Bloggers' Quilt Festival

Hello, and welcome to those of you visiting from the Bloggers' Quilt Festival! Pull up a chair - I'll cut you a slice of cake and put the kettle on.

I've decided to enter my Emerald City quilt into the Two-colour Quilts category. I realise that some of my followers may have seen this before, but I am really proud of it so you will have to suck it up ;-)

Emerald City was made for the Pantone Colour of the Year challenge. I had bought a stack of Kona greens a while ago and I loved the way they were organised by value, so wanted to recreate that in a quilt. I cut a whole load of strips without using a ruler and pieced them together in colour groups to make the ombre panel, then surrounded it with a low volume background sewn from all sorts of fabrics including linen, quilting cotton and muslin.

I originally planned to hand quilt with lots of different shades of green perle cotton, but there were so many seams in the green section that I decided on machine quilting in the end. I did use six different shades of green thread though, so part of the original idea was there.

It finished up at about 40 by 50 inches, perfect for hanging on the wall. Which is my eventual plan if and when I ever get around to adding a hanging sleeve. In the meantime it is sitting on the quilt rack, making me smile.

Don't forget to check out the other entries in the festival. I have a feeling that my weekend is going to be spent doing exactly that!

Putting the machine through its paces

I finally (ok, I'm exaggerating a little, but I really had been wanting to make this bag for a while now) got round to making an Aeroplane Bag yesterday. It was one of those perfect situations where the fabric arrived on a day when I actually had some time to sew, and I also happened to have all the other required bits and bobs on hand. Including the British equivalent of Annie's soft and stable, which according to various sources is functionally the same as 3 mm scrim foam used for car upholstery, and easily available for not much money on Ebay. Win.

The fabrics are a selection of Field Study linens in the Charisma palette, with these gorgeous feathers for the lining. I added an outside slip pocket between the straps on one side, and I am inordinately proud of my mad pattern matching skillz:

The other small change I made to the pattern was to replace one of the inner zipped pockets with a patch pocket. Mainly because I am lazy, but partly because I don't really need that many inner pockets in a bag this size. I'm thinking it's going to get most use as a weekend bag, in which case I will also have my handbag with me to carry around the massive amount of crap I seem to accumulate.

I was really impressed with the speed that the bag came together. As you can see, I opened the fabric parcel at 11.31 a.m. and had a finished bag at 5.21 p.m., having fitted in two school runs. I can neither confirm nor deny that I took an iphone photo while driving. Ahem.

These photos were taken with my new favourite app, Days, which allows you to document your day in photos and then publishes them all as a mosaic at the end of the 24 hour period. I don't think I'll do it every day but it's pretty cute for things like this.

So, bottom line, this is a well-written pattern that makes a really nice and functional bag without too much faffing about. I love that the depth is created by boxing the corners instead of sewing in separate side panels. There was a little swearing when it came to the zip, but that was overcome by unpicking some of the machine stitching and finishing it by hand.

Oh, and the Juki? It was a star! I love that machine!

Linking up for this month's Le Challenge: Wings (because of the butterflies, of course)

ahhh, (semi) instant gratification

I have a feeling that doll's clothes are going to be my new scratch-that-making-itch sewing project. Lucy is going to a birthday party tomorrow for a fellow American Girl doll addict, so I thought it would be nice to make a dress using the pattern that I bought at Market last October. I even broke into the DS stash for some Shelburne Falls.

(Speaking of the DS stash, I refolded it all the other day and discovered that I have even more than I thought. Don't know how that happened.)

I am *almost* ashamed

It's so much fun making clothes without having to worry about the fit, the possibility of itchy seams or having to sew a zip. As far as I am concerned, all dresses should do up at the back with velcro (other hook-and-loop fastenings are available). Never mind the whole hospital gown vibe - easy on and off is the way to go.

Of course, as soon as she saw it Lucy asked me to make one for her doll. I can't say I blame her - Scarlet does look marvellous, don't you think?

So this was my Saturday...

Not-at-all-wordless Wednesday - the one with the new machine

I'm in love. With a machine. And it is so quiet and smooth (totally vibration free, in fact) that my husband can't raise an eyebrow (for once, Kelly, your dirty mind is totally justified). I've been putting up with my old Janome for a while now. It was bought fairly recently but was a poorly considered purchase made before I started quilting in earnest. The tension was a bit crappy, there was no automatic thread cutter, it had a tiny throat space, and it was annoyingly "blessed" with a gazillion unnecessary stitches.

Enter the spectacular Juki TL-98P - a straight stitch only semi-professional machine that does not mess about. It has adjustable foot pressure and can sew through massive wodges of fabric, so is perfect for bag making. I can't wait to make the aeroplane bag.

Anyhoo, I found some time today to work on a new quilt that's been brewing for a while. I've been putting it off because it's all HSTs, and I couldn't quite get off my arse to start. Silly really, because I used Thangles, which make the whole process so much faster. I made 220 HSTs in about three hours - there is no way I could have done that using the traditional method.

It was quite meditative - sew, cut, trim, press, rip - and I love the result. I'm planning on adding a background of low-volume prints to fill in the edges and make the whole thing quite a lot bigger without having to make more HSTs.

These babies finish at 3 and 1.5 inches, and are made in seven kona shades (papaya, orange, kumquat, tangerine, flame, tomato and red). I was going to make some even smaller ones (to finish at 0.75 inches) but I drew the line. There's a limit, even with Thangles, and I think I may have reached it.

No surface is safe

I don't have a terribly extensive yarn stash, but every now and again something jumps out at me and makes me buy it. I'm sure you know what I mean. I've had a beautiful skein of beaded silk yarn knocking around for a very long time - I bought it on a whim in New York about seven years ago, with no immediate plans of what I could use it for. Clearly. So I took it along to my knitting class a couple of weeks ago and asked Monica what she thought I could do with it. As chance would have it, she had just submitted a project to a magazine that also used a beaded yarn. A brilliant project. A project that made me both giggle and want to make it at the same time.

this is all that remains. I'm thinking an egg cozy?

I present to you: the knitted lampshade, without which no house is complete.

It's knitted in a lace pattern so the light shines through beautifully, and the beads give it just the right amount of sparkle. And it makes me happy every time I look at it.

I'll be crocheting a toilet seat cover next - watch out!

What do you do when the world goes a little mad?

I don't know about you, but when bad things happen I just want to wrap people up in love and good wishes and hugs. The Boston Marathon bombing is a case in point. Not only was the attack itself a terrifying event, but the lockdown of the whole area during the manhunt must have been beyond awful.

The "To Boston With Love" campaign has been organised by the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild with the aim of creating a public exhibition of beautiful handmade flags with messages of love and peace. All the details are available here on the VMQG blog.

I will be sending a few, and I'm going to rope the LMQG into it as well. Bunting of love. That's the best kind.