Modern Quilters Ireland Swap

This summer the Modern Quilters Ireland Group closed but there are two activities still ongoing for the rest of the year.  Our summer swap and Modern Irish Bee are the last makes and we are going out with a bang!  The swap item chosen for 2017 was the Goody Binding Kit by Leila's Boutique.  This was a really fun thing to make and not that difficult. 

Yes there is a zip but there is a video and some very clear explanations in the tutorial to make this bit a breeze!  There is a pocket for a scissors another larger pocket for patterns or EPP templates, holder for thread and the zippy pocket for loose bits and pieces. 

 My swap partner likes bright and modern so I made a scrappy plus cover from 1.5" squares from the scrap pile and some ribbon from Fat Quarter Shop.  Found some Tula Pink and managed to get it in!

In return Sandra@sewofcourse made this gorgeous kit for me - love the fox!

 And Bassets!  I love the keyring and the centre Basset is appliqued and is a pocket for some scissors.  More Tula Pink fabric too!

Thanks to Sandra for such a lovely swap item and thanks to all who have taken part in the Modern Quilters Ireland activities over the last 4 years! 

If you want to make one of these for your self the tutorial can be found here.

Linking to the Friday finishes.  Happy weekend everybody!

Thankful Thursday - One Hour Basket Swap

So this arrived in the post!  Isn't it gorgeous?  This is Joanne's (@mojoret4 on IG) take on the One Hour Basket free pattern by @kelbysews. 

The hand stitching in this just blows me away!

And a few extras too - a needle book and pin cushion.

Thanks a million Joanne and Modern Quilters Ireland for another fantastic swap! Follow the link to see more amazing versions of this brilliant free pattern or check out #mqisummerswap on IG!

Now what to put into it?  My dog fabric collection methinks.  Definitely one for storing my favourites!

Wandering Camera!

This month's wandering camera has some sunshine at last!

Mum and G at Riverfest, View of the Shannon river with Thomand Bridge and King John's Castle

Limerick had Riverfest for the May Bank Holiday weekend and it was tons of fun!  When the sun shines the river just looks amazing.  There was rowing, jet skiing and tricks and stunts on the river this year and the location of the festival on the river front instead of by the old Granary worked really well - it was thronged!  The carousel had the longest line, even longer than the ice cream and Erdinger lines!

I have to say a big thank you to my Instagram swap partner@stichedbybetty for my May the 4th be with you mini quilt swap!  I received a brilliant package full of R2 extras and a light saber inspired mini quilt for my wall!

Other happy post included the next rounds of our Round Robin bee - we have a bit of a bottle neck due to one member traveling the world and now catching up.  I added very minimally to these to get them moving on again.  I turned the triangles into arrows and echoed the grey squares on the first one and then, extended the HST to flying geese by bringing back some text print that I saw had been used in the starting block for the second.  Still working on the amazing curved block - hoping The Improv Handbook will help me with ideas!

Not too much wandering outside the sewing room - the design wall looks like this in preparation for the class in June - Traditional blocks made modern.  I am definitely going to make a quilt for myself using my dog fabric and the modern economy block. 
Lastly. Wilbur is delighted to be home after his adventure at the Veterinary College. There's still lots of sleeping and yawning. Makes me tired just looking at him. He has developed a hard case of selective hearing as he is getting very good at ignoring me calling him off the sofa! I have resorted to schmackos from time to time to get him moving!  I think he is training me!

Linking up to

May the 4th be with you!

I told myself I wasn't going to do any group swaps this year and then I saw this one on Instagram!

May the 4th be with you!

Seriously how was I ever going to be able to pass up a Star Wars Swap?  I even thoroughly enjoyed making this mosaic for my swap partner!  Star wars droids are my favourites and Lego Star Wars has to be the cutest thing ever!!!!

I even have an idea what to make for my partner who chose the Dark Side - boo hiss!!  It has to be Darth Vader really doesn't it?  I saw this lego Vader on pinterest as a cross stitch pattern and it looked like it came from a vinyl sticker but I can't for sure find the designer.  So not wanting to just "borrow" it as a design for my quilt, I decided to change it up a bit.  I modified the face, legs and breastplate and removed the cool flames in the long coat as that was such a lovely design touch by whoever made this guy that I just couldn't use it as my own.

What's with the green?  The plan is glow in the dark fabric!  This is either going to be epic or an epic fail but I've ordered some white fabric off Finch Sewing Studion on Etsy that is supposed to last for 10 years glowing as long as it charges up in sunlight for a few hours every day.  Fingers crossed this works out the way I hope!

In for a penny, in for a pound!  No more swaps after this until I get a quilt made off my to do list - really this time!  Pinky promise!

Best Swap Ever!

Have you ever had a parcel arrive in the post that sent you squeeling like a crazy person?  There may have been hopping up and down and giggling and lots of Thank you, thank you, thank yous when I opened the envelope and found this mini quilt from Lara @ BuzzinBumble.

Isn't it perfect!

There is so much about this that captures the spirit of Wilbur and Charly.  Charly the boss driving the cart and Wilbur's ears flapping behind him.  I love the little scarf! I can't believe how lucky I am to have received something so perfectly personal to me and amazingly made too!

The little stitches defining the shapes give them the most lovely expressions.  Even Charly's little tail looks like its wagging!

Lara even captured Wilbur's brown coloured fur on his neck.  He has allergies and in the summer months his fur changes from white to a red brown.  He also has really dark patches by his ears which are brilliantly done!

During the summer when I was doing up the kitchen Lara and I had an email exchange about how nice it would be to have people in for a cuppa and from there we decided on a mug rug swap.  My holidays to the states meant we held off on shipping to only a few weeks ago. 

I'll share my mug rug in a separate post as there is no way I can follow this up!  I knew Lara was brilliant at applique and was so looking forward to receiving the swap parcel.  Even with that expectation I am blown away!  So, so happy and grateful.  Thanks a million, Lara!

Lara has a book coming out in December called Crafted Applique - New possibilities.  Seriously if you want to see more of this fab work check out the book, you can pre-order already. 

Lara also sent me some fussy cut squares to start me off on my Polaroid quilt and some lovely feather fabric too!

I have my new mug rug up on the wall already, looking down on me, where I sew at the kitchen table.

Happy Friday everyone - hope all have a great weekend and big thank you to Lara.  Cheers!

Summer Swap Tote Bag - A Finish

This year the Modern Quilters Ireland group had a summer swap. We've been making tote bags for each other, big enough to hold a magazine and room for a crafty project or two!  This is due to be delivered to my swap partner today so I thought I'd share some photos!

My swap partner loves bright happy fabrics and didn't have too many dislikes so I had a lot of free reign in coming up with something that she would like and would be in the spirit of modern quilting.  I knew I wanted to have a nice front to the bag and thought about paper pieced stars.  My original idea was to have 4 snall stars on one side and 1 big one on the back and then I had a rethink.  I thought I might be over complicating things.

Thumbing through some old editions of Quilt Now I spotted Laura Hartrich's Goodnight, Love you bed quilt. I love this quilt and think the clever way of using drunkards path for the heart and letters is really visually interesting.  I chose Noodlehead's Super tote as the basis for the bag as it offered a really lovley big pocket on the front of the bag.  Looking at the maths to make this fit would mean really small drunkards path blocks so I made them all triangles instead!

I pulled from scraps and have fabrics in here from my Lost in London and most recent swoon quilt.  this was so much fun I decided to make a second pocket for the back and appliqued the O and E to make this a bit easier and faster to make.

The super tote pattern has a pocket on one side only but it was really easy to just make 2!  I loved this pattern - it is really well written and once all the interfacing is ironed on it sews together quickly.

I had the idea of quilting in some text to have this say Love...summer holidays, friendship, family, sunshine...  I think I may need to practice quilt writing a little bit more as it was not quite as smooth as I had envisioned!

I wanted the bag to be slouchy and not too stiff so the heart got some gentle wiggling , enough to keep the layers in place!

So here you have it!  My take on a summer tote bag!  There are rumours of an Indian summer so my swap partner may get to use it yet!

Linking up to the Friday Finishes!

A little something extra - a finish & a Giveaway

Did I tell you I broke my machine?  My Husqvarna Viking H600e is a sewing machine with an embroidery module.  Its essentially the same as the Singer Futura XL550 sewing machine that has slightly fancier plastic but with Husqvarna software for the embroidery motifs.  To say that this is a finicky machine is an understatement!

My machine is unnamed; I generally don't name electric items.  At one point I was tempted to call her Heidi the Husky but Hideous Heidi kept popping into my head so often it was better she stay the unnamed one!

Don't let the pretty plastic fool you (she really is a good looking machine though, isn't she?) She can straight stitch with the best of them but ask her to do the fancy work she looks like she is up for, trouble brews. I have cursed more and muttered more and walked away from the machine in a temper more than any other piece of equipment I have ever owned - thanks Unnamed One for that!

The trouble is she really wants to be an embroidery machine and I kept wanting her to be the all purpose sewing /quilting/embroidery machine I thought I had bought.  I have since learned one size  does not fit all. 

Coats on left and Aurifil on right - same 50 weight

Image from Wonder thread Guide

She hates working at full speed (3/4 suits best).

She only likes expensive thread.  Gutermann for embroidery and Aurifil for quilting.

She doesn't like thread fed on the horizontal spool even when using the net so I use a doohickey called a Wonder Thread Guide.

This sits on top of where your spool goes and guides the thread through like a cone stand.  It's designed to eliminate thread breakage when stitching out an embroidery motif.  I leave it on the machine permanently.  It helps but I still get thread breakage, even with the expensive thread and new needles.  Happens mostly when the machine is travelling from one area in the hoop to another.

You get the best value in shipping by buying 2 so I have a spare one if anyone is having issues with thread and wants to try it.  Leave me a comment to enter the giveaway and if there is more than one person who wants this I'll do a random number generator to pick a winner.

Don't get me wrong there is a lot to like about this machine.  It has an automatic bobbin winder, push the lever and she winds herself!  She warns you when you are about to run out of bobbin thread - so handy!  She has a beautiful wide bed and a lovely wide harp space so moving  a quilt around is really easy.  The automatic needle threader is easy to use and works about 80% of the time but the little handle on the side of the machine keeps falling off so useless really! 

The real issue with this machine though, in my humble opinion, after 3 years working with it is this. 

The bobbin tension is a nightmare!  The manual says do not adjust the bobbin and of course I did!  In my defence I had to to get the tension right for free motion quilting (previous post here).  It was working like a dream for about 10 hours and then I guess the bobbin slowly came apart as it got worse and worse.  I did get my quilt finished but ended up with a broken bobbin case at the end.

28 Euro's later - a new bobbin case, some new Gutermann thread and voila!  A perfectly pretty Tula Pink owl all stitched out!

Was this a pain free experience with The Unanamed One?

Nope!  7 thread breaks, a bit of pulling in despite stabiliser and screwing the hoop as tight as I could, 1 curse after first attempt had a massive bobbin jam (jam proof drop in bobbin me a**e) - this came after round 10 of 16 and had to be discarded due to enormous hole ripped when trying to remove said jam proof bobbin, 2 cups of tea to calm down, 3 biscuits as I thought I deserved them after that, and 5 hours later - 1 owl!

It became a needle book (slightly largeish as the owl is about 5" x 8") as an extra to our Summer Tote bag Swap with the Modern Quilters Ireland.  I'm looking forward to sharing my bag with you this Friday as it should be delivered to my swap partner then!

The owl is available from Urban Threads along with the Acacia raccoon and can be bought in a machine or hand embroidery option.

I think it was worth the aggravation but I might just take a break and  do some quilting on my new Janome before sitting back down to The Unnamed One again for a bit just yet!

Sewing organiser - A finish!

One of the first blogs I followed, when I discovered quilting, is Aneela Hooey's Comfortstitching.  Aneela designs really cute fabric, very girly, lots of sweet colours, pinks & purples and beautiful hand drawn art. She also makes patterns for fabric boxes, pouches and project books.

Last week, when leaving a comment on Carla's blog Granny Maud's Girl, suggesting Annela's blog for inspiration for pouches and small makes from heavier weight cottons it occurred to me that it would be the perfect place to find a use for this embroidered design of a fox and a bunny!

The design is from Urban Threads Moonlit Winter.  They have since released Spring, Summer & Autumn in both machine and hand embroidery - they are really gorgeous.  Urban threads is another one of my favourites and well worth a look!

I came across this design while looking for cute bunny rabbits, as my swap partner for the #SPDFairytaleswap on Instagram loves them.  I thought this fox and rabbit were seriously cute.  I'm calling them Fred and Barbara (no idea why, just suits them to me!) 

My Husqvarna has an embroidery adapter that I don't use much, preferring to hand stitch embroidery but sometimes I set it up and use Silk threads and let it run.  I had a nice big scrap of solid grey and let the machine do its thing and scratched my head for a bit as to what to do with the embroidered piece. 

Annela's Project Book Pouch looked like it might be the perfect thing for it. I used some Architextures and Art Gallery fabric to make the little piece stretch into a book cover.

Some Minimalista fabric and a low volume fat quarter with scissors all seemed to go well together to make pockets for a few small goodies.

Hand sewn binding on the front to finish.  I used fusible fleece on the front cover as I wanted it a bit squishy.  Next time, (and there will be a next time as I am definitely making one of these for myself and probably as Christmas presents for everyone I know!) I'd stick with Aneela's instructions and use the stiff heavyweight fusible to make it more book like.

I really like how this turned out. Hope my partner does too!
Linking up to the Friday finishes and