Laptop Bag

My sister-in-law asked for a colourful laptop bag for her birthday. I obliged and when Elf husband saw the result he commented that the bag indeed was so colorful and bright that it almost hurt his eyes! This gift did not go without mishap...I slightly underestimated the need of seam allowances, so it was too small for the laptop it was intended for. Oh the shame...

This was to be a bag where she just slipped her laptop into, when not in use, rather than for transporting it.

The pocket is for the charger.

Sorry about vomiting pictures...not awfully lot to say about this project otherwise.

Yet another baby quilt

I was fortunate to become an auntie again and thought that I surprise the newly baked nephew's parents with a quilt with a dedication patch. I embroidered as usual the baby's name, birth weight, how tall they were and the date of course.  You can see from the date that this was made a while ago. The quilt was made a bit later as it is an old custom in Finland not to publish the baby's name before Baptism. Not that everyone keeps the name secret, but quite many still do.

The cool animal fabrics are organic cotton from Monaluna, which I love. I did machine quilt it with free wavy motion, which has become my go-to way of doing these. I think it looks nice and goes well with modern quilts.

I am facing a pretty busy working week as I have had to postpone several of my clients due to my cold. When I get a cold I do a full blown "man flu". Not because I feel that rotten, but because in my line of work I cannot return before I am totally healed. To get as quickly as possible over the cold, I rest, rest and rest. I let my body use all available energy for its healing. I must admit that this one took me by surprise by really flooring me couple of times, but hey, I am good now.

Presents for sisters

I have taken a far longer break than intended. Actually I didn't intend to take a break at all. It just happened in the busyness of life. I better show something to make up for it. The picture above was taken in the latter part of May, before I pruned many hundreds of grape bunches and flowers from my grapevine. I will show you soon how the grapes are doing now.

My little sisters both have birthdays in summer. One of them had a round one, so she got gifted a "big" present, a quilt for her sofa. It is really weird how these things pan out: She had told me already before Christmas that she wished to have one, so I have been planning it since that. I have done it several times over in my head, drawn it carefully and calculated the needed fabrics, started on it and discarded a big centre panel and still finished it in the last moment. In the end I actually changed the design totally!

I made it in colours I know she likes and last year I gifted her a couple of cushion covers, which would go with the quilt. I decided to quilt with an irregular wavy line as I like it a lot. The back was solid red and I embroidered a dedication patch with our signatures on it. Although I admire the old fashioned embroiderers' skill doing very neat stitches, I find it far more charming where an actual handwriting or a child's drawing has been embroidered.

I styled my little sofa in our living room with the quilt and a couple of my own cushions to see what it would look like covering a sofa like ours.

The other sister had sent me some fabric and asked if I could please make her another skirt. I made her one last year using one of her old skirts to draw a pattern with. We made some adjustments to the pattern and now I have it in my pattern folder, so I can dig it out when she needs one. We were talking on Skype just before I started sewing and she mentioned that she actually quite fancied one in very light grey colour as well. As it happened I had suitable fabric in my stash and offered her to make the skirts as her birthday present. Handmade and useful! She was delighted with them. I must mention here that she is my "pocket sister", very minute in all directions and finds it extremely difficult to get fitting clothes. In addition she is rather clever having a small, but well working wardrobe, where the components need to be in colours working together in all sorts of combinations. So finding them in shops is a mission and a half!

It's funny how the skirts look big in the picture. But go and have a look at a hanger and see how small the waist actually is. These are tightly fitted skirts in the top with a mermaid or bell bottom. They are made of five panels and have a lining. The fabric is jersey, so small mistakes in measuring or cutting are not that detrimental.

I was laughing at myself, because sewing the grey one I made countless silly mistakes. The skirt is very simple to sew and yet...I managed even to sew one panel upside down! Luckily I noticed before putting the lining in. I wondered how the top half had such a funny shape...

That was a wordy posting.  Have you had any time to sew? Any delicious mistakes? Let me know, it always comforts me that even very accomplished seamstresses make mistakes. Hoping to be back very soon to show more of what I have been doing.

Juicy baby quilt

This was the other reason why I was so quick out of my bed last week; a baby quilt commission in juicy colours.

It is again the "Chinese Coin" model and measures approximately 105cmX117cm. The front is pieced from various quilting cottons and the back is flannel.

 

I machine pieced and quilted and then finished off by hand sewing the binding on the back. This time I quilted with a wavy free motion in yellow. I like the result.

 

The dedication patch is also hand embroidered and sewn.

I can hand quilt and quite enjoy it, but I cannot see that you can sell those pieces, if you want to have a salary for yourself. Or I should find some very wealthy clients for those ones...I guess for me they will always be pieces made for my family and friends.

Baby Quilts

I have made several of these in different guises. They are relatively easy to make and I can often use fabrics I already have, although I also buy a bit to make them extra special. The quilts have become my default go-to gift for new babies as they have been very well received. Several recipients have very sweetly commented that the quilt has been the nicest gift they have got for their baby. (Or maybe I am really quick, before there are too many to compare with???)

Here are more pictures from little A's quilt. I used the "Chinese Coin" quilting, but did not make the coloured bits equal in their length. It is a really easy way to quilt as there is no need to sweat over the block corners to fit. This is possibly the easiest quilt type ever!

The quilt was for a "yoga baby" and I got the birth details from the Mum without even being sneaky. I just had to keep them in my head during the session, so I could embroider them as soon as I got home!

This second one was made before the baby was born and we did not know about the gender. The quilt was made of big squares of white and printed cottons.

 The back was some of my last bits of hand dyed batik polka-dots from Africa.

 

The colours were rather light and sort of retro feel to them. It felt like a spring baby quilt. This one I quilted along the piecing lines.

Have you done any nice quilting lately? Big or small...(These are not especially big pieces, but big enough to be used for toddler naps and later maybe as lap quilts).

Big Quilt

As you might have gathered I am not an accomplished quilter. I do only easy and VERY easy quilts and even they have plenty of mistakes to show that they were handmade.

I have managed to produce five quilts since I started blogging and actually five quilts per se and none of them have stayed in the house. They have been thrown together for special occasions for special people. I admit that I have fancied them all and been a very bad elf coveting my gifts to others.

So I made this quilt - I won't tell you as yet why it was made other than I really wanted to have a quilt staying put in this house. Due to circumstances I have not made the "dedication patch" for it either. It will be used in the little bedroom, which is under re-decorating and will be showed later, when finished.  All this won't stop me having a tah-dah moment though and show to you what I have made. All sorts of things are planned for this room and I will show the bits, when I have made them and in the end show the whole room. Here the quilt is shown on our bed.

I really, really like this one. It is the largest one to date I have made and although it took some time to make, it was not that difficult. The pattern you can see in it is my own design, but I would guess that it might be a traditional pattern anyway, having a name. I just don't know the name as I am not that well versed in quilt matters.
The reverse is red and the binding polka dot.

So indulge me and see my quilt from many different angles!
The centre of the quilt:

My two favourite fabrics in this quilt (although I like all of them A LOT and I absolutely adore the owls above). I was planning to quilt it in the groove, but decided that I liked the top stitching. Certainly not the tradition, but I don't care.

Other colours

Happy heap

More Hearts and a Quilt

So now the pressies can be revealed! This is another decoration I made around the heart theme for my sister. It can be hung on a door or wall or between door jambs. It was not made too heavily in Christmas theme as I thought that she might want to use it other times as well. Maybe as a lucky charm around the Valentine's day?

The other sister's baby got his quilt after a looooong wait. As my sister requested a white one, that's what she got. It was not the most inspiring thing to make in my mind and in the beginning I had the idea of hand quilting it...well, that plan was abandoned. It still has the central bits and some of the panels in hand quilting, but the rest is machine work. Basically anything curved was done by hand, because I am rubbish at free motion sewing on machine. I need to practice it more.  It was washed several times to get the required wrinkly look. I embroidered the baby's name and birth date on it, with white. How nice am I? Well, my sister did not even notice the name. I hope she has found it now. As you might expect the pictures of a white quilt are impossible to take, so here is a white wrinkly thing

and here is a hint of the name embroidery, just take it as an extra competition, "who can spot it?"

More gifts to be blogged about and I have already managed two projects after the Christmas despite the fact that every major electrical item seemed to die in this house over the holidays. That is a slight exaggeration; only washing machine, tumble drier, toothbrush, car battery and the coffee grinder. The last one clearly being the worst...luckily we still own the manual old fashioned grinder as well.

Baby Quilts

This year there were three babies born, whom I felt I wanted to gift with a quilt. Here are two of them, the last one is almost there and hopefully the baby will get it as a Christmas present. I have been shamefully slow to get these together, on the other hand the boy baby's quilt would not have had a name on before now, as the parents did not reveal his name before the Christening. The poor nephew of mine, who was the first of the three to be born is still waiting for his.

Baby Alyssa's quilt has many pink colours, unusual for me to use as I don't much like pink in my house or clothing. I must say that in the end I was quite loving it and wanted to keep it!

Mainly because I just loved the owl fabric

and the polka dot binding,

not to forget the back of the quilt that is made of sew together Edwardian piece of curtain or something. The handiwork is beautiful as you can see.

Baby Filip's Quilt was made of shirtings and old sheet to keep it lovely and soft.

There is just nothing to beat cotton, which has been washed many, many times in softness. I used the same polka dot binding, which lifted the mood of the quilt.

I thought that  rather make it like this than putting "baby" materials in it as it might lengthen the use of the quilt. Little boys often protest if things are too "sissy" in my experience, especially when they have big brothers around. I created a Scottie(?) dog playing with a ball with his embroidered name on the back as there were no pictures in the patchwork materials.

There will be one more quilt here, maybe first after the Christmas and maybe one day I will make one for myself as well!

Quilty Pleasures

Here it is, THE PRESENT. Again, apologies for the picture quality. I had to send this away and light at the moment is rubbish. It is just gray and cloudy all day long here in Northumberland. The present has now been received approximately three weeks after the birthday and the recipient was well pleased.
This is my first bigger quilt and certainly a first patchwork one. I started easy just with squares. It was hard enough to get them cut and pieced precisely. If you look closely, you can see I was not entirely succesfull. This owes to two facts; I used one material which was considerably thinner and stretchier than the other ones and that I did not have a walking foot for my machine. I knew that using a thinner material was not a good move, but could not resist from the colour point of view. I just had to have that deep rusty orange in this quilt.  You might know everything about walking foot, but as I am a  newcomer to patchwork sewing, I did not have a clue. The foot helps your machine to feed both the top and bottom fabric at the same rate. Otherwise the top is fed just a tad slower. Often this does not matter, but in patchwork, where every millimetre counts, it is just what you need. And of course now that I have my new machine I don't have to worry anymore, it has an integral walking foot.

Here is the back of the quilt. I made it before the front as I was waiting for some materials to turn up in mail.

 

All the appliqué was machine sewn. The quilt is machine pieced and hand quilted. I enjoy the hand quilting bit, just a perfect evening job. I don't much watch the telly, often going without for weeks, but if there is something on which can be "watched" with half an eye like "QI"or "Have I got News for You" this is the perfect accompaignement. The quilting pattern is a total free-fall. I like the look of irregular pattern and as I used fleece inside the quilt, I was not limited by minimum distances between my quilting lines as you might be with an"official" batting.

My quilt had the "dedication" embroidered in one of the back corners. I like using real handwriting, rather than doing "nice" lettering. And our embroidered signatures add a nice personal touch in my opinion.
The patchwork and appliqué were made of mixture of up-cycled and new fabrics. The white back is an old sheet, which gives it a lovely "antique" soft and snuggly quality. The material also looks much more like the antique quilts do; wrinkly in a special way. I would make an entire quilt of this type of material if I could find it!