UFO review post

Back in April, I posted about some of my unfinished projects. Most of these are still unfinished but I've done three:
Crochet shawl (which my friend no longer needed, but my daughter has claimed as her "green blanket")

The quilted square (still not quite sure what to do with this to be honest)

My mending pile 

Not done yet:
Dress - started May 2016. 75% complete

Fabric baby book - started 2007. 5% complete. I know a few people having babies in 2020 so I might get around to doing this eventually

Camp blanket - started 2000 ish. I might get around to this at some point as I could do with another blanket.

Kingfisher cross stitch - started 2003. 60% complete. I've just got back into cross stitch over Christmas so the next cross stitching I do will be this.

New UFOs:
Crochet hat - I was going to make my friends some hats, and I found a pattern, but somehow I gave up halfway through so I will probably just unravel it and use the wool for something else.
Bag - I was going to make a laptop bag for work but then I got a backpack for it instead so not sure what I'm going to do about this. 25% complete.

Next up is a dress that my mum got me from Clothkits which I need to make up before my daughter gets too big for it!

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!

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: 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.