comfortstitching

chicks on sticks

Chicks are big news in this little quilty house, at this time of year anyway.  A splash of yellow is all the sunshine we can get some days.  These little felty chicklets are super easy to stitch and you can make a nice handful in an evening.  They can be sewn up onto a length of ribbon to dangle somewhere in need of chicking up!  or you can stitch on little ribbony loops to hang up on sticks in a vase/jar/baked bean tin if it takes your fancy!

You will need

yellow felt

yellow or pale coloured thread

little beads for eyes

buttons to decorate (optional)

ribbon

needle, pencil, paper or card, scissors

 

Using the pic above as  reference, cut out chick and wing shaped stencils from your paper or card.  Use to cut out your chicks from the felt, cut 2 bodies (this makes them more sturdy) and a wing for each birdie.  Place your two bodies one on top of the other and sew around the outer edge. 

 Sew on the wing with one or two stitches or sew a button on instead as above then add a little bead for the eye.  If making a chicky garland sew all your chicks onto a nice piece of colourful ribbon.

 

Otherwise sew a little ribbon loop onto the back to use to hang up as below or quite frankly however you do like!

 

This tutorial is now being featured on the 6 o'clock stitch's make and tell monday.

 

 

chiccy chicks

 Yes I do know were not there yet but I can't be the only eggily excited being around.  I love the colours of spring, those daff and tulip bulbs, bluebells - spanish or english, cowslips, lily of the valley oh I could go on and on into the woodlandly splendour of the coming weeks.  True there's chocolate to look forward to, not that I've ever given it up!  But I do more than anything love giving the rooms a bit of a garnish like dress up with tissue paper, felty chicks, ribbons and pom-poms and any other pastel coloured delights I can conjure up!! 

To begin, one word GARLANDS! or if you like and I prefer BUNTING!!  Bunting shouts celebration on a string!

 

 

If you fancy yourself as a budding easter bunting artiste then grab yourself a few arty bits and a few tiny helping hands and I'll add a little guiding instruction to the mix!

You will need :-

yellow card or whatever colour you fancy frankly it's your bunting!

pretty fabric and paper scraps

kids stencils and stampers, whatever you have knocking about at home really

pens, pencils, scissors, pva type glue

ribbon, one long piece whatever size you like or several shorter pieces tied together

cups of tea and juice (recommended!)

mini pegs, can be bought at stationers and card shops.  Mine were from Ikea

To begin you need to work out where you fancy hanging your bunting, work out how long you want it remembering you want it to drape down nicely!

You will probably need around 8- 10 eggs per 100cm of ribbon but it's totally up to you.

I get around 8 eggs out of an A4 sheet of card, my eggs are 10cm in length.  Using the pic above as a guide draw an egg shaped and a chick shaped stencil out of card.  It doesn't matter if they're a bit wobbly in fact it helps it all look more fun.  Draw and cut out as many eggs as you need.  Use your chick stencil to draw around and cut out shapes from your fabric and paper scraps.

Now call your tiny helpers and let them help you decorate your eggs, stick chicks onto some eggs, then add eyes, feet and beaks with felt pens, use stencils, sequins etc. to add artiness.  Leave to dry.

If using short pieces of ribbon tie together to desired length.  Peg your eggs on and hang up somewhere you can appreciate it!!

 

This tutorial is now being featured on the 6 o'clock stitch's make and tell monday.

increasingly smooth

I have spent the day house building, of the fabric variety of course what else would I getting up to?  Obviously there have been a few hiccups along the merry path of sewing construction mainly run before I can walk type errors in measuring and cutting accurately but what else would you expect?

Last night I spent a bit of time hanging around here and went to bed dreaming about scrappy bargello's and crumbs!!!!! amongst other things, not helped by my mobile constantly buzzing to tell me it was about to run out of battery about 4 times, honestly interrupting my quilty dreams!!  Took me ages to work out what the fuss was about as the message stayed on the phone face for about 1 second.  Needless to say me and technogy are not all that!!!!

Talking of tech and gadgety wares I'm still in love with my steam iron, I even read some of the instructions which made me laugh in an as if kind of way, oooh!!! the way you are meant to look after these instruments!!!!   Apparently I should clean and rinse the water container of mrs steam iron after every 10 uses!!!!!!!!!!! don't make me laugh!  My dyson apparently should be equally pampered by virtually being taken apart doused and wiped  and one part of it even laundered regularly,even though said appliance actually spits out anything bigger than a speck of dust if you dare to attempt to vaccuum it up although this has been the saving grace of many a sylvanian milk bottle or fork,  sorry but I thought these tools were meant to help us or is it just me????, might as well send them to finishing school and teach them a few languages whilst were at it!!!

 

Look no naked sylvanians!!!!!!!!  What lovely cars they drive!

And now I want something from you!  I'm looking to buy a new sewing machine!! My current Brother machine is too old and tempremental and I'm after something that can quilt too!!  not just because the manufacturer says so but something that can really handle being used by a quilting obsessive !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and can do free motion type quilting and maybe let me do lots of swirly type patterns instead of just straight line quilting.  I don't need anything with lots of fancy machine embroidery stitches either just easy buttonhole and zigzig will do.  All your recommendations of what's good and also what's not will be heartily appreciated!!

mother's monday

Hope you all had a lovely day yesterday whether you were mother or daughter or maybe even son!  I enjoyed being woken up at 6.30am to be presented with a steam iron and scrambled egg with 2 bars of green and blacks chocolate on a plate (yes no fork or toast) for brekfast.  I was housewifely pleased with the iron, especially as I have been making do with an old jobbie I found in the attic - left by the previous occupants - for the last four years when my previous model a freebie from La Redoute gave up on me, obviously more so for my sewing needs than anything other!!!  Expect to see crease free posts from now on.

Got a bit hooky and knitty on the weekend making a stripy dress for an old jam jar from here, and a daffodil coloured chick from this tweety tute.

 

Hooray henry for new beginnings!  have bitten the chopping bullet and sliced into a bit of Philip Jacobs, fabricly speaking, welcome to my newest wip or more precisely wip's as this one is twin's!  I am making new quilts for Asha and Ciara just in time for summer obviously.  I will be making up the design as I go along so I get to try any quilty type blocks I fancy, play apround and have a bit of quilt as you go fun.  I may call them Sketchbook quilts as that is what they will be in essence, yippee for quilty doodles!!!

Latest excitment in the garden comes in the chequered form of this gothicky frittalaria melearis, I hope that's how you spell it as I really cannot be bothered getting 'The Complete Gardener' out right now to check.  Drama comes in the form of three red lily beettles having to be picked off these lovely plants in the last four days, two of these inexcusable pests were caught whilst mating!  Not on my frits you don't maties!!!

 And if you're not completly bored to the back of your quilt teeth by now you may be pleased to know that my Loose change quilt is finished, here's the evidence.  What do you think was it worth all the drama?

 

 

 

 

See you soon for more stitchy, blocky, flowersome dappled sun fun.

wippety-do-dah!

 

Caution: woman at work.  Wipping things to do!  I have been busy with three spinning plates of crafty goodness on the go and am at the crest of fabricational wave.  Today I am dwelling on the interchangeable world of wipperology, being a seasoned wipperologist myself I could write a pretty hefty tome on how not to wip. 

 

 Just in case the foggiest escapes you I am talking about those wonderful Works In Progress.  I would find it implausible to stick to just one venture effort at a time, creative compositions take time and a merry-go-round of imaginative endeavors is just the ticket.  I am a serial wipper, sometimes engrossed in a project for a few days but always with an emergency back-up escape route when things just aren't going my way.  I intend to wip my life away, though I always do finish what I start I just don't go about it in a straight line but take the many tangents deviations and distractions as they drive on by.

 

And now a breaking wip report.  Super mini crochet blanket bunny bribe is completed.

 just look at how much more fabulous it looks now that I've blocked it, this is where I found out how. 

 

Should the sylvanians use it as new carpet or should bunny be allowed to keep it?

 

 

I  am almost at the end of my Loose Change quilt, just binding the sunny days away.I also have the lovely mini quilt to indulge in whenever I am in need of diversity.  This has been fun as I'm just scrapping it up as I go along and having a nice play.

And finally just for Zoe as requested a pic of Asha's blood red iced St Patricks day cake!  Now alas half the cake it used to be!

green day

 

Today I am getting out my green fingers in celebration of that great shamrocking event St Patricks day.  My husband you see is irish, in fact he is called Patrick but I am not allowed to call him that despite being wife-fied to him in all things matrimonial.  No my hubs choses to breeze through life labelled as PJ.  Anyhow later today we shall be having a little cakey party with a lovely cake Asha made with blood red icing!!!!!  In the meantime let's keep things in the green by adding a little greenery to the day.

 

Emraldtastic shamrocky sticker love!

 

Jady lady, obviously living in a house that is three quarters Irish has it's side effects.

And now I shall bring you for the very first time -The Wipping News  (sorry we turn blue here)

 

Current quilt Play in action is this new mini quilt,  I'm just going to add borders of strippy edges until I exhaust my strippy gene.

 

Typically lots of flowers and scrap it up as I go along.

  

In the crochet headlines I'm almost done with making a mini blanket for Asha's bunny, well it is mother's day on Sunday.  It's a bit curvy so some blocking therapy is required.

 

I have finished hand quilting my Loose Change quilt!  That only took me about a week which was less than I thought.  I had to slice off some of my quilter's knots in the squaring up process despite having squared up before quilting so I may need to do a little follow up surgery next week.  I'm binding this baby later today!!!!

 

Oh those painstaking little stitches!

 

And now I'm off to make the binding, so I may contain all the lovely wadding within the quilt never to escape!

duvet do's

 

Amongst all the quilty adoration it's easy to forget that bastion of the bedding world and night time sofa of goodness, the humble duvet cover.  I was brought up sleeping in duvets, usually luridly designed shop bought effort's shouting 'look at me I'm fun!' in tragic dastardly colours.  It was a joy to me when I discovered my inner sewing epidemic and set about destroying all memories of these ill advised fabric creatures by building up my own collection of home sewn beauties. 

 

Now every night is spent sleeping in my self created textile gardens of screen-printed wonder and fabulous colour stories. 

The cover in these pictures,  oooH! what shall I call it, my ' Floral brick path' duvet covering, was created by using a large 1 metre piece of sienna coloured 'Hepworth' from Laura Ashley as my leading lady fabric.  This was laid out on the floor of my front room or sewing chamber as I like to call it and further cast members were selected from my stash agency of talented fabric acquisitions.

Only the most compatible and friendly additons were chosen including flavours of Liberty, Kaffe and Philip Jacobs goodness (only as per usually usual), these were cut to the same width but slightly different lenghs and joined together into four long columns which were then sewn up forever and ever to each of the four sides of 'Hepworth'.  I think in the end the lovely 'Lilac Rose' did upstage the leading lady but thems the breaks. 

 

Lilac Rose posing next to Dahlia, see the wonderful spell she casts in her wake.

 

 

 

A trio of textile tremendousness!!!!!

 

Asha made these yesterday when I was at work, look at how her colour choices have been subconciously influenced by my fabric choices!

 

 

petal power

 

I have been swooning my way through my collection of Philip Jacobs fabric, any day now I shall HAVE to make a decision and position these darlings in some form of rightful employment.  Mr Jacobs is king of the blowsey english floral in fabric terms.  His weighty full petalled beauties are pictured at the height of their voluptuousness, just before it all gets too much for their supportive stems and the petals begin to go their own way in the world and fall confetti like to the ground.

The colour in his designs is full of a multitude of precisely perfect shades playing with each other delightfully in floral drenched delight.  The flowers chosen by Jacob's to drape over his designs are the epitome of those selected by English country gardeners each summer to colour in their homely plots with.  There's geraniums, hollyhocks,delphiniums, pansies, lilacs, roses, foxgloves, tulips and poppies.

 

Jaunty floral ladies in their gorgeously resplendent finery.

 

The unsurpassably effervescent 'Lilac Rose'. 

My one grievance with these lovely designs is, something happens to me whenever I go near them with a pair of scissors, I am gripped with a fear that chopped up into smaller pieces in a patchwork they will lose their flamboyant personality and be fashioned into abstract visions of petals and buds.  I need to find honorable design husbands to pair away these honey's with and yet I shall have to take charge of any snipping fears soon as these lovelies are wasted in their current folded away stash fashion.

And now back to floral reality, I present to you the only two examples of anything approaching floral magnificence from my back yard.

 

Heavenly hyacinths.

 

Glorious gold laced primula's.

Wouldn't they look lovely draped everlastingly in material masterpieces?

life's a quilt

 

I have been caught up in a self imposed epidemic of hand quilting frenzy since I last blogged on.  This virus has got me gripped in it's contemplative, therapeutic grip and I fear I may never stop.  Like a vice (a good vice not one of those crooked vices) it's fever has struck me and I cannot stop my  mind thinking about all the quilts I want to make.  This is all good but I don't know where I'm going to put all these quilt's of my imagination.  So far my quilting endeavors have brought to life four quilts, so let's get into our textile time machine and step back in time to my quilt archives.  This is sort of a blog recycling but all these pics have been taken with the all seeing eye of new camera.  First quilt is a baby quilt I made for Ciara but it lives in the airing cupboard and has so far managed to live a reclusive pic free life.  Quilt two is my True Blue quilt.

 

This quilt has previously been written about here and here.  It is one of my favs on account of it's watery similarities, sleeping in it is like slumbering in a swimming pool without the drowning.

 

 

 

 

Third quilt action is provided courtesy of Magenta Diamonds Quilt, you can read about this quilt here, here and here.

 

 

 

Ahh! time for a little greenery after that rosiness perhaps?

 

Don't think this pic does spring umbrella quilt justice.

 

Much better, you can read more about this quilt here and see more pics here, here, here, here and also here !!!!!

 

Very hotchpotch in style (my trademark).  This is a fun quilt to make, you cut up a load of strips, join them up in gangs of three, chop these into pizza slices then construct into these hexy's. 

 

And now especially for Rita here are some pics of folded up quilt-ness.

 

There's somefink about stacked quilts, that wee abstract glimpse in detail that intrigues the brain.

 

I am completely besotted with quilting, it produces a great state of mind, a healthy obsession, makes your hair shine and your teeth sparkle.

Caution: it may turn you into a blogger who churns out a machine of quilty ideology as a blueprint for life.

My one dilemma is: How many quilts do you actually need and is need a necessity to needle more quilts?  What shall I do with all these quilts I make? where will I put them? I know I don't want to sell them.  Should I disguise them?

What do you think?

 

the coin quilt saga

 

An unfeasably overly long and unforsaken dramatisation in several unfathomably drawn out and confusing parts.

It all began charmingly well, I pieced together several hundred scrap strips into towering columns of material endlessness.  An early hiccup occured when what I had previously assumed to be many metres of white cotton so un-immaterially turned out to be less (much much less).  Cue excrutiating afternoon spent jigsawing many small pieces together to form the white column action for the quilt.

Fabric rainbow and white strips are joined together in quilted matrimony, all is going seamingly well but it is not to last for there is stormy haberdashery weather around the corner.  As seen in friday's episode the batting takes countless hours to arrive, much deviating and meandering around the original screenplay takes place.

And now hold on to your sofa's an ad-break.

  

Finally batting is procurred and all is looking handsome and reasonable at last but it is not to stay that way for there is another sorry cyclone (yawn) waiting around the corner.  The large checked pink gingham fabric so perfect for this quilt's behind, measures in at half a metre less than necessary.  The life of a quilt in the making is too short for this kind of de-ja-vu.

(It must be getting near the end now the ads are coming thick and fast).

 

More crochet therapy is called for to lighten the load.

 

A preview of one of many final episodes to come.

 

Behind scedule and well over sanity budget a last minute plot adjustment is written when I talent spot a half metre piece of Kaffe Fassett's Cabbage Rose and a matchmaking plan is hatched.  Upon meeting, pink gingham and cabbage rose instantly fall in love and an end is in sight for this tragic colourful tale.  At last quilt is laid out and joyously sandwiched together by a jubilant me.

 

In the editing room it is decided that a hand quilted storyline will be added to acheive a little more interest in lead character white column.

 

And that is the story so-far, hand quilting is shaping up nicely in the form of zig-zag's -  this may have to become my trademark. Meanwhile do not hold your breath I doubt there'll be a sequel.