Stitching against the clock!

Firstly, thanks for your comments on my last post - its given me a lot to think about before I start attaching my granny squares together. I've had to put that to one side this week as I have been working on a present for my grandmother's birthday. It was her birthday on Thursday and I am seeing her tomorrow (Sunday). I've known I wanted to make her a present for ages and I've known I am seeing her on Sunday for ages. So when did I start thinking about what to make? Monday of course! There's nothing like forward planning!

Since Monday I've been frantically stitching in any spare moment to try and get the present ready in time. Its been tricky as I've had a pretty busy week. And I still haven't finished! In fact I should really be stitching now but I need a break! I decided to make a cross stitch picture using some butterfly designs I found in Crossstitcher magazine.

Here's the results so far of my frantic stitchery! And the process my brain goes through when I start making something.

Day 1: Monday

"Right, this is going to be great. I think I'll do a sampler with 9 butterflies"


"Aaaah, I'm enjoying this. The butterflies do seem to be taking longer than I expected though"

Day 2 - Tuesday


"Hmmm....these actually take quite a long time. Its probably not great to stay up til 2 am sewing every night"

Day 3 - Wednesday

"I'm so tired. I shouldn't have stayed up so late stitching last night! I'll just fit in one more butterfly before I go out tonight"


Day 4: Thursday

"I'm not sure I really like this. Maybe I should put in the black back stitch to see if that makes a difference and check they really look like butterflies"


"Yep, starting to look more like butterflies now. The back stitch part takes ages though. Maybe I haven't left enough time....."

Day 5: Friday

"Aaaaarrgggghhh. It's Friday. I'm never gonna get this finished!"


And that's as far as I got by the end of yesterday!! I'm still stitching away and hopefully I'll have it finished by tomorrow! I think I like it but I'm never sure til I've finished something. And its going to have to be 6 butterflies rather than 9 which is disappointing. Aarrgggh - why didn't I start planning earlier?!! I never learn....

Right back to work! I'm trying to bake a birthday cake and wrap up my aunt's pressie at the same time! Hope you are having a lovely (and not too frantic) weekend xx

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

Hours of Stitching

I never thought tapestry would be my thing until I spied some beautiful designs by Emily Peacock. They are much more modern and funky than most of the tapestries out there. After some very heavy hinting I was given a set of two kits for my birthday to make a HUG and a KISS design (Picture is from Emily’s etsy site.):


So, since the summer I have been spending my spare hours quietly stitching away in front of the TV. And it has been a lot of hours! And finally something to show for it:

Although I made a few little errors along the way I am really pleased with the results. As the days (months!) passed my technique improved and I’m hoping KISS will turn out a bit neater! I also found it a very relaxing craft and once I got in "the zone" I could stitch away for ages - very therapeutic!

One down and one to go! Next to start work can’t wait to get the KISS tapestry finished too….

I haven’t decided what to do with the tapestries once they are both finished. Emily shows them made into cushions on her website but I think they might get damaged too quickly in my flat (I have a propensity for throwing red wine around the place!). I am thinking of getting them framed and putting them above the doors as they are just the right size for that. Anyway, if it takes me as long to complete KISS as it did to do HUG I have a few more months to worry about it yet….!

Dotty xx