Stars and Strips

I had a spare cushion inner and so decided to use up some strips of fabric from previous projects.

So here is the result a strippy front and a stars and strips back.

Anatomy of a Shirt / Shirt Seas

I’ve been saving old shirts to make into a quilt. The first stage is unpick or “fillet” them into their constituent pieces. I was having a rummage in the bag the other day and I thought what a shame it is to cut all the parts into regimented rectangular pieces.What about just using the parts of the shirts as they are? How about starting with a central panel of upper back pieces, as above? And then I thought that they looked like waves on the sea, so I could spread them around and make a very rough sea with maybe a boat of two being tossed around. I think I need to play with idea some more.

People Planning

I’ve been thinking about this for quite some time. How can I preserve MLD’s cartoony drawings that she was always scribbling on bits of paper. I had at least scanned a few so they wouldn’t disappear into recycle heaven.

By chance one found itself snuggled up against an old brown and white gingham curtain and I decided what I would do. I would stitch the characters in brown embroidery thread onto calico and make a quilt of squares alternating between the calico people and the gingham squares.

So far Iihave stitched the people but I need to decide whether to surround the calico squares with dark bown sashing, or not. I can’t quite make my mind up.

Where do babies come from?

or what I really mean is where do all these Summer 2009 babies come from? Everyone that MLD (My Little Darling)knows seems to be having one.     I made the mistake of making a pinky quilt for a baby girl and so in the interest of gender equality I had to make this red green and black one for a boy.

Offcuts and offshoots

27 cm x 20 cm  overstitched interwoven scraps of hand-dyed cotton

Bib Bib Hooray

Also completed (except for velcro fastenings) – a set of 6 bibs for the same baby.

The reverse of each is towelling/terry cloth.

Maybe I should make another one so there is one for each day of the week?

After Two Nights in Labour

A quilt is born

In Gestation

How time flies. The first of my daughter’s old school friends has just given birth to a little girl named FREYA DAISY MAY, so it was decided to make a not-too babyish quilt that demonstrated traces of her name.

The lime green is for freshness – the “Fr” at the beginning of Freya and the rather grown-up white daisies on a black ground are of course for Daisy. I think the binding will be daisies also. Now what about the back? Should it be all one fabric or maybe I will cut large deep random stripes of all fabrics.

Going Round in Circles

I really should have been getting ready for work but instead I was off reading blogs as I usually do while I eat my breakfast each morning. It sets me up for the day. I pop in to see all my old friends and then often get sidetracked and find someone new and decide they are worthy of being added to my bookmark bar at the top of my web browser.

This morning a wandering path led me to LAVENDERHOUSE and her posting called CIRCLES OF COLOUR which reminded me of something I started to play around with after a visit to the Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace in 2007. Yes I did type 2007 intentionally. I went to one of those 15 minute classes. The pieceof red silk is from the class as are those three spiderweb circles stitched to the red silk. Everyone else there seemed to be an expert at embroidery so I was the obligatory slow one in the corner. Luckily now that I am allegedly grownup I don’t care what anyone else thinks and I just get on with enjoying  the moment and taking away from I can. in this case that something was the inspiration of DORSET BUTTONS and so I played around (see bottom left of pic) with something that owes its technique to dorset buttons, crochet, tatting and probably other crafts as well.

The results have remained pinned to the red silk on the wall in J’s old bedroom, where I keep my sewing machine, forgotten until I read Ms LavenderHouse’s blog this morning. Those circles were made with short craps of yarn lying in or around the bin so very much in keeping with what Ms LavenderHouse was told by Madeline Millingtonnot …”not to bother with expensive yarn as cheap yarn in rainbow colours gives a really good result.”

The N U M P bag

I’ve spent most of today making a N U M P bag (Network cable, Usb cable, Mouse, Power cable)
for G.

He saw my drawstring sewing things bag and decided that he would like a bag, made to a similar design,
to contain cables and other bits and pieces for his laptop. This cable-organising bag could then be
slung in his rucksack without everything ending up as a rat’s nest.

When opened completely flat, the sewing bag is a very large circle.

The  N U M P   bag, however, is made as a cylinder. It looks a little like a small fabric bucket.
The exterior fabric is black cotton duck. Black chosen to be masculine and the cotton duck because it is a sturdy fabric.

Inside the  N U M P  bag there are 4 pockets/dividers, each made from a different fabric. A really
organised person will always put a particular cable back in a particular pocket, therefore making it
easy to know where each cable is. Each of the pockets has a smaller pocket on the outside, two of
them wide and two skinnier ones which can be used for pens, pencils etc.

The bag has a circular bottom and a drawstring closure. There is a sturdy grab handle on each side,
and a loop so that the bag can be hung up on a hook.

Auditions over, roles cast and the fabric performs

A while ago I was auditioning fabric for a quilt destined for my own bed this time. So here is the result.
The fabrics in the quilt are:

some samples of shibori indigo dyeing that I did several years ago
an already tie-dyed sheet from a jumble sale
sections of a curtain from another jumble sale
one or two small remnants from a friend
some old pieces of sheet dyed by me in yellow & blue

The whole thing was backed with a dark blue piece of sheeting and now I have started a sort of sashiko type quilting. In other words I am using a very visible cotton thread. On the reverse side this often shows up in high contrast. Particularly noticeable are the flowers, fish and “compass”. I still have quite a lot of the quilting to go but I am not going to reush it. When the spirit moves I will pick it up and do a little. I might even take it on holiday with me at the end of September at least I won’t be cold.

It’s cold oop north …

… or so I have been told. TLM (The Loom Monkey) saw the quilt I had made for MLD (My Little Darling) and proceeded to tell me why he needed a quilt more than her. Having put the finishing touches to MLD’s red, black and white quilt while we were on holiday in Cornwall I had to immediately start work on TLM’s so that he can take it back to Durham with him for year 2.

I tried to use fabric I had already so the plain fabrics were from my stash and I spent real money on the patterned purple for the sashing and borders. I didn’t quilt it much because I quite like the puffy look. I quilted through the middle of each sashing strip and in the ditch between each coloured panel.

The quilt is not as big as MLD’s which would easily do for a double bed but having run out of room in the car when we brought TLM home I think restraining the size of it is a good idea. What it lacks in size it makes up for in brightness.

The Loom Turns

Another weekend gone. Where? TLM (The Loom Monkey) is off to Uni at the end of the month and so he had a farewell barbeque with old school friends, friends from work and friends from church. This involved tidying the garden, removing clutter from the kitchen so it could become a servery area and of course going shopping.

So that was most of Saturday gone. After meeting everyone I thought it best for us to remove ourselves to the piano nobile with only a brief foray down below to provide lighting. I hadn’t realised how dark getting it gets these evenings. Our slinky lights in a tube hadn’t been out of their boxes since we had an impromptu family disco in the kitchen. The cousins from what I consider to be “oop North” but they adamantly insist is the East Midlands were staying with us and there’s a limit to how many Disney films you can watch. Instead we had a really cheesy disco. It was wonderful! If you know me you know how unlikely it is for me to rave about … well a rave. I just don’t do that sort of thing.

I couldn’t sleep on Saturday night so eventually got out of bed at 4 am and finished up the tidying up that TLM had done the night before. It was a bit eerie, all that there was to show that there had been a party was a dishwasher full of brightly coloured garden/picnic plates and bowls, loads of food in the fridge, including a ton of tuna, sweetcorn and pasta salad and the kitchen table turned 90 deg and pushed against a wall. So it only took me about 3o mins to empty dishwasher, turn table and bring the hidden clutter back to its rightful place.

I crept back to bed later and had a little snooze. The sight of tidiness led me to believe that the erroneously named “Dining Room” could really be tackled. This is where my 4-shaft, George Harris floor loom resides and since I acquired it I have desperately been attempting to clear the rest of the room around it. It’s rather like one of those little plastic puzzles. There is one piece empty and you have to keep moving everything around until it is in the correct order. Well now I have more than one piece empty after a trip to the charity shop and the filling of a large bin bag. But still the room is full. if I was brave I would post a pic, but I daren’t. Then I had a brainwave. If I turned the loom it would take up less space! So with great difficulty, I turned it 9o deg so that now it has turned 180 deg from the way we first put it together! So the loom turned. Unfortunately B I G is B I G whichever way, or in whatever light you look at it. I’ll just have to plod on with sorting all the other stuff in the room. Watch this space. What space? That’s the whole problem!!!

I love Freecycle

I subscribe to two Freecycle groups and enjoy seeing what people are chucking out and more amazingly what people ask for. People actually specify the make and model of baby buggy that they are looking for. Remember this is not to buy, this is for someone to give to them. I don’t know, young people these days are so ungrateful .. mutter..mutter..rant rant. When we were first “expecting” we caught a train to buy a McClaren carrycot/pram/buggy from someone for £18. Believe it or not I think the buggy part might actually be lurking in my garage somewhere. This was back in 1982 when shoulder-pads were the height of fashion and buggies were either blue and white stripes or red and white stripes and had hooks for handles to hang several tons (should that be metric tonnes?) of shopping on, against which you used your offspring as counterweight. Anyway, none of this nonsense about cross-country, cross-trainer, 3 wheeled, 4×4 vehicles that babies aspire to these days.

Talking of going cross-country, I have wondered offtrack here. I was about to announce that I had acquired something from a freecycler who lives a stones’s throw away from the Rugby Stadium at Twickenham where last night the Police were giving a concert. The freecycler suggested that I came to his house whilst the Police fans were safely inside the stadium having their eardrums perforated. What is it, I hear you ask. Well, it’s a sewing machine. Haven’t you’ve already got one?

Yes .. but …this is a HAND sewing machine.

There is no electrical power, and consequently no handy lamp placed strategically above the needle to aid elderly eyes with the threading. The other design feature not yet incorporated when this lovely object was manufactured, probably in the 1930s, is REVERSE. It took me a few minutes to work out that all you have to do is to leave the needle in the fabric, lift the presser foot and rotate the fabric so that it faces in the opposite direction. Does that make sense?

My machine is a Jones, even though it says “Kildare” on it. I have been told that these were made for Whiteleys, London’s first department store when it opened in 1863. According to UK Travel Search, London, “Hitler was particularly taken with Whiteley’s during a visit and vowed to make it his headquarters after Britain was brought under the yoke of the Third Reich.”

Let’s Get Weaving

To start with, here’s a wall of “stuff”, most of it weaving but with a touch of crochet, knitting, spinning and dyeing thrown in.

And now my first piece of”wide-ish” weaving on my grown-up 4 -shaft George Harris loom.

There are 120 warps on this piece of weaving, all of them one-ply different coloured hemp from The House of Hemp.

The turquoise blue is one-ply hemp (exactly the same as some of the hemp used for the warp). the purple and blue is a ball of space-dyed, or random dubious “yarn” that happened to be lurking. By varying the depth of stripes I hope I have made this small piece of weaving look quite crafty and individual.

Do you remember my Bag for the Bridegroom’s Mother? Well this next piece of weaving uses the same warp as the blue/purple piece above with a weft of the remaining yarn that was four different yarns plied together to make a colour that matched the Bridegroom’s Mum’s outfit.

I really impressed myself here. I started the weaving with about 2cm of tabby weave, then changed to twill and back again for the last couple of cms to tabby. As this weft is thicker but looser, the coloured warps show through slightly so you can see a sort of shadow of coloured vertical stripes.

Finally using the very last of my 120 warp threads I chopped up some manky maroon cotton ties that I think had been made for a school show of some sort and wove tabby till I ran out of warp. This created a lumpy, bumpy, rustic, folksy piece in which the coloured warps are clearly visible.

My Darling Little Dragonfly

Mouth open as usual to answer back! You wouldn’t expect any more from a teenager, would you? Off to her last exam (for now) Unfortunately she takes after her mother in the Maths dept so I know how excruciating this morning will be for her.

Never mind, Dragonfly then has all summer to fly around. Have a wonderful summer!

Stash-busting progress

Using this….

I’ve been making this….

with a largish hook I made 130 chain and started randomish stripes using dc (double crochet or single crochet if you are from the USA)

I’ll keep going till I run out of yarn in these colours. It’s a snuggly throw ‘cos some of it is fluffy yarn. Just right for cuddling up with one or two others and watching a film on a rainy day.

DANGER stash-busting in progress

Pics later

Cosy Times

I’d been wanting to have a felting session every since my Sunday with Dawn down at Dorking with felting queen Gillian Harris. On Saturday I was determined that nothing should get in my way and here is the result. the design is from Gill’s new book and despite my husband thinking it is a jellyfish it is actually a cupcake. This has been made as a present for someone and so I can’t say any more.

Sunday Never Felt So Good!

Almost half a year since we first met, Dawn and I met up again to play with fibrous stuffs. This time it was at a felt workshop with Gillian Gladrag (alias Gillian Harris).

Her home is a wondrous Aladdin’s Cave of colourful arty stuff. No details here. I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise in case you decide to take part in one of her classes. No more than five in a group and lunch provided. Who needs afternoon tea at the Ritz? Who needs a weekend at a spa retreat? This is the stuff for stressed-out souls. Fluffy, soapy colour therapy.

Arranged around the soap dish and small pieces of merino fleece tops are the five items made by the five of us who eagerly lapped up Gillian’s expertise, enthusiasm and tea-making skills.

For those of you who know Dawn and me, can you guess which are our works of art?