Tic Tac Toe

A couple of boys I know were visiting here recently. They spent some time playing TicTacToe on paper, and I remembered how tedious it is to always redraw the lines for the game. Then I saw a tutorial for take along games via Sew Mama Sew and thought: Great idea for a christmas gift!

I adapted the idea to my own liking, of course, since these boys are not into checkers (as far as I know).

 I started with 2 pieces of background fabric (about 8" square). Then machine-appliqued white stripes (about 7"x0.5") in the TicTacToe pattern onto one piece. Placed the 2 pieces face to face, sewed around them, turned them inside out and fortified the edge with a seam (about 1/8" from the edge). I "quilted" (there's no batting inside, but hey) around the white stripes (about 1/4" from the stripes) to keep the 2 layers of background fabric together.

The game pieces are simple flanelette circles, sewn together by machine (the edges are raw, but I zigzagged near the edge to minimize fraying). I used a thread spool to trace the circles.

Rather than making extra draw-string bags for the game pieces and the game-board, I decided to minimize parts (that could be lost) and made the gameboard itself into the game "box".

All the game pieces are stacked in the middle, then the board is folded up along the natural fold lines of the white stripes.

Out of a 2" strip, I made a tube with a loop at one end and attached this tube (ironed flat) with a button to the back of the game board. I matched the tube length to fit once around the folded up game board and voila, the whole game becomes a neat package that can be chucked into a backpack to go to the pool or for a car journey etc.

I've been told the gift was a hit on Christmas morning and the boys tried it out right away. That's the best kind of "thanks" once could wish for!

Similar to visiting friends and finding a gifted quilt being well-used, with some signs of wear and tear, right?

Diaper-friendly pants

I saw photos of some cute toddler pants on  Mairuru's blog and immediately thought that would be a cute gift for a friend of mine who had a baby girl this year. The bum on these pants is so big, that diapers should easily fit inside...

I didn't have a pattern, so simply eyeballed it and then fixed it where necessary (my original estimate may have fit a giraffe baby, the legs were much too narrow...).

I also used a draw string instead of an elastic so that the pants can grow with the baby.
 

I hope the pants fit, maybe I will have a photo of pants+baby to post!

Happy New Year!

Triple Constellation Part C

Well, the top is finished and the thread colours are chosen... as soon as I'm done with the current foot attachment on my machine, the free-motion foot will go on and I'll look for inspiration on how to quile this last part. Stay tuned!

Triple Constellation Part B - Lines

I love contrast in quilting, so to go with the all-over-the-place, different-size bubbles, I decided on a parallel grid pattern. I didn't want the pattern to be too ridgid, so left out every 3rd line, ending up with 2" - 1" - 2" - 1" etc. in between quilt lines. I simply used masking tape to mark the quilt lines and quilted along either side of the tape.

Using the tape was much easier than marking all the lines with a pen and then having to get rid of the markings later. The method uses up a lot of masking tape, but I simply reused small bits that I had left over from taping quilt backings to the floor for basting. After a while, these bits aren't strong enough anymore to hold the quilt backing to the floor (too much fuzz collects on them), but they're fine to string together for marking a quilt line...

Whenever possible, I simply lifted the needle and foot and moved across to the next seam without cutting the thread. This reduces the chance of thread-ends balling up or getting tangled when starting a new quilt line with loose thread ends.

View from the under side, all finished and squared up.

And the front...

Once all three parts are ready, I will decide on the binding colour... whether to match each quilt or use the same colour to link the 3 parts together...

Triple Constellation Part B - Bubbles

Next comes Part B. I decided to do bubbles in the circles this time. The plan is to use different quilting styles and combinations on each part of the wall-hanging.

The bubbles pattern is one of my favourite free-motion quilting patterns. Especially on a small section such as this, it's a lot of effect for relatively little work.

I want to bounce on these!

A little oopsie-daisy happened about 5 seconds into free-motion quilting. I missed a pin, it snuck up from behind the foot and caught me so unawares that I quilted right over it. Unfortunately in such a way (as you can see) that I couldn't simply fiddle the needle out. What a pain to have to cut the threat after 5 cm of quilting! But hey, I'm glad my needle didn't break when it hit the pin... 

Next up: the background quilting on Part B.

Triple Constellation Part A

Progress on a WIP to report! Woot woot! First though: a refresher -->

This part of the three-part wall hanging has been done for a while. I tried to use thread and quilting to make the 3/4 circles look like almost full circles, fading the clearly delineated missing quarter into the background. However, short of quilting that part of the quilt into a solid brick, I gave up trying. There was just too much light-dark contrast to bridge, and it may have needed fabric paint or something, and I'm not really interested in trying that...

Here is the back, you can see what I mean about trying to soften the transition from background fabric to circle fabric.

Snooty cat revived

Ages - and I mean AGES - ago, I started a quilt that went awry. The Snooty Cat Quilt. Last posted about over 4 years ago (when I described my dilemma in detail).

The other day, I got out the pieces and thought, what the heck. They're cut wrong and don't fit and don't make exactly the patter I planned back then, BUT, they'll make some kind of pattern, and who cares anyway!

So I started sewing them together. So what if the diagonals in the rectangles don't meet the corners of the center square...

The basic pattern is still there, I get to use up this line of fabric, and best of all, I'm quilting :)

Besides this project on the go, I am hand-quilting the first of those 2 baby quilts (the dark one) and making a little iCover for one of those Apple products :)

Happy quilting!