Free Motion Quilting...

I went to the sewing machine shop on Satuday to help a friend buy a machine for her sister (a birthday gift - talk about best sister ever!) and I finally managed to pick up a darning foot for my machine.

Thus, I had a bit of a go at free motion quilting... and boy, it's HARD!!! Below are a couple of images of my attempts, and I definitely need to have some more practice before I let myself loose on anything I actually care about!

My somewhat pathetic attempt at stippling - I need to practice the whole drawing with thread thing, draw wiggly lines on sheets of paper and all that.

Some fake roses, spirals for the roses that aren't too bad, and some leaves, the first of which was TERRIBLE (I bet you can guess which one it is!) but the second and third improved. Also some more utterly pathetic stippling on this one too.

Muslin Draft 1...

I finished stitching my esprit dress muslin together today. The first thing I learnt - sewing curves is tricky! Secondly, I need to make some alterations to the pattern before making the real thing. However, for a first try both at this dress in particular and pattern altering in general I don't think it's too bad.

The Front: there is some baggy-ness around the front of the armholes, and it's a bit tight around the hips, so I need to let that out slightly so it doesn't pull across so much.
The Back: You can't quite see it here but it gapes quite a bit at the top of the centre back, and as you can see it has gathered up quite a lot by my lower back, so I need to fix that too.
To help me with these alterations I got a book from the library to help me with called "Fast Fit: Easy Pattern Alterations for Every Figure". I'm not sure what it's like or if it's even any good, but it was the only one they had on fitting patterns, so I figured I'd give it a go.

I got a few other books while I was at the library, mostly sewing ones, but also one called "A Guide to Elegance" that caught my eye on she shelf above the sewing books, which has some very entertaining passages in it. Here's one that caught my eye earlier on the topic of shopping:

"Shopping provides that same joys in the city that hunting does in the country - in both cases the huntress is rewarded by bagging the object or animal of her dreams!"

Hexacushion

I finished off something with some of my paper pieced hexagons last night:

A little cushion cover for one of the cushions we have in the living room that was looking very grubby... emphasis on the word little. I deliberately wanted it to be slightly smaller than the cushion to make it a bit more puffy, but limitations with fabric (I used the leftovers of the navy flannelette from the back of my couch quilt) meant it ended up being quite a bit smaller than the cushion, so I hacked up the cushion to make it smaller so it fit in the cover.

Quilt Mockup...

The other night while avoiding finishing tidying my room I decided to make a quilt mock-up because after not really liking my last one I really want to love this quilt I thought I'd make a mock-up of what it might look like (based on the fabrics I currently have but with the triangles completely random):

(the picture is clickable for a bigger version)

The images of the fabrics are based on 2" squares, which would allow for about 1/4 of the sequence of the gene. 1" squares would allow for the whole sequence... so I'm still pondering sizes...

Quilt Fabrics

Today I went on a little field trip to Amitie. The aim was to go and have a look at quilt fabrics to get ideas and such for my next quilt... and yes I did look at fabrics (for quite some time as I'm so indecisive), but I also ended up buying some.

This is what I bought (20cm of each), dark and light:

I also got swatches of the following to ponder over some more:

As you can probably see, I've decided to go for greens/blues for the dark triangles, and then whites and almost whites for the light triangles.

Quilt musings...

Since finishing my quilt I've known that while I don't hate it, I definitely don't love it. I love how it's been keeping me warm, but I don't love it, and for a quilt that's going to live on my bed (when it's cold enough to need one) I want to love it.

Thus, I am definitely going to make another one, and for this one I intend on specifically buying the fabrics for it rather than mushing together what I can from what I have lying around.

To this end I've been pondering colour schemes... no idea, fabric styles... not really any idea, and designs... no idea until this evening when I came across this site. Now a genome quilt... that's right up my alley! I could even make it more personal by using the sequence of beta3 integrin, the gene around which my research focuses.

I've even made a sort of mock-up of what the gene would look like as a pattern, but with colours instead of angled triangles:


Ambitious? For me, yes, more-so if I use the whole sequence of 4894 bases rather than a segment of it. Awesome in a super-geeky kind of way? Hell yeah!

Finally named...

After canvassing opinions from various locations (mostly on the internets) I have finally settled on a name for my quilt on my bed...

Hex's...

A combination of being lazy to get my sewing machine out this past weekend and too cold to want to venture out of my warm and cosy bedroom unnecessarily, so (once again) inspired by Aneela's pictures, and the fact that I had a little pile of cut out hexagons in my sewing box (from who knows when!) I thought I'd give paper pieced hexagons a go.

Normally I HATE hand sewing. It bores me and I get frustrated over how long everything takes me to do. However, making the hex's was surprisingly relaxing, and I had quite quickly assembled a very respectable pile.


However, I then realised that maybe the sewing together of the hexagons might be less fun than the making of the hexagons, so I tried sewing a few together... and finding that just as enjoyable I added a couple more... and then a couple more, until I now have this many sewn together:


I got to this point and thought "what the hell am I going to do with these (any any subsequent) hexagons???" (well I'd thought it before this point but I had been pushing it to the back of my mind). This is a thought I'm still having, so I'd be super grateful for any suggestions...

I've started one thing, I've picked some of the green and blue ones and stitched them together and "quilted" them onto a piece of fabric (nothing between the two layers) and am planning on having them as one side of a coin purse (with dark green on the back):


But I haven't a clue what to do with the rest of them... everything I think of is either too ambitious for a hand sewing project (eg a quilt), or has a very high chance of becoming a "oh dear god, what were you thinking?" item, which I would like to avoid!

So, yeah, any suggestions?

Shopping Bag...

A little pressie I made for my Dad to make his weekly trips to the supermarket a tiny bit more interesting:

The bag was made by following this tutorial with a couple of changes:
- I didn't line it, it's made from a single layer of calico. I zigzagged around the edges to somewhat finish them.
- I made it out of one piece of fabric so there's no seam at the top of the handles (having a seam there is a bit bulky and not so comfy for carrying)
- The tongue is machine stitched onto the fabric with a straight stitch
- It doesn't have the pocket detailed in the tutorial

One UFO down...

The task I set myself this weekend was to tackle my UFO box, so settling down in front of some trashy movies this evening I set to work. Sadly, the first UFO I ran out of the right colour thread half way through working on the first one, so it's back in the box. Happily though, the second is finished and already being worn!



I introduce to you my newest pair of PJ bottoms! They are super comfy and made from the same pattern as my argyle PJ bottoms. However they do look like they're made for someone a great deal taller than my humble 5"4... I may need to re-hem them!

There's a matching PJ top still waiting to be made, rather experimentally the pattern was traced from a PJ top I own, so we'll see how that turns out!