Finished Item Round Up

I seem to have only been making things for other people for quite a while now. Not that I'm complaining, but perhaps I should do a little 'me' sewing. Despite that, here is the mini quilt I made for the Pusheen Swap that recently concluded on Instagram.

The explanation behind this quilt is a little complicated. The Pusheens are on the applique'd fabric and are the ones I printed and mentioned in my last post.

The lion's head of the symbol of the Alliance on World of Warcraft (a massive computer game), the unicorns are...unicorns and the most like colours of the recipient are purple and grey. I combined all of these references into one mini and accompanied it with this one-hour basket...

...because the recipient is also a big Labyrinth fan. So having included elements of Pusheen, WoW, unicorns, purple and Labyrinth I then forgot to tell her which swap it was for and she had to puzzle it out by herself. She seem to have liked them though! These are the basket handles.

A dotted cutting line with scissors and 'cut here' printed on the ribbon.

I have been very much enjoying participating in the SF Quilt Guild for the last few months and at the July meeting they were asking for volunteers to bind some finished Community quilts. I stepped up and was given a *very* brightly coloured one about the size of a single bed.

I duly delivered it back at this week's meeting and asked if they had any more. They didn't but they did need some more tops so I was handed a bundle of fabric and told to make a baby quilt. 6 hours later and ta da!

I was a little unsure about the black but they had included it in the bundle so off I went. I basically made it up as I went along but I knew as soon as I saw it that the sheep would have to be a focus.

Overall I am pretty happy with it and will hand it over at the next meeting.

Swaps and Bees

I mentioned the Pusheen Swap in my last post and here is part of my main swap item - a mini quilt. I designed and printed my own Pusheen fabric using my home printer. It's something I've done a few times and it works well as long as you don't want to wash the finished item. 

I printed two letter-sized sheets and then used them for applique. Here is part of the design...

It is quite an intricate design which I am applique-ing to a plain white background. 

For the Simply Mini swap (another one from Instagram) I had a big scrap dive using the hexagon fabric on the left as the main fabric. 

I'm trying some reverse applique portholes for this so I'll have to see how it goes. This palette is quite unusual for me as there is no red. Makes it a bit more of a challenge!

Something else unusual and slightly challenging was this pencil case. Isn't it adorable?

The fabric comes from Spoonflower with the design ready printed and instructions included. I got it completely free by combining a free-shipping day with some Spoondollars I had earned by selling my own design. 

Finally I said a few posts ago that I was going to join the 30's Farmers Wife Sew-A-Long, and had a crazy idea I might do it in Liberty fabric. Yeah. A bit of surfing showed me prices and brought me to my senses. Mind you, I did then splurge somewhat on Etsy, and add a few long term stashed fabrics, to assemble this lot. 

The inspiration behind my colour scheme is one of my Somerset-from-the-train photos a la this:

Lots of blues, greens and bit of brown. Lovely!

The Babe With The Power

There have been further experiments with my embroidery machine. I am trialling a handy piece of software called Sew What which looks a little old school in layout but allows you to put together your own designs to embroider. There are a few stitch options so I decided to try out a little applique, since I haven't used the machine for that yet. 

I ended up making this coaster for a friend out of some Cotton and Steel charm squares, an offcut of batting and some scraps of bias binding. On the software it was very simple - decide on one of the set alphabets in the software (there are about 30), get the size right and select "Satin Outline". I had to try a few experiments to get the outline thick enough and I still think it could have gone a lot thicker but it looks ok. 

The second thing I tried was a simple phrase. This is for part of my Pusheen Swap parcel and the recipient is a fan of all sorts of things I know nothing about. A bit of research told me she would like this. 

This one came out OK but it taught me that variegated thread doesn't really work on this kind of design. Having said that, I am still really happy with the way this basic design came out and the suggestions it offers for future development. 

There is one set of designs that I have been eyeing up - chalkboard type ones by Anita Goodman that I first saw on Instagram which you can see on this blog. I'm not sure where I can buy them from though so if anyone knows share that with me!

Goodbye England, Hello America

England from above is truly a patchwork, and specifically a crazy patchwork, of fields.

America, or at least the bit I flew over on my way back to San Francisco, is not so crazy.

You can imagine putting a quilt of that together with a jelly roll of pre-cut strips whereas the England one would definitely be a chance to use up scraps.

I have blogged several times about how much I love the view from aeroplanes. On this trip I saw a few startling and interesting things. It took me a while to realise these 'steaming' mountains weren't some sort of active volcanoes no one had mentioned to me.

Wildfires - I'd missed hearing about them on NP Radio but now I'm back I know that they are burning large parts of California at the moment.

One thing no one who has spent any time in California in the last year or two can have missed hearing about is the drought here. These pictures of a lake show how much it has shrunk by - see the whiteness of the exposed rock around the water.

Pretty shocking.

Of course as well as the shocking, there is the breathtaking.

Isn't that beautiful? I never tire of looking at the sky. Even at work I can look up and see it through the skylights and get lost for ages before remembering my to do list is a mile long.

It was heartbreaking to leave Sian, Jasmine and the rest of the family behind. On Saturday my Dad and Brother came to visit and we had a great time taking Jasmine to a playground before heading to a cafe. "Grumps" rendition of Meg and Mog brought the house down.

While Jas and I got to exchange some final words of wisdom.

Isn't she beautiful? And so clever. She talks in phrases and often in sentences now, although sometimes the latter are not so intelligible. You just have to listen and if you don't get it the second time say something like "Wow, really?" to which she responds with a highly affirmative "Yes".

The downside to getting to experience a different culture is leaving your family and friends behind.

Joining a Quilt-A-Long

I am going to join the 1930's Farmers Wife Quilt Along!

I am not committing lightly to something that will take about a year but I have been wanting to try this kind of project for a long time now and since I have all the blocks I need (for now) for my Lucy Boston Patchwork of the Crosses Quilt it seemed like a good time to start a new thing. This one is being run by Very Kerry Berry and there are details on her blog. 

The key thing now is what fabric to do it in. This is the full quilt. 

This image is from Quilting by the Bay who have a block of the month club for the quilt. I did consider something like that but then a crazy thought entered my head. Liberty. Liberty fabrics. But that's crazy. Right? Sheer crazy. I mean...who would even think that. Yep. Too crazy.