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!

I Cannot Sleep Tonight

Do you remember the feeling of excitedness for Christmas when you were little? You know the absolute hearty-skippiness and being totally incapable of sleep. I am like that today. Elf Husband was laughing when I refused a second cup of coffee today middayish as I was afraid of not being asleep anyway...don't need any chemical help for that.
The kitchen has now been painted and all the boring jobs finished. I will show pictures when I have done some of the nice stuff. Doing that won't be any hardship. I have my head buzzing with ideas for several projects and can hardly wait. I will though take it easy and SLOWLY and enjoy the fun.
My excitement knows no limits because a couple of days ago my husband bought me this:

I hadn't been able to really try to work with it before today when I did a little job with it and what a joy! It's greatest secret is here:

Can you see the black arm behins the presser foot? This is an integral walking foot and makes precision sewing absolutely a doddle. It feels lovely to work with and I am in sewing heaven. My first sewing machine was bought for me by my Dad when I was 13. It was a second hand machine from 70s and I had it until five years ago. We were then moving between continents and I decided to sell it as it was not in the best shape any more. I then replaced it with a very basic model as at that point I was only doing an odd repair job and sewing some cushion covers and alike. I was not doing any creative stuff, nor sewing clothes.

Now that my machine is in use constantly I have noticed its limitations. I was quite hankering for an overlocker, but actually I needed a good regular machine much more. And this is in my mind the ultimate Limousine of the working horse machines. I love it. It's sort of my next Christmas and birthday present - we are not fussy about the real dates, we do the presents when we need them and not necessarily at Christmas time.

Not enough with a new kitchen and a Limousine of a sewing machine, there was a present dropped in our front yard this morning. A local builder J, who also is my client, dropped off some iron stakes, timber and pipes for us to build a polytunnel. I am slowly building up our garden and this has been on my wish list for a while.  In general the biggest cost is the soil, because I have to buy all the soil save the stuff we get from our compost. The soil in our garden is dire; clay and building rubble under a 5cm layer of topsoil, which is bound to grass roots anyway.
J was offering to come and build it with us, but Elf Husband did it with me as his assistant. Look at its frame, it's HUGE.

Its measurements are just shy of 5m X 3m. We are not finished with building it, but not far to go. Then I have to think the best way of putting beds and shelves in it, so I can optimise the space.

I am absolutely hopping of excitement thinking of all the veggies I can now grow! I have a good amount of "outside" bed space as I added a couple more this spring to my existing ones. The polytunnel enables me to grow tomatoes and cucumbers and stretch my season longer for other veggies like broccoli and spinach.
All this wonderfulness means I don't know how I am going to sleep. Maybe copious amounts of wine?

24hr Cafe

I am in process of redecorating our kitchen. It really needs a new coat of paint and as I mentioned earlier, I wanted to change the colour as well. I was actually really happy with the burnt orange walls, but they restrict escapades to colourful kitchenalia. My only worry about the white walls is how long they might stay white. The orange walls hide to a large extent candle wax, food stains, snot...What? You don't have snot on your walls? Don't have anybody in the family sneezing at any opportunity?
So I went yesterday down to the paint shop with my chosen colour slip. They made a little pot of it, so I could try it in situ. And it was BAD. Not the effect I wanted at all. The gray tint in the white made my kitchen tiles look dirty. They are slightly off white and so are the cabinet doors. I decided that I needed another colour, maybe slightly yellowish. And that was luckily the right one. The white looks white, it just is the effect it has or rather has not on other things around it.
In the midst of filling the holes in the walls and calling the Electrical Elf aka husband to help with  moving a light fitting I had time to do a bit of preparation for the new bright colours that are going to invade the kitchen.
Truth to be told this little sign was a gift to Elf husband a couple of years ago as he always tastes new foods and especially cakes we make with "the cafe" in his mind. This is something he dreams of, although I have told him that he would drink all the profits making  all sorts of coffees for himself all day long...

Now the sign is nice (I of course forgot to take a "before" picture, so in the picture I have already started to repaint the sign), but I wanted brighter colours, so this is what happened to the sign:

 Rather funky or what? And it's really good that my Coffee Elf keeps the shop open at all hours of the day!

A Homage to Tingatinga Painting and a Craft Book

The time flies and I keep promising to myself to update the blog. A great deal of the time is going into gardening and sometomes it feels as if my other life is suspended.  Now, at the moment I am still engaged in the BIG present making and cannot show any of that as the receiving person obviously should be the first to see. So I think I need to blog about some older projects.
The picture above hangs on my living room wall together with this one:

They are painted by Tanzanian Tingatinga artists Mbwana and Hassani from the Tingatinga artist co-operative in Dar es Salaam.  I get immense joy of seeing them daily and appreciate them more than words can tell.

Around the Easter we went visiting down South and my sister-in-law S took me to a QD store where they had wooden boxes for craft use for sale. These ones were £2 each!

 
I really wanted a couple of them to put little items in and hang in my living room. I have painted one of them and the second one is work in process. I chose the theme of those two Tingatinga paintings by making "polka dots" on black background and painting the insides with bright orange. Painting outlines of the figures is typical of Tingatinga, so I decided to paint the self edges with white to imitate this.

Craft books are a tricky topic. As I don't want to own more than what I use and find inspirational, I am quite picky. I find magazines often dissapointing and rather keep my money to invest in a good book. This book came with the mail today.

I ordered the Green Crafts for Children by Emma Hardy after reading about it in couple of other blogs. It looks really useful and is pretty to look at. Some of the entries are old favourites, but it does not hurt to have a reminder of them. Older children can also do many of the activities by themselves. The pictures and the layout are really yummy and clear at the same time.
 I like the fact that the book's point of departure is using natural or recycled materials with a few widely available and cheap bought ones. Here are a couple of pages from the book for you to admire.

Go and borrow it from the library to see whether you want to own it. I think it will be used here in the hut and also when I am supply teaching and lacking something to do.

Have a lovely weekend and tell me if you have come across any lovely and useful craft books lately.

Notebook Frenzy

I am going on a course in the coming weekend. (Not craft related). The only "thing " we are required to bring is notetaking equipment. The idea of a personalised notebook has been lurking in my mind for a good while since I read Amanda Blake Soul's book "Handmade Home". I took the inspiration from Amanda, but decided against the spiralbounding. Instead I did some home devised bookbinding. I do not have a clue about real bookbinding, so I just figured out something I could do with my sewing machine. (Yes, the needle does need changing now).

I am not normally a "pink" person, but today it felt very important that this project was swathed in pink fabrics, ribbons and cute buttons.
I also filled the rather thin notebook with different colour pages and as it is for myself I added some pictures and slips of  edging for inspiration here and there. There is even a page of handmade paper purely because it looks and feels good. I don't think I can write on it!

After the weekend edit: This is one of those really odd things. During the weekend I took notes of the "balance" that I gave to my partner on the course and wrote them in this book. Next morning I had very strong urge to give the book to her, so I did. I think that I was actually making it for her, hence the pinkness of the project! The book was widely admired on the course and there were questions of whether I would make them for sale. I shall see...

May and Potato Excitement

Oh my, oh my....it's May already. If you are a dab hand at printing with stencils and screens and freezepaper, look another way. I got so excited when these pots came with the post.

They are six pots of textile colour I ordered from the Scottish firm Stewart Gill. Now I must admit that I cannot for my life remember that I have EVER done any textile printing. Not even in kindergarten with a potato.
I have plenty of ideas how I would like to use these lovely colours: I have plans of making t-shirts for Elf Boy, I would like to have a couple of new pretty calico bags for shopping and I think printing a small border on white napkins would be nice too.
I have also another project underway, which I cannot discuss yet, as it is a present. It involves an amount of different fabrics and I thought that a really quick way of trying my hand with prints would be printing a small sample to use in the project. I chose the old potato print method as it is quick and easy.

 
And here is what I did in the first sampler (far too small for my project).

The final pattern using the same potatoes:

My inspiration was a seed in a pod and as you can see I have interpreted it with a poetic licence. It was first in my second attempt that I had a towel under the fabric to make the printing easier. The differences in strength of the colour was an intentional effect and I am just itching to do more now...
Edit: I suddenly remembered that I have done printing before! I made some pillowcases when I was in the 6th form for Christmas presents for the family and friends. I have actually seen them kicking around when visiting. I can now remember that I used the book plastic for making stencils. And I think I printed Mick Jagger on a pair of sloggies for my stepmum (Great fan of Rolling Stones)!

April is here Part 2

Sorry about the confusion, but if you just got here, scroll down and read the part 1 first. Blogger doesn't allow for miles long posts obviously, or I had a technical hiccup.  So, where was I? Yes, the dolls. The dolls were made for small children, so no weighting pearls or rice in the dolls, the only thing I ask people to take off the dolls is the shoes and hair ribbons should the child be under three years old. I love painted doll faces, but for small children it is safer to keep to embroidery. Similarly I could not use lovely buttons to embelish, but never mind, I think the dolls are rather cool still.
I made an improved version of my own phone cover in multitude, here are some of them:

I also made some luggage tags, similar to what I made for my own holidays. I don't think I have blogged about them. They are colourful and help to identify your luggage on the carousel and at the same time your contact details are kept hidden from the world.

I like to make my own cards and had developed this design not so long ago...It is a little flower appliqued on a piece of fabric and an embroidery running stitch around it. I also made some freehand papercut cards for children, but don't have any pictures of them as yet.

I had made these applique pictures a while ago, but finished them off and framed them. In the pictures they don't have frames and the one in the embroidery hoop was reverse appliqued on a piece of dark blue calico.
This is "Pirita Dances on Ice"

And the second one is called "This Must Reach the Evening Post"

I have to admit to be the most rubbish blogger, because I am going away AGAIN. This time the whole family is going to travel to East Anglia to see Papa Elf's family and breath some hopefully warmer spring air. I so hope that the weather has warmed up when we are back to inspire me to go  to my garden. At the moment it is totally impossible to do anything as I don't have a greenhouse. (That though means less crafting=less blogging, unless this blog temporarly becomes a gardening one. Hmm, maybe)
I wish you all a very happy Easter with these lovely daffodills. I have been lately indulging myself in homegrown ones in vases...

April is here Part 1

 Yihaa! I had this calendar page on my fridge door all ready to go on 31.3. I followed the March page in style as it was easy to create and colourful to watch. 
I can see that many of my posts carry apologies for bad pictures due bad light. I managed to snap some pictures of my recent production, while the sun was out(just a little, so image quality isn't quite as good as I could wish for), so you can see why my fingertips have been smoking. (And why I haven't answered anyone's emails, texts and calls). The Elf son's school had a fundraising shopping event and I usually offer my skills as a therapist for the evening to raise money. This time I did just that and in addition had a little table with my crafts as well.
Here are the Livia Dolls from April '10 Edition:

I think these girls are rather cute and to accompany them there were two Wolfie boy dolls:

Crafting and Messy

Where is this month going so fast? I have been soooo busy with life in general and making some crafts for selling, so this post will be short. The above pictured half made dollies are part of my effort. I try to get pictures of the finished ones as well. At the moment the light is too bad for photographing.

I have seen on the net several articles about creative people's working spaces and it never ceases fascinate me. Now, I don't have a dedicated studio, neither do I have to work on the dining table. My therapy room doubles as a sewing/crafting/painting room/office. I love my big, old Victorian chest of draws, filled with my sewing things. I must admit that it is not quite enough for all my stuff. Here is one of the draws where some of my material stash lives in neat piles.

As many other crafty people I am quite obsessive about having my space well organised, but not under the creative process. Then it looks more like this on the table:

And on the floor:

Yes, bad, isn't it? See you soon with hopefully nicer pictures.

March and Much More

BIG SORRY to leave the blog for this long. I did not have much chance to blog on my holidays; going back home means catching up with the loved ones every minute at my disposal. We got back safely and then the horrid tummy bug hit our house...So this post is a real mixed bag. In the first picture my March calendar. You might ask: "What about February"? Well, officially it did not happen in our house, so no calendar. In truth I did not get round to it and had to force myself to do something for March. The end result was far better than my uninspired mood predicted.

I made a doll for my niece whom I met for the first time despite her being 18 months old. She was stinking cute (the niece, not the doll) and sligthly confused about who I might be tropping up with the Grandparents. Initially she wanted to call me grandma as well.

I just LOVE this doll and the colours. I have never before tried this type of combo. The doll is made of cotton, so is the hair. I am always torn between being really "natural" and use natural materials only or make it washable. So this time I went for the washable option as the doll was for a toddler. The filling is polyester and the doll is weighted with plastic beads. (Both parts secondhand, so at least that was a bonus). Obviously the face was embroided instead of painted for the washability. I quite liked the end result myself.

















I think this was the first time I used knits for doll clothes and it was SO good. The whole question of how to get the doll into the clothes was solved as they stretch, no zigzaging needed as the material doesn't fray. And the best of all, my old long t-shirt sleeves were the perfect size for the body part of the shirt and the trousers. So I had ready made hems!

I also made a playmat for a friend's little son. Unfortunately they were travelling while we were visiting, so it had to be posted. The playmat was made of hand dyed African cotton for the front and the binding and thrifted soft cotton for the back. I made different "sensory" things for the upper edge of the quilt for baby to play with. It is playmat size and can alternatively be used in a pushchair where the baby will still have access to his toys. The pockets were hand embroided as well as the robot's face. I hand quilted it with an irregular squiggly pattern, which went well with it's modern bright colours and toy theme. Everything it is washable and if the mother gets tired with the toys dangling from it, they can be snipped away.

 The weather up North was wintery. At times it was -22 C with stiff wind. That meant not going out other than getting from point A to point B. My sister claimed that her frontal lobes were deep frozen during our walk from the Zoological Museum to a department store. The picture of the elf son was taken on a day of lesser severity; only around -14 C and no noticeable wind. He is on the frozen sea ice, making confusing trails.

I promise not to leave the blog for another month. There are more things to blog from the travels and new fresh things to show, so see you soon.