Marzipan learns crochet

I have a friend who teaches children to crochet in schools, and one day I was at her house chatting about wool whith her and another friend (as you do) when I said I wanted to learn crochet. She gave us a quick lesson, but I didn't quite get the hang of it, and then she went away for summer holidays...

A few weeks later she came around to my house & taught me how to make chain (it's like finger knitting but with a hook) and slipstitches (to tie the bits of chain together). I made a ring, and a flower:

Ring and flower made of chain & slipstitches

Then I got a bit carried away, and I tried to make a lacy mat-type thing with different colours of wool that I had:

Based on a flower, with chains around the edge

Except it looks a bit more like a hat than a mat.

I got quite into making chain while I was on the bus to work but I got a bit carried away:

This chain is longer than I am when it's stretched out.

 Then I was in the crafty-shop one lunchtime, and I found some pretty wool to save me having to change colour all the time, and made a flower with it.

Pretty firework wool!

The trouble with that wool is that it's hard to see the stitches because it's so dark.

I got a bit bored of making chain after a while, but yesterday my friend taught me to make proper crochet (double crochet) in rows so now I have something else to do on the bus:

A very tiny scarf?

It's only about an inch wide as it's about eight stitches in a row. Any ideas for what to make with it? Or should I just try to make something more sensible & call this a practice piece?

July/August 2012 - Hungry Caterpillar quilt

Several of my friends are expecting babies at the moment, but back in February I only knew about one of them. I happened to be in the crafty shop when I saw some Hungry Caterpillar fabric.
(It's made by Andover Fabrics, they have a couple of free patterns featuring the hungry caterpillar fabrics on their site also)
I'm a big fan of the hungry caterpillar, so obviously, I wanted an excuse to buy this fabric and make something out of it, so I decided to make a quilt for the new baby.
So I bought the fabric and kept it in my fabric box for a few months as I got distracted with other things. Finally in July I dug it out, measured it and went to buy backing fabric and wadding so that I could actually make it into something.
As it's one printed piece rather than a patchwork quilt, it's not as big as a bed quilt (it's about 70cm x 120cm) but it's still bigger than anything I've done before, so I consulted the internet for useful information and found some tutorials at Ludlow Quilt & Sew which I found quite useful (I just happened to find them through google, I know nothing about them other than their website.)
I decided to not be too complicated, and just outline the main motifs & white panels, and sew around the edge.
First of all I made up a practice piece to make sure I could follow the lines and quilt without making too much of a mess of the back, so I made up a little square about 25cm x 25cm of fabric and wadding that I had from other projects, and tried to quilt around all the flowers.
It didn't turn out too bad, the worst bit was where I tried to quilt all in one line so that I wouldn't have too many ends, which made the back look quite odd (I was using a contrasting thread so that I could tell what I was doing). This wouldn't be a problem in the actual quilt as it would mainly be straight lines & obviously I could just start & stop more often.

Patterned side of practice piece

Backing side of practice piece

So I'd already washed and ironed the fabric for the main quilt, so I pinned the layers together & basted it (sewing it roughly together by hand so that the layers stay mainly in the right place), and I was ready to start.
Here it is after I'd quilted the butterfly:

Front of quilt at the beginning - the wadding
and backing is oversized so I don't have to
trim the front too much when it's finished

Back of quilt at the beginning -
you can see the lines of quilting better from the back

Close-up of quilting lines and basting

So I carried on quilting the outlines. I had to sew in all the ends as well so it took a few weeks working in the evenings (though it probably would have been quicker if I hadn't decided to quilt around each segment of the caterpillar!)

Panel of leaf & tiny caterpillar

Beautiful butterfly!

The Very Hungry Caterpillar has not yet eaten any holes in the quilt!

Back of almost-finished quilt showing quilt lines

The last part was the leaf, and I happened to be quilting it on the evening the Olympics started, and I wanted to watch the opening ceremony at the same time as sewing so I moved my sewing machine in front of the TV (the table it sits on has wheels as it's actually a computer desk). This is the advantage of not having an electric sewing machine, I don't need to be next to the wall socket the whole time.

I managed to finish the outline of the leaf reasonably quickly with the olympics to help me, so I somewhat foolishly decided to do some more quilting on the dotty background. I quilted diagonal lines about an inch apart across all the background, which took longer than you might think. (My sewing machine has a foot with a guide so that I can sew parallel lines so at least I didn't need to draw lines across my fabric). Originally I was going to do the diagonals both ways but as it looked fine with just one way diagonals, I decided to stop.

Once I'd trimmed the excess wadding and neatened the edges,the final step was to attach the binding. Again I consulted the useful tutorials from Ludlow Quilt & Sew and I managed to have enough of my backing material left over to make binding for all around the quilt. (Next time I must remember to allow for that when I buy the fabric!)



Here are some close ups of the binding on the finished quilt:

Binding on front of quilt

Binding on back of quilt showing slipstitches

Despite using white cotton for the top thread of the quilting, I managed to use nearly a whole reel of green cotton!

I only have a little bit of cotton left!

Final finished quilt of beauty

And here's a video of Eric Carle reading the book for you!

Patchwork Owl - March 2012

I've been making things lately, but I keep forgetting to blog about them so stand by for a few posts in a row.
Partly that was because I was making things as presents so I didn't post about them before i gave the present, and then I forgot all about it!

So in March it was my mum's birthday. I decided to make her a cake which you can read about here, and as a present I made her a patchwork owl as she runs a Brownie pack so she is a 'Brown Owl'.

Patchwork owl sitting on the sofa!

The pattern was quite simple as the owl is symmetrical, the main problem I had was hemming the beak & eyes (you might be able to tell from the picture they're a bit frayed especially at the corner of the beak)

Anyway my mum loves it so that's the main thing!

Purple bag - 22/3/12

It's been a while since I did any sewing, but I've had the fabric for this bag half cut out for about a month so yesterday I decided to sew it together.
It's made of three different fabrics, but you could use just two or even one. Here it is finished:

Finished bag

Showing the lining

This bag's finished size is 29cm x 32cm, so it's just big enough to fit an A4-sized magazine. The handles are stiffenned with some iron-on interfacing (which I managed not to stick to the iron or the ironing board) but the bag itself is just made of cotton fabric. Hopefully I won't break it too soon!

Quilting: Shoo-fly - 1/2/12

This block is called the shoo-fly block (named after a shoo fly pie, though I don't see how it looks like that at all!)
Anyway this block uses two of the templates from last week's sailboat block (the small triangle and the small rectangle), along with the big square from the first block (double four-patch).
One big square for the centre
Four rectangles
Eight triangles (four of each colour)
My block has four different fabrics, but you could easily make it out of just two.

Start by sewing the small triangles to make small squares

Fabric laid out after I'd sewn the small triangles together

Then you make up the horizontal strips by sewing two small squares to one rectangle, and the two other rectangles to the central big square.

Finally you sew the horizontal strips together to make a square

I think I need to work on the accuracy of my seam allowances and make myself a guide to stick to my sewing machine as well as just using the presser foot, as the seams should line up and they don't really!

The edges aren't completely straight either, I think I had too much seam allowance when I was sewing together the small triangles, but I can hide the wobbly edges when I sew the whole quilt together!

Quilting: Sailboat - 26/1/12

This week's quilt block is a stylised picture of a boat. It has more pieces than the first two and so it's more complicated!
It has four colours and four different shapes. The colours are for the sky, the sea, the sails, and the boat. The shapes are small triangles, small recangles, long rectangle and trapezium (though you could make the trapezium out of one small rectangle and two triangles I suppose).
When you are sewing this block together, it's important to press the seams as you go, otherwise it will probably end up all lumpy at the back and won't lie flat at the end!
The pattern and number of shapes can be seen in the picture below

Cut pieces ready for sewing

First you sew the small triangles of sky to the sails (to make squares):

Then you sew the small squares together to make a big square (as in the double four-patch block), and then the rectangles of sky go on each side:

For the boat/sea half, first the trapezium boat sews onto the triangles of sea, then the long rectangle of sea goes along the bottom:

Finally top and bottom halves join together to make the finished block

My block has gone a bit crooked, I think this is because my final seam wasn't straight. I'll see how well the next few squares turn out, and if it's too annoying I'll unpick it and re-do it.

Kindle cover - 20/1/12

Very productive today! Actually, I started this a few days ago but got a bit distracted.
My Kindle is 16.5cm x 11.5cm, so here's what I needed to make this cover:

• Cotton fabric 35cm x 40cm (or two different pieces 30cm x 20cm if you want different pattern on the inside and outside)
• Wadding approx 30cm x 18cm
• Cotton thread
• Sew-on velcro approx 10cm long
• Flat elastic approx 20cm long

Here's a vague diagram of how the fabric and wadding relate to each other and the device:

I was adapting instructions to make a padded bag for a gadget, rather than a cover, so i didn't hem the cotton before I sewed the fabric to the wadding, but it would probably be easier if I had hemmed it first.

Mark lines along the cotton fabric spaced 2cm from each other (if you have a foot you can use as a guide, you don't need to do this although it might help anyway).

Then, you put a layer of cotton fabric on each side of the wadding, and pin all three layers together (if using one big piece of fabric, fold it in half and then put the wadding in the middle).
Using contrasting thread, tack the three layers together with long stitches.

Stitch back and forth along the 2cm spaced lines using your sewing machine (see the picture below). Leave about 3-4cm unquilted at one short edge for you to attach the velcro to.

Check that the piece is big enough to fit around your device once the quilting has been done. (Mine was too short, so I had to add another piece, but the measurements I've given above should be big enough for it).
Trim any spare wadding back to the last line of stitching, and sew the edges together neatly.

Before you attach the elastic to keep the deivce in place, it's probably a good idea to attach the velcro. The piece with the hooks goes on the inside of the cover on the part you didn't quilt (this should be on the half of the cover that will wrap over the front of your device) and then the softer piece can go on the back (behind where the device will be) and it won't catch on your clothes/bag/carpet/etc.

Now it's time to make sure your device won't fall out of its cover. Attach the elastic to the top and bottom of the cover.

My cover has a small flap along the top of the kindle to keep it in place (so one half of the fabric is wider than the other half), or you can just use elastic stretched across the width of the device and stitched at each end.

To keep the bottom of the device in place but still be able to press all the buttons, I stitched a piece of elastic diagonally across each corner:

And the kindle fits in its new snuggly home!

Open to read

Closed to carry about

I can take it out of the cover if I need to

Quilting: Whirlwind - 20/1/12

Another quilt block this week. This one is called 'Whirlwind' because it looks like a windmill. It looks quite complicated but it's made up of just 8 pieces.

The finished block

First of all, you sew the white triangles to the coloured trapeziums:

Then you stitch together one of each colour to make a bigger triangle:

And finally, you stitch the two halves together to make the square block.

I use the edge of the foot on the sewing machine to make sure the seams are the same width, but I had bought a magnetic guide before I realised the foot was the right width to use instead. It's coming in useful to keep the pins on as I take them out of the fabric:

Quilting: Double Four-patch - 14/1/12

I've started learning to quilt, to make a sampler quilt made up of lots of different blocks with different patterns. Hopefully this means I can do some sewing but it won't take up too much of my time. I'm going to make one block a week, and this week I started with a double four-patch block. This is made up of two big blocks and eight little blocks, as you can see:

It's quite easy to make, first of all you sew together the smaller squares into a big square and then you sew all four big squares together. I'm using my lovely sewing machine to make this as I'm too lazy to hand-sew so much (also I'd just sew it wrong and have to unpick everything!)
If you want to make one yourself, my templates for the small squares are 63mm (2.5 inches) square, and the large squares are 112mm (4 3/8 inches) square. This gives you 6mm (1/4 inch) seam allowance, and the finished block is about 30cm or 12 inches square.

When I do more complicated patterns, I'll try to take pictures as I go along to make it clearer how you sew it together.