Fabric bins

I used this easy tutorial to make my very first fabric bin. 

Since I couldn't find my iron-on lining stabilizer stuff (Pellon-equivakent), I used batting and quilted all over the place. It's not super sturdy, but I don't have any comparison of what it would be like with the Pellon... and it stands up without problem, so the bin works for me.

Now I gotta figure out what to put inside... :-)

Tea Time

Today I am sharing a commissioned work with you. It's a cover for a lidded stove, 2 by 2 feet finished size. The lady who ordered it provided the fabric (which is not quilting weight cotton but a heavy cotton weave --- this made it tricky to work with, because it frayed terribly, but it was lovely and smooth to quilt). She wanted a kitchen theme on the cover.

I started by browsing the internet for tea cup and a tea pot shape, which I printed and traced onto thin paper. I then cut out blue fabric in those shapes and used a zigzag stitch around the edges to apply the shapes to the quilt top.

I quilted the details from the tracing paper with contrasting thread. This gave the shapes some nice dimensionality, too.

To make things easier, I did not cut the thread till the end and just hopped from spot to spot.

Here's a view of the back.

I quilted some steam coming out of the tea pot (the first layer was in matching beige thread, but you can just make it out here.

With the same beige thread, I filled the background. I thought about tearing out some of the wavy lines right down the center and redoing them to get better perspective, but in the end, it was not worth the effort, so I left it this way.

I added some blue thread to emphasize the steam coming out of the tea pot and used proper quilting weight cotton in matching blue for the binding (just attached to the front in this shot).

Here it is all sewn down by hand (possibly my favourite part of quilting)...

And here's the back, including the label, of course!

It was a fun little project, though I once again noticed that I prefer non-commissioned work. I can do what I want without wondering whether the customer will like it, and there's no deadline!

Julia's Quilt Finito!

Okay, in the interest of ease and time, I stippled this quilt with rather big loops. My machine is quite slow on the different voltage in Europe. Maybe it's the adapter I use, but I haven't looked into a different model yet. I also bought a machine here that I use for piecing (I'd go mad piecing at the speed of my old Singer from Canada), but I haven't bought any attachments for free-motion quilting.

Amazingly, no problem quilting or putting on the binding, and ah! it was so pieceful and quiet to sew down the binding on the front...

Here's the finished product, delivered on schedule to my grandmother's:

Measures about 55 x 78 inches.

Back of Julia's Quilt

Okay, next installment of the quilt for my cousin Julia.

This is a close up of the backing fabric:

I took some of the fabrics from the front and cut out the letters of her name and enlargements of the flowers on the white fabric, to be appliqued.

I don't really bother with heat'n'bond paper, glues or sprays to fix applique in place; I either find that the quilt gets too stiff with an extra layer, or don't have the stuff and can't be bothered to buy them for the rare times I need them.  I'm more of a piecer, on the whole. So pins do the trick for me...

I did the quick way of appliqueing, i.e. zigzagging around the shapes. Folding the edges under and hand-appliqueing is a lot prettier, but also takes a lot longer, and of course, there's a deadline for this quilt (upcoming birthday).

Okay, time for basting!

What it takes to get me quilting...

... a sick friend, apparently.

So it was time for a cheer-you-up little quilt, the motif was chosen based on an insider joke of ours...

I don't think I've done a scene like this before, but it was fairly basic.

I sketched my scene, then layed out scraps of fabric that I had at hand until the image worked for me:

Next, I ironed the small scraps to heat'n'bond and laid them out as I wanted them, as a final check of fabric choices. The larger pieces I cut to size but didn't heat'n'bond them:

I then sewed the background layers to a foundation piece of muslin, ironed the small heat'n'bond pieces on top (I always have a hard time getting them to stick to the base... I might heat them too much when I attach the paper to the applique piece. When the backing paper is removed, the glue is supposed to look milky, and it doesn't always do that, even though I have the setting on silk and only count to 2 seconds as per instructions. Maybe I count too slowly!). Then I outline quilted things like the palmtree leaves, the sun, the umbrella, person and beatch towel. The palm trunk, sand, ocean and sky received matching patterns and the sun got some extra rays:
It finished at around 8x12" which fits perfectly into a large brown envelope with 2 chocolate bars another little gift and a long letter. Started the quilt on Friday, worked on it again Sunday and had it in the mail on Tuesday - hopefully some of the rays of sunshine will reach my friend!

I've been doing a *little* bit of other quilting too. Days are getting colder and darker outside! More about that some other day, I've had enough of slow internet for one day!!!

Jen's Quilt - A Big Tree

I had another request from a friend to make her a quilt as a commission. We started picking out fabrics together at the store, and the she bought a bunch more and mailed them to me.

Originally, she wanted a copy of my Mossy Monkey Mechanic, but then she found another pattern, and another and another ;) One of the quilt pictures she sent me looked really familiar and turned out to be a quilt made by Anne of Film and Thread (my friend found the photo on someone's photo collection site and it took me a while to figure out where I knew the quilt from)

In the end, my friend let me decide whether to make her a tree similar to Anne's or a Lonestar (the one with diamond shapes, 8 pointed) as long as her aubergine fabric was the main fabric.

I picked the tree and made a bigger version of my Tree of Hope. A much bigger version. Queen-sized, to be specific :)

I started by laying out two strips of background aubergine fabric and playing with the layout of the tree trunk and leaves I had cut out.

When I liked the layout, I used safety pins to fixate all the pieces.


Then I took the 2 background pieces apart to have less fabric to maneuvre around the machine while I free-motion straight-stitched around all the leaves and the trunk pieces.

When that was all done, I joined the background pieces with a straight seam across, and sewed down the rest of the trunk (that went across the seam).

I also started playing around with borders. I had figured out measurement to use 3" (final) squares in rows of 4 all the way around. I forgot that I had cut the background fabric a bit bigger, for safety (not sure what kind of safety... where could I have possibly lost fabric in one straight seam???) Anyway, because of that, the number of squares I cut wasn't enough to reach all the way around, and 4 rows in the border would have made the quilt bigger than my friend wanted it.

(Looking at this layout now, I think I will add some more leaves to the right, the heaviness on the left bothers me a wee bit :)

So I downsized to 3 rows, still okay, and maybe less overpowering for the centre...


Here are the squares of the border sewn together - I love how quilts look better and better when the seams are completed - raw edges sometimes really make a layout look bad, but I've learned to trust that finished seams will make layouts and even colour combinations look better!


In between joining border blocks, I zigzagged around the leaves and the trunk. I only did the original seam to hold everything in place and not run into problems with shifting fabric. I didn't use any glue, interface or fusible webbing to hold this shapes in place, and didn't have any problems.


The border is now attached to the quilt center - looks great! Just didn't have a chance to take a photo yet. I'm also still waiting on a recent thread order to finish zigzagging around some leaves for which I didn't have a matching thread colour... I have 2 more months to finish this quilt, my own deadline, and since I'm planning some elaborate quilting, that'll be just enough time!

I love making a quilt for someone I care about, especially when they were involved in the design process!

Tree Of Hope

A professor I know from my post-graduate years and who helped me a lot when the going was rough has been fighting cancer for several years. He's about to get a bone marrow transplant and more chemotherapy in the coming weeks. I've stayed in touch with him since my graduation almost 3 years ago, and when I heard about the transplant, I decided to send him a little something to show that I'm thinking of him. I'm not all that good with words when it comes to sad occasions (you should have seen me struggle with a condolence card I was writing for someone else yesterday), so I did what I'm good at: quilting.


I opted for a small wall-hanging - if he likes it, maybe it'll brighten up his hospital room for him!
I zig-zagged around each leaf and the stem to hold the pieces in place.

Next, I added a bit of swirly quilting for some movement in the quilt - could be wind swirling around the tree?


I used black backing fabric...


... with the different colours of thread I used, the quilt is almost reversible :)


Because of the light background fabric, the quilting really stands out from the shadows that are created - I like that effect a lot!


Often such trees are called trees of life, but he already has life, so I'm calling it tree of hope, since that's what I hope he has lots of!
I hope he likes it and that it adds some happiness to this tough time. While I was making the quilt, I also mused about the connection of transplant and tree. I think I chose a good metaphor for the whole situation, wouldn't you say?

Two Finishes!

Well, I'm sitting at home with strep throat, bored out of my mind, so I managed to finish two quilts this week, and one of them hand-quilted, wahoo!

Today, I'll show you the machine-quilted one (won't have anything else finished in the next few days, so I've got to stretch this over at least two posts ;)

The only thing holding me up with my Hoot Hoot quilt was the lack of embroidery thread and needle. For how little I needed to do on this quilt, I didn't want to go and buy everything needed, but I was lucky enough to find someone I could borrow a needle and a foot of thread from! After that, it only took a day to get the claws and 'ear-hair' on the owl:


I basted the quilt that same afternoon.


Didn't have any hesitation deciding on the quilting, for some reason... sometimes the ideas just snap right in, other times I have to hum and hah for a few months, it seems.

I started with the owl, outlining the wings, body, face and pupils as I didn't trust all of my hand-applique to hold up during subsequent washes. I also quilted some feathers (the owl kind, not the decorative kind) on the body.


Next, I loopy-loop quilted all over the background. I learned that you have to plan carefully where to start if you don't want to cross lines and end up where you started WITHOUT having to go around the outside of the quilt first - puffiness alarm! I made it work somehow, but next time I'll think ahead ;)


Lastly, I outlined around the wonky stacked coins. That was a bit of a pain because I used a walking foot, so had to turn every 1/2" to 2". Luckily, it was a small stack of coins!


And here is the finished product!


You can even see the owl outline on the back (on the left in this pictures)!



This quilt was fun to make and I love the personal touch of my own applique shape. Maybe I'll make a series next, I'd love to make a giraffe and an elephant!!

Stay tuned for finish #2!

Hoot Hoot Greetings

I've finished appliqueing the owl to my Hoot Hoot quilt.

I'm currently searching for my big needles to embroider "ear hair" and claws. I'm getting a bit impatient to get going, so if I don't find them soon, I'll go and buy new needles.


Question for you: I also can't find my stash of embroidery yarn, do you think wool will do the trick or should I just go and buy some thicker yarn (embroidery or darning or whatever)?