::Quilting:: Stacked Coin 'Treasure' Quilt

This post is well overdue. I wrote up great big post about this aaages ago and before I got a chance to post it for some reason the internet farted or something and the post vanished.
On with the post...

A friend was having her first baby (the baby has been had and is 4 and a half months old - see what I mean by this post being overdue) and the lovely Sarah of Stitching Lyrical suggested we collaborate on a quilt for the impending arrival.

I agreed and immediately went on the hunt for a project that would be simple to collaborate on, yet effective. I stumbled upon this tutorial for a Stacked Coins Baby Quilt. This was ideal because Sarah and I could sew a few stacks each and then we could assemble the stacks and spacing strips later on.

Chained Pieces

One lunch break Sarah and I went to Lincraft  in the city to get some fabric. As the gender of the bub was not to be revealed. we got a stack of  "warm" coloured charm squares and some navy fabric for the background and some mottled yellow fabric for the binding. A great combo for a "unisex" quilt I think.

Pieced Strips

The colours are not typically "baby", but I think that makes the quilt timeless. The quilt can be used the bubba and then they can use it as throw on the lounge later on.

Here is the top all pieced together and ready to quilt.
(Being held up by the lovely Sarah)

Sarah and I pieced the coin stacks for the top together using light thread. So I wasn't sure what colour to stitch the quilting in. I ended up going with a light colour.

Close up of the quilting

I'm not sure if I could quilt a whole queen sized quilt using my sewing machine. This quilt was quite cumbersome to baste and quilt and it's only a baby quilt. I've bought the Craftsy class Quilting Big Projects on a Small Machine but haven't watched it all yet. Maybe there'll be some tricky tricks I can use in future.

The finished quilt front

I originally thought that I would just quilt vertically up and down the the "coin stacks". So I echo quilted along the sides of the columns. I didn't stitch in the ditch because it was just a little too tricky to wrangle the quilt and keep the stitches in the ditch. However, Sarah's mum (who is a quilting guru) said we should quilt horizontally as well. So Sarah quilted around  couple of the "coins" in each stack.

The back of the finished quilt.

Sarah's mum used her great handwriting skills to write a little note for us on the strip we used for the back of the quilt. We named the quilt "Treasure".

Unfortunately, we didn't get the quilt finished in time for the baby shower (although we certainly did try, we sewed right up to the start time of the baby shower, but alas by this stage we still didn't have the quilt bound). However, we were able to give it to her at the first meeting of the the little baby boy.

That my friends is the tale of the first quilt that I've made...and the first quilt I've given to anyone.

Until next time, I hope you're making lovely thing for the lovely people around you,
Vanessa xo

::Quilting:: Super quick Half Square Triangles!

I found this awesome tutorial for making 8 half square triangles at once! Awesome! I just had to share it with you.

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I haven't made an half square triangle quilts yet, but this know-how might just push me to do it!

Until next time, I hope you're finding quicker ways to do things,
Vanessa xo

What do you mean it's the end of March already?!

Holy guacemole! It's been a fair while since I've posted. Lame!
Anywho, let me tell you about the latest most greatest things that have been going on in my world.

I'll start with the boring non-creative stuff.

In late Febrary/early March my work life was crazy hectic, luckily in early Feb I decided I'd take the second week of March off. Totally glad I did it, otherwise I think I'd have gone cray-crazy!

Last weekend I went for a gallivant OS to see my parents. It was nice to hang out with my parental units. I just did some reading and lots of sleeping. My main read was a book that I've been working on for some time, I've been nursing this book along slowly because I devoured the first volume within a month.  I do like me a little Sherlock Holmes.

My holiday read - Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories Volume II

Mum kept apologising that we weren't doing anything special, but I wasn't bothered. It was nice just being out of my usual environment.

The view from the room I was sleeping in. I love the colours, blues and greens. Yeah you're jealous :-P

I did manage to get creatively productive when I got back. On Friday I set up my sewing machine, my DVD viewing setup and I was ready to get my craft on. Oh yeah!

Aaages ago I started what I intend to be a bento box quilt and I thought if I was going to be sewing and watching a DVD at the same time straight sewing was going to be the best way to go so I worked on putting together more blocks. I put together 4 blocks at a time. Here are the fruits of my labour!

Please excuse the blurry photos. Shame!

That afternoon I went to Big W and bought some variegated yarn, some cheap fabric and a couple of other bits and bobs.

I got 4 balls of this Sean Sheep-Rockbank

The yarn is for a scarf I'm crocheting. The fabric was for a bag bag, the Mr requested on so we could wrangle our collection of plastic bags in the cupboard.

The Mr was out of town on Saturday and Sunday morning, which gave me some all-about-me time. Saturday morning I went to a Brisbane Northside Knitting and Crochet Group  meeting. I've only been to a few, but it was fun and I got started on my Clapochet. You can read about my Clapochet on Ravelry.

My Clapochet in progress.

My sister and I went out for lunch and she came over to my place afterwards. We watched Red Dog and we talked about her plans for her sewing patterns and her online presence.

When she left I watched The Help and made the bag bag requested by the Mr out of the fabric I bought from Big W. This is my creation complete and in use, tres neutral, tres useful.

While I was out and about Saturday morning I got a text from a friend that she was going to have a birthday brunch Sunday morning. She said no presents, but I ignored that part :) I pondered what I was going to make for her and I went to bed with a plan.

I woke up Sunday morning had a shower and got down to work on my friend's gift. I had some curtain fabric I had bought last year to make a different gift that I hadn't gotten around to making.

I cut two 12' by 18' pieces of the fabric. The fabric was shiny on one side and dull on the other, I used the shiny side of one of the pieces and the dull side of the other as the right side. The wrong side of the pieces were interfaced with adhesive interfacing. With right sides together, I sewed around the sides and left an opening in one of the short sides. The corners were clipped and it was turned right side out.

I zigzag stitched the side with the opening along the edge to close the opening. I stitched so that one side of the zigzag stitch missed the edge of the fabric while the other side of the stitch caught the fabric. This created a great over edge binding for the fabric. I should have done the whole side of the fabric, but I only did it to close the opening and to one end of the opening side. Silly. Oh well, you live and you learn. :)

Next was to sew the sides to create the pouchy bit. So I folded the short end with the zigzag edging up a third and zigzagged the sides together. Ta da!

My pouch is complete!

You might just be able to see that the outside is mostly shiny while the inside is mostly dull

Here's a close-up of the zigzag stitching.

I gave the pouch to my friend with a set of coasters that I had made before (you can read about them here).

The pouch and coasters. A doubley handmade gift!

That's about it from me my dear.
Until next time, do things you want to do, when you want to do it,
V xoxo

House-warming Quilted Coasters

Hello there,
How are you? I'm doing well.

This past weekend I got all inspired and decided to get my craft on. I decided to make some coasters and a Kanzashi flower brooch (I'll show and tell that next week).

I have a friend (Miss B) who recently moved to her very own house with her partner and I wanted to make something I could give to her on my inaugural visit to her new house. So, while I was on my craft stint I decided to make some coasters for her house-warming gift.

Now I am someone who strongly believes in referencing where I get inspiration; giving credit where it is due. I got the idea for these coasters from a book I have, Last-Minute Patchwork + Quilted Gifts by Joelle Hoverson (she is the owner of Purl; I really enjoy their blog, Purl Bee, it is sooo incredibly inspiring and varied!)

This is such a great book. It is filled with fantastic and quick projects and they are so lovely to go to for inspiration. There are other Last-Minute Gifts books out there, I've read most of them and I recommend them.

I had been thinking about making these coasters for aaages, but didn't get around to it until last Saturday morning and my visit was in the afternoon! But as promised in the book they were quick and simple to put together.

So first steps first, I cut out the fabric and batting I needed.

I folded the fabric so the narrow ends were together then chain-pieced the squares I had to close one of the sides. When sewing I started from the folded edge. Then I clipped the thread in between the pieces.

I then did the same to close the opposite side.

This created a rectangle with one open side.

The next part was to turn it right side out and put the batting inside.

 Here are all my pretty outsides sewn and turned right side out.

I found the easiest way to put the batting into the pouches was to do it the same way I insert a doona into it's cover. The farthest corners from the opening first and then work the rest of it in. (I think that makes sense).

When I did my first one I found that the pieces of batting were a little bit too wide. So I trimmed one of the edges a little.

Here's my attempt at showing you how I put the batting into the outsides (it's very hard showing a two-handed move when you have to hold the camera!)

Once I put the batting in a still had to smoosh (yes smoosh, it's the technical word for it) it around a bit to make sure it was in all the corners and everything. Here is what it looked like with the batting on the inside.

I folded one side of the top opening down into the pouch so that it was between the batting and the outside...

...then I folded the other side down so that it was between the part that I just folded down and the outside.

(I think I made it sound over complicated. Essentially, I just turned the raw edges in so the folds were flush with the edge of the batting.)

Here are all my lovely coasters, filled with batting and ready to be sewn shut and quilted.

To prep for the quilting I installed my sewing machine walking foot (It looks a bit scary, doesn't it) and did a test run.

To sew and quilt the coasters I started by sewing the open end shut. I sewed it right to the end, but when I got there I reverse stitched a few times and while the needle was still in the fabric I turned the coaster and started quilting. Before I got to the end (about 3 stitches from it) I left the needle in the fabric and turned it again.

I just continued on doing that until I got pretty darn close to the centre. To finish of I stitched until I was about 1 stitch away from  the row of stitching in front of the needle. I then made sure that the last stitch would be right on the row of stitching and then cut my threads. I then pulled the threads to the back, tied them off and snipped my loose threads. Voila! Quilted coaster!

Here is my bundle of coasters all done, tied up and ready to be gifted.

I'm one of those people who gets really hung up on perfection (read: anal retentive) and usually takes so long to make something intended for someone else I become a Scrooge and decide to keep it because it takes so long to make. Silly really. But these coasters are such a quick, simple and practical project that I am sooo happy that I could give them to someone. An instant shot of accomplishment and gift giving.

This is such a versatile project because you can make them any size you want, so you could make a matching placemat. There is also the option of making it out of any kind of fabric you want. You could even cut out someone's initial in felt and stitch it on instead of quilting. Hmmm. That's not a bad idea. I think they would make a really great stocking filler.

Thanks for reading my post. I hope it inspires you to make something to gift to others.

Until next time, do something that makes your heart sing.

V xoxo