Tweed Notebook Cover - Present for a Chap

Hello

It's my partners brother's birthday so thought I would have a go making a present for him using some tweed suiting fabric that I have had stashed for years.  Its lovely fine wool I think.  It was hard not to pretty it up with girly stuff!

Cheers

Sharon

Irish Chain Wedding Quilt

Hello

My old school friend's daughter is getting married in March so rashly I thought that I would make a patchwork quilt as a wedding present.  Asked and her favourite colour is blue.

Pieced the top a while ago but have been stalling making the quilt up.  Its tricky to get all the layers of the quilt straight and flat, laying it on the floor at home isn't really an option cos Buzz sheds his coat everywhere. If the quilt had been just for me, I wouldn't bother too much but its for a wedding present and don't want to mess it up.

Then had a brainwave, found a use for my late Dad's front room while the house is empty, somewhere to lay my quilt sandwich.  Yippee, with room to crawl round it while I tack it together with my nifty tag gun.

The hand quilting took quite a while but when the weather is cold, its the best way to pass the time, sitting on the sofa with a cozy quilt draped over me.

Finished it yesterday, doing the final bit sewing the 7.5 metres of binding on.

#

I like to put a label on my quilts, I normally make a heart shaped one, their wedding invitations had a little wooden heart attached, so having a artist in the house was handy, he drew me a larger version of it which I| traced onto some fabric.  The colour theme for the wedding is a crimson red so despite this quilt being blue, the embroidery (I use this term loosely, embroidery is not my strong point) has been done in red.  Hope the red doesn't run when they have to wash it, might do a test first so that I can warn them.

All wrapped up and ready to go

Hope they like it.

Oh, Buzz rounded up a pig (in his mind, it wandered up to the fence and was oblivious that he was even there, hee hee)

Cheers

Sharon

Patchwork Notebook Covers

Hello

Been having a go at covering note books.  Had some left over fabric from the patchwork baby quilt.  It was fun to do.

Played with my new Singer Embroidery foot on the Featherweight trying to learn free motion quilting.  The small notebook is a Liberty print with the flowers picked out with orange thread, its not perfect by a long way but as I quilted with the machine, the easier it became.  I found that if I turned the fabric too quickly, it skipped stitches so steady away was the way to go making sure that the stitches had caught before setting off.  It finished off with some vintage bias binding which was a perfect match.

Cheers

Sharon

 

Singer 221 Featherweight Free Motion Quilting/Embroidery Foot Simanco 121094

Hello

Been on a bit of a spending spree to cheer myself up.  This icy weather is making me anxious despite having grips on my boots when dog walking.  Roll on Spring.

I have always admired anyone that could do free motion embroidery on a sewing machine.  Did have a go once on my "modern" (1980's Toyota machine) which can drop the feed dogs.  It was disaster, despite having the correct foot, I just couldn't control the stitching, was totally defeated so gave up never to try again until now.

When browsing Ebay for Singer attachments, found this reproduction feed dog cover for my Featherweight at a price of £23 which seems a lot for such a tiny thing until you see the cost of an original Singer part, the last one I saw on internet was £90, eye watering!  Only ever seen the odd one for sale so very rare.

All I needed to go with it was an Embroidery foot, Singer made a special "hopping" for the Featherweight 221 (Simanco 121094).  Again, a fairly rare item but they do come up now and again.  Missed one on Ebay for £14.99 got sidetracked and forgot about the listing (doh).  Did find one but ended up paying twice the price, hey ho.  It arrived in the post, again such a dinky little thing.

Put them on the machine, set the stitch length at zero.  Made a little quilt sandwich and jumped in with both feet and wrote my name!  Wow, so easy to control, the featherweight sews steady away, no zooming out of control.  A joy to use.

Here is the first ever attempt which I don't think it too bad for a total beginner, can read the words (well almost all of them).

Will have to look at UTube for the quilting techniques and patterns but awesome, so chuffed.

I had borrowed this plastic Singer foot off my stitchery friend Sarah, again another embroidery foot but much later date, its huge compared with the the other foot but seeing its a low shank foot, tried it on my machine, it worked fine so this is a suitable alternative which would be cheaper to buy.

Off to practice

A WORD OF CAUTION - IF USING A FEATHERWEIGHT FOR FREE MOTION QUILTING/EMBROIDERY - YOU MUST LET THE MOTOR COOL DOWN REGULARLY - DON'T QUILT FOR LONG PERIODS OF TIME YOU WILL DAMAGE IT

Cheers
Sharon

Drum Carder Cover

Hello

My very good friend Julie asked if I could make a cover for her drum carder to keep it dust free when its not in use.  Yes, I said without really knowing what a drum carder was.

If you are wondering, this vicious thing is a drum carder.  It looks like a medieval implement of torture. You have to keep your fingers away from the spikes they are not nice.  It is used to card wool to prepare it for spinning into yarn.

We went to look for fabric.  I wasn't sure quite how I was going to make the cover but seeing the oil cloth thought that this robust fabric would be just the ticket.  

Had to make a template so I turned the machine on its side, drew round it with a marker pen onto some paper marking the highest curve, then folded the paper into half and cut out the curve so both sides would match.  My Singer 201 made light work of this tough fabric.  Just used my usual quarter inch foot when sewing back of the fabric.  But when top stitching used a roller foot which worked a treat, it stopped the foot sticking to the plastic coating on the fabric.

Here it is, she picked this gorgeous fabric, isn't it yummy, just love the colours.

Made a very simple zipped bag with the left over fabric to keep the rest of her carding tools in.

This is the roller foot in action.  Glad I finally found a use for it.

Cheers

Sharon

Featherweight 221 - Patchwork Baby Quilt

Hello

Happy New Year, hope you all had a good time.  We had a quiet festive break at our cottage but luckily our village pub opened a week before Xmas after being shut for months and months.  The new owners did really well to get it fit to open in just a few days, they worked really hard.  So a warm welcome to all the village from them.  It was great to catch up with fellow residents, the pub is really the heart of the village.

I had another baby quilt to make for my neice Zoe who`s baby is due next month.  As she didn`t want to know if its a boy or girl, I had to do a neutral colour scheme, found this range of fabric on Ebay with sweet rabbits and hares.  They came in handy fat quarter packs which made it much simpler to get the contrasting and matching fabrics.

The quilt was a joy to make up on the Featherweight 221.  Haven`t used the 221 for quite a while, been using the Singer 201 as it's faster and more powerful so ideal for making the tote bags with all those layers to sew through.  I had forgotten how steady the 221 is which make it much more accurate when you want to do just one more stitch, the 201 doesn't like sewing slow.  They both stitch beautifully.  As usual I did hand quilt, just love the finish it gives.

Here is the 221 next to the 201 so that you can compare the sizes, the 221 is so cute.  The 201 is made of cast iron so it weighs a ton.

Anyway, got side tracked, back to the finished quilt.  Ta daaa

Cheers
Sharon

Handcrafted Christmas Presents

Hello

Had an enforced 2 weeks off work, after Gloria the old horse stomped on my foot!  Gosh it did swell up and couldn't put any weight on it, luckily, it wasn't broken much to the Xray chap's surprise but it did get an infection in it which slowed the recovery up.

Soo after days and days of sitting on the couch with my foot in the air sewing my teeny weeny hexies and reading books, I started to potter about in my slippers (nothing else would fit!).

Not sure when I will stop with the hexies.

Made some Christmas pressies.

A selection of these sweet fabric pouches, just need the fancy popper kit to arrive from Ebay so that I can finish them off and wrap them up.

A couple of fluorescent bandannas for my friends dogs, we walk at 7 a.m. when it is still dark (must be mad!)

Oh, pieced a quilt top for a wedding present but I will show that when its finished.

And finally, another Thread Catcher made out of the sewing label fabric, had to do a bit of fussy cutting so not to chop the labels in half.  Its filled with wheat and homegrown lavender, its smells of summer.

Hope you all have a wonderful Christmas

Regards
Sharon