i am back

oh its been a while but now that summer is nearly over and the kids are back at school i hope to get more time for blogging and crafting. my aim will be to post an item at least once a week (i think i have said this before) but i do hope to keep to this promise, its also good for myself to keep a record of what i do or i just forget. Thank you to pamela kirk of kirkskorner, http://kirkskornerathome.blogspot.com for being my one and only follower and showing me that i am not just talking to myself. Also for her baby bib pattern, its just what i was looking for as a baby gift, i couldnt find a pattern i liked but i really like the long flap on this one, i plan to make it tomorrow so i will post some pictures in the next few days.
over the last few months i have been on a sewing frenzy making a baby quilt, a quilt for my sisters christmas which i will have to take pictures of as i made it from a jelly roll and a charm pack and i cant believe how quick it was to put together, i also discovered that if you use fleece fabric as your backing fabric it hides a lot of mistakes. i even impressed myself to how proffessional this one looked. i also made a quilt from heather bailey fabric from a pattern in sew hip magazine, it is very bright, and i also made slippers but they turned out to be too small for my big feet. oh well just something else i can give as a gift. my husband says i would have been cheaper buying a pair of slippers but wheres the fun in that! i also dont even like slippers i am always in my bare feet, even outside, it was a cute pattern though. i have also been making reading pillows from a sew liberated pattern, again i love the pattern but i am not sure if people will use it, they are getting them as christmas presents anyway, maybe even everyone i know as i just love this pattern. i have also made a few hopscotch mats and i have also been making the kids floor cushion from living with punks blog http://3punkmom.blogspot.com , they look really good made up although it took me ages trying to find a circle large enough. well thats enough for now, will be back soon with some pictures and hopefully some crafts to do.

English paper piecing

English paper piecing, how addictive.

I have been cutting and sewing hexagons non stop, it is so easy and so pretty, i have been using up all my scraps to make them in different sizes. I had so many i thought i better do something with them so i made these place mats with some large ones and coasters with some really quite tiny ones. The place mats are 15inches by 10 inches as i used a moda layer cake square and half a square sewn together. At least with precuts you know it is going to be pretty straight. The coasters are 5inch square, a layer cake square cut into 4, how handy instant coasters, well nearly.

i have also been making the patchwork pieced hexagon bag from cath kidston's sew book, the hexagons where larger and i needed 60 of them, this was a bit less enjoyable trying to sew them all together but its done, yeah. I don't think i will be making a full quilt but i will happily be decorating everything with the funny pieced flower.

Happy Easter?

Its the beginning of the Easter holidays but what is this to wake up to. A few days after British summer time began we have SNOW. no rolling eggs this year, no daffodils in bloom, no lambs, no bunnies, and definitely no sunshine. A cold Easter is not what i wanted, the garden is in desperate need of some TLC , the grass really needs cut and i am way behind in sowing seeds.

It is just too cold but the plus point is all the extra time indoors to craft.

Hopscotch

Hi, today i made this excellent hopscotch for my kids. I used a basic tutorial which can be found at http://sewhappytocraft.blogspot.com/2010/03/hopscotch-tutorial.html

i had been looking for a pattern for a few weeks and came across many but this was this quickest and easiest way to do it. I don't know how i didn't think of it myself.

The kids love it.

The only thing i did differently from the tutorial was that i treated it like i was making a quilt and added wadding, backing and binding and just stitched in the stitched lines. I used the machine to quilt as it was narrow but i still found it hard to get everything under and rolled out the way for stitching. hand quilting may take longer but it is so much easier. if anyone has any tips on machine quilting i would love to know, i just don't know how to do it without getting in a mess.I have bought many a book and looked at a lot of web pages on quilting but there is not a lot of instructions on the actual process of doing the "quilting", no info on where to start or what patterns to use or how to do them. You always get lots of detail on piecing the patchwork top together but then all it says after that is layer batting and backing and then quilt.

is it so big a secret that you can only be born with the knowledge?

buttercup bag

I made this cute bag from a pattern i found at made by Rae,

http://madebyrae.blogspot.com/2009/02/free-buttercup-bag-sewing-pattern.html

it was really enjoyable to make and the pattern pieces fitted exactly which is actually a very rare find, this needed no adjustment at all. I made it from a fat quarter of Amy butler fabric and used a contrasting print for the lining. It is a bit smaller than i thought but ideal for when you do not need to carry a lot.

penguin cross stitch

As i have said before my daughter loves penguins. Here is a new penguin cross stitch taken from the Bang on the door animal range of images, i thought it was so cute i just had to convert it for stitching. I am also loving the new windows 7 snipping tool it makes uploading images so much easier and quicker as before it took ages to convert the cross stitch file to a file that can be uploaded to blogger but now i just have choose the snipping tool and drag a box around the image. How great is that?

valentine

here is a picture of what the back looks like.