Craft Blog

ALLITERATION FTW!!!

Continuing the Halloween specials, I give you a super cute trick or treating bag, guaranteed to last from year to year no matter what outfit you’re pairing it with

I would like to stand up in my own defence before I get into this one, yes, I quilt, but I am a crazy/scrap quilter, I have a phobia of seam matching and precise measurements, so my methods (and finished product!) probably make seasoned quilters and patchworkers shake in their boots and run screaming from the computer. BUT, I say the dippy way this comes together, with the offset squares (again, formed by necessity due to the seam matching fear!) and the less than perfect embroidery gives it a very “shabby chic” vibe, at least that’s what I would like to believe! If you’re new to patchwork this would be an excellent project to get you going, the small size makes it less overwhelming than a quilt, and it comes together fairly quickly so you won’t be stuck sewing tiny pieces to tiny pieces for days on end.

You will need…

• Your chosen Halloween patchwork fabric - four fat eighths (9×22inches) would be perfect for this - Check out the superb Halloween fabric selection at Fabric.com in their “Bootique”
• Fabric for lining - 1 fat quarter
• Fabric for the embelishment band
• Embroidery floss, buttons and anything else you would like to embellish your bag with!
• Rotary cutter, cutting mat and ruler. A 4.5inch quilting square will also help, but isn’t essential.

NB: All seam allowances are a quarter of an inch.

Tutorial is behind the jump –> Read the rest of this entry »

Helen has asked me to spread the word about her new flickr group, Australian Scrap Quilters. She is in the process of organising a swap for people who are interested in making a scrap quilt without spending four years collecting up co-ordinating fabrics. You send off a collection of various 6.5inch squares of 100% cotton from your scrap collection and stamps for return postage, and in return you’ll receive the same amount of squares back to you in the theme or colour that you request, e.g. novelty, florals, red tones, etc.

I’m planning on making up a monotone charm quilt in purple at some point over the next six months or so, so this sounds like an awesome way to add to my collection of scraps for that, whilst getting rid of those bits and pieces of forgotten fabric that I’ll never get around to using. I’m also looking forward to playing I spy with the finished quilts and trying to spot the fabric that I sent off!

Deadline for registration is only the 1st of August, so head on over to the flickr group and register your interest now!

I love the thought of surrounding myself in handmade items, preferably that I’ve made myself, and to me nothing seems better than sleeping underneath something that I’ve spent months creating, which is what turned me on to quilting about a year ago.

Unfortunately I didn’t think this plan through very well, I’m not a very precise crafter, and I’m certainly not a patient one, something that I think is required for quilters. So quilt top after quilt top was shoved into a box under my desk labelled “Things I’ve Screwed Up And Never Wish To Look At Ever Again”, then I discovered scrap quilts! Never again would I have to measure and match seams and spend my time cursing because my quarter inch is 0.37mm off. Now I can just throw them together and say that the mismatching is “whimsical”. Perfect.

My favourite scrap quilt block is a simple string quilt, although they look fairly unassuming by themselves, when you bring them together as a full quilt the result is beautiful.

You will need:

• Foundation fabric - This will be hidden when you complete your quilt, so it doesn’t have to be anything special. Muslin is regularly used, just plain cotton, I use a polyester fabric called “suedecloth” simply because I have such a huge amount of scraps from making nappies out of it. Whatever you use just make sure that it doesn’t have any stretch and that it’s neutral enough to not show through your strips.
• Collection of scraps.
• Your “resting fabric” - I’ll explain the need for this later, just pick a plain solid cotton in a colour that you like as it will be appearing in all your blocks.
• Rotary cutter, cutting mat and ruler

Tutorial behind the jump, as always, click on the pictures to embiggen.

Read the rest of this entry »