A new bag! And it's for me!

I have little kids. Little enough that we still need to tote around a ridiculous amount of things to prepare for all possible emergencies. I'm not quite sure how that equation works but something along the lines of - the smaller they are, the more stuff they require.

Anyways my nappy bag (well backpack actually - cannot recommend having a backpack enough when they are only small and you need free hands!) has seen better days. It's been in constant use for nearly two years. It needed an upgrade. There was a small matter of a banana left in there for a few too many days too that may or may not have also factored into the need for an upgrade.

I have been on the hunt for a fabulous messenger bag style pattern for ages. I found the perfect one on Etsy! I couldn't wait for it to be emailed to me, so I bought it directly from the designer's website. This design is the Savannah bag by ChrisW Designs. I made it up using Aviary 2 Sparrows in Cavern paired with plain black.

The original pattern has a gazillion pockets which can be very handy with a nappy bag! However I just went with a handful of pockets as I have less chance of losing things with only these few.

See? I can fit my sunglasses and phone in the front, a pen, a magazine (for when I turn into one of those yummy mummies who goes to cafes and reads magazines in peace while her children happily sip babycino's, not spilling a drop and behaving like angels - hahahaha! yeah right!!!).

In the main section, I can fit the necessities - nappies, wipes and my handbag. I only have a little handbag - gorgeous leather thing my sister bought for me in Argentina, but I hate swapping things out of it. So I like to squish the whole handbag into my nappy bag when I'm out and about. That was a bit of a tight squeeze with my old backpack bag. I'm happy it fits the new one beautifully!

I think my favourite part about this bag is - oh my goodness, I made it, with only half way following the pattern (surprise surprise) and it actually turned out and it's functional! Miss Lulu wasn't quite as impressed as I was, though you can see she did come to check out the photography session. Plus it looks pretty. Really I think you could make a sack shaped dress out of Aviary 2 and it would still look fabulous. Can you really go wrong with that fabric?

So I have a new bag! It fits all my stuff! It looks fab! I'm just not sure I want to leave the house with it in case it gets dirty...

Edit: Oooh how exciting! My little bag was featured by Sunni at Love Affair with my Brother!

Bee Blocks and a bag

Fiona from Finding Fifth is the host for the February blocks. Lovely girl posted up her instructions early! So I made the most of some kidfree time and got stuck into them.

We were asked to make one (of course I got carried away and made more than one!) scrappy log cabin block, based on the tutorial at Red Pepper Quilts. Okay, honesty vomit. I actually made way more than one, but they didn't come out at 8.5" which drove me crazy. They were more like 8.25" and I know that quarter inch would make a difference in the grand scheme of things so I've hidden those blocks away and I'll make them into little bags or something (more on that later). Meantime I'm still trying to find the sweet spot to put my needle to make sure my seams are accurate so my end results are the correct measurements. This bee business is good for me working on precision!

Less talk, more pictures, right?

So I figure Fiona can pick which one she likes best, or take both for that matter, if she doesn't mind the novelty prints. As I do a lot of kid stuff with my sewing, I have a ridiculous amount of novelty prints in my stash. I'm working on balancing that out. Because I absolutely need a reason to buy more gorgeous fabric.

I also finished up a little bag I made out of one my orphan blocks. Actually you might recall my chubarama starflower block from an earlier blog post. It was the one that didn't make the final cut into my starflower table runner. I didn't want to just ditch it as it's pretty and I spent time on it damnit and it's not that bad! So tada! It's a little tote bag!

I backed it with pink polka dots the same as the handles and popped it into my madeit shop. I think it'd be cute as a bag for sheets for preschool etc. I'm in the process of planning a bag for my son for preschool with some cute transport fabric I picked up. Haven't done it yet, probably should as preschool starts on Tuesday. My excuse is I'm waiting to find out if they need to take sheets to preschool this year as he's moved up into the bigger room and I wouldn't think there'd be too many having naps at age 4, but I could be wrong. Gosh my kids gave up naps at 18 months. Imagine all I'd accomplish if they napped right up til 4!!

Now I'm off to either find or make my own pattern for a cute block I saw floating around someone's flickr feed. Wish me luck!

Rain, rain, go away...

It's raining, it's pouring and the kids are driving Mummy crazy. So to save my sanity I worked on a project I've been planning in my head for awhile.
I was inspired by my favourite coffee mug. Inspiration strikes in the weirdest of places doesn't it?

I've been wanting to do a wallhanging like this for ages. Yesterday was the perfect day. I drew up a rough sketch of what I wanted, traced it onto some fusible webbing (and oops forgot to reverse it, oh well!), grabbed my Aviary 2 scraps and away I went!

I did an extra little bird to see if I wanted him sitting on the branches or not. Look at that little purple one, even looks like he has an eye! Happy accident.

Whacked it all together amidst cries of "Get off the bench!" "Stop harrassing your sister!" (from me, best mum ever) and their cries of "Mummmmmmmmyyyy, I'm booorrrreddddd" (hello you're 4, you don't get bored, go play with your gazillion toys!) and the ever favourite, often repeated "Mama, mama, mama, mama, mama ad infinitum" from Little Miss. Are you starting to see why I needed some sanity sewing? Because I could go on. Really. No? Okay, moving right along!

I FMQ'd this thing to within an inch of its life. I have noticed that I tip my head on an angle when I FMQ like I'm some kind of weird quilting cock-eyed pirate. I had some very funny pirate conversations in my head with my piece of work. They stayed in my head, not out loud, don't worry, I haven't gone completely round the bend. 

Then I got brave and used some more of my scraps and added a real binding. Yes, a real binding. Not cheater moves here! I used this fab tutorial from Crazy Mom Quilts recommended by Jane. Added some ribbon. And tada! Wall hanging finished!

It's not wonky in real life, honest. I have well and truly learned my lesson about squaring up blocks! It's just over an A4 size and I'm very happy with it!

 Look at this cheeky birdie peeking over the edge of the binding. Again, happy accident. That little aqua bird there is my favourite. I did some stippling over the birds, then loops for the background on white.

Now Joel Dewberry fans, look away now. The back isn't so pretty. What was I thinking, using my beautiful Aviary 2 fabric as a backing when I was going to FMQ like a madwoman all over it in white thread?!

Oh well, live and learn. Meanwhile I think I need to go talk the real estate into letting me put a hook in the wall in the bedroom so my new wall hanging can live above my matchy-matchy Aviary 2 doona cover.

Making lemonade... or a table runner.

Was it just yesterday I was having a whinge about not loving my starflower blocks? What a difference 24 hours can make! As soon as I was posted that blog post, I got stuck into sewing and made up the rest of those HSTs into starflower blocks. I had three blocks. Had a bright idea to make it into a cot quilt with string blocks down the sides to give it more size. String blocks did not work out quite as planned so decided to cut my losses! Here's what I ended up with:

And because I didn't want to waste a few hours of cutting, sewing and ironing, this table runner has a pieced back!

Oh and if you've a keen eye, you may have noticed a bit of 'real' quilting on that table runner. Yes indeed, I broke out the darning foot and tried some FMQ! Practiced for all of 5 minutes on a piece of felt and decided to jump in the deep end!

Each starflower has a different type of quilting around it. Not for any design feature but simply because I was having fun and wanted to try out different things!

I started with a little flower and leaf motif. Which I did on way too small a scale so it just looks like stippling,but I'm okay with that because you can't notice exactly how messy my flowers are.

Next I thought why bother with flowers and leaves, let's just go with stippling! So I did and I actually preferred it. I didn't have to think as much. Again, rather small scale, I think I should have done it a bit bigger but that's okay, I'm happy with it.

For the third block I thought let's try something different again! Echo quilting with straight lines. Oooh fun! Loved this one and I love the final look of it.

I also FMQ'd a flower in the centre of each star. At first my flower lines were a bit wonky but know what I figured out? The hesitancy and worry I'd get it wrong made me get it wrong! When I relaxed and just went for it with a bit of confidence (even fake confidence!) my lines were steady and turned out okay.

I also totally cheated and only did the quilting with the quilt top and batting, then later added the backing in my signature pillowcase flip-a-roo finish.

I'm quite pleased with it and it brightens up my very boring dining table. Seriously, there is nothing on my dining table. Not even a table cloth. That's because I have two children (who may be half monkey) who like to dance on the table. Yes, dance. Apparently it's hilarious. So let's see how long this will last on there.

Oh and I still didn't do a binding. Because I didn't want to. And I didn't have enough rainbow scraps for a cool rainbow scrappy border. And because I didn't want to. Hey I FMQ'd - that's enough achieving for one day!

  

Not feeling the love

Maybe I'm just grumpy and sleep deprived. Trying a new sleep routine with my kidlets. Been trying it for a week. All the books and the experts say the time should shorten as you go on. Clearly they have not met my children. We went from taking 40 minutes to go to sleep to an hour for the 4 year old and infinity for the 20 month old. Argh. So last night I got tough! No eye contact, no talking other than saying "Sleep time" each I resettled them. Yeah hello super nanny with her crazy ideas.

Little Miss finally went to sleep after I had resettled her 47 times. Yeah I counted. What else was I meant to do while standing in there staring at the wall trying to ignore the tantrums (Little Miss) and the pleading (Mr 4)? Mr 4 kept going. Final count was 68. No joke. He had some funny tactics to get out going to of sleep - trying to spell his sister's name, having hot feet, conversations with his teddy about morning tea, having to tell me something important (needed a cuddle apparently - cute but still GO TO SLEEP!) and on and on and on. I'm exhausted. Plus sick. Hello grumpy mummy.

So i'm feeling in a bit of a sewing funk. Nothing seems to be coming together. My ideas look fabulous in my head, but in fabric, not so much. Here I am on a Saturday with some kidfree time and I have already wasted one hour of it watching silly crap on the telly, and playing Tiny Towers on my ipod. And now blogging. Ahh procrastination at it's finest.

Anyways here's why I'm not feeling the love...

I had this grand plan of a big scrappy paper pieced string quilt in rainbow colours. I planned for blocks of solid colours (and I just realised I placed two of these squares in this picture in the wrong spot... oops) with 'middle' blocks of blended colours. Hence the half triangles of mixed purple/blue. But I'm just not loving it.

Maybe looking at it from a different arrangement. Looking. Looking. No. No love still. So I think these squares will be put away for a bit while I think some more on how I want to continue this.

Next no love. And this time, it's not the block or the pattern. I LOVE that. It's my piecing. My precision seriously needs some work. I'm a bit embarrased about some of these pictures but they will serve as a reminder to follow the instructions exactly as written. (Remember that self - FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS!).

This is my first attempt at the colour wheel star flower block from Ellison Lane's tutorial.(Go see hers for how beautiful it should actually look).

What? I need to square up each of the little HST blocks after making them into squares? Really? Huh. As a side note, this square reminds me of the characters on the Wii fit after it tells you you're ridiculously fat - goes from skinny to floomp! chubarama. This is my chub block.

And here's my skinny block. Oh I'm much happier with this! Points are still a bit messy but improving. I unpicked seams a few times to do this, and it still wasn't right but really, at this point I'm not going to nitpick (or unpick any further for that matter).

Oh and another reason beyond the chub/skinny look to trim your blocks to size! Look at this!

That's the difference in size in blocks due to me not trimming. Again self, FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS.

Well I have a bunch more HSTs cut out ready to be made into some starflower blocks. Yes I have trimmed these ones to size. I learnt my lesson! I just need the motivation to make them into blocks. I don't think I have it in me to make enough for a quilt, even a cot quilt. So I'm thinking I'll make a mini quilt - and - dont' fall over here - I might use it as practice for some FMQ and maybe even a real binding! Surely I could do that on a mini? And if it's a completely disaster.. well.. Little Miss won't notice how wonky it is as a doll quilt I'm sure.

Joining the Craftsy BoM

So last year I signed up to a BoM for a fabulous quilt, but after the second month kind of lost motivation. It was gorgeous but just too much hand sewing for me! (Note: I joined when I had only been sewing for a few months and really had no idea what I liked or didn't like. I just thought it looked cute!).

Fast forward to the beginning of this year and I start seeing mention of the Craftsy BoM popping up all over the place. I ummed and ahhed and thought yeah that could be fun but really, do I have the staying power for a.whole.year?!


Then some of the fabulous girls on QCA mentioned they were interested and all of a sudden we have a support group! ;) It's great - we can share our blocks as we make them and keep ourselves and each other motivated to continue. So I'm determined to get past the second month this time. I even bought a special fabric bundle just for this quilt.

This is Moroccan Mirage by Khristian A Howell. It's absolutely not my normal style of fabric but oh I love love love it! I bought this bundle from the Intrepid Thread and it was 30% off. Bargain! I can't recommend the Intrepid Thread highly enough. Fabulous customer service and really fast postage. It normally takes nearly two weeks to receive things I've ordered from the States. This bundle took 8 days. I was very surprised when the postie dropped it off!

So I have already made my January blocks. So I kind of cheated and didn't actually watch the BoM video - because my computer died and it was too hard to get it sorted on the iPod. I just used the instructions provided and they were great!

Asterisk block. Easy peasy and so much fun. I took a ridiculous amount of delight in the fact the white strips lined up with very little effort from me. Plus I'm loving that fabric. Did I mention that already?

Wonky slashed block. Now this one wasn't so easy peasy. I think I unpicked seams 3 or 4 times to get those red stripes to line up just right. They are still a fraction off but nothing compared to what they were originally. Where did I go wrong? Oh yeah, I probably should have watched the video...

So now I have packed away the rest of that gorgeous fabric to await the February blocks. I think if I leave it in plain sight I may be tempted to use it for some other project! Out of sight, out of mind and all that.

Oh and I'm planning the end result to be a picnic blanket. My mum was -horrified- that I was going to use a quilt as a picnic blanket! But why not? It might encourage me to do more picnic trips with the kids!

(Apologies for terrible ipod photos in this post - these were taken when the computer carked it and I couldn't upload photos from my regular camera. Plus I'm incredibly lazy when it comes to uploading the photos so I couldn't be bothered retaking them!).

A Walk in the Woods

I picked up a little charm pack of "A Walk in the Woods" from Need it Want it Quilt. It sat in my fabric cupboard for awhile. I'd look at it occasionally and ponder what sort of quilt it should become. No inspiration. Nothing. So I put it out of mind and worked on other things. Plus I got busy making Christmas presents and the like.

Then it came to me! Little charm squares made into star shapes - perfect! Showed off the fabric and would look great on a white background. This was one of those quilts that just came together rather effortlessly. Don't you love those types of quilts?

All I had to do was sort them into pairs to make the stars, bit of cutting, bit of sewing, bit of ironing and tada! Quilt done! But it needed just something to finish it off. I happened to have a few charm squares left - all of the stripey variety. Cut, sew, iron. Add to the quilt - stripey borders in place!

I love them. I think they finish the quilt off perfectly.

My first finish for 2012.A lap quilt sized around 95cm x 125cm. I've popped this one into the Quiet Play madeit store though it was tempting to keep it for my little Miss.

It's so much fun coming up with a pattern and, sewing the fabric come together into a gorgeous quilt that sometimes it can be hard to let them go! So I find that when I start a project, I have to separate in my mind whether it's for Quiet Play, or for a specific recipient. That way it's so much easier to let go if I decide to sell it or give it away. So far that has worked for me. Of course things may change as my little one's get older and start making their own demands. Mr 4 is starting to get that way already! It's nice to be appreciated hey!

January QCA Bee Blocks!

So I joined my first ever quilting bee this year  - through the QCA (Quilt Club Australia) group on FB. I'm a bit nervous but also very excited. I think what I like best about the whole idea is that I'll be making blocks that I wouldn't have chosen for myself so I get to push my own quilting boundaries a bit and gain new skills too. Fun!


January belongs to Erin from Missy Mac Creations and she chose a great paper-pieced string block. I only needed to make one block for January, but I was having so much fun, I ended up with four (though technically two of them were practice blocks!). Here they are:

Not perfect but still bright and cheery. Can I say though - that white strip? What a bugger it was to get it lined up perfectly (and clearly mine still aren't!). I tried pinning it in place but that didn't work so well. The tutorial suggests glue which I would definitely have tried - if only my resident munchkins hadn't made the glue sticks disappear.

Being a complete newbie to this whole bee thing, I was a bit worried my blocks weren't quite up to scratch. Exactly how perfect do these things need to be? I'll admit now I can be a bit of a haph-hazard quilter - which works great for me - so long as I'm consistent in my haph-hazardness! But when I need to mix that with other people's work (that is probably way more precise than mine), well I get a little nervy. Not to worry - the QCA girls were all very lovely and encouraging and Erin is happy to use all four blocks!

These were very fun (and a bit addictive!) to make. The tutorial for them can be found here at the Film in the Fridge blog. While you're there, have a look at the gorgeous string quilt made from Ruby (love that line!). Maybe I'll add that to my "some day" quilting list...

Confessions and Resolutions

Happy new year and all that exciting stuff! Really, to me, it doesn't feel like a new year, let alone a new week! It could perhaps be attributed to sleep deprivation. Thank you, darling daughter for waking me up no less than 5 times, with one of those times being to the sounds of little feet dancing on the stove top. Yeah - my kids inherited quadruple doses of the climbing gene. I wouldn't mind so much if they didn't exhibit said gene at 3 O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING! So here's to a better night's sleep tonight and perhaps I'll start my new year tomorrow.

So as with any new year, there are always the obligatory resolutions. Lose weight, get more sleep, do more, be more blah blah blah. I've decided I'm not going to bother with those as official resolutions. Instead I'm going to focus on more interesting ones - and ones that I'm likely to achieve. Quilty resolutions!

Where does that fit in with confessions you ask? Well my resolutions relate directly to my confessions - quilty-wise anyways. Now if you're a fully-fledged, pearl-clutching, member of the Quilt Police, move along now. It's not pretty.

• Confession #1 - I don't do binding. It hurts my hands. It takes too long. I don't like it.  But I feel like a fake quilter by not having binding. so...

• Resolution #1 - Attempt to learn how to machine bind quilts. No excuses - it won't hurt the hands like hand sewing surely.  Hello tutorial!

  

• Confession #2 - My quilting aspect of the quilting business sucks. I don't believe it get any more boring than my average and token few lines of stitches around prominent features of the quilt. Squares anyone?

• Resolution #2 - Practice FMQ and actually try it on a quilt. This time, don't unpick each stitch, girl. Not only is it time consuming, it's demoralising. Rejoice in your wonky FMQ! Oh and look! Laura from Quokka Quilts is hosting a FMQAYGQAL - a quilt along! hmm maybe now's the time?

• Confession #3 - I'm a fraidy-cat when it comes to bees and swaps. I'm terrified what I sew isn't going to be good enough for strangers who are potential members of the afore-mentioned Quilt Police.

• Resolution #3 - Oh and I've already met this one! I've signed up for a Quilt Bee through Quilt Club Australia. Yay! I guess this is kind of a cheater resolution to pop in, but gosh it feels good to say I can tick one off my list. Oh and if you're wondering - my month is April. Can't wait!

I think that's enough confessing and resoluting (ha, is that even a word?) for now! Let me add a few more things to what I want to achieve this year - quilt-wise.

1. Make a snowball quilt
2. Make a king size quilt cover for my sister's 30th that will be awesomely out of this world
3. Sort out that terrible excuse for a craft cupboard that houses my fabrics
4. Take some kind of quilting class. Ooh fun!

Well sorry for a boring post with no quilty pictures. The only photo I had that could possibly fit this post was a terrible blurry one of my FMQ practice on some felt scraps. But I don't think it's fit for public consumption. I will post a pic of my "A Walk in the Woods" quilt soon though! I finished it today (does that count as my first finish of 2012?!) but it's currently in the washing machine. Better go hang that out on the line!