Catching up: Outgoing!

At the back end of last year I had a sudden flurry of things I needed to make which made for a very busy December and am only now catching up with blogging about them!


First up were 'under bed den' curtains for my eldest niece.  She got a 'mid bed sleeper' bed (an odd name for a bed but that's what they're called!) in the summer and asked me if I could make her some curtains for it - I said I'd have them finished by Christmas at the latest but didn't get the measurements until the beginning of December so I had a frantic few days of fighting with slippery voile and metres of ribbon.  They turned out well, though:

I don't know why I had fifteen metres of voile in my loft but I have enough left to make another set of curtains, should her sister get a similar bed and want some!

Also needed was a book bag tag for my youngest niece, to help her identify her navy blue book bag in a pile of thirty-nine navy book bags.  She first asked for a pink dinosaur and then changed her mind and wanted 'Holly from Ben and Holly'.  Naturally, I spent quite a while with tiny pieces of fabric and made a Holly.  The first thing she said when she opened it was 'I thought it was going to be a dinosaur'  *bangs head on table and weeps*  No, I didn't make a dinosaur and yes, she's quite happy with Holly!  The book bag tag is just under three inches square and is made using scraps of fabric, fusible web, wadding and ribbon left from her sister's curtains:

 Yes, some of those pieces are tiny - I don't know how I managed it but I didn't lose any!

My eldest niece also asked for a Union Flag/Jack cushion - she'd seen a miniature version and asked for one of her own, in pink, purple and lime.  Each time we talked about it the cushion got bigger and in the end I made her a pillow-sized cushion which I thought would be perfect for sitting on under her bed.  I finished it a few days before Christmas and immediately washed, dried and wrapped it and didn't get another photo - this was taken when I still had one side of the binding left to stitch down:

I had been going to just quickly quilt the flag but then got sucked into doing at least three times as much as I'd planned - the texture is lovely, though!

A better photo of the quilting

As I'd done so much quilting on the front, I decided that the back needed an equal amount of quilting.  I didn't really have time for it but it needed to be done!

I happened to have the perfect shade of pink Aurifil 50 in my thread stash - I love it when that happens!

Of course, if I'm making a cushion for one niece, I have to make a cushion for the other so I got sketching and designed a 'Mammy and Baby' owl cushion.  I finished stitching the binding down on 23rd December at about 11pm and immediately put it in the wash and stayed up until the end of the (fortunately quick) cycle so that I could put the cushion cover in the airing cupboard overnight and then get it wrapped.  I didn't manage to take a photo of it with a pillow inside, nor did I get a photo of the back (vertical wavy lines with pink binding on the overlap) but here are the owls:

All made from scraps and leftovers - the blue Oakshott background was left from the back of the Stingy Siblings Together quilt.

The quilting took quite a while (all those ends to finish off!) but it was worth it.  Both cushions have a double layer of wadding on both the front and the back - a great way to used up odd strips of wadding that you're left with after a quilt has been trimmed!

The frantic sewing was well worth it as my eldest niece (7 years old) opened her cushion and hugged it to her.  She then danced round the room with it, exclaiming 'I love my cushion!  Who loves my cushion?!' - the memory of that still makes me smile!


There was one final Christmas make, which came as even more of a surprise than the cushions (at the end of November I wasn't making any Christmas presents and by the beginning of December I was making two big cushions and then on the 21st December, another present was added!) - I'd ordered (on behalf of my mam) a knitted shawl kit for my sister-in-law (just a very simple but beautiful triangular shawl - a proper 'beginner' knit) and when it arrived I was really disappointed in how it was presented.  (In my mind, a 'kit' means that it is presented nicely and you get a little bit more (in terms of wrapping) than you would if you were buying 'supplies to knit this item'.  This 'kit' consisted of three balls of yarn and an A4 instruction sheet (printed in colour and then folded into quarters) in a plastic ziplock bag - I later worked out that the mark up on this kit was around £7 as I could have bought the pattern from Ravelry and printed it out and bought the yarn separately.  Needless to say, I will not be shopping with this shop ever again - I didn't get a confirmation email about my order, I didn't get a dispatch email and when, a few days after ordering, I emailed to check that the order had gone through and quoting the lack of confirmation/posting email as possible evidence that something was amiss, the reply said that 'your item has been posted' emails were an eBay process and not something this shop did as they were a small shop...overall, it wasn't the best shopping experience I've had and is nothing like any other experience I've had from a small, independent seller.  Thank goodness it's in the minority!)  Anyway, to get back to the story, I offered to make a drawstring bag for the yarn, in return for Mam decorating my Christmas tree - it was 21st December and my tree still only had lights on as I was so busy sewing, a skills swap was the only way it was going to get decorated!!  I used the method of this tutorial but altered the dimensions to create a project bag (I have them somewhere in case I need them again, I'm just not sure where that somewhere is - hopefully it's with all my other 'I might need this again' sewing instructions/notes but I can't guarantee it at the moment!) and added heavyweight sew-in interfacing to the back of the outer fabric, which means the bag holds its shape, a very handy feature for a project bag.  I think I'm going to make more of these but will alter how the drawstring casing is created, to eliminate raw edges coming into contact with the drawstring.

Please excuse the awful photos - by the time I realised I hadn't taken a photo, Mam had already wrapped it so we had to cut through the sellotape, slide the bag out of the paper and  then slide it back in...no time to run an iron over it or wait for daylight!

After Christmas, I needed to make good a promise I'd made back in May 2014: to make a 'something' for Yvonne, to say thank you for my lovely cushion.  I had some fat eighths of this fabric (I think it's by 3 sisters for Moda) and decided to make (my first) Dresden plate - I wanted it to look like a flower so made a double plate, one pale pink for the 'petals' and one green for the 'leaves'.  I used the EZ Dresden ruler and cut the inner blades 0.75" shorter than the outer blades - I made both plates separately, appliquéd the green plate to the background and then the pink plate on top of that.  The yellow centre was then appliquéd in place and two layers of wadding were put behind it to add a trapunto effect to the centre of the 'flower' and then I added embroidery (stem stitch around the edge of the yellow centre and the pink plate and colonial knots around the edge of the green plate), hand quilting and then a narrow binding.  I then had a bit of a wobble as the lines I'd added with a Hera marker (to help me get the hand-quilted zigzag even) didn't wash out so, after a lot of thinking and a brilliant suggestion from a friend, I added some tiny French knots along those lines - I used two different colours (one for the lines coming from the points and another for the lines coming from the valleys) to give it a bit more depth and, as is quite often the way with these things, I much prefer with the added embroidery and I'm really glad the lines didn't wash out.  At least I am now, I wasn't at the time!  In-progress photos can be found here.  The drama didn't end there as I managed to post the parcel to Yvonne's old address and I spent a few days on tenterhooks, worrying that it was lost forever, but fortunately the lovely lady who now lives in the house took it round to Yvonne's new house - phew!

Dresden mini for Yvonne - about 14" square

Close-up of the embroidery

This is an item on my FAL Q1 list and I'll be linking up with Adrianne at the end of the quarter, which is rapidly approaching!

Archie started the week in an ideal manner:

How better to spend a Monday than wrapped up in three quilts?!

Yes, the rest of him is there somewhere; yes, he did this himself; no, it's not my bed - he has his own quilts (duvets really, but I don't like that word!) to keep him warm!  And yes, he's completely wrapped up again today - there's no point in taking a photo as you can't see hide nor hair of him!

Thanks for popping in!