Pinwheels....

I get very distracted in the holidays......I am meant to be packing but I keep getting sidetracked by my stashes of fabric lying about! I got this fabric at Sandown...just £5 a metre.

Look at these fab little houses

When I was in America last year I bought a twister tool that is an easy way to make pinwheel quilts. I have been desperate to try it out so today I quickly whizzed up some four patches.

Just look at my nested seams!

Then you lay the twisty thingy on the top, lining up the seams and re-cut the squares; these are now 10" squares.

Then you arrange them all into the pinwheel shapes and sew them all together.

BAM! one pinwheel quilt; but it needed some borders so I went for a 2" one in green

then a 4" one in the gorgeous houses to make it a bit bigger.

And here it is all together! Those pinwheels just look so effective! I can't quite believe how easy it was...it took me just under 4 hours to do!

Feed Sacks....

I think I might have told you but last year I went on holiday to Oregon, USA. Whilst I was there I visited an amazing patchwork shop called Tater Patch and they had just the most amazing range of fabrics. What I was really looking for was feedsacks. Those 1930s style ones that people used to make into quilts; I thought they would be easy to pick up but when I was chatting to the ladies there, they said that quilting fashion had moved on from feedsacks and that there really weren't that many about these days. Then just as I was leaving the shop, one of the ladies suddenly asked me to hang on a mo. She ran downstairs and came back with 7 feedsacks. They weren't of the 1930s vintage but they were very pretty, cotton fabrics. She gave them to me as a gift and I have been trying to decide what to do with them!

Guess what.....my latest favourite magazine came up trumps again!

This design would showcase the fabrics but also would have a bit more interest than plain squares. First job was to unpick the stitching on the sacks.Oh boy, that took ages! And this is how I know these are not very old sacks as the thread was a synthetic fibre that melted when I ironed it! That done I had 7 lovely big pieces of fabric so I cut out all my bits and also sashing from some plain white I had bought.

I love to see all the "kit" for a quilt laid out, ready to go! Next I assembled the blocks; 9 of each design.

Finally I laid them out, following the pattern in the magazine and stitched them all together with the white sashing. By now it was nearly midnight and I had spent 12 hours on it (with a break to cook and eat dinner).

So there is the top! All done. I have NO idea what to back it with but I am thinking a white quilt in our house is NOT going to be a good idea! I love the way the feedsacks really feature. So there we have it: 3 quilts in 3 weeks (even though this isn't quite finished!)I think I might rest my poor machine for a bit now. Need some more supplies but Sandown is soon......

Oops I did it again.....!

Yep, I did that "oh I can do that, only take me an afternoon" thing again. Took me 4 days! But here is the final creative thing I made in my Easter Holidays. I was inspired by this front cover,

and this Pin on Pinterest. So I clambered off to the loft again and had a good old tidy up of all the trousers I have ever collected putting coloured ones in one suitcase, black ones in a fruit box and all the blue ones in a MASSIVE box. Then I made my selection of the largest and plainest pairs.

Then I had to plan my version

Next job was drawing around my circle template which I did in biro so it would show up. As this was going to be inside it wouldn't show!

This was where the slow bit started; it took me over 4 hours to hand cut out all those circles! 140 of them!

I then drew around my square template on top of the circle and used this as the stitching line to sew my circles together

A fair bit of ironing was required after each row and then I tucked my fabric squares into the pressed circles and stitched them down with a long, wavy zig-zag stitch

I mistakenly thought this would be super quick to put together but I added fabric after I had joined each row of circles and that meant that at the end I then had to turn the quilt through 90 degrees to do the other two sides of the square.

I bought a pack of 6 fat quarters in paisley to be my middles and they all pull it together quite nicely. So finally after 3 days machining and over 1000m of navy thread (yes really that much!) it is done! I love the back with the different denims and the faint wiggles...

And it looks great next to the other denim one too! I think of them as "Circles In, Circles Out!"

And as an extra bonus, some of those zig-zagged edges are going to go all lovely and frayed with use.....

More Easter things...

First I can show you our Easter Bunny....

He quite liked eating my Easter Tree! I have been whizzing on and now I have finished my 6 crochet squares too.

I have also made myself a skirt! This was quite easy but I did learn a new skill; how to put in an invisible zip. I have put zips in before but not invisible ones and I was quite pleased with how "invisible" it ended up!

I did have a panic when I had nearly finished and held the skirt up against me...it looked like it was going to be far too small! Luckily when I tried it on it was a perfect fit...especially as I am now loosing weight.. With a few more pounds off it will be even better.

Last thing to show you tomorrow I hope!

A sideways move?

I LOVE the holidays! SO much time to do what I want to do! Especially now my littlies are biggies and don't require entertaining! So as well as my quilt I have ventured in dressmaking... A few weeks ago this magazine came free with a Sunday paper

In it was this dress using stretch fabric

I have never used stretch fabric before and in fact, apart from a brief excursion into making a skirt last year (which ended up too big really), I haven't done any dressmaking since I was at school! First I had to download the pattern and glue it all together. Loved doing this!

Then I pinned it all on to the fabric. I managed to get some very cheap at Fabric Land for my first practice

My fabric had a directional pattern so I did actually remember to compensate for that so I wouldn't have any upside-downy deer! Well I had to concentrate lots so there are no more pics of the process; BUT.....here is the finished thing!

I am very pleased with the fit, although it does make me look a bit pregnant in these photos, and I need to practise tying the tie bit, but all in all a success! I won't be wearing it as a dress however....don't have the legs!

More "stuff"...

So what to show you first? It would appear from the lack of post on my blog that I have been doing nothing. But let me assure you, nothing could be further from the truth! I have finally finished a tunic style jumper I was knitting for myself. In this picture it looks a rather dingy colour but it is in fact, a rather lovely meadow green. It fits well but I think if I did it again, I would make it a bit longer.

I rather like this moss stitch detail on the shoulder...

I have also finally finished the Pansy Quilt! It's not perfect; I would have liked a 2" border of green around the edge before the binding but hey-ho, it is what it is!

I finished joining it all together and then cut out the wadding and backing before I set to quilting it. I was the home contact for a Scout hike event last weekend, so I had to stay at home all weekend, providing the perfect opportunity to crack on!

I couldn't really decide the best way to quilt those wonky squares so after stitching in the ditch for the straights I just went around them.

I had ordered my backing over the internet; I was going to have purple but they didn't have that so I thought green. But then I panicked that it might not match enough so I went for a total contrast of pink! I love the pink and green together!

Finally I used the leftover bits of pansy fabric to make the binding; the first time I have done a scrappy binding and I quite like it! So two more finished projects. The other knitting one is still creeping along......

Loveliness.....

You know I said I was creating something.......well I ran out of fabric but I will show you so far.....

First you have to admire in close, close detail the lovely pansy fabric! Stroke it, smell it, fold and unfold it and then spend ages thinking of the best way to show it off! Linda and I trawled through books and magazines before I decided upon the first one I had seen! It came from this book;

It was just a picture, no pattern, so I had to think about exactly how it was going to come together.

First of all I cut the pretty fabric into 6.5" squares.

Then I trimmed the edges to make them wonky....much to Eliza's horror!

Then I joined them to a 3" strip. This was my first calculation error. I had forgotten that my borders actually only needed to have a finished measurement of 1" and that my final squares wanted to be 8.5" (before joining) so I had drastically cut my strips too wide!

Then I trimmed them off their strip and repeated on the other side. This time I used a narrower strip as I had discovered my error!

All this shilly-shallying about meant I now didn't have enough green fabric to finish all the edges so I only managed to complete 9 squares AND despite careful trimming as I went, they have ended up 8" square before sewing together.

Well you get the idea. Now I need to buy more green to finish it off. Hmmmm need to plan more carefully next time as I ended up wasting quite a bit of trimmings. Or use a pattern!