On the go at the mo!

I haven't finished anything much recently as I seem to be working on some bigger projects at the moment so I thought I'd show you some glimpses of those so you can see what I've got on the go!

Firstly I'm still working on my quilt. I'm hand quilting this so its pretty time consuming but when I actually get down to doing it I am really enjoying it. I am bit worried about getting to the binding stage though!


I also always like to have some cross stitch or a tapestry on the go for those evenings when I want to do some craft but my brain doesn't feel up to concentrating too hard! At the moment I am working on "Think Happy Thoughts" by Emily Peacock. I've pretty much done it all apart from the border - I've left it because it is supposed to be brown but I'm thinking of doing it another colour and I can't decide! I'm thinking maybe grey...


I also always seem to have a crochet project on the go! I've been planning to make this doily rug for ages but only started this week - its taken me a while to get round to ordering the chunky yarn! I got the pattern from here but it is also available on ravelry. It is done using three strands of yarn at once and a big hook (the pattern recommends 15.75mm but I am using 17mm) so it comes together really quickly - very satisfying! I suspect this will be the next project I finish:


Just before Christmas I learned to knit so I also have a knitting project on the go. I am working my way through the Knitty Gritty book and this is the first project in there. It is a very simple scarf and probably doesn't look very impressive to all of you knitters out there but I am actually extremely proud of it - I never thought I was going to crack knitting so this is quite exciting for me! I'm looking forward to finishing this and moving on to some more complicated projects!


Hopefully I'll actually have something finished to blog about soon! What bigger projects are you working on at the moment?

Another go at quilting

I was getting a bit fed up with sitting round the house after my accident on holiday and I didn't have any plans for the weekend so when I saw that my local craft studio was running a beginners quilting weekend course I jumped at the chance. I've made a quilt once before and although it turned out OK I made lots of little mistakes along the way and I thought it would be useful to learn properly. Plus I am slightly addicted to buying fabric and I need to start using it!

After discussing possible ideas I decided to make a simple quilt with square patchwork to make the most of all the fabric I had. I took a few pictures along the way but, as always when I get involved in something, not as many as planned. (Apologies for the photo quality - some are on my phone and it was a miserable day on Saturday).

I cut 96 six inch squares using a rotary cutter and ruler and roughly arranged them to sew together. I seem to have been drawn to pink fabric (again!) so this is going to be quite a pink quilt but I tried to balance it out a bit with some turquoise and blue patches.

After much pinning and sewing and unpicking and resewing and swearing at the sewing machine I came up with this for my quilt top:

I didn't take any pictures of the next stage which involves making the quilt sandwich with wadding and backing and then loosely tacking all the layers together. Once that was all done it was finally time to do some quilting! YAY! Unfortunately making the quilt top had taken longer than expected and by this stage it was 3pm on Sunday and I was flagging! I just had time to start quilting but would have to take it home to finish off!

My initial plan was to free motion quilt in a swirly pattern. The teacher got me started on this and I had a go. I don't know if it was because I was very tired or it just isn't my thing but I found the free motion quilting SOOOO stressful! I just couldn't get the balance between the stitch speed and the speed to move the quilt around at so I ended up with wildly differing stitch lengths! After much huffing and puffing I'm ashamed to say I decided to admit defeat and give up. I really want to learn how to quilt beautiful swirly patterns but I don't think this is the project to do it on - I think I will have to start with something smaller and less challenging initially.

By that time it was nearing the end of the class so I just had a go at quilting a couple of straight lines on my quilt and brought it home to finish off.

Unfortunately that means I now have another thing to add to my WIP list! Since I got home I've been thinking about this more and I think I might unpick the straight machine quilting I did and hand quilt this one. I really like the effect of hand quilting and it is an opportunity to try something I've not done before. Plus I like the idea of sitting with this on my lap and feeling cosy whilst I quilt on a cold Autumn evening. It also means I won't have to fork out for a walking foot for my machine! It would take a long time though.....I'll keep you updated!

Dotty xx

Finished Quilt (& all the things I learned making it)

In my previous post I mentioned I was making my FIRST EVER quilt from Amy Karol's book "Bend the Rules Sewing". I have finally finished it - hurrah.




Before I read about the lap quilt in the book (and a few articles in Sew Hip) I never thought making a quilt would be something I could do - they seemed to big and time consuming and intimidating. Surely only proper grown ups with fancy industrial machines made quilts? It took a few weeks to convince myself that this was something that I could actually make but once I took the plunge I really enjoyed it. There were a few dodgy moments along the way but I am really pleased with how it turned out.


My quilt is not perfect (don't look to closely at the straightness of the lines!) and I have no idea what I am going to use it for (a bit pink and small for my bed) but I am sooo proud of it! Every time I look at it I can't believe that I made it. I learnt absolutely loads making this and next time it will be even better.

Since I mentioned I was making a quilt a few people have said that they had been thinking about doing the same so I thought I would give you a list of things that I learnt and found useful along the way. This is a bit of a jumbled list and is in no way complete or "correct" but hopefully someone out there will find it useful. Some of the points are a bit simple and may be obvious (this is definitely a beginners list!) but I put them down because they are things I want to remember next time I make a quilt. Hopefully this will be helpful to someone:


1. Making a quilt (even a simple one) takes quite a long time. When you are used to making little softies and pin cushions that can be done in less than a day this is a bit of a shock! The sense of achievement you get when you complete something keeps me motivated so I split the project into stages - choosing material, cutting material, sewing quilt top, cutting the batting and quilt back and pinning together with the top, quilting, making binding strip and finally sewing the binding onto the quilt. Splitting it down like this made it feel a lot more manageable.

2. Of all the stages cutting the pieces for the quilt top seems to be the most important. If the edges of your pieces are wonky then your quilt won't be square. I marked pieces up with a 30 cm ruler and cut my pieces by hand. I will never do this again! It took forever and was really difficult to get a decent straight line. If I make another quilt I will be investing in a rotary cutter and a decent straight edge.

3. Everything in quilting is referred to in yards and inches. This is very confusing when you have spent your whole life thinking in metric! I wasn't completely sure what a yard was until I asked my mum a couple of weeks ago. It still doesn't come naturally to me. Each time I want to work it out I have to think in stages - a yard is three foot, a foot is 12 inches, that's about 30 cm which means a yard is around 90cm, so just under a metre! I'm getting used to it slowly!

4. Don't start too big. The quilt I made is just over a metre square - much smaller than most quilts. When I was planning my quilt I was quite tempted to go bigger to make one that would fit on my bed, for example. I am SO glad I didn't. Even a metre square feels quite large and unwieldy when you are used to dealing with smaller pieces of fabric. Do your sewing on as large a table as possible - this makes it easier to move the quilt around.

5. Those fabric markers with ink that disappears after a couple of days or after washing are really useful - well worth the investment and much easier to use than chalk.


6. Once you have cut and arranged your pieces in the order you want take a break and come back and look at it again with fresh eyes - you might see a better way of arranging the pieces once your stepped back for a bit. When you are definitely happy with the arrangement take a photo so that you can refer back to it when sewing it all together. This was suggested in the book and is a really useful piece of advice. Remember to refer back to the photo - I didn't at one point thinking that I was confident I could remember the order and had to spend a boring half an hour unpicking one of my pieces!

7. When you've finished the quilt top iron it but be gentle otherwise you may stretch the fabric. On the other hand, if everything is a bit wonky a little bit of stretching can help things look more even! The book I used didn't specify how the seams should be pressed but a 10 minutes spent in Borders having a flick through some of the quilting books revealed that the general consensus was to press the seams to the side rather than open.

8. Once you have got the batting sandwiched between the quilt top and bottom correctly then hold it all in place by putting safety pins all over it, starting from the middle and working out. This works much better than holding it together with pins and is much quicker than basting / tacking the layers together. I believe you can buy special quilting pins to do this but I found regular safety pins worked just fine.

9. Treat your machine to a new needle before you start quilting - this makes such a difference when you are sewing through three layers of fabric. Also, check how much thread is on your bobbin regularly - it is so frustrating when you are halfway through a quilting line and your thread runs out!

10. Take regular breaks - I found if I didn't do this I got a bit impatient and ended up rushing the quilting which left me with a few wonky lines! It seems I need some practice sewing in straight lines!

11. Making your own binding is much easier than it sounds and actually really fun. Now I know how to do it I am going to use it in lots of other projects. I used one of these tools but I think it is fairly easy to do without the tool.

12. If you aren't that confident about something, in my case the binding, then it is definitely worth searching the internet. I found a flickr group for the BTRS book which had some useful discussion topics about the quilt. I also used this tutorial to check my understanding of the binding was correct. I also found this tutorial (thanks to Polka Dot Daze for the link) which uses a slightly different method but looks really useful and shows how to make binding without the tool.

13. Try not to be a perfectionist! This is my biggest problem. I could have spent ages unpicking and redoing bits of my quilt but I would never have finished. This time I was very disciplined and tried not to give into my perfectionist tendencies. I probably should have redone a few of my quilting lines but since I knew this was a learning exercise for me I decided to leave them in as reminders for next time. It is the overall effect of the quilt that matters and any little flaws just make it look a little more handmade (that's what I keep telling myself anyway!).

14. The final step is to wash and dry your quilt to give it that used, crinkly look. I can't give you any tips on that since I haven't done that yet. I keep putting it off as I am scared of it all going wrong and ruining all my hard work! When I do wash it I will let you know how it goes.

Finally, here is a list of useful quilty links I found:

Jaypeg gives some useful tips on designing your own quilt in her blog over a series of posts in January (scroll down). I will definitely be using these when I design my own quilt.

The two binding tutorials mentioned above are here and here.

And loads of free quilt patterns here, here, here, here and here. Some of these are quite tricky looking! Personally I am planning to do this one next - I love the zig zag effect.

I hope that was useful. If you made it this far down this marathon post and have any thoughts / questions / compliments / comments / abuse then please let me know!

Dotty xx

PS. Just to let you know, I am off on holiday tomorrow (woohoo!!) so there won't be any blogging around here for 10 days or so. I'm a bit worried I will miss being crafty so I have supplies with me: Issues 1&2 of Sew Hip which I have finally managed to get hold of (only issue 3 to get now!), a subversive cross stitch kit and a sketch book. Hopefully I'll return rested and full of crafty inspiration. Missing you already...

Fabric Stash!

At the request of the lovely Sandra at Pepperberry&Co here is a quick glimpse of the fabrics I bought on Wednesday whilst that pesky Clive the carrot was hijacking my blog!



This is also a sneak peak at the quilt I am making (I didn't take any before pictures as I was itching to get started!). This is my first ever quilt. I'll post some more pics of it when I'm finished - I've only done the top at the moment. Its based on a pattern in a fab book called "Bend the Rules Sewing" by Amy Karol (check out her fab blog Angry Chicken). The quilt is a bit too pink (I wanted to use turquoise but I couldn't find enough matching turquoise fabrics!) and I have no idea what I am going to do with it but I am already insanely proud of it - I never thought I'd be able to do something like this. Bit worried about the actual quilting and binding but we'll see what happens.

I've got this lovely Cath Kidston fabric to put on the back. I don't normally buy Cath Kidston as it is a bit expensive but I couldn't resist this!

And as if that wasn't enough look what arrived in the post this morning - yay!

I LOVE these fabrics and I have lots of plans for them. Unfortunately they were a bit soggy when they arrived - thanks Royal Mail!! They made it all the way from the US unharmed and then they got wet being delivered this morning!

There won't be much blogging going on round here this weekend as I'm going to a weekend mosaic workshop. I am very excited - I have always wanted to learn how to make a mosaic. We are supposed to bring a few ideas with us and I already have a notebook full! Hopefully I'll have lots of pics to show you and a lovely mosaic at the end!

Right - I'm off to paint the bathroom - woohoo! The fun never stops...

Dotty xx

PS. Sorry about the rubbish pics - stupid English weather is not giving me much good light at the mo!