comfortstitching

starting delightfully

Cutting and stitching has been begun in earnest for a new quilt.  Now that I'm on to the quilting part of Bloom, I needed a break from all the dresdening with something a little simpler.  Cue Delightful - another quilt pattern that was written over Christmas before I had even seen the new fabric in person.  Excited to see how this one turns out.

If you'd like a preview or are interested in stitching one up yourself, the pattern will be available in my shop later today listed!.  It's a much more straight forward pattern than Bloom, perfect for the novice or experienced quilter.

Back to stitching, stitching, stitching........

blooming and boothing

Ive been busy sewing (or sowing) up the seeds of -  you know that quilt I'm making, the one with the dresden explosion in the middle of it.  I've had to pick up my game and speed up with it having found out that the third sofa of our new set is going to be arriving tommorow.  Which means my available floor basting space is about to be sliced in half (leading to a slight panic of how I'm going to baste my future projects).  I decided to change my original choice for the flower centre from white to pale green but I'm not liking how its looking so that may get changed back after it's been quilted.  Other than that I am LOVING how it's looking so far.

Made using this pattern.

I'm also loving the surprise early birthday present I got yesterday - an Ipad 3.  I always ask my family not to buy me presents but sometimes they ignore me and come up with gems like this.  This little baby is getting a bit of a workout and is a highly distracting bit of gadget with fun stuff like the photo booth function (above) - I keep trying to put it down but it's hard :)

sock o'clock

I finished my first sock!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and it's making me ever so happy just sitting here and stroking it, waiting until I finish it's twin sibling so I can wear them.  The sock took me a week of evening only knitting (or sock o'clock as I like to call it) to finish.  So if I continue at this rate of a pair a fortnight - I could have 19 pairs by Christmas day :)

Socking facts

Gusset heel basic sock pattern from the book 'socks from the toe up'.  This book and pattern were recommended to me by Amanda on Twitter and as a beginner sock knitter I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested enjoying a bit of sock o'clock.

Yarn - cakewalk yarn in cam

Knitted using a pair of 2.5mm/size 1 knitting needles - my first time doing this, the book explains how to.

I used Judy's magic cast on and finished in russian bind off, again all explained in the book

Happiness factor on finishing - 11/10

BTW - I signed up to Ravelry two years ago but still haven't actually done anything on my page, I'm hoping to start when I get a minute so if you are interested you can soon find me here.

I was so happy knitting with the cakewalk yarn that my daughter easily convinced me to buy a couple more (left to right - Brooklyn and Cherry Blossom).  She does seem to have got it in her head that I am going to be using the cherry blossom to knit up a pair for her...................mmmm.   The yarn is looking lovely displayed on this pretty dresden mini sent to me by Allison (with the cute drawstring bag) to say thank you for the honour of winning one of my giveaways from last year - isn't that nice??!

so far so bloomy

Its been a blooming-ly lovely weekend around these parts.  Picture the scene, hubby and the girls are out, the sun is shining and I got to spend a largeish chunk of time out in the garden handstitching dresden rings to my backing fabric - BLISS.

I got quite a bit done on my bloom quilt - 2 rings down and 2 to go.  This is how its looking so far, held up for display by my trusty helper miss c, who will be helping me out as photography assistant from now on because miss a has now employed herself as my sales assistant by sending my email patterns and re-listing them in the shop for me (if you bought a pattern last week and got a double smiley face in your message, that was her work).  I'm certainly not complaining about their wanting to help.

Although miss c's suggestion that I make this into a summer dress so far is not the kind of help I was after.

Miss a meanwhile spent a little time in the kitchen unleashing her creativity in the form of arty cake decorating for a friends birthday party.  

And before you ask, I really did enjoy washing up all 99 bowls of icing colours.....

sewing stitch-ily in dresden

My house is awash with dresdens, picture the scene - it is like the sea of dresdonia has come crashing through the doors.  Sharing my living space with several squillion drezzies is not a bad place to be however, they make for nice company, are polite and behave themselves at all times.  So you can see, the beginnings of my bloom quilt are well underway and coming along nicely thank you very much.

This flood of dresdens is also giving you a nice little bit more of a peeky into the world of Sew Stitchy lucky peeps.  See how right you were?

It is all about the sewing with this line, hand sewing, embroidery, spools, pins and more.

These are four of my favourite prints - I just love the two prints on the left together so much it is making me squeal.

OK better get back to stitching the sea of dresdonia into circles because much as I keep asking, they won't stitch themselves.

the making of a quilt

So yep you are all pretty much spot on with the contents of Sew Stitchy, you honestly could have designed this line for me :)  And just so you know, there is a little squirrel in there.

Precisely five minutes ago I had an idea, the idea was to tell you all about the making of and writing up of the pattern of the quilt I'm working on today.  The thing about this quilt is, I've written up the entire pattern and made the templates and all the illustrations FIRST.  Yep!  that's before I've made the quilt itself.  The reason for working so confusingly backwards is because I designed it to go in the new Moda catalouge or playbook as it is known, so it had to be ready almost before I got the fabric to sew it with.  Working on this little number began over Christmas.  All through the festive season, I was making my own templates from scratch and sizing and resizing them to fit inside each other neatly.  Then I made a mock up of all four dresdens to double check my maths and make sure everything worked (see exiting blue fabric dresdens above left).  The quilt is called Bloom and is going to be made up of four dresden plates appliqued one inside the other to make up the most ginourmous dresden you have ever seen and by gosh it has been a lot of work.  

So now begins the exciting bit, using my pattern to actually make the quilt from..............................Sew Stitchy.

If any of you fancy stitching along side me, I'm adding this pattern to my shop today - listing is up, you can find it here.  It'll be nice to have some company if anyone fancies playing along :)

So what do you say, fancy drezzing along with me???

introducing sew stitchy

Here it is, a little sneaky peek into the world of my newest line for Moda - Sew Stitchy.  This collection will be shown at Spring Market in Kansas in a few weeks time but you know me, always want to make sure my readers are the first ones to see ;)  I wonder if you would be up for a fun little game?  Now that you've seen a teeny glimpse - do you think that you could take a guess at what is behind this line?  Maybe, tell me what you think is going on in the fabrics up there or have a little prediction for what other prints in the line might be????

I'd love to know what you're thinking :)

socking

I felt it was time I dipped my toes into something new, so over the weekend I took full advantage of it being St Patricks day, National quilting day and Mother's day by learning how to knit socks....  I've been wanting to learn for some time and after two days of socking I'm only wondering what took me so long.  I'm knitting the gusset heel basic sock pattern from the book Socks From The Toe Up on a pair of 2.5mm (size 1) circular needles using Cakewalk yarn in Cam.  As someone who has only ever knitted one item (my eternity cowl) in the round before all I can say is I think I will be knitting a LOT of socks from now on.

petal ring pillow tutorial

Firstly, I'd like to say a great big huge version of Thank You to all of you who responded to my request on the last post.  I really enjoyed reading all of your stories and finding out more about you, my cup was filled many times over and is still being refilled, my kettle has never been so busy.

So what's a thank you without a little something back from me to you?  As I've just finished up a second petal project in the form of the pillow above, I thought I'd do something that I haven't done in a while - write up a new tutorial, lets just hope I remember how.

May I present to you my Petal ring pillow tutorial.

This tutorial will show you how to make paper pieced petals and applique them onto a square of fabric.  The appliqued square can be used as a quilt block or made up into a pillow, table runner what ever takes your fancy frankly.

 

You will need :-

An 18" square of fabric

fabric scraps to make the petals

paper to make the piecing templates

plus - needle, thread, pins, spray starch

You will also need a copy of the template sheet which you can download using the link below - print 2 copies to make each block/pillow (note. two copies will give you two extra petals more than you will need)

Download Petals by aneela hoey

 

1.  Cut out 24 paper petals.  Pin a paper petal onto the wrong side of a fabric scrap.

2.  Cut the excess fabric so that the fabric petal is 1/4" larger than the paper one all around.

3. Turn the excess fabric edge over onto the paper template and baste in place (see middle petal above).

4.  Continue with remaining templates until you have 24 paper pieced fabric petals.

5.  Give your petals a spritz of spray starch and then press.  The starch is important to keep those pressed edges nicely creased until they are safely appliqued in place.

6.  Before I talk about how to put together this design let me just go through the appliquing bit.  Remove your basting stitches and the paper template (please note - for some reason this was not done when taking the pic above so please pretend those basting stitches are not there).  

7.  Pin the fabric petal in place.  Make a few little stitches one on top of the other under where the fabric petal will hide them to secure your thread . 

8.  Bring your needle and thread out just above the folded edge of the petal and make a tiny stitch to exit just below the folded edge into the background fabric.

9.  Make another stitch about 1/8" along the folded edge and continue until petal is stitched in place all around the petal edge.

To make the ring design above -

10.  Fold fabric in half vertically and crease with the palm of your hand all along the folded edge.

11.  Fold it again, horizontally this time and crease again.  When you open out the fabric, it should be separated into 4 quadrants by the creases.

12.  Refer to the picture above when pinning the petals.  At the centre, pin one petal in each quadrant so that they form a ring.  Applique into place (see steps 6-9 above).

13.  For the second ring, pin two petals in each quadrant to form a ring of eight petals in total and applique into place.

14.  For the final ring, Pin three petals in each quadrant to form a ring of 12 petals and applique into place.

And when you have finished that you will have one petal ringed square of the design above to use as you wish :)

The block finishes at 18" square or alternatively you can change the size of the background fabric as you wish to suit yourselves.  For reference the largest petal ring finishes at 13" square so any size larger than that is suitable.

I turned my block into a 17" square cushion cover.  I'm going to give super quick instructions here but please use any method you are used to.

To make a folded back opening - I used two pieces of fabric 22" x 18".  I folded them in half to measure 11" x 18" and pressed them.  

Next I topstitched them 1" away from the folded 18" edge.

To make the cover - I placed the pillow front right side up, then placed the two back pieces on top so that they overlapped at the center and were aligned all around the edge with the pillow front.  After pinning the pieces together and basting I stitched the cover using a 1/2" seam allowance all around the outer edge.  Turned it right side out and dressed up my pillow in it. 

If you use this tutorial I would love to see your pillows turn up in my Flickr group here.  You can also add anything you make from my fabrics, patterns or tutes here or just have a browse around to see what everyone else is up to!

Have fun!!!!!

over to you

For today's post I just fancy changing things up a little.  In the usual scheme of events, I write a blog post in which I witter on about something or other that's been happening recently or otherwise and you come along and have a little read.  I'm starting to feel that you all now know quite a little bit about me but I know hardly anything about the vast majority of my readers.  So how do we fancy a little swap?  You do the talking and I'll do the reading bit - Tell me something about yourself, anything.  Who you are, what you do, where you live, where you wish you lived, how long you have been reading this blog, who you love, what you are doing right now, what you really should be doing write now, what you are wearing, what you are sewing..............anything.

I have my cup of tea and I'm sat here waiting, please don't leave me all by myself.