Thursday, 29 April 2010

A Win, A Surprise & A Sewing Project

Yesterday when I got home there was a little white envelope on my mat. I was pathetically excited to get it open as I knew what it was. Last week I won a giveaway on Carols blog, iStitch. It's the most wonderful little scissor fob & along with it in the jiffy bag is some pure silk hand-dyed threads from Dinky Dyes... what a wonderful surprise.


If you get chance please stop by at Carols iStitch blog, she is a wonderful designer & has created some beautiful samplers. I have some of them myself sitting in my "to do" folder & have promised myself I won't buy anymore until I've done at least one.... it is hard though as they are soooooo nice.

I have another photo to share with you, this is my latest sewing project. Nothing too big or exciting but I thought they were quite nice. Double sided fabric bookmarks. These were my first attempt at the bookmarks so hopefully they will improve.


My end game here is to gradually get enough little sewn items together to do a craft fair or indoor market type thing. This is why the cross stitch has taken a bit of back seat but it is still getting done. I am enjoying doing work with lots of different fabrics & shapes, I've also learnt alot about my sewing machine since January & I'm loving it.

Happy Stitching :-)

Monday, 19 April 2010

Fabric Scrap Challenge

Last week my friend Fran & I went on a trip to The World Of Sewing, it's about a 45min drive from here but with the traffic we encountered it was more like 1hr 45min. We were on the hunt for sewing machine accessories, trimmings, fabrics & a general browse to see what other goodies we could find. After that we headed over to C&H Fabrics for the exact same thing.

We came back with lots of bits & bobs for our sewing & in our new stash we had both picked up the same scrap bag of fabric bits. Three different colours of fabric. Fran happen to suggest that we have a challenge between us to see what we can both make with our scraps. After looking at the size of our scraps we decided it was acceptable in the challenge to add other fabrics to it.

Well here is my finish challenge piece... or pieces :-)



The fabric that I used in the middle & the ends was one that I added. The other three were from the scrap bag I bought with Fran. I decided to make two bags because I bought two zips, I really liked the idea of a red zip but wasn't sure if the colour was right so I bought a cream one too & both were perfect. I guess that means I have one bag for myself & one to sell.

Happy Stitching :-)

Finally... I'm back!

Is it just me or did the Easter Holidays seem to take forever to go by?? The twins nursery isn't open during school holidays so my one day a week for stitching has been lost. Not only that but none of the playgroups are open during holidays either.... it's been busy...busy...busy with twins around here.

Now to get back to some serious stuff... the stitching!

Only one picture to share with you at the moment & thats my TUSAL picture. I finally managed to take it on the right day but haven't got around to posting it until now. The light threads near the top are all from my Sampler Quilt & the dark purple on top is also from the quilt. Above that is from the Christmas Design SAL.


Back to my stitching for a while now. I'm busy making up a little zip up bag & it's time for the zips... this could go one of two ways so wish me luck.

Happy Stitching :-)

Monday, 29 March 2010

Patience!

Patience is something that I don't really have much of & considering how little I have I am surprised that I get any stitching completed at all. As you know every Monday evening I've been off to an evening quilt class where I've working on Roberts sampler quilt. Every day I go i've been admiring a quilt they had hanging up advertising a Saturday workshop. Well at the last minute I booked myself up for the days course & took myself off last Saturday to spend the day sewing.
Our tutor for the day was the much published & author of her own book Quilting-on-the-go, Carolyn Forster. The quilt for the day is called Patience Corner Quilt.

There were six of us taking the class, a real mix of experienced quilters to the complete beginner. Carolyn was excellent & took the time to explain even the most basic parts of getting started. I was impressed with how the quilt top came together so quickly. The 9 patch start seems to give so many alternative patterns, I can't wait to get going on some more variations. As you can see from the pictures I chose a mixture of pinks & lilacs as this one is to be a quilt for Hannah.
The first quilt here top left is Carolyns quilt, the one that I admired every week for 9 weeks :-) Carolyn asked us to lay out what we'd completed during the day so that we could all see what everyone else has done, she is here at the head of the table. Some lovely coloured quilt tops, it's always really nice to see how everyones quilts turn out, especially as we've all done the same pattern but they took totally different.

Here are my completed blocks.

A very successful day, it was over far too quickly. A huge thank you to Carolyn Forster. So many little details that she mentioned throughout the day really made me think about the projects I'm doing & intend to do, so much so that some of them I have already changed thread colours & fabric placement etc.

This evening I have the last of my evening classes over at Thread Bear & will hopefully have a picture to show you later this week of Roberts Sampler Quilt. I know that I will stand & admire the next quilt Carolyn is to teach on a one day class, it's called Star & Lattice. They've hung it in exactly the same place that the Patience quilt was. I shall just avoid looking.

I may even get to post some cross stitch updates later this week. I have totally lost my Monday stitching day for 3 weeks now as the twins nursery is closed for 2 weeks over Easter & then another Monday for staff training... oh how I wish they'd do the training on a Friday!!!

Thats it for now... I'm off to play with new obsession of Selvage Edge Quilts. Thank you again Mrs Forster!!

Happy Stitching :-)

Thursday, 11 March 2010

Woohooo..... A Finish :-)

Here it is... my first finish of 2010 & it just happen to also be my January 1st Challenge piece for the stitching group I follow.
Sweet Dreams by
Cinnamon Cat
January 1st Challenge Piece
Completed March 10th

Happy Stitching :-)