First try at sewing baby clothes

I made some pants for a workmate's wee girl. The pattern came from Anna Marie Horner's book 'Handmade Beginnings'

They are reversible  pants that have a main pattern and then a feature yoke on the back. I enjoyed making them - they were a good beginner project for me. I will definitely be making more. For some reason I really enjoyed making the elastic waistband and seeing the band change from flat to crinkly with the elastic - I'm weird I know!

I liked the fabric I used, I think they go well together.

Side One Front

Side one Back

Side Two Back

Side Two Front

All fabrics are from the 'Hoos in the forest' range. My favourite is the one with the little woodland creatures.

(Please excuse the terrible photos)

I'm entering this in Celebrate Color's Competition in the Wearables section

Finished! and Celebrating colour :)

I finished Mum's quilt yesterday - just in time for christmas :). Please excuse the utterly uninspiring background - this area is getting re-done and is in a bit of a mess. I can't believe it is finally finished.  The squares are from the Fandango fabric line.

Don't quilts look all pretty folded up? They look so comfortable, just waiting there for somebody to snuggle up in it.

Ahhhh, binding - how I love thee. I love the look of hand-binding on a quilt. I did most of the binding while watching Season 3 of True Blood on DVD - I really enjoyed this part (both the binding and the DVD).

The quilting was just a stitch-in-the-ditch around the squares. The backing is scrumptious flannel - it will be lovely and  warm during winter.

I'm going to enter it in the Celebrating Colour competition - you should check it out - lots of amazing crafty goodness :)

Family tree baby quilt

I made this quilt last month for a friend expecting a baby girl

All fabrics and the panel are from Sarah Jane's range 'Children at Play'.

I really enjoyed doing this one as it was a nice quick quilt. Next time though I will embroider the names as this time I wrote them with a permanent fabric pen and it ran a little in the wash.


The quilting was around the outline of the tree and also around the white squares that the names are written in.

The backing was from flannel fabric from the 'Ruby' range. for some reason the photo has made the back fabrics look wonky but they were actually straight.

Long time, no post

This break from blogger has done me good I think (as well as sorting out the rest of my life). I am enjoying my job there - it helps that most of the other people I work with are great people.

I reflected on my quilting journey the other day and looked at the parts I love and the parts I don't love so much.

What I love (in no particular order):

• Hand binding - I loved hand binding the quilts I have done, it's quite therapeutic to take it slowly and think over things as I bind (or more often watch TV or DVDs as I bind!)
• Piecing - I enjoyed this part of the process - sewing all the pieces together
• Fabric choice - both in general and also when choosing the layout of fabric in my quilt.
• Quilting - I'm going to hand quilt my next quilt and see if I enjoy that too

What I didn't love so much:

• Cutting - I think because I'm impatient and want to get on with the piecing. It takes so long and I get bored of it easily
• Basting - eurgh, I don't have much room to spread a quilt out and pinning takes soooooooo long. I think I might try a spray baste next.

I've also sewn my first clothes. Well a pair of baby pants for a little girl. I'm going to start sewing more baby clothes so I can build a stock pile of new baby gifts. I may need to change my blog title to reflect this.

Anyways  - back to binding (Apparently blogging is one of the few things you can't do while binding, ha ha)

Picture posts to come soon I promise!

Well......

I'm on holiday but have not done any quilting! Oops. I was going to bring the batting and front and backing with me to baste it together while on holiday - but once I had that in my suitcase I had no room for any of my clothes so I had to reconsider. Its been a good holiday though - good to catch up with family and friends - and also to not have to work. I could easily be a 'lady of leisure' I think.

While I haven't actually been quilting I have been buying more fabric and various notions - and have plenty more on my wishlist. It doesn't take long to build up quite a stash.

I bought a sampler quilt book so  I think I will do that next - a block at a time.

Night Shift

Yuck, I'm on night shifts again this week. I don't seem to do much quilting when I'm on night shifts. I feel to tired and 'spaced-out' during the day to concentrate and end up with wonky seams etc.

I do get a bit of knitting done though - as long as its a more simple pattern where I don't have to concentrate to hard. I'm working on a skirt with lots of ruffles. The ruffles are taking me forever - you start with 120 stitches then knit into the front and back of each stitch, knit a few more rows and then knit in the front and back again - ending up knitting 480 stitches on the row. But it really looks adorable so I'm not complaining (too much!)

Well I'm off to try sleep some more!

Batting

I'll be buying the batting for my quilts this week. I'll have to do some research before I go to the craft shop as I have no idea what type I should get.

I had a look in the shop the other day and there were so many different types.... all with very different costs as well. I want to get a good type of batting as I want my quilts to last, but I can't afford the high end batting either.

I also need to cut and sew my backing to the right size and then I will be all ready to baste. I'm quite excited about basting as it means I will be able to quilt it after! I will probably do straight line quilting for the first quilt and then see if I'm up to something more adventurous for the second one.