Fabric ATCs done.

While they may not be as polished and amazingly stitched as some I have seen in my travels across the internet, I am pretty happy with these. Sometimes, it is more about bringing your own vision to life than it is about floowing someone else’s path, even if the end result is perhaps not as …good? No, that isn’t right. As technically proficient, maybe.

In the end I opted for the stamped lady, and text about screaming.

I played with placement, but somehow she really wanted to be in the landscape format. which is unusual, because I would say 90% of the ATCs I make, and that I see in galleries, seem to be portrait. But no, she really needed to be landscape. And the text is randon quotes and pieces of quotes about screams

• 

• 

• 

• 

I can see from the photos I probably need to neaten up the edges a little more, although in some ways the frayed aspect echos the poor lady and her frayed nerves. She clearly has issues….

WOYWW tomorrow, so the final completion of those long struggled-with coins (if you think back I’ll bet you know which ones I refer to) will have to wait a day. I need to re-post my WOYWW stamps for anyone who might have missed them after the fact last week, and my desk is again in a state of disarray so I need to snap a shot of the chaos and then sort my shit out!

Quilted ATCs

After making the Life Book class stitched meditation, I thought that making fabric ATCs might be a fun idea. I looked at the fabric piles I still had all over my desk and picked out a large piece for the background.

I kinda gridded off the 2.5 x 3.5 inch blocks, although that kinda went out the window as I started the process. I cut up some bits of fabric, in the same way as for the meditation (no circles tho’) and laid them out. I used the ATC sized window to preview how the cards might look:

So then the sewing. I should perhaps of done a bit of research, cause a lot of people have made quilted or fabric ATCs an the most common method seems to be using what is basically a buttonhole stitch all around the edges. I didn’t do that, my versions is way more raggedy, a bit rough and ready, which I am totally OK with. I might try the other method at some point but this is what I thought to do. I ironed all the small pieces on to fusible web then ironed them on to the background. Some of the bits, like the long strips and the small squares, I stitched onto the background which I backed with medium weight cardstock. I cut them into ATC sized blocks.

I used a zig zag stitch just inside the edges of the cards and ended up with these as backgrounds

I think you can see what I mean by rough and ready! I did want to disguise the card peeping thru on the edges, so I inked them using Archival ink rather than my usual Distress ink.

So now I have to make a decision and I am struggling a bit with which of the two screaming figures I want to use!

I like them both quite a lot and can’t decide between the two. I think I will ponder on it for a bit – I am having another idea looking at them. One I considered a while back for a troublesome set of backgrounds that I want to use but have not found the right focal point for. I think I might have. Wait and see…

Kids. DOH!

DS has been home for a bit, preparing for a number of things – some shoutcasting at Insomnia and a gig at a tournament in Transylvania (seriously – I couldn’t make it up)  in the short-term, job interviews and potentially getting his own business off the ground – so it’s been all about suit shopping and website building and (my part) business cards.

We had two designs.  You’ll see which we picked but curious – which one do you like better?

So having gone to all the trouble of printing and hand-cutting business cards, I had t then figure out some way for him to carry them.  I had made him a phone case so I went looking for a good business card case tutorial.  I found this one but as I had no fabric stiffener I had to alter it in a fairly major way to make it work and not be too thick. I managed it and really like how quick it is and how cute, but I am still trying to sort out the measurements.

The red and dotty one started as a 9 x 7 inch piece, the madras one as 8 1/2 x 6 1/2 and the green one 7 1/2 x 5 1/2.  They all fit a UK sized card but the green one not a US sized one – and it won’t fit many.  I am not sure I like the hair band as the clasp, since it is kinda bumpy.  And since making these I thought of a couple of modifications that will make it all a lot easier.  But I need some supplies.  Lucky DD and I are popping in to town for a movie and I can make a quick dash to the fabric store and get hat I need (I hope!)

So in the end we went with the left design, but altered to be on white (good thing too, cause printing a back background sucks printer ink like MAD) and I used a corner chomper to make them a bit more distinctive

 

 

I so wish I had a die to cut and emboss the edges rather than cutting by hand.  No matter how precise you try to be there are always teeny tiny variations.   I experimented with one of my oval dies and I like it, but DS thought it was a bit too artsy fartsy, and hard to fit in a wallet.  Lucky he only needed 20 to walk around with, in case he needed to hand out details.  Next time he can order them!

If I manage to decide on the perfect size and the best fastener I’ll share my version. Right now, the sunshine is calling for towels to get hung out on the line and DD and her movie-day date with Mom awaits….

Emergency phone case and my blog 2014 in review

Happy New Year to all my followers, readers, casual drop-ins .. really, anyone who stumbles on this 1 January 2015 post.

It will be DS’s birthday on a couple of days and as he has been complaining about his phone for ages, DH sourced him a new one, a Cyanogen 1+

Amazingly good price, although an android one, not a Mac, and WAY big.  DS complains it is too big to fit in his pocket, but these days it seems big phablets (phone the size of a tablet) seem to be the norm.  OK, this one isn’t THAT big but it measures in at about 3 x 6 inches. He wanted a case of some kind to keep the screen safe when he drops it in his backpack, so I made him this one, quickly, this morning.  I showed him a huge range of fabrics from my stash and his comment? There are only two good fabric in the whole stack. That’ll teach me to ask for input from the colour deficient.

You can’t go wrong with black and white.

On the plus side, he liked his socks.  Shades of grey, you may recall.  They are a little big – he apparently has huge FEET but very aristocratic (slim) ankles.  I will be taking measurements before he can slip away.  He likes them and says they are warm, so there is that, at least.

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog. Is anyone but me even remotely interested?  Perhaps not….

Here’s an excerpt:

The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 260,000 times in 2014. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 11 days for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

I checked back to last year and I had 30,000 more views this year.  I make that 82 more visits per day.  I am NOT surprised my best day in the year was both a WOYWW day AND a calendar download post.

Have a lovely weekend!  I’ll be spending the next few days with DS before he has to trundle off up to snowy Scotland, back to Uni.  Missing my crop, but there will be another next month and Ds won’t be back for AGES…..

Crochet hook roll

I found my crochet hooks (YAY!) and as I had duplicates of most sizes. I decided rather than putting all my hooks in one basket, as it were, I’d make a quick little roll to store them.  I figure I may lose track of ONE of my storage devices but it’s unlikely I’ll lose track of BOTH of them LOL!

Pretty simple, actually.  I found a tutorial online for one made from felt, a no-sew version that is actually designed for storing coloured pencils. I sort of adapted it, adding some sewing.  I used a 3 inch strip of felt for the hook storage part.  Cut the felt slits first, using some ruler tape I got from the local discount store.  For the smallest hooks I used a 1/2 inch measure and about 1 inch for the super fat ones:

I took an 18 x 22 inch fat quarter and folded the edged in.  I left about a 2 inch gap in the middle.

I sewed along the open edges.  With the gap there was no need to leave a gap on the edge to turn it right side out!

I laid the hook strip over the gap and sewed that to the fabric.  I added a fold of ribbon on one end to create a tie.

You can see the hooks fit with plenty of room top and bottom, so I was able to fold over those edges.  That will just contain the hooks so they can’t escape!

I sewed the bottom in place but added Velcro to the top part.  It might have been OK to sew both folds down, really, but it might have made getting the hooks at the ends out of the roll a bit harder.

All tucked in to place- but before I sewed the bottom in place.

and rolled!

Nice and compact. Slipping the hooks in to place isn’t as easy as if I had sewn in in a strip of elastic then sewn channels into it, but it’s not really difficult. Slipping them OUT is no problem at all.  I’m always losing track of my weaving in needles so I stuck one of them in there as well.

Easy peasy and really took only about 30 minutes to create! Now, DD is home today and we’ve done the movie thing but she wants me to figure out the written instructions for a loom bracelet (DOH!  And I thought I had managed to escape the craze – apparently not….) so I’m off to do THAT.  Typically she didn’t pick the easiest pattern for me to figure out. Off to YouTube I think…

{sigh}

Bags? not really

I have been trying to sort out those quilts for LillyBo, a I’ll be taking them off to the WOYWW crop tomorrow.  First, the labels – I had been cutting up some old shirts for a project and was looking at the bits I was cutting off, and…

They are small and seem to work pretty well – as these all had the bindings completely stitched they had to be top-stitched, but for future ones I can sew them in under the binding stitching, I think:

Now, I ended up carrying through with my original plan which was to make them all nto “pillows” because I like the fact they could do double-duty then, for in the car, or in the hospital.  All made with fairly cuddly fabrics – polar fleece, terry towelling and flannel…

I am doubting that I will be able to get all the quilting done on the in-progress one before tomorrow, but then I guess there is an excuse for JoZarty  to meet me for a coffee on her routine travels.  . . .

 

WIP for the week – so much in progress!

I have been mad crazy busy, and not entirely down to crafty things, so I thought I would do a little wrap-up of works in progress, some shared, some not. A mix of papercraft and quilting.  Going back to the oldest thing, is this little quilt.  I was playing around with the Jelly Roll Race idea, of sewing all the strips in one long line, then matching the ends, and sewing, halving the length and doubling the width with each seam.  Google it, it’s well-known.  I thought Humm – I have the 4 or 5 fat quarters, I wonder what would happen if I used them, in fatter “strips? Not a total success, the blocks of colour were too large. I might experiment with alternate rotating of the FQs, first sewing them slightly shorter side to slightly longer side, to vary the way the patches match up, IYKWIM, for the next attempt.

I experimented with hacking it up and re-sewing it back together in different ways, then finally hacked it in to large squares, maybe 12 x 12, with the goal of having the most interesting mix of bits in each block.  I sliced THEM, inserting strips of super bright solids, and a bit of a B&W dotty scrap, did sone framing of the randomly sized bits, then laid it all out and joined in rows or blocks.  It was all a bit of a puzzle,  but I ended up quite liking the result.  I added some sashing and backed it with that cheetah print fleece that I mentioned once having NO IDEA what I might use it for.  I then experimented with BIG STITCH quilting with some high contrast, for each block, pearle cotton.  It’s appealing to me, but clearly my BIG STITCHES need some uniformity, although I actually LIKE the very rustic and almost childlike look of the imperfect stitches. Or at least that’s what I tell myself LOL!

So then I started quilting that other dotty one, using the CM circle cutter as a template.  Stitches getting better, more uniform, but still not there yet.  They get better towards the end of a long session, then by the next session, they get a bit less precise.

Like it on the front, but REALLY like it on the back! Those circles really POP.

I also have on the go the LARGE one that I posted last week – that one is my first serious attempt at machine quilting,  Straight lines all of them, but that’s OK.  Three of the four long panels are pieced and quilted and trimmed – they will eventually be joined into a whole piece using the QAYG joining.  I find the long panels straddle the line between QAYG and full-on free-motion machine quilting, in the sense that they still need to be manipulated thru the machine, but are not as cumbersome as a full pieced top would be.  I consider it a sort of intermediate step. This is a slightly earlier stage, with only two of them quilted and only one trimmed.  Still playing around with the placement and orientation of the bias colour block strips, as I let it grow fairly organically, with no real plan when I began, except it was going to be sliced and the color blocks inserted with the alternating light/dark areas.  I think of it as my Escalator quilt LOL!

The chili clock has moved on a lot too!  I have been using UTEE (thanks to all commenters who suggested that) to emboss the chilis. and leaving it rather pebble-y, not super smooth.  I’ve added the ones I previously Glossy Accented as the bottom layer, around the edges, so I can still USE them rather than cut a whole load more and re-do them.  I also did two more sets in two different sizes, so I can fill the whole surround, more or less. I also did the numbers (just the four) on green chilis and MAY decide to do the rest of the numbers, slightly smaller, as well.  Just the centre to sort out! Here’s the progress shot. Nothing except the edging of peppers around the black frame is stuck down so it’s all a bit of a mess at the moment:

I am determined to sort it fully over the weekend.

My last WIP is the ATC play for WOYWW.  I think I have decided on a plan of action.  I’ll do ONE that is unique, that is for the person for the “official” swap (i.e the person above or below me, whichever it is) and then as many as I feel like making that will be earmarked for those WOYWWers who want to swap additional ATCs outside the official one that I know/follow.  I may also do a handful that will be for people who want to swap but who are not ones that I manage to get to every week.  This is the one for people I follow, or at least the germ of the idea – I think you can guess where it’s going.  Gelli prints come in to play, the background on card, the topper on deli paper:

Just two more bits LOL! First, I thought I would repost the printable I did ages ago, of ATC backers.  If they appeal and you can use them, do feel free to grab them.

I am sort of planning to update them – I want to look at a few more to make sure I’ve included all the usual info (Title, card series info, date made, email or address, and a signature on this one – am I missing anything??) and maybe update the font and colours.  I really like the title of ATC by Me so will probably stick with that.  I have an idea using my current pattern obsession (can you guess what it is?) but not 100% sure it will work like I want it to.

Last, finally, is a bit of software.  DH pointed me in the direction of this nifty little thing – called TextExpander.  Mac only, I’m afraid, but there may be a comparable PC thing, I don’t know.  Anyway, this week I was so late, doing my WOYWW visits and struggled with stuff that kept getting in my way on the day.  I was determined to at the very least visit anyone who visited ME and left a comment and then try to hit as many of the blogs that are people I know or think of as ones I “follow.” Now I know the whole copy/paste of the same generic comment in every blog (Nice desk with no indication the post was actually read) is not looked on favourably by some, and I have never done that, but I did want to note my lateness but NOT have to copy that into the comments section, then either type or copy and paste my blog name in a two-step process – since I don’t use Blogger or Google blogging, I always have to select Open ID and WordPress and fill in that info then submit and publish (for every comment!) What TextExpander does is let me type a snippet of text and assign it an abbreviation.  Then, every time I type that abbreviation, I get a little BLOOP noise and the text replaces the abbreviation.  Magic.  The abbreviation has to be something you aren’t going to type on its own (like WOYWW wouldn’t work, but for me, w late (all one word) gets replaced with this:
Happy WOYWW!

MA (8) (so very late this week!)

Then I can have my blog name stored in my command+P (paste) and both sign my comment and fill in my blog info in two strokes.  Normally I even type my “signature” and Happy WOYWW! every time, so this lets me spend MORE time reading the post and focusing on the content of the comment, rather than the generic stuff. If you have a Mac, check it out – there is a trial download.  If you are on a PC and know a way to do this, feel free to comment so others can see.  In just a day or two I have already found it massively useful for a number of things.

Good lord, that got way longer than I planned!  I’ll  hope to get the clock sorted and post the final at some point over the weekend. Thanks for sticking with me if you managed to read ALLLL the bits.  Kudos to you if you did!

A quilt for ME!

Having done enough smaller quilts for LillyBo (although still not delivered them yet! I keep saying I have to make the bags! but can’t set aside all the stuff I am ENJOYING to do it.  I will, I will, soon) I had an idea so I just sort of went with it.  That is my way…

Anyway, I don’t know if this qualifies as a MODERN QUILT – I think it does –  but it has elements of QAYG, free-form piecing (only in that I am beginning with no pattern, making it up as I go along) and I am having a go at machine quilting, albeit using the feed dogs up and the walking foot – free-MOTION quilting I think I am still a way off from.

Basically, I am using some fabric I unearthed, pretty sure it is from some of DDs “ethnic” dolls.  As I’ve said before, row after row of peachy white faces didn’t appeal to her – she wanted Chinese dolls, Afro-Carribean dolls, Asian dolls….. I have NO IDEA why I bought the khaki colour.  I simply cannot think why I would.  Anyway I have a huge chunk of it (maybe destined for a backing at some point when I flirted with quilting in the past?) and it works with the beige and the bright strips, I think.

My method is this:  I am slashing the long strips of fabric, on a 45 degree angle, and inserting the strips of multicoloured fabrics to create the angled lines. I am finding in fiendishly difficult to make the side seams perfectly aligned!  Try tho’ I may, they always seem to be just that little bit off.  I am going slow, taking care of the seam allowance (I used an index card with a 1/4 inch line to position the needle to ensure I am keeping the 1/4 inch seam allowance – read that trick SOMEPLACE and it’s a good one), taking note of the bias nature of the seams, and making sure I am aware of the action of the feed dogs pulling the top fabric at a different rate than the bottom so I am stitching with the right fabric top or bottom. And they still don’t match up perfectly.  Grrr.

The QAYG idea I have adapted to fit my needs.  I am sewing the long strips then doing the quilting so I am dealing with only a small bit of fabric thru the machine at a time.  Maybe you can see the pattern in this shot?  The angles are sort of concentric lines into the middle and the straight bits (where I have two colourful strips close together, going at the same angle) are…straight lines.

I am loving how it is turning out, but I do wish I could work out so the sides line up perfectly when I insert the strip!  The strips are about 2.5 inches wide, and mostly I have been looking at asterisk quilt blocks for guidance but they tend to end with squaring up the block, which I don’t really want to have to do with the long strips, and lose too much of the width.

Once I have the long strips pieced and quilted, my plan is to join then with long sashing just between the columns, in the QAYG style, using the SAME fabric for the sashing on the back so it LOOKS like one continuous piece of fabric, rather than a contrasting colour – but I may still change my mind on THAT – I joined Craftsy and got a free class on pieced backings when I did so I will watch that and see if making the backing with a pattern to it appeals to me more.

Now, I have to await delivery of 505 quilt basting spray as finding it at a local shop has proved impossible.  So I’ll carry on piecing and then see where this goes.  I am also still working on two different quilts with big-stitch hand-quilting but that is proving difficult to find time for.  I have high hopes for the long trip to skating tomorrow when I know I will have a good 90 minutes of travel time, at least, and provided I am not piercing my fingers with every stitch in the bumpy car, I should make some progress.

Oh, and the Tando clock – be warned!  I def. need to highlight the hands to make them stand out better from a distance, and OMG the TICKING!  It is soooooo LOUD.  Honestly, I can hear it over the TV.  If you like a silent clock this is not the thing for you LOL!

Sunday-someplace-else – really SOMETHING else

I just had to share this.  I get a lot of email newsletters and one of them is Quilting Daily, from Interweave.  Usually, I just have a quick glance thru it and move on, but this quilt captured my eye.  I just adore the view, as if from Google Earth..

Details of “Canal Country” by Alicia Merrett,
photo by Alicia Merrett (April/May 2012 issue Quilting Arts)

Isn’t it fab? If the view of my own house was slightly more interesting I would be tempted to make a similar quilt, but the current view shows mostly brown fields.

When quilting and scrapbooking collide…

…and not in the way you are probably thinking.  Not with photos printed on fabric or quilted mini-books, but using scrapbooking tools for quilting.

I had a group of I think 4 fat quarters of this dotty fabric.  I did love the lime, blue and purple ones, less keen on the yellow, but I wanted to make something to try BIG STITCH quilting on.  I love the look. I also wanted to try out something I had seem in a couple of places, most recently in the Freeform quilting book. It’s a technique where you lay your two fabrics on top of each other, right sides up, then cut a curve.  You flip and match the edges to create a curved seam.

This is the quilt top – really, it looks a lot less garish in better light!

Can you see the wibbly-wobbly edges? I had four of the strips of dotty fabric.  I took one of them, laying a piece of the pale blue over the top, centred.  I cut the curve then swapped over the pieces so they matched and sewed.  But what I USED to cut the curve was my old CM curvy ruler! The plain yellow was a remnant so I had to add in the bumblebee stripe (which I THINK I have enough of to bind it with) and then I used my (still used and useful) CM circle cutter to mark the big round circles for the quilting!

I’m using a thick cotton thread (not like matte 6-stranded cross stitch floss, but not shiny like pearle cotton either) to do the hand quilting.  It will take me some time to find my rhythm and get the stitches more regular, but even so I am really liking how it is turning out!

I like it even more on the backing fabric (again, remnants, so pieced) although it does show my imperfect stitching better.

I’m quilting in a hoop so the wrinkly fabric is not due to bad basting – I think I actually did than fairly competently.

My MIL used to work on something small, to help her get back into the groove and get her stitches uniform, before going back to a major quilting project.  This is my warm-up piece, before I finally, FINALLY, go back to the quilt I started for DS about 5 years ago.  And I am sure that BIG STITCH is the way to go. I think the thick stitches will look fab on the striped denim fabric.

I went to my local crop today and picked up a Tando clock kit.  I have a plan.  But that will have to wait for another day…..