Slow and Fast Stitching

It has been a good week on the sewing machine. Yesterday I finished this i-spy blanket for my ickle niece.

The back is the very soft minky fabric I got from fabrics.com with the stars embossed in it. It should be good for cuddling when she's poorly and hopefully she'll enjoy looking at all the different pictures and making up stories about them.

I also finished the top of my latest decorative mat - this one for the chest of drawers in the bedroom.

It needs sandwiching and quilting of course but at least this bit is finished. Those y-seams! I will not be rushing to do that again.

Then my ongoing sewing has been on the blue EPP quilt for my Mum.

I've drawn a line to show how far I have got with the hand quilting.

Clearly I've got a loooong way to go - but I can only do it every other day because it makes my finger tips hurt. Ah! How we suffer for our craft!

The Renegade Craft Fair

From their website...
"Renegade Craft Fair is the world’s pre-eminent series of events showcasing the best and brightest talents from the modern Maker community. It’s a weekend-long celebration of DIY culture; a thoughtfully curated marketplace where shoppers and micro-entrepreneurs make meaningful connections. RCF was the first event of its kind when it was founded in 2003, creating a platform for the underground DIY community to stake a place in the design market on their own terms. 12 years later in 2015, RCF is still the largest and most far-reaching indie-craft fair out there, attracting over 325,000 attendees across 22 events in 8 cities. We currently produce Fairs in Chicago, IL; New York, NY; San Francisco, CA; Los Angeles, CA; Austin, TX; Portland, OR; Seattle, WA; and London, UK"

Well this one was certainly quite a size. I thought this building. part of the SF Marina, held the whole thing.

But it turned out it was in both buildings...

...with just a little bit of coast in between. As you can see it was an amazing day, with Alcatraz looking rather pretty in the distance.

Inside it was busy but not too crowded so there was plenty of room to move about.

There were perhaps 60-80 stands in each building. There was a lot of jewellery - and a lot of that was laser cut or etched - definitely a recurring theme. I think it's fair to say laser cutting is now part of the mainstream. As for the rest....feast your eyes!

Delicious (but expensive) ceramics.

Vintage clobber.

Make your own necklace. I thought this was an interesting idea. The cord was free and you paid for the beads - $5, $10 or $20 each from front to back. But I baulked at the idea of paying £6.50 for a wooden bead half painted.

Planters or trinket dishes inspired my underwater elements. I was tempted by these but the price put me off a bit. These are from Relm Studios.

Gangster jewellery from Brooklyn NY via Snash Jewelry.

Embroidered Cards.

Nail decals from Cha Cha Covers. I really liked the look of these.

These guys were single-handedly trying to bring back the fanny-pack aka a bumbag in the UK.

Pop out wooden sharks, whales and birds from Julio Carreon-Reyes.

There were a lot of cards. I got some of these ones from A Jar of Pickles.

Speaking of what I got...here it is!

The spiral bound books are two of four I got from Ex Libris Anonymous who make notebooks out of old books. All four are going to be xmas presents. The cat brooch and the Makers Gonna Make postcards are from Migration Goods. The screen printed chicken is a tea towel and is from Rigel Stuhlmiller who is a local print maker. The 'count the calories' tea towel is from Nourishing Notes and was part of their food philosophy range. The Dual Tetrahedron is another laser cut and etched pop out thing that you assemble - due to be another xmas present - by Thomas Houha Designs. I also got some food.

The jerky and Candied Bacon Caramel Popcorn are for Pooch while the Brazilian Chocolates (much more like fondant than french-style truffles) are to be "shared".

A month or two back I saw this bag at the MAKE Fair.

Today it was this bag.

I kind of hope someone shows that picture to Morrisey one day.

San Francisco Sports

Although my job is to be 'Executive Assistant' to the CEO I also took on recruitment fairly early on and so now could legitimately call myself a part-time recruiter. My sister does this as a profession and was once bought a brand new Mulberry handbag by one of the recruitment companies she worked with. I hadn't expected to be quite so handsomely courted but I did find myself offered tickets to the baseball last week, and so along I went.

AT&T Park is just around the corner from where we lived when we first moved here and the crowds on match days (which are about 4 days every fortnight) are something every native San Franciscan learns to avoid while still slurping mother's milk. For this match the SF Giants were playing the NY Mets and there is something of a historical rivalry. It was still very friendly though and I found myself in a sunlit stadium just in time for the game.

The seats were very good and I watched, bemused, as all the pre-match preamble went on. There were bagpipes. There was the presentation of two of those ginormous cheques to charities. There was a big cheer for Firefighters. And then a man from a local church came out and sang the National Anthem. Now this was none of your British operatic warbling - it was more like a soulful baptist sort of thing - and the crowd all stood up and duly assumed the position.

Look at all those arms on chests. Amazing. I had always thought it was a Hollywood thing or possibly something WWE promoted to get people to buy Jack Swagger's t-shirt.

But no, they actually do stand there with their hand on their heart. Amazing. Anyway, after that they suddenly started to "play ball" and off we went.

It was at this point that I began to wish I had brought an American with me. Baseball, it seems, is a lot like teenagers and television. They like to be in front of it, but they're more likely to be looking at their phones or talking to a friend than watching what is going on. I had NO idea at all about what was happening. I thought the sides swapped when three people went out. But I couldn't spot people going out and it seemed like they were changing sides every couple of minutes on a collective whim. In fact it was a lot like the Mad Hatter's Tea Party where they all had to randomly move to a new place at the table when the butter knife got crumbs on.

I stuck it out for half an hour but then politely made my farewells. I was the richer in terms of experience and more importantly, from a handbag point of view, to the sum of one black hoodie with the company that invited me in small letters on the front and "San Francisco" written large on the back. Printed though, not machine embroidered. Machine embroidered freebies are my goal for the next rung up the recruitment ladder that has that Mulberry handbag waiting for me at the top.

My Own Machine Embroidery Machine!

My birthday vouchers plus some of my hard earned spondoolix means I now have a Brother SE400 which has all the bells and whistles of your average sewing machine but ALSO does a load of machine embroidery. The hoop I have is only about 4" square but that's enough for me for now.

A friend has just had a baby so I decided to make her some bibs but I knew your average baby material wasn't going to suffice. A beloved pair of jeans that has gone paper thin around the cheeks from much use had been put away so I could use the denim for some future project. This is the project that caused me to finally cut into them. I carefully read the manual and was finally ready to try some designs out on a scrap piece.

I am really glad I got the Madeira sample pack of stabilisers as the booklet that comes with it explains exactly which is best for each type of fabric and embroidery, including freehand and hand. I went with a cut-away black and repositionable spray glue for the denim. I had lots of fun fooling about and after a while had this.

If you want to see a video of it in action you will find one here.

Having had a good fiddle about I was ready to go on my bibs and not so much time later I had these two!

The "Hey baby!" uses one of the built in fonts and then the heart is another standard design and I just varied the size of each. On the back I used some standard quilting cotton.

The binding is some red and white hearts I used on my Lucy Boston blocks. I also added plastic poppers allowing it to be fastened in two positions. I saw with my niece's bibs that velcro only gets stuck to other stuff in the washing machine.

There are either 4 or 5 fonts and about 80 built in patterns. I used some of the fonts to make this label for my Hand Pieced Mini Quilt, which is finally finished bar washing.

The label fabric is one lovely Rachel from My Life in Knitwear sent me. I didn't spray the glue well enough to get it evenly stuck down on the stabilisor, hence the puckering. Still looks pretty good though! Here it is on the back of the quilt.

You can also see how I did the border of this one - effectively using more hexagons as a kind of 'binding'. I am pretty happy with how this turned out.

The quilting/embroidery uses sashiko thread and the concentric circles are a very japanese design. It has actually ended up about an inch under the minimum size but I hope no one will complain about that! And having finished that one I have signed up for the Simply Mini Swap on Instagram so another mini will be entering my life soon. My Partner has been quite vague about what she likes so the field is open and I like to use these minis to try new techniques. In this one it was the use of colour but I have a feeling I might use paper piecing (not EPP) for the next so I can get lots of straight lines and angles connecting sharply. We will see!

A Different Approach to Hexagons

I have always avoided Y seams (those angled seams you get such as when you join three hexagons together). At some point in the last month though I seem to have decided the time had come, and so I started cutting out fabric for a runner to go along the top of my chest of drawers.

I started with the trusty free online Hexagon Calculator to work out how many I'd need of which size. Then I drew one and made a cardboard template. My template showed both the outer edge AND the line I was going to sew along. I know you can buy things like this but making your own means it's available to you the instant you want it. Having cut out my hexagons and drawn the sewing lines on the wrong side, I was ready to go!

It was slow work but I've finished the assembly and am now ready to move on to making the sandwich and quilting it!

Last weekend I was once again cat sitting and Luna was on fine form.

Pooch had given me some Godiva chocolates for my birthday and Luna adored the ribbon from the box. Once she'd done with playing we both had a lie down on the sofa.

This was on my birthday, before Pooch and I went out for dinner, and it really was a perfect way to spend an afternoon. Having a zizz with a cat similarly sleeping on top of you on a lazy afternoon with some nonsense on the telly is really my idea of perfection. I *so* want a cat of my own!

Diamante Delight

I have a fairly good collection of diamante or costume jewellery dating back a century or so. I first started acquiring necklaces for £2 or £3 a time during my A-levels when an antique shop next to the bus stop I got off at when coming back from school started regularly displaying it in its window. Back then I bought pretty much anything they got that was old and sparkly. Now I'm a bit more discerning.

One of those side-effects of working is that they do pay you, so having a fair whack of disposable income for the first time in 18 months I've started occasionally looking at ebay to see what's out there. And I've made two purchases.

I prefer silver metal but this one caught my eye as, in colour, it resembles another one I wear quite frequently (I collect to wear, not to preserve) and it was a design I hadn't seen before. That upside down horseshoe shape and the triple baguettes where the chain attaches made me think of Art Deco and Fred Astair and Ginger Rogers in Top Hat. Ah, to be Ginger Rogers in that film. Her grace of movement, those dresses, the settings, the romance....ahhhhh. Anyway. The second were being sold as a set but are mismatched and the necklace is actually slightly broken with half the clasp being missing.

Often jewellery like this is sold as being for repair or repurposing because it can break quite easily. Catches and clasps are usually quite easy to repair with some wire or, as a last resort, glue. I haven't done that yet with this necklace but I did wear the brooch and bracelet when we went out for my birthday dinner last night. Actually they paled into insignificance when compared with my most blingy accessory.

Yesterday was my 37th birthday and, since it just so happens that it falls on one of America's biggest celebrations, Pooch and I ventured out for dinner and fireworks. Fog managed to dull the fireworks but not the flashing of my headwear!

Latest on my Lucy Boston

As last reported in May, I now have 40+ Patchwork of the Crosses blocks so I have started on the bits between them. There are various ways of arranging them but I have chosen this one:

(Image from this article.)

For every block I therefore need 24 white honeycombs and 16 red squares, and for my 4-squares marked '2' in the diagram, I am going to use a 2" square of white. So for 40 blocks, I need 960 white honeycombs and 640 red squares. And that's not counting any kind of border. Wow. Here is one I've added the extra white pieces to and am adding the red squares in.

It's astonishing that, just as I think the main job is done, it turns out I need even more pieces than the block took to join it to the next one. Amazing!

Two Little Dresses for Africa #LDFA

Jan at 'Sew and Sow Farm' is hosting a sewing drive to make these Little Dresses for Africa.

The pattern couldn't be simpler and you can even use an old pillowcase for the job. I would say it took me 2.5 hours start to finish to make these.

That includes using a couple of the fancy stitches on my machine for the bias along the bottom edge.

The purple fabric is one I brought back from Japan with me and the flowery one is something I got from Scrap. I hope they'll both do the job! Jan has got her Sponsors to offer some amazing prizes so if you have time to add to the total number of dresses, the deadline is 5th July.

My First SF Quilters Guild Meeting

When I first arrived in San Francisco I made it to two different knitting groups in one week, and then never returned to either. The people at both were very nice, it's just that I'm really not knitting much in this climate. It seems a bit too warm for it. At the same time I did discover that there was a SF Quilters Guild that met in Richmond (in the north west of the SF main area) once a month and I determined to go. Last week was the first meeting I'd been able to attend.

The Guild have monthly meetings with a general section and then a speaker and then also a day the following Saturday where they either do a community project or have a teacher come in. My luck was in when the speaker at this meeting was Susan Else, someone I had not heard of before but am now very happy to have come into contact with. I would definitely encourage you to go and look at the gallery on her website as her work is very impressive and she had brought some along to show us.

Aren't the pieces amazing? There were lots more and she also talked about how she makes them and her inspiration for each.

The people at the meeting were absolutely lovely and the President gave a very funny introduction and update at the beginning. I had had to sign in as a Guest when I arrived and during her intro she read out my name and asked me to stand up and everyone welcomed me - it was so sweet! Then later during the break (when there was tea and cake) people kept coming up to me to welcome me to the meeting and have a chat - I could tell this was something I wanted to come to regularly! So I am now a fully paid up member and will be going back next month and maybe even showing something in the Show'n'Tell!