WIP Wednesday - Basset Hound Wall hanging

You know when you have lots on your to do list, like finishing that quilt that's been hanging around since last year, taking off a border on another because you've changed your mind, darning a hole in a sweater and cleaning the bathroom, but you decide to ignore all that and do something just a bit more fun?

I decided to try this project I'd picked from Annie's Scrap Happy Quilting.  It involves stitching the outline of an elephant with a running stitch and using scraps backed with fusible web.  First, iron them onto the background leaving 1/8" to 1/4" between them and then stitch down afterwards.  I think it looks like a really fun project so last week, I pulled some Kona Snow for a background and instead of an elephant, I traced a Basset Hound shape (I hope you can see the outline ok - orange perle cotton on white is hard to photograph in winter lighting!) 

I had great fun trying to sketch Wilbur and though I was happy with his head I struggled with his body.  So I looked up Basset Hound silhouette and found lots of images to use for inspiration. 

I'm going to use scraps I have left over from this quilt I made in 2012 (this is my very first proper quilt made doing Whipstitch's e-course). 

I think the warm mustards, reds, pinks and browns are very Basset friendly and Wilbur our Basset is a Tri-colour so he has quite a bit of black in him that I think will be cool with blue!

Let's hope I do him justice.  Somehow I don't think he'll mind either way.

 

 Linking up to

A Finish - Kobo e-reader cover

Gordon got a new Kobo e-reader.  It really is a lovely device and a very nice size about 4.5" x 6.5".  I think I want one too!  So admiring it, and reading a few stories from the Brothers Grimm on it, (yes I borrowed it only for a short while!), I came up with the bright idea of making  a cover for it!  He doesn't ask me to make him much, if anything, and usually takes a deep breath when I head his way with fabric or a design idea.  He patiently puts up with me bending his ear with all the crafty talk, so I thought with Valentines coming up and all, I'd make him a cover for his new Kobo.

I found a few paid patterns but stumbled across these three free ones when I was browsing for inspiration.

Mommy by Day, Crafter by Night Kindle Case tutorial
Blissful Sewing E-reader Cover
Displacement Activity Kindle

I eventually chose the last one to make, he preferred a flip cover over a sleeve and it has a handy pocket for the USB cable for travelling.  So I pulled all my manly fabric out, about 3 fat quarters (surprisingly I don't have much man friendly fabric in my stash!)  I had bought this for Doctor Who blocks but was happy to let him have it for his reader.

Sorry there are no in progress photos, the elastic hairbands I used for the corners (couldn't find black ones in the supermarket ?) broke my heart.  I've never sewn over elastic before - even basted they moved a bit and I ended up using a bigger seam allowance than 1/4" to get them in securely. 

The dreaded drop test when you turn it upside down to see if it will hold turned out ok!

You know the feeling when it's late in the evening and you should really put your project away and go to bed but you just want to get it finished?  Well I kept on going and started making mistakes.  By the time I was happy with the elastic corners I sewed the front and back together wrong way around and had to un pick. I put the tab on the wrong side and had to unpick.  But I kept on going. And finally a finish! 

I think I'd like to make one in brighter, happier fabric but not just yet.  I left out the stiffening card as this is just a reader and doesn't need to stand up on it's own and Gordon was happy with it as is.  Done and dusted!

Linking up to Finish it Friday and

Medallion Quilt Along

The Modern Irish Quilters are having a Quilt-A-Long.  It is for a Medallion quilt and there are two choices.  Follow along building borders around a central panel of 15", like a star or a paper pieced centre, or do your own thing, following guidelines from Catbird Quilt Studio's series on how to make a Medallion Quilt.

I have ideas for both and I'm really intrigued by the design hints on both streams. The centre panel should be 1/4 to 1/3 the size of the quilt and there are hints for framing the surrounds and adding borders.  I am hoping to learn a lot!  The idea that is buzzing around my head the most is this one for a baby quilt with a centre panel made using hexagons; Something like this:

It came from playing with hexagon shapes in Microsoft Word and I ended up with a brightly coloured balloon. 
The sun and the grass came from the Craftsy 2012 BOM with Amy Gibson.  Her Block "Sunny with a chance of Hex" was used to teach Paper piecing Hexagons and she challenged us to make our own version and that's were the bees and flowers came from.   The ideas from these blocks stayed with me so adding the balloon seemed like a good idea and to add a curve to the grass and then to fill the space with a kite and some clouds maybe.

Playing with borders is giving me this so far, though it will probably change as I make it.

 

I want my centre panel to be rectangular not square and to fit all of the hexagon designs I'm going to make it 18" by 24".  To make the balloon and flowers etc I've had to learn a little about the geometry of Hexagons.  If you have no interest in Maths you can skip this bit!

You can print templates for Hexies from Incompetech and they look like this:

You enter the length of the side you want and it calculates the rest and gives you the template to cut the hexies to the correct size.

For the balloon above I wanted it to be about 5" high and there are 5 hexies stacked to make the balloon at it's highest point, so I need my individual hexies to be 1" high.

The height is the square root of 3 multiplied by s.  The square root of 3 is 1.732 (1.732 x1.732=3) so if I want a 1" height I need to divide 1 by 1.732 to get s which is 0.58".  Putting 0.58 into the website gives me this template.

I have a 5" high balloon and it will be  just under 6" across.  (W=2x0.58 which is 1.16 and there are 5 hexies so 5 x 1.16 is 5.8")

So I now have 5 templates printed for the 5 different sizes I need (balloon, flower, bee, sun, clouds).  I'll worry about the kite next week!

So for the rest of the week, I'll be busy cutting up the templates and stitching tiny hexagons together!

And for the original idea of a star centrepiece in case you are interested this is the Mosaic of favourites I found on flickr.  I am hoping for some border inspiration from these gorgeous quilts.

1. Swirling Medallion quilt top - side view, 2. Marcelle Medallion - advice please, I'm stuck, 3. Border 8, 4. Modern Medallion Top, 5. FO: Marcelle Medallion, 6. Mystery Medallion Quilt - Border 3, 7. Baisakhi Medallion Quilt, 8. Medallion Quilt detail, 9. Medallion Quilt detail, 10. Medallion Quilts on Craftsy, 11. Medallion Border #6, 12. My Quilt  

Linking up to Modern Quilt Guild of Ireland and

Scrappy January Round up

Sarah @ Fairy Face Designs has a great idea for a linky party called Put your Scraps to Work.  The idea is to dive into the scrap basket and make something, during the month, from scraps and link back on the last day, so we can share all our lovely projects and get some inspiration for things to do with our scrap pile.   This is my scrap basket.  It may look small but there is quite a bit in there from last years projects and a good rummage about gave me scraps for lots of projects last month.


3 strips of blue fabric and some Kona snow were used to make this little guy.  I'm calling him Robot Bear.













I plan on making a few more of these from scraps for a baby quilt that should look something like this:





  







January's Bee blocks were all scrappy too and I got all of the blades for this block from scraps with some Moda Bella White background.  The pattern is Kaleidoscope from Red Pepper Quilts and this was for Anna for the Global Scrap Bee.  I love the repeating pattern emerging from these teeny 4.5" blocks.

This string block is made entirely of scraps.  I can see at least 3 quilts in this and one I'm still working on.  This was made for January Stash Bee and the tutorial is here under Hive#10.

I made this cross body bag from 30 charms left over from a charm pack of Spa by Deb Strain.  This came from a magazine pattern as one of my To Do items for the Library project (get out those books we've been hoarding and make something!)  I'm not sure if leftover charms are considered scraps or stash but it is pretty scrappy!

Finally my wonderful Hive mates in the Modern Irish Bee have been making me blocks with scrappy centres and I love them.  This is my makeshift design wall made from wadding hung from a shelf and a mirror (with Charly's little house on top of one of my stash boxes and the dogs travel crate underneath - this is where the blog name came from!)

And I still have a whole pile of scraps left in that basket.  What to make next?

Linking up  a little bit late to

and

Design Wall Monday

Photo : Limerick abroad facebook page 

The west coast of Ireland took a battering this weekend.  Storm Brigid arrived (1st February is St.Brigid's day) with high winds and high tide at 6.30am Saturday resulted in the River Shannon bursting it's banks, here in Limerick.  Over 300 houses flooded, pets missing, people displaced and homes destroyed.   The community of St Mary's park pulled together fantastically and evacuated their neighbours with the help of the emergency services.  Boats and horse &carts were used to move people out of harms way.  More photos here.  And there's more wind and rain forecast for the week.  We've had enough of winter - Spring can hurry up and arrive!  Thoughts go out to all those affected.
  

So battening down the hatches for most of the weekend, I pressed and arranged on the design wall the blocks I received from my hive mates in the Modern Irish Bee. 

There were 3 sizes of scrappy centres (3x3, 4x4 and 4x5) and some very cute scraps used to make these blocks.  Thank you so much to all who made these gorgeous blocks!  The fabric choices are so cheerful and fun.

I've come up with 3 layouts on the design wall so far.  I'm calling this one A. Scattered.

B. Linear (There's ordered linear and upsy-downsy linear!)

And the last one C. is Connecting line.

Votes in from family friends seem to an overwhelming win for A. Scattered.  It is the simplest to piece together so that's a plus too!  What do you think?

The original idea was to sash and border with skinny white strips as in the blocks themselves.  Would it be too weird to leave them disconnected like this?   To sash or not to sash?

Linking up to Design wall Monday and

Colour Intensive

I thought I knew a lot about colour from my photography.  I knew about the colour wheel and primary, secondary, complimetary and analgous colours.  I knew about colour spaces and calibration, from camera, to computer, to monitor, to printer, but colour theory for fabric has whole lot more going on.  One colour, just the wrong tone, can throw off a design and make a quick trip to the quilt shop, become an hour of hunting through bolts to find the one or two fabrics that work.  So in order to expand my comfort level with colour in the quilting world, I signed up to Stitched in Color's online class Color Intensive.

It's a 5 week class working through theory, palettes, some practical projects like a tote bag and there's even a quilt pattern.  I had taken Rachel's Penny Sampler class and I am still working on this quilt design with applique, paper piecing and precise piecing.  I loved this class and I'm so happy with the quilt in progress that I had no hesitation in signing up for another of Rachel's classes. 

To prepare for the class Rachel offered a Kona Colour Card project.  The idea is to take the little colour swatches and add velcro to them to allow a side by side comparison of the chips (without having to play twister with the original card) or to lay the chips against a background fabric or prints in order to pull out the colours or tones to compliment a colour scheme.  Coincidently I had bought a Kona Card just before Christmas so this week I've been drawing a grid on some neutral grey card and I've started chopping up the little colour patches.

As they are so pretty in their original form and useful in this layout of tones, warm & cool etc.  we are keeping them in the original order on the card.  This is how far I've gotten:

I can see a whole lot of cutting this weekend to fill this in.  I'm thinking a movie and glass of vino will make this an enjoyable task.  We start on Monday so there is still time to sign up if you are interested in practicing your colour skills or expanding your colour knowledge!

Library Project Item #1 - Patchwork Bag

I made a bag!  No it doesn't have a zip, (haven't learned that bit yet!) and it is missing a button and a tiny bit of binding in the inside where the top flap meets the body, so it's still a work in progress and oh so nearly a finish.  I picked this pattern from Creative Quilting, (a one off magazine from last year),  as a possible To Do item for Chezetcook's Library project.  You go through the books and magazines you've bought but not used and pick at least 4, or more, items to work on for 2014.

I wanted to make a small bag and narrowed it down to two choices and even though I have a few quilt tops in progress, I got this pattern into my head and had to drop the to do list and make this one.  It uses some left over charms to make a surprisingly, roomy bag from scraps or a bit less than a charm pack if you have one to hand.

The front and back are made up of a 9 patch of charms, quilted to some wadding.  I wanted the darkest fabric on the bottom, where it might see the floor every now and then.  The pattern said the usual - quilt as desired!  So, I quilted the front with some decorative stitching along the seams and a curved diagonal line across the patches (it was quick and really easy!)

For the top flap (3 x 2 charms) and the back panel I quilted in wavy vertical lines.  There is a setting on my machine for this so I set it for the longest and widest stitch it would do.  I rounded the edges of the flap with the smallest saucer I could find in our kitchen!  I pinned a loop to the middle of the curved edge that got trapped when I joined my lemon lining fabric 3 sides around and I like how it lies nicely when it's all turned right side out.

The bottom of the bag is boxed so it sits up all on it's own and I think this would make a great scrap basket.  The lining is pinned to the inside wrong sides together and the top flap sewn on by positioning both at the centre back.

The pattern recommends a contrasting fabric for the trim, so I chose lemon.  I had a 3/4 yard of it on hand for another project which I've changed my mind about colour wise.

The strap is made up of 6 charm squares sewed and cut in half and joined end to end with some wadding and solid fabric.  I think the lemon might get grubby very quickly in the strap (oh well!)

If I was to make this again I'd make the strap longer and overall in a darker colour.  The length is  about right for me as a shoulder bag and just about right as cross body but I'm a shorty (5 ft zero!) so I think it needs a few more squares added to it.

Still as my first quilted bag, I'm very pleased with it.  All in all it used about 30 charm square (5"x5") so a very scrap friendly project and it's 1 done (almost!) on my Library project list.  Not bad for an afternoon's work! 

Linking up to