My first finished quilt!

It's been a long time since I posted here (or on my food blog), but I am sure everyone is sick of hearing my excuses, so let's just pretend I have been posting regularly ;) One of my friends gave birth to a gorgeous baby girl a couple of months ago and as soon as she announced she was pregnant I got excited because I knew it meant I would get to make my first by quilt. At the time I thought I had ages to get it done, but then all of a sudden she was born and I was quiltless! So I kept putting off meeting up with her so that I could get the quilt made, but the quilt kept getting put to the bottom of my to do list. I finally caught up with her over lunch a couple of weeks ago and ended up making this quilt in ONE NIGHT. Luckily baby quilts come together quickly! Although it is quite large for a baby quilt because I didn't want her to grow out of it too quickly.

Some of you may recognise the purple and blue materials as they are the same as the big quilt that I am making myself (which I still haven't finished). This quilt is much smaller, so I left out a few of the fabrics and I also went with a simple squares pattern to save time. I spent about half an hour figuring out where to put each of the blocks and then managed to sew them all wrong (it was 3 in the morning at that stage) - so I ended up just doing it randomly and I don't think it turned out too badly.

I backed it with a cute heart flannel that I had bought a while ago to make some cloth pads, but haven't got around to it. There is still enough leftover to make a couple one day though. The heart flannel wasn't quite long enough for the backing, so I added a strip of plain pink flannel, which I think looks quite effective with the label there. The label itself was just made with t-shirt transfer, but it was the black type, so I am not too sure how long it will last. Hopefully it doesn't disintegrate on the first wash!

I wrapped it up in a pretty ribbon and gave it to the mother with a cute elephant wrist rattle and a set of Tupperware snack cups as they always come in handy for babies and I have lots of them lying around as I am a demonstrator. The snack cups have a lifetime guarantee, so they will last for ages even if the quilt falls apart (hopefully it doesn't!).

I had so much fun making this quilt and it has spurred me on to get my own one finished - once all the university assignments are out of the way of course! Damn Uni, interfering with my quilting bug!

Ragged Squares Quilt Progress

I have been a busy girl working on my quilt... the squares came together quite quickly as it is just sewing 3 different sized squares on top of each other, no piecing or anything tricky... then I spent a good hour trying to get the arrangement of the squares right... in the end this is what I ended up with...

It is quite small, so it didn't take long to sew the top together... now that it is together I can see a couple of squares that shouldn't be next to each other, but oh well! Still loving the colour combination...

Then I pinned my top to some batting and some blue flannel backing so that it will be nice and soft... now all that is left to do is quilt it all... As of yesterday I have quilted 4 of my 30 squares... this could take a while...

Also, after my last post I would just like to reassure you that I didn't get caught up in the bushfire frenzy that has ripped through Victoria... well, not entirely... My house is still standing and my family are all safe and well, which I am thankful for... We did have a fire at the base of the hills I live in, but thankfully they got it under control quite quickly because they didn't want a repeat of the Ash Wednesday fires going through the Dandenong Ranges... Our street got told we were under threat and most people evacuated... I was already out, but had a eerie view of the fires from where I was... My heart goes out to all the people out there who have been affected by these fires...

My second skirt & some dress ideas...

Well, I finally got my second skirt finished just in time for another day of 43 degree heat tomorrow... ouch! They keep mentioning on the news how the weather tomorrow is going to be the worst bushfire weather in history in Victoria, which is scaring me a little (read: a lot) as we have just moved to an area that is prone to bushfires... let's just say that I will be packing a couple of bags and keeping them by the door tomorrow, along with the cat carrier and my car keys!

I made this skirt using the same pattern as the green floral one that I made a couple of weeks ago. This time I made the butterfly side from one continuous piece instead of alternating patterns, just using the floral for the flap. I wanted to do the same thing on the other side, only using the butterflies for the flap and the floral for the big piece, but I didn't have enough of the floral to do that. Instead I used some plain purple poplin I had in my stash for a bit of contrast. I also used the purple for the waistband because it was the only one out of the materials that I had enough of, and I made the ties much longer this time. I screwed up the waistband quite badly this time (didn't have the same problem last time which is a bit weird), but you can't tell when it is on so I didn't bother to re-do it.

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this pattern, the way it sits, the pretty bows... the fact that there is a lot of overlap, thus alleviating the fear of flashing yourself in public at the slightest gust of wind! I will be making more of these in the future for sure.

I think the next piece of clothing I want to tackle is a dress. A friend introduced me to the TV show Pushing Daisies sometime last year and ever since I started watching it I have been in love with Chucks fashion sense which is mostly 40s-60s inspired. I really want to make myself some old style dresses, but there is a big step from a wrap around skirt to a dress that actually needs to be fitted properly! Anyone have any suggestions for an easy old style dress pattern?

But next, I need to start sewing together squares for my ragged squares quilt!

My new skirt!

It has been fairly hot in Melbourne this week, so I decided to make myself a new skirt. Most of the ones in my wardrobe are getting a bit old, and I am sick of them! To tell you the truth, I drafted the pattern and cut out the pieces for this skirt during the last heatwave we had, but that is as far as I got. When I found out that the heat was on the way back, I worked quickly to finish this one off and managed to finish it in time for yesterday, which ended up being 40C.

I used this pattern from What Did She Do Today?. The pattern is fairly straightforward, I used the pieced version, but alternated my fabrics instead of using the same one all the way around. I had a tiny bit of trouble with the waistband, but that is probably because I am a newbie! I did find I had to add some more on to them and the ties still could have been longer in my opinion, but I will keep that in mind for next time. I love this skirt so much I already have plans to make another one using the butterfly and floral materials below. Can you believe I bought them on two completely different ocassions? They match so well it was like they were made for each other! I think on this one I am going to use the same fabric all around except for on the flap, like the pattern suggests, but we will see.

I've also made a little bit of progress on the Ragged Squares quilt that I have planned. I have cut out all the squares and 'randomly' assigned which squares are going together, but I haven't figured out where they are going in the overall scheme of things yet. But still, progress is good!

Sew, You Made That?

It has taken me a while, but I have finally got my butt into gear and started a blog for my sewing and crafts. If there is ever a hobby I enjoy as much as cooking it would have to be sewing and crafts. There is something about creating something from raw materials that makes me very happy... and the little glow of warmth that comes when someone says, 'So you actually made this?', well... all you crafters and sewers out there know what I mean!

I don't make stuff nearly as much as I would like to, but at the moment I am feeling the sewing itch big time and so I thought there was no better time to start a new blog, especially as it is a new year. Hopefully this one stays active longer than my mail swap blog, but lets face it - taking photos of everything you send and recieve in the mail gets quite tedious! This blog will serve as a place for me to document the things I create and my progress on larger projects... which will hopefully spur me on to actually finish them!

I came across a simple quilt on Crazy Mom Quilts that doesn't involve much cutting and piecing, it is called the Ragged Squares Quilt. I am totally in love with it! Mostly because it is gorgeous and has a beautiful old style feel to it... but also because I haven't made a quilt since high school (and that one is still only a quilt top sitting somewhere in a cupboard) so I thought something simple that I can get finished in a reasonable amount of time would be good to start off with... So the other day I went out and bought a walking foot for my sewing machine (which was on sale for 20% off - woohoo!) and some material for my quilt...

This was the first time I have tried to coordinate fabrics for a quilt completely by myself and I am quite happy with my efforts! I absolutely love purple and I was going to go with purple and green to match the colours in my room, but then I found a fabric with purple and blue in it (the 5th one down in the pile), so I decided to go with purple and blue instead. It all started with this retro style floral print that I loved (the lime green version of it was on sale, but not the purple that I wanted - boo!)...

...and I also fell head over heels for this one, the heart leaves and all the swirlyness remind me of a fairytale forest or something... beautiful! It's not the best photo though, the light pink pattern is in the same style as the darker and white patterns, it just got blurred in the photo...

I also bought a few cottons because they were on sale for $4 a metre... I don't know what I am going to do with the top 2 yet, but the green floral and the coordinating greens are going to be made into a skirt, quite possible this wrap-around one from What did she do today?... made into an adult size of course ;)

That's all for now, I will be posting some pictures of my stash later this week...