin' since the last post. What a handy way to read the blogs I follow when I'm on the go on my ipad or iPhone  So if anyone would like to follow me on there then I have a little linky button that hopefully will appear under here and will work!

Thanks for reading!

(Oh and yes, I did stay inside sewing on what was possible the nicest day we are going to see in the north east of England this year as you can see from the sun in my photos!)

Productive week!

Well my week off work was rather productive as far as sewing goes! Pity that the weather was awful so i didn't get a change to go out for a wander in Northumberland somewhere and go geocaching but I did manage to get all this sewing done - a lot for me!

The first thing I work on was this cute bag that came with Patch! by Cath Kidston that I got at Christmas. Making it revealed to me that I have NO patience whatsoever for paper piecing things. i hated having to cut out fabric with scissors and then loads of paper templates then having to baste it all and then sew it together. What a faff! I much prefer using my Dresden ruler I have which cuts half these steps out and means I can rotary cut it all. Another leader from our Guide unit also had the book and made her bag about the same time as me on her new cheap sewing machine. We both had hours of fun making the puff for the middle. She managed to make her's too small and I made mine too big and as you can see had to pop an extra bit of fabric in the middle because the fabric supplied only had the print on 1 side. Oh well...

I also made myself chuckle as I sewed all the seams inside and I blindly followed the book which said to do a zig zag stitch on the seam to make it stronger. just as I turned the bag the right way around I realised not only do I have a hemming foot with my sewing machine (doh!) but it also has a pre set stitch for it! (double doh!). I'll have to remember that for my next project which is the bag fro the Make! book that I was given for my birthday by a friend.

My bag

Project number 2 was the starry quilt (yes, the one I started earlier this year that is a birthday pressie for someone who's birthday was in feb). I FINALLY got all the stars made and spent a good hour with my twin sister working out the best layout so we didn't have groups of colours or collections of the same type of star together. I guess a lot could be said for planning and not being spontaneous but where's the fun in that! My sister is  huge fan of the grey/pink/yellow star that's in the middle column 2nd down. She's requested a whole quilt of it (not demanding at all!). I on the other hand am a fan of the purple and green one in the top left corner and the green and grey one in the bottom centre. I love the idea of making a quilt with a grey background and using bright colours to really add some 'wow' to it.

As much as I love this quilt and will be proud of it when I've finished I still would have preferred it on a black background but the recipient wanted it on a creamy one. I think black would of looked fab. This quilt is all pinned now and just needs to be quilted which leads me to project number 3...

Starry Quilt - top all pieced!

Project 3 - learn to fmq on my new(ish...) sewing machine so i can quilt this quilt with stars - it seems only right for it. I sat myself down one afternoon with a couple of large quilt sandwiches and just sat playing with the tension and everything to try and get it right. It would appear that changing the stitch length to 0 has a huge impact and once I managed to get the tension right for a straight line (I have to loosen the bobbin tension every time I put a new bobbin in because my sewing machine hates me lol) I was whizzing around and actually getting rather good results fro my first attempt. The tension was perfect even around corners although my stitch length was a tad dodgy in places - all in all i think I could get the hang of it easily because it just seemed like such a natural thing to do. I bought a couple of star templates and some air vanishing pens to mark the quilt so hopefully if i get a chance this weekend I may get the quilt done. I'm so excited!

As for my other project of the week - Herman - he worked OK but not brilliantly. I blame it on the instructions I was given being in American (I have no idea what a cup is when baking - obv in real life it's what holds my tea). This time around I used a recipe that had English measurements and he looks a lot happier. I'm due to cook him this weekend so we'll see how he goes!

hopefully next time I write I'll have a quilt that just needs binding (or is finished!)

The friendship braid quilt is getting there!

Finally, after rather a long time I've managed to get all the braids for my friendship braid quilt sewn.
There is a problem though. Half way through sewing them I switched to my new machine and I've managed to sew the majority of them with a bigger seem allowance then they should have. It's hit the point it's easier to unpick the 2 old ones and re-sew them then the new ones.
The morale of this story? Always check what you're doing. *sigh*

Here's a picture of half of it anyway