For my sister...

It was my sister Sum's 30th birthday last weekend. I wanted to make something special for her but she is annoyingly hard to please. She hates pretty much everything anybody gives her for presents. In fact, this year she had specified to both me and my parents that under no circumstances were we to get her any sort of present at all except for a a pair of warm gloves and a snood. I still got that wrong as even though she had written down which snood she wanted I managed to get something totally different!

Anyway, in order to give her something nice, I'd spent hours over the summer making colourful blocks, loosely based on Faith from Fresh Lemons Quilts Echino Squared quilt. It was hard going - mainly because I couldn't seem to get all the blocks the same size so kept having to add bits of fabric here and there... I eventually got fed up and had far fewer than I initially anticipated! I then left them in my fabric cupboard and forgot about them for a few months. A couple of weekends ago I remembered them and quickly got to putting the quilt together. Because I didn't have as many blocks as I wanted, I decided to put sashing in between them. The quilting was just straight simple lines around each block.

Oops, a bit skewed!

For the back, I wanted to have a slightly more subdued feel in case she didn't have her sunglasses handy! I'd seen some lovely Paris streets material at a sewing exhibition I'd seen which I'd bought specially for Sum back in March that I wanted to incorporate so that was my main panel.

I also found some lovely cotton with a denim feel/look and some fabric which I think is called Twirl by "Me and my sister" designs that I really wanted to incorporate (only because there's just the two of us) Oh, and of course a tybalt label!

I also made a sprocket pillow to match - courtesy of Allison at Cluck Cluck Sew. It was so, so easy to make as the instructions were really simple and clear - thanks!

 The stuffing isn't as smooth as I would have liked but I'm sure after a few bums have tried it out, it'll be fine!

My attempt at an arty photograph

 Here they are together (on Mum's sofa rather than Sum's as we celebrated her birthday at my parents' house)

 Happy 30th Birthday Sum! xx

My sewing machine

It's about time I introduced my sewing machine. It's not conventional...

It's an old manual Singer

Isn't she beautiful? Look at all the intricate design and pattern:

There's a serial number on it which enabled me to look up the year it was made - 1936 in Kilbowie, Clydebank, Scotland.

This is not an electric machine so I have to feed/guide the fabric with my left hand and turn the wheel with my right in order to sew. It can be quite tricky sometimes!

Excuse the mess in the background! I was hoping the strategically placed plants would hide it but they haven't done their job properly...

The only change I've made is to add a walking foot so that I can quilt a little more easily. Yes, I know the modern plastic looks out of place on this lovely old machine, but believe me, it really has helped!

She can only do one stitch length and type but she does the job. Maybe some day in the future, I'll get an all-singing, all-dancing electric sewing machine that can do fancy stitches (I always want to do zig-zags for some reason) and have different stitch lengths but more now I'm more than happy with the old Singer!

A quilt for Edie

I found the cutest animal print at the beginning of this year. Really bright, primary colours, letters of the alphabet and zoo animals. I knew I wanted to make a child's quilt with it but didn't have anything else to match. So I went and found some plain fabric in coordinating bright colours (red, blue, green) and made up a quilt loosely based on the log cabin concept. Here's the finished product:

Front

Back

A close up of the "log cabin" panel:

I kept the quilting really simple, just straight lines around each panel and the middle cross. You can sort of see the geometric pattern better on the back of the quilt...

The whole thing was finished off with bright red binding and, of course, a tybalt label:

All in all, I'm quite pleased with the finished article. It can be used as a quilt or a playmat. This is for a special little girl's first birthday next week (I hope her Mummy's not reading this, it's supposed to be a surprise!). Happy birthday Edie!

Catnip toys

To pass the time while recovering I decided to make some cat toys. I dived into my scrap bag and pulled out a couple of colourful bits of fabric, sewed a very rough rectangular pouch and filled each one with leftover wadding and a few pinches of catnip.

Safe to say the tinkers like them...

Merky

Mini

yuck!

Am down with a vomiting bug. At least the vomiting has stopped now - but still feeling very drained and tired. Annoyingly, all the stuff I had to do this weekend has had to be cancelled - like going wedding dress shopping and food tasting with the caterers. (Did I mention I'm getting married next April?) The last thing I feel like doing is eating Indian food at the moment! Oh well, I can still do some internet work for research and work on the invitation wording etc to stop me getting too bored.

Sorry this is such a boring post! (Not that I think anyone even reads this...)