Shirt!

This is the result of the baggies-in-the-sun and they are just beautiful! I love dyeing and the wonderful effects that can be achieved. The Princess loves them and wears them whenever she can. The flannels turned out quite well too and I have even started embroidering on them. I hope to have some up for sale on January 1st. I am going to try and start a little business and what better date to do it than the 1st of the year!!

Dodgy Business..

Are these baggies the start of something or just a lot of wishful thinking..? I wanted to dye and embroider some wash cloths, and maybe sell them on Oztion, to help pay for the software I want for the embroidery machine. I am thinking maybe the dye is too intense again and I should have toned it down a bit. It is a good learning experience anyway.. and if some of these sell, good on me, and if they don't, the family will get them as birthday presents!! I did 3 little Princess-sized shirts too.. and she loves them so much, I can't sell them!!

Perfectly Pretty Pinks

My latest effort.. beautiful pinks.. they are so nice, I am making some more!! I was going to use them as part of a backing for a baby quilt, but now I think they will be the backing and the backing that I have that there isn't enough of, will be for something else. The white tone-on-tone didn't turn out too well.. but I love the back of it! If I had dyed it plain instead of mottled, it would look a lot better. All part of learning.. Next time I go to Tricia's, I will buy a metre or five and see what damage I can do to it with different colours.. :)

Thread Stand

Finally I have put my thread stand together. It was a flat-pack that I made and bought home from school. It was easier than bringing it home on the bus fully made!! I haven't tried it out yet, it hasn't dried properly.. maybe tomorrow. It was a whole lot cheaper than buying a horrible plastic one and looks a whole lot better too..

Bluesday Results

Here are the results of Thursdays effort. A nice range of blue and turquoise. Some of my stapled labels washed off but I am hoping that by process of elimination, I can work out what is what with them! There has to be an easy way to mark them.. probably before I stick them into the soda ash would be the go!!

Bluesday

I am lucky there is only one person that reads my blog and they don't mind pictures of jars!! Today the weather was a disgusting 38 degrees C and I thought.. "what a great day to dye". Out came the blues and away I went.. I even experimented a little.. the tall jar has 5 dye concentrate, quarter cup water and quarter cup soda ash mixture. Wonder how that will turn out!?
I stapled numbers to each piece and I hope they are readable after the wash! I might finally be able to write the 'secret' recipes for each bit.

More Results

Not quite the colour range I had imagined... they are better!! So bright..! It seems I mixed the dye wrong.. I only put quater of a cup of water instead of half a cup. There was enough dye to do all this and none left over. Seems to have made a difference to the brightness of the fabric though.
Some of them have hardly any mottled effect at all and I am not sure why.. ? Is the colour too intense? Is 20 hours too long to sit in dye? Did I squeeze too much soda ash solution out of them? Did I wiggle them around too much in the dye?
None of the marking I put in the corner of each one came out, so I have almost no idea which is which and how to recreate the colour!

Dye Another Day !

Another afternoon of fun with dye. This time there is a range of colours.. turquoise, fuchsia, oranges, green, purple and a brown - cant wait to see what these turn out like. There is no sun today so they wont get warm. Hope it doesn't make too much difference. This time I wrote all the details of each piece down, but I forgot to mark each piece of fabric before I started. I did mark them as I went so I hope the marks are still there after I rinse and wash them or I wont know which is which!! :)

Colour Magic.. !

This is the end result from yesterday. Some beautiful purples and a to-die-for pink and a bright, fresh green. I still have to take a pics of 2 more pieces, the one from the baggie and the one from the 'drip tray'.

I was looking for a 'perfect' pink colour to do The Princess a ballerina quilt, but I think these are just perfect. Funny how our ideas change and evolve. I may even have to dye some more to make borders and backing! Now wont that be a hassle..

... not :)

Colour My Day..

Today I took the plunge and put dye to fabric. I know there are a million pictures on the 'net of fabric in jars and bags in the sun.. and now there is a million and one! I cant wait to see what these turn out like.. it certainly looks promising after the first rinse.......


Thank you to Sandy for all her help and patience, I really appreciate it.. :)

A Sewing Machine Cover

I finally have a sewing machine cover. I had to make it myself, but I now have one. I havent had a lot of luck with 'swaps'. First there was the SM cover swap - mine got eaten by her Sewing Machine so she sent me a lovely bag instead. Then there was the Easter Bag swap - it got changed to the William Morris Bag Swap (I dont like William Morris, sorry Michele). A Christmas-in-July bag swap turned out bad too.. my swap partner couldnt do her bag for me because she had too many other commitments and lastly we have the Secret Sister Christmas Stocking Swap. This is a total no-show too. It has been going since June and here we are in November and not a pressie in sight. I have sent to my SS, some were a little late, but they all got sent!! I cant wait til Christmas so she can open them :)

I embroidered Mama because that is what The Princess calls me. It is made from Oriental nine patches that were received in a nine patch swap. Nine patch swaps are goood because if you dont send any in, you dont get any back!! :)

I need another Sewing Machine cover for the other machine now.. at least I know I will get one if I do it myself !! :)

Quilt Stand

I made it myself! It looks good enough to be a bought one, and it only took a couple of weeks at school to make this! The colour looks a lot better in real life. The Princess uses it to hang her quilts on so when she is finished with it, I will hang some of my own !!

Thread Stand

Here we have a rather beautiful thread holder. It isn't mass produced in balsa wood from any old shop, it is hand-crafted by a caring woodworker. It has a drawer on the base which allows it to be free-standing on the table. There are 7 rows of 10 threads and as you can see, I still have room for one or 20 more!! He will make it to your own specifications. I asked for an extra row to be added, and it was. If I had asked for an extra two or three rows, I am sure he would have done that too.. Thank you. It looks rather nice with all the lovely shiny threads on it!!

The Reason I wont Make a Million Dollars

This is the reason I wont make a million dollars doing embroidery!! I wanted to flip it over - end over end. It did that ok, and I didn't check anything further. After it had stitched the black and was starting on the orange, I suddenly realised that it hadn't turned out as I had planned!! I am sure it doesn't say in the instruction book that when something is flipped it also needs to be turned.... I decided to finish it as a constant reminder to check things properly. :)

Borders at Last!

Here it is at last.. the finished quilt.. and The Princess loves it to bits. I love blue painters tape!! Without it, I wouldn't have been able to do the quilting in the middle. I just did straight lines for the borders because I have no imagination!! This is the first quilt I have done that isn't just stitch in the ditch!!! I am happy with it and glad I tried something different.. I have been making quilts for years so it is about time I did different

Blue Squares

For my daughter. I tried doing my own version of a colourwash before I really knew what a colourwash was and how it was done. It is just a collection of 4inch squares sewn together. It definitely needs more quilting in the borders. This is one of my first quilts and I had no idea what I was doing really... and nobody told me what I needed to do. I have to do some more quilting on the orange quilt too.. or all the wadding will start migrating south.......

At Last!!

At last my table is done! It took a while from thought to table but it is done!

Lots of people have sewing rooms, I just sew where I have room. I had nowhere big enough to throw a quilt and pin it and the thought of crawling around on the floor putting in a million pins, then having to undo half of them because they were stuck in the carpet, just didn't appeal to me or my knees.

The table is too long and not wide enough, but it does the job and I have now got 3 of my UFOs under control - one is almost finished, just got the last little bit of binding to do. We are lucky that there is a rather large veranda out the back because the table is too big to fit in the house!!

Hexagons

I love hexagons too.. I started this queen size 2800+ English paper piecing hexagon madness about 14 months ago. I don't get as much time as I would like to sew them together. I wanted to enter the finished quilt into next years Guild Quilt Show so I hope this isn't breaking any future 'Quilt Show' rules. It takes a week to sew one row together at the moment, so I don't know that it will be done in time for the Guilds show in November 2008!! It is going to be 53 rows by 53 rows. I don't have enough fabric (!) to do each of the 2800+ in a different one, so there are lots of repeats.



(there just may be time if I get one row a week done, then there is a week or two to get it put together!!)

For Sir Billy

A cushion I made for our cat 4 years ago. I thought it would stop him from sleeping on the quilts I was trying to make at the time. He is a rather large cat so I made him a nice, large bean bag type cushion. It is made from polar fleece bought from the 'bargain' bin at Lincraft, with 2 layers of wool/poly wadding under the top layer. He totally ignored it for 3 years and when The Princess started playing with it, he decided it did indeed belong to him and he wanted it!! (Sibling rivalry between The Princess and Billy The Cat..!) He sleeps on it most of the time now, but still sleeps on any quilt I happen to spread out to sew...

Christmas Sewing

This is a Christmas Stocking I made for my Secret Christmas Stocking Sister. I couldn't put the proper picture up because she may read this (not that I think anybody does! but you never know!) After Christmas, maybe I will put the proper picture up. I quite liked it and so did other members of the family and they all have an order in!

Quilt As You Go

This was done as a QAYG. Very easy and very quick. The top is cotton, the middle is a wool/polyester blend wadding and the back is polar fleece. VERY warm. Again, it was made for The Princess for her cot. It is too small for her bed. I am thinking maybe I should unsew the bottom and one side, add a row or two to make it big enough. Sounds like a lot of work actually!! She can use it as a take-it-to-the-babysitters quilt.

No piece of fabric is repeated anywhere in the quilt and I only used what I had in the stash. It isn't every piece that I own - or owned at that time - because I didn't use The Special Pieces, but it was close! I think I should have enough to make another row or two all round.. but I wont. :)

Shaggy !

Or raggy, depending on who you are! I prefer shaggy myself. This one is flannelette and the second shaggy one I made. The first one was cotton. I like it but it isn't anywhere as snuggly and warm as a flannelette one. It is for The Princess and made for her first winter in 2004. It went everywhere with her. I guess that means she has more quilts than I thought she did!!

UnFinished Object

A 'UFO'. I started this one about 2 years ago, when I had nothing else to do and plenty of time to do appliqué. It isn't a quilt, it is a wall hanging and I have a wall for it out in the back room where it is always cold and echo'y. This will help cut down the echo'yness if and when I get it finished! All it needs is some appliqué around a few of the outer flowers, a middle and a backing.. some quilting, then a binding - not much at all.

Pockets

A wall-hanging for The Princess. I don't think she has enough wall space for all the hangings I have made and half made !!! This one has pockets for all her 'Princess Stuff' and when I find a 'landlord friendly' way to hang it, I will !! (does anyone have any ideas.. please?)

The background has calico on the back and the pockets are backed with calico too.. the were all bagged. All the pockets have beads or buttons sewn on them and some stitching too.

The Princess is checking to make sure all the beads and buttons are sewn on properly :)

Scraps Only!

This is called Harry's Zoo. I don't remember who the pattern is by, sorry. I made it only with fabric I had in my stash, I didn't buy anything for the top.. I did buy the backing, but it was on special!!

I didn't add wadding to it so I guess it isn't really a quilt. I wanted to use it as a summer-weight cover for those warm-but-not-hot-enough-for-no-covers night for The Princess. I never did use it for that because of all the work that went into it so I will one day stitch a hanging sleeve on the back and use it as a wall hanging.

Cushion

Today I made this cushion for my mum. I love the poem on it though I have no idea who wrote it. I went to the craft market held once a month at the local leisure centre and happened to stumble across the red hat fabric. I couldn't find any on eBay and had no idea where else to buy some. Lucky I went to the craft market!

I hope it washes ok, the ink is water proof apparently, but I don't have my bubble jet set yet so I don't know how it will hold up!.. or even if it would work any better with it.. I have some dyes coming - sometime - so I can dye my own purple fabric to go with the saying on the cushion!!

Nine Patch Blocks

I love nine patch blocks, they are useful to make a quick quilt when imagination leaves for a holiday. I didn't make all of the blocks in this quilt, they are the result of a 'swap'.

It is 'sort-of' hand-quilted. I did a running stitch around the borders and stitched in the centre of each square, using a DMC Perle cotton.

I tried to make it look scrappier by doing two colours sashings around the blocks and most of the time, people don't even notice they are different colours!!

I still have dozens of nine patch blocks left and each month or so I get 20 more. I used some on the back too.. just for something different. I was going for a pattern on the back but I didn't measure anything. When I laid them out to see how they fit, none of them seemed to fit so I mixed them up and sewed them together randomly. I could see after I did this, that they would have fit together in the pattern I wanted to do but I wasn't going to unsew them and resew them!!!

Bow Ties

I enjoyed making the first 4 blocks of this quilt. I then hated making the other 200 or however many there are. They are bow tie blocks with a '3D' centre, like a little pocket. It was fiddly and time-consuming and I made it in summer during a hot spell back in 2003 I think.
The blocks are black background with colourful music note fabric for the bow ties., and is quilted with neon green thread.
It looks a lot better in real life !!

Another One Of THOSE Quilts..

This is the one I made for my first Granddaughter but I wasn't happy with it, so she didn't get it.

I love the colours and the fact it looks like a totally different quilt to the other 2 because I did it 'scrappy'. I don't like the fact that I ran out of pink gingham and had to put blue gingham in two of the blocks instead. Maybe I was being too picky about it. The Princess loves it though, she lays it out on the floor and looks at all the different blocks, finding all the different pictures. When she isn't well, she lays on the lounge, snuggled under this quilt.

There is one more quilt version of this pattern.... !

The Other Baby Quilt

The other baby quilt I used gingham on, except it was blue this time.. This one was for my one and only (so far) grandson. Apparently he loves it to bits! I washed it before I gave it to his dad to give to him, that is why it looks lumpy - it is still wet! It looked a lot better when it was dry..

If I had the opportunity to make these quilts again, I would use something other than gingham on the back. I thought it was a good idea at the time, but I was very much a beginner. With the 'stitch-in-the-ditch' quilting, it didn't line up with the stripes on the back. The recipients of these quilts don't know anything about quilting so I guess it isn't really important.

As long as the 'Quilt Police' never see them !!!

Second Quilt

The second quilt I made. It was for the girlfriend of the M.O.T.H.'s mate. It isn't a good picture because it was a 'real' photo that I scanned!

It comes from the book Patchwork Basics 1 and the pattern is by Bev Darby. Hers has teddies in it, but like most quilters, I liked the pattern but not the colours! I use this pattern for all the new babies in my circle of acquaintances, just changing the colour to either suit the babies gender or the amount of one particular colour fabric I have!! It is such a quick and easy pattern to do. I backed it with pink gingham for some reason. Never again !!!! It looks crooked and was quite difficult to get anywhere near straight.

But I did it again on another quilt! and that is another story.

Second Charity Quilt

This is the second charity quilt I have done. This one I quilted and bound. I just did 'stitch-in-the-ditch' quilting. I need to learn 'proper' machine quilting!! I did a class to learn the Thimblelady's Handquilting Technique, but I failed - horribly. I only know of one other person that failed.. and that is my friend J !!

No, I'm not that good, the last one was done 4 months ago!! This one was finished today. I wanted to have it finished by last Thursday Night (Guild night) but it didn't happen. I was hoping to do one a month but I missed last months Guild meeting because my babysitter had a family emergency, and I am slack so this sat in a corner while I thought about it for a while..

First Charity Quilt..

This is the very first Charity Quilt I put together. The Quilters Guild of South Australia has a charity sewing group called Southern Comforters. They take peoples orphan blocks or donated fabrics, unfinished tops and blocks and create something from it. I was (un)fortunate enough to get this one to finish piecing together. It is so very bright and garish, and the block colours are so similar in value, the pattern of the block can hardly be picked out. The colours are NOT colours I would use together. I only hope the person that gets this is blind or really, really likes these colours!!

Hearts

I am making a Healing Heart quilt for my daughter. After an unfortunate incident with her then boyfriend, she found herself in hospital with no knowledge of how she got there. All the lovely people at QDU made her hearts and I have finally sewn them together into a very large top. It will have a cotton batting and flannelette for the backing. I am considering having it professionally quilted because it is so large. But then I will have my new Janome 6600p sewing machine soon so maybe I will give it a go after all !!

I find it very interesting that when hearts are called for in a certain colour, there is always someone that doesn't read that bit or just refuses to send in the right colour. Her hearts were supposed to be light blue but there were pink ones and white ones. I know she loves them and I am very grateful to the people that put in the effort to send her one too.. Thank you all.

Orange !

I have made an orange quilt! I made it about 2 or so years ago. My youngest son (now aged 20 !) likes the colour orange. He says it is a bright and happy colour. This quilt is shades of orange and brown, done in 'stack and slash' pattern. It has a dark brown homespun backing and is quilted in bright, fluro orange polyester thread (in the days before I found Rasant). It has the same orange binding as the borders around each block and to bring out the colour of the orange, I used black sashing between each block. He uses the quilt all the time and just loves it.

Another sort of Patchwork..

I made this for my parents to take as they travel around the Eastern states with their caravan. It is quite cold over there during the winter months apparently. I have heard it snows too..

They are back in South Australia at the moment so I was able to give it to them - just as well as it would have cost quite a few dollars to post as it is heavy. They have been using it regularly as winter has arrived here recently and they say it is very warm!!

It took about 8 months to make from start to finish, working on it for about 3 - 4 hours a day. I really started it about 2 years ago but then my quilting got in the way and it got put to the side. Mum gave me a deadline to have it finished by, but I missed it by 3 days!! Ah well.. they have it now and are very happy with it..

Ties, Ties, Ties..

There has been 'talk' on SCQ about ties. Men's ties. Ones that aren't wanted anymore - or ones that the menfolk don't know they don't want anymore that have been 'liberated'! I am trying to collect lots and lots to make a quilt or 3 from. I have made a little something from ties - this lovely bag. I made two, but I can't find the other one. I wonder where it has gone...... ? I haven't made a decision about how to make the quilts yet. There seems to be lots of ways. Like this by cutting them into strips and doing a log cabin arrangement or like this, sort of QAYG-looking, or like this which is crazy quilting with ties.. very nice indeed! :)

My Worst...

Sometimes in life, we make something that we don't like, and that we think nobody with half a brain would like.. I made this one. I don't like the colours. I don't like the pattern. Actually, the pattern isnt too bad, if I hadn't used those colours. I was trying to make it look like a pond at the bottom and sky and clouds at the top. I think it belongs to the worst quilt competition! I backed it with polar fleece and used it in DG's cot. Kept her cozy and warm and I didn't have to worry it wasn't being loved! Now that she is out of the cot and into a big girl bed, this masterpiece sits in the dark wardrobe.. poor quilt. If, in future, I gather enough creams and browns, I might have another go, but chain-pieceing really bugs me! :)

First Ever Quilt

This is the first quilt I ever made. I am still impressed that I made it! I had been to The Stitches and Craft Fair the year before, because I was into cross stitching in a big way. I had an hour or so to spare, so I went and looked at the quilts. I was hooked from then. Off to the newsagent when I got home and found a few magazines to look through. Eventually this pattern was in AP&Q (cant remember which one at the moment) and I knew I had to make it for my newborn granddaughter. It took a couple of months to collect fabric because I had none. Then I had to learn what fat quarters were (besides the ones I sit on), how to use a rotary cutter, what all the funny terms meant and how to do buttonhole applique. Finally I was ready and way I went. It was started in about June 2004 I think and finished by the end of August 2004 for DG's first birthday!

1st Picture

This is the latest quilt top for my granddaughter. I hope to have it finished before winter! I will back it with flannel, I think. This is her first bed quilt, her 4th quilt overall, and she loves them all. She has one 'play' quilt which I made for another granddaughter, but wasn't happy with it so I didn't give it to her. One day I will make another to replace it!

It Works!

I managed to get the link to the webring working with some much appreciated help - Thanks Margaret! :)

All too new

My first blog post and I already need help..

All of this Blogging stuff is too new.. I cant even work out how to put in the HTML for the webring and I am certainly not a beginner at computer stuff!!! In another lifetime, I designed a whole web site just using HTML..

Once I get this worked out, i will put some pictures up, the walls are looking awfully bare!! :)