Holiday sewing

No not the type in the American sense of Christmas but the type where one goes in an actual holiday. I am off to a sunny place this week to freshen up that all important tan and to top up the rather low Vitamin D deposit. And because I want to go in style I engaged in some fun holiday sewing.

Over the next couple of weeks I will feature a few items I have sewn so you have something to read while I am counting sand grains at the beach (sorry !!).

First off my new bag. This is a bag I mirrored on this beautiful hand embroidered shoulder bag that I  bought some years ago in Vietnam. This is the perfect holiday bag because it weighs next to nothing (unlike a leather bag) and has enough space for the important bits (wallet, sunglasses, book, suntan lotion). As you can see it has this clever drawstring unit at the top that helps to keep longfingers out of the bags.

The arrival of 'Ruby Star Shining' inspired bag sewing action my house so I copied my Vietnam bag for which I used one of the panels of the new Melody Miller fabric collections. I think the fabric panels lend themselves ideally to bag making and I used them on most of my previous bags.
The bag is approximately 13 x 12 inches and has a long strap so the bag sits on the hips.

Front

Back

On the Vietnam bag the drawstring unit was simply attached to the top but I wanted a fully lined bag this time and I also wanted the right sight of the lining to show inside the bag AND outside on the drawstring unit. The only way to achieve this is by producing two lining units whereby the top (drawstring) unit has to have a French seam as the seam will be visible on the inside of the unit. French seams are nothing else but a double seam resulting in a clean seam that doesn't fray. You first sew a very narrow seam where the two fabric pieces face wrong sides together and then fold the pieces right sights together and stitch  a normal quarter inch seam over the first seam. There are plenty of tutorials around, a good one is on Sew Mama Sew. You can see my french seam here in this image.

And here you see how the two lining pieces look when sewn together and attached to the bag.

 

 For the straps I used a newspaper print I had in my stash.

  

This images shows the drawstrings pulled together.

Just in time - one finshed Pirate themed quilt

This is definitional the last quilt I finish before Christmas but not the last one this year as I still have to make a small one for my new god-daughter Anya who I will be seeing just after Christmas.

For now I wish you all a very merry Christmas and say goodbye until next week with some images of my finished "Pirates, Doges and Bones"quilt that I made for the most important little man in my world; my nephew and godson Hauke.

Hauke

The front of the quilt is made of 192  5 inch squares measuring in total about 60 x 80 inches  (2 x 1.5 m). I used fabric from my stash including the specifically purchased pirate themed fabric by Emily Taylor Pirate and Alexander Henry 'Bizness Pirate. I also added quite a few Timeless Treasure 'Dogs' and replaced the amount of sculls with cute little dogs and bones thereby a bit. After all I don't want Hauke to have nightmares.

I also kept two of the prints that have such wonderful detail as plam trees, boats and maps on them as large pieces because fussy cutting wouldn't have worked here. I also hope it adds a kind of "I spy" effect to the quilt top.

 

The back is a print wiht lots of blue stars on a cream backround from the 'Amercian Banner Rose ' collection from Moda purchased at my local Tikki quilt store (and yes Corinne you were right with the choice of fabric for the back and also with the binding !)

  

I kept the quilting simple in straight lines along the seam lines which I must confess is one of my favourite straight line quilting "patterns" - simple yet so beautiful.

 

  

I used a lovely stripy number again for the binding to give the quilt a little bit of a kick. The stripes are from the Lecien basics collections and were also bought at  Tikki. I love the black and white contrast.

 

I really really love this quilt and hope my nephew will enjoy it for many years to come. 

I wish you all lots of food, lots of help with the washing up; hopefully some breathing space in between and as few quarrels as possible (let's face it x-mas never passes without them entirely) over the festive days.

See you all after Christmas !

Lotta fly away - spreading its wings

... only its gonna stay put because I keep it !

So here it is; all done and actually already in use on my bed. Just to recap briefly,  this quilt is made of the new line 'Echo' by Lotta Jansdotter in combination with Kona Snow and various other Kona solids (see details in this post here). 'Echo'  was bought at Seamstar here in the UK and the Kona solids are from Riverfabrics here in the UK and from existing stash I had.

The quilt measures 70 x 76 inches (1.78 x 1.92 m) and the front is made of 136 flying gees units ( 7 x 3.5 inches) from Kona snow and patterned fabric plus a border of units in coordinating solids that are 5 x 2.5 inches).
I used two different methods to make the flying geese units and both work well. I made the larger units with my flying geese ruler. With this method there is no need to cut off dog ears at the corners but it can waste fabric. However one can minimize this by doing some calculations before measuring the fabrics strips. For the border units I used the "No Waste method for making flying geese units" by patchpieces. This is an excellent method that wastes absolutely no fabric (as title says....), the unit dimensions are easy to calculate for any size you wish but you end up with dog ears.
The reason why I used two methods was just because I wanted to try them and see how they compare. I think I am slightly in favour of the no waste method as I hate having to many fabric offcuts.

The back is pieced using the same solids that were used for the border on the front plus 'Echo' leftovers and a generous amount of Kona Coal for background.

 

I quilted in zickzack lines below and above the stitch lines to emphasis the flying gees pattern. I used two different Guetermann Sulky colours. On the front my 1071 and on the back my favourite steel grey colour 1328.

  

As always I am particularly excited about my choice of binding .It is a stripy number in rich pink and orange from the Taza collection of Dena Design bought at my local quilt shop Tiki.

 

And for good measure a few roll-ups...

 

 

Lotta fly away - an update

I have had a very productive weekend and made great progress on my 'Lotta fly away' and the 'Countdown-to-x-mas' quilt. But first an update on Lotta and a big, big thank to all you lovely readers for your encouraging comments here on my blog and on Flickr. From the comments I gather there is a lot of love for the 'Echo' collection but also a lot of headache or hesitation when it comes to finding the right pattern.

It's true, it isn't an easy collection to choose a pattern for and I'm afraid I can't tell you why I chose the flying geese pattern other then when I saw the collection the first time, my first thought was Love and my second flying geese. The collection has a good mixture of bold and finer prints and I think this actually does make it suitable for a variety of patterns but I would say the collection benefits from patterns that showcase (at least i part) larger pieces of fabric. Another pattern that comes to mind for this collection are Diamonds, just rows and rows of Diamonds.

I pieced the entire top and am now turning my thoughts to the back. I added a border of flying geese to the top which is made of solids that reflects most of the colours used in the collection.
The fabric in this image is largely from my stock. From top to bottom, the fabrics are Kona Curry, Kona Navy, Freespirit Gold (though I am not a 100 % sure) , Kona Everglade and Kona Candy Pink.

The fabric in next image was purchased from Riverfabrics and shows Kona Black (not used in this quilt though), Kona Snow and Kona Coal. Apart from the Freespirit and Kona Curry all of the above are also available from Janette at Riverfabrics in case you are looking for coordinating solids for this collection.

Baby Blankets

A few weeks back I finally got a chance to do something with the yardage of Robert Kaufmann Flannels I bought back in Spring when I was holidaying in the US. I had these earmarked for Baby blankets but never really had the right cotton print to go with it (or thought I didn't). I bought flannels in solid colours and made a point of buying more neutrals and blues as I wanted to make baby blankets for boys and girls alike. I find it often more difficult to get colours for boys and it seams that the market is more geared towards baby girls.

Flannels or so soft and I think these blankets are great little gifts and so practical as they aren't bulky and are very light.

All of the blankets are about 34 x 34 inches apart from the chicken one that is a little bigger and I am listing them all in my Etsy Shop later today.

The first one here is called "Chicken" and is my favourite. It has a cream coloured flannel backing and a  chicken print on the front that I think is from Robert Kaufmann but I am not sure anymore. 

Aren't these chickens the best !

These really are very easy to make as you just take a yard of flannel and a yard of cotton, cut them exactly the same size, put right sights together and sew around leaving an opening to turn. Turn the blanket around and sew on the right sight around the edge one more time thereby also closing the opening, add a label if you want and you are done.

The second one is called "Alphabet" and has a soft green flannel backing with an alphabet print from the Punctuation collection from American Jane.

And the last one is  called "Rush hour" and has a deep blue flannel backing with an Alexander Henry print called "Rush hour".

Lotta fly away and other updates

I  wanted to thank everybody who so kindly helped with quilting suggestions of my  'Countdown to x-mas' quilt. I pondered each and every one for days on end until I had a revelation last Sunday while running (and I would not have had that without your help !). I finished the machine quilting part yesterday and moved on to some hand quilting which I really enjoy. Since I have my Janome Horzion I have done very little hand quilting but I guess this has more to do with the fact that before I had the Horizon I hand quilted each and every one of my very large quilts.  I think I was done with hand quilting for a while and I am rather delighted that I find pleasure in it again. But the big reveal of the finished quilt and the quilting pattern will have to wait a little while.

I hand quilt normally in front of the TV which means I need a project in parallel for the machine (as there is only so much TV watching one can do....). What better to do then to start a new quilt (what else really ..). I have been itching to cut into my stash of 'Echo' by Lotta Jansdotter.

Can you guess what it's gonna  be ?

Of now to another lap of Sunday morning running and then back to the sewing machine...bliss.

Sugar and Spice - a finished quilt -

Yesterday I finished my Sugar and Spice quilt and I couldn't wait to share the pictures with you but by the time I had the last threads tied and buried in the quilt it was to dark. Luckily I have another week holiday this week so I took some photos this morning.
Prepare yourselves for an flood of photos.

First the top and back. The front you have already seen when I was constructing it but to recap this is made of half square triangles from the Sugar and Spice fabric collection from the Quilted Fish. The white halfs of the triangles are made from Kona white.

The colours of the collection I particularly loved where the green, aqua and red. I wasn't that fond of the softer pink parts and kept these to a minimum in the quilt.

For the back I used Kona Ash for the first time and am rather pleased how it offsets the two pieced strips I incorprated in the back. I quilted in straight lines along the squares thereby emphasising the pattern. I love how this shows most visible on the back of the quilt.

I infact was so fond of the squeeky fresh green that I decided to make that a feature of the binding and luckily my local quilt shop Tiki had just what the doctor prescribed. Look at that wonderful stripy green. Doesn't it remind you granny apples ? (Mind, I am more a breaburn kind of apple girl than a granny one come to think of it....).

The binding offsets the front and back perfect in my opinion and works so well with the Kona Ash.
I also changed my binding technique a bit. If you are a regular reader you probably know that I mostly machine stitch my bindings rather than machine stitch the binding onto the front and than handstitch it onto the back. I do this for several reasons. It saves time, doesn't kill my wrist and I think it looks really good. Normally I sew the binding onto the front and then fold it over to the back and then stitch it onto the back ensuring that the stitch line on the front is close to the binding. Recently I saw on a blog (sorry can't remember who) that it was done the other way around. So I tried it and must say I rather like the look of it and I find it easier on the whole.

And one can't go without a couple of lovely rolls.....

 And here the stats for anybody who is interested:

Size: 61 x 61 inches (1.55 m x 1.55 m)
Batting: Hobbs Heirloom 100% cotton
Quilting thread: Gutermann Sulky 30 in offwhite colour no 1071
HST: cut 72, 6 inch squares of patterned fabric and the same number of contrasting solid fabric
Binding: Sis Boom basics by Jennifer Paganelli for Free Spirit bought at Tikki Ltd. in Kew (but I bought it all ...sorry)

Previous listings can be found here, here, here and here.

The quilt can be found in my ETSY store. Sold