A life in lists

Meet Bob

So I have about four yards of fabric with a cat border print on. I decided I wanted to use it up. And look, that there is one 2 1/4" square of cat fabric!

OK, so it's not the most efficient stash busting ever, but I was browsing Denyse Schmidt's patterns for design inspiration and came across the patchwork scottie dog freebie pattern. It seemed rude not to, frankly.

So, just another 3 and 99/100ths of a yard to go...

I was too lazy to iron the fabric before snapping. I don't imagine you'll lose any sleep over that, but apologies nonetheless.

Incidentally, the light is atrocious at the moment. Even when the sun comes out it is decidedly watery and sad. Our conservatory (which doubles up as the boys' playroom) is the only place with any decent light, hence today's photo shoot on one of the two gorgeous kid-sized Lloyd Loom chairs we were given by an incredibly generous aunty.

Here's the zoomed out view...

Bob's sole purpose in life is to brighten up my workroom a little bit (what, you didn't think I was giving him to my children, did you?). It's in the process of a bit of a sort out and freshen up - being the smallest room in the house by some margin, it needs all the cheering up it can get.

I was just scrolling through my old pictures to find a picture of Bob's namesake (who is a horse. I am not quite sure why I named the toy dog after a live horse, but there you go) and although I couldn't find a picture of the neighing Bob, I did find this picture of my smallest child from last year which made me smile.

Edited to add: I was just about to click publish on this post and realised I was one mis-typed letter in the title away from introducing you to a dog called Bib.

New Liberty prints

Just a little heads up that I have new Liberty prints coming out of my ears right now. If you haven't been over to the shop for a while, swing by and see if there's something you like the look of.

Which reminds me, I must stock up on some old favourites. Let me know if there's something you love that isn't there!

EPP on the go: the first iteration

Do you know what the definition of iteration is? Google has it as: "Repetition of a mathematical or computational procedure applied to the result of a previous application, typically as a means of obtaining successively closer approximations to the solution of a problem"

I did A-level maths, and iteration always seemed slightly pointless.

However, I'm kind of learning the point of it now.

Even if the first iteration falls a little way short, the second one will be closer to perfect. And that's nice.

I am intending to iterate my way towards the perfect English paper piecing (EPP) travel kit, in case you were wondering.

Incidentally, am I the only one who always struggles to transport EPP around the place? You either take a bulky tin, or you risk squashing everything inside a zipped bag, or you take too much, or not enough. I really hope it's not just me.

I've been meaning to make a travel kit for a while, and this was the first attempt at translating my scrawly drawings into an actual thing.

It is full of flaws - the sewing supplies pocket is too small and baggy, the pocket which has the yellow and black fabric in (which is meant to be the pocket for finished shapes) is too deep and too tight, and the overlapping (unstuffed, as yet) pincushion and scissors situation bothers me more than I'm prepared to admit.

But don't for a minute think that I'm unhappy with this project. The patchwork of tiny scraps of precious fabrics, both new and old, and the dense straight line quilting make this one of my favourite patchwork things to play with, ever. And the fact that it holds my other favourite thing to play with - EPP supplies - makes it even better.

That red and blue fabric there, incidentally, represents my very first cut of any description into the Liberty Art fabrics I bought at the Quilts exhibition at the V&A a couple of years ago. Ridiculous.

(Ths pincushion will be attached to its tab by a key ring, in case you're wondering. I thought it might be useful to be able to detach it).

A second iteration will be coming soon.

And possibly even a pattern. Who knows? I've been toying with the idea of putting together some patterns to go in the etsy shop, and I think when I go 'full time' on both the etsy shop and my new business in a few weeks, I'll consider it a bit more seriously.

ps: Any thoughts, ideas and iterative improvements you can suggest for the EPP kit would be much appreciated.

pps: I am also planning a full on tote version of the EPP kit, so you could, theoreticaly, just grab the bag if you were going away for the weekend and it would have everything you might require for putting together an entire EPP quilt top on the go.

ppps: We found a house! Touch wood, fingers crossed and imaginary rabbits foot stroked (or whatever the hell it is you're meant to do with rabbit's feet. Never struck me as desperately lucky for the rabbit). It's perfect for what we need, and I finally feel that I can move forward with imagining our new, relocated to the South West, life!

A play mat for camping

A couple of months ago during a trip to the Eternal Maker (not normally an outing that would fill either child with joy) I was somewhat surprised to hear a great big gasp of excitement from Teddy and a breathless, "Mummy, can I have that fabric?" Well, it would be rude not to, right? How often does your average three-year-old ask for fabric?

Never mind that it is possibly the ugliest fabric ever made (I have informed Rachel that they are forbidden from ordering anything so alarming again, in case Teddy spots it and I have to make a duvet set to go with this mat or something), he was just so excited that I felt obliged to set to work turning it into something that I could bear to have in my life.

And look, it even comes with its own little garage. Of sorts.

I'll be honest, the entire project was a bit of a bodge job - most of the seams are wonky, and I could have made life a hell of a lot easier for myself by not piecing the 'garage' pockets out of five different green fabrics.

BUT.

It is possibly the most well loved project of any I have ever completed. It was played with pretty much daily while we were camping, and often graces our sitting room floor (once Teddy stopped yelping, "but it's for camping" every time we offered to get it out. He's a bit funny like that). He really loves it. I'm calling that a success.

And besides, I backed it with pretty fabric, at least.

And, since it's a travelling mat, it rolls up and looks all pretty.

I was going to sew on the webbing as a proper strap, but ran out of time before we went camping. I might get round to it one day. Or not.

Project notes - camping mat:

• Fabrics used are the Choo Choo You panel by Richard Neuman for Clothworks (look, there's a whole range available!), and a Kokka (I assume) robot print, both from the Eternal Maker. I can't see them up on the site at the moment, but give them a call if you want to track either fabric down. Pez prints and other scraps are from my stash.
• Cotton webbing was also from the Eternal Maker, find it here.
• I haven't measured the overall thing, but a quick google suggests that the panel is 36"x44", so I'm guessing the whole thing is around that size, plus the extra bit for the pockets, which is maybe 12" long by 8-10" wide.
• I made the pocket portion first - pockets were made by sewing two pieces of fabric right sides together along one edge, then turning and pressing and top stitching - then sewed it onto the main panel (with raw edges where the binding would cover it) and sewed over the top of the seams between fabrics to create the smaller pockets. I left one large pockets for bigger cars and trains. The snap press was used to put poppers on it.
• I basted it like a normal quilt, but added an extra square to the backing to account for the sticky out pocket section
• I quilted and bound it like a normal quilt. The inverted mitred corners where the pocket section meets the main mat are atrocious, I should have looked up a tutorial or something, but I was too lazy. Teddy doesn't seem to care.
• I hand finished the binding. If ever there was a time to learn machine finished quilt binding, it was on a kid's play mat, but I just couldn't face it, so I stuck on a film and finished it over a few evenings.

It's the first of a handful of things I'm hoping to make for our camping holidays. I actually had grand plans for a whole 'Project Camping' series with a bundle of handmade goodies for camping, but since I'm absolutely rushed off my feet with the shop at the moment (5" charm square assortments are proving more popular than I could have imagined!), I think maybe I'll leave that for a springtime series for next year. Because, you know, I like to sleep occasionally.

I can't get over what a hit this mat has been with Teddy. Have you ever made something for your kids that's been a huge hit? Was it as ugly as this mat? Did you rush through all the little details like adding pockets as much as I did? I bet you didn't.

Liberty print. Half square triangles. What's not to like?

Following the charm square craziness that fell upon my shop after Ashley posted this amazing quilt top a couple of weeks ago, I thought I'd give the people what they wanted and have put together a 36-random-squares charm pack of Liberty prints - no duplicates, no strict colour scheme, just Liberty print loveliness.

Naturally, the first thing I did was steal a couple of the packs to see what I could do with them. I made this baby quilt top, which measures 32"x36" using just one charm pack and some plain organic cotton I had kicking around.

And if you're wondering why I was too lazy to turn this into an actual quilt, it's because I'm going to add to it with another few charm packs and bring it up to either single or double bed size. Would you believe I have never actually made myself a Liberty print quilt? And since making one appeared in my mental 'to make' list, I thought I'd kill two birds with one stone and make myself one while also doing important product testing (and I almost typed that with a straight face).

Making this quilt top with absolutely no idea how far the charm pack would go has made me think some more about ordering EQ7. I think I'd get a lot of use out of it, not least for putting together some quilt patterns or tutorials for the shop. I'm still a bit nervous about running it on a Mac, even though there's a Yahoo group to help, as in order to run it I'd need to use some kind of virtual Windows software - there are a handful of options about, none of which have impressed me desperately when Adam's had to use them for work. Decisions decisions. Has anyone used it? Has it made your Mac run v-e-e-e-r-r-r-y-y-y- s-l-l-l-o-o-o-o-w-l-l-l-y-y-y-y-y-y?

Sampler quilt. Which way?

Back in, oooh, June last year, I joined a little quilt along. Within a week it had a couple of hundred members, and by Christmas I think it had passed the 1,000 mark. I think it must be one of the biggest quilt alongs running in internetland right now.

Of course, I don't for a minute think that there are 1,144 other people powering their way towards finishing a Farmer's Wife sampler quilt, but there are plenty of members with a good chunk of the blocks done and not too many left to piece.

I really enjoyed making the blocks I managed in the first month or two of the quilt along - I think I have a whopping 13 or 14 complete, out of a potential 145 required to make a kingsize quilt. So a little way to go then.

In a determined effort to pull out all my WIPs (I'll update you on how many there are when I can actually bear to count them) and get them either finished, donated or ripped up as appropriate, I looked through these blocks and tried to decide whether I really want to commit to making another 130-odd of them.

And the thing is, I think I probably do.

And the other thing is, I've gone off the colour combination I chose.

Sorry about that. I'm a bit fickle.

As soon as I saw the rainbow Dear Jane quilt layout pop up in my Google Reader the other day, I realised that I definitely didn't want to continue with my Farmer's Wife in it's current format. I'm not sure if I want to emulate the rainbow layout of the Dear Jane, but I definitely want to do something different to my current blocks. Incidentally, if you're really struck by the Dear Jane, there's a BOM available. 

I also want to throw in a few different blocks, rather than slavishly following the patterns in the book, which I was previously determined to do. I'm thinking I might accidentally purchase one or two quilt block books when I go the Festival of Quilts in August.

But before I get all intrepid and start thinking about alternative block designs, I need to chose what the heck colour scheme I'm going to do my blocks in. The current shortlist includes (but is not limited to, if I think of a better option):

1. A rainbow layout, similar to the Dear Jane or extending from top to bottom. However, I have a rainbow hexagon quilt in progress, and I'm not sure I need to crazy rainbow coloured quilts in my life. But I suspect it would look amazing when finished, and would allow me to use plenty of my scraps instead of just those in particular colours.
2. A quilt with some kind of volume changes, going from pale to bright and back again, probably fading out from the centre then darkening again towards the edges. This would mean being able to reuse a couple of my blocks, because precise colours wouldn't matter as much as volume
3. A monochrome quilt, either grey or yellow (or red. Or blue. No idea really) and a pale solid of some description
4. A completely random scrappy quilt, like this, this or this. I love all of those quilts/blocks and would probably love the finished object, but the idea of the process doesn't excite me as much as some of the other ideas. It would be an awful lot easier to pick up as and when I felt lik it though, if I wasn't worrying about volume/shade/layout/block placement every time I started a new block. I think this would probably make the best end project, and I'd probably get into it over time, but it doesn't exactly thrill me as a starting point.
5. Finding a new colour scheme that I like more than the original grey/yellow/white one. Suggestions welcome.
6. some other idea that I haven't thought of yet.

Or possibly the fact that I can't think of the perfect solution means that I should abandon the farm for a while and come back to it when I'm feeling a little more inspired. I think part of the problem is that I don't feel I can commit to the Farmer's Wife until I've borken the back of my huge WIP backlog, so I'm struggling to think clearly about it.

Help! What should I do? I leave it in your capable hands...

Sale update

Just a quick note to say that the sale has been moving incredibly fast this week, and I'm relisting fabrics that I have more of as quickly as I can, but if you placed your order and were hoping for any fabrics that were sold out, it's worth checking back in case I've relisted any additional stock.

Thank you for your wonderful custom everyone! I'm pleased to say that there is now a lot of space for new fabrics, so you can expect new prints, new charm packs (just as soon as I work out making a collage of prints!) and some other little goodies in the next few weeks.

Look! I made more bunting!

I haven't been able to face making bunting since I made approximately 43,000 miles of the stuff last year, but the Jubilee seemed an appropriate occasion to get triangle cutting again. Also I wasn't stupid enough to actually make the bias tape as well this time.

Patriotic bunting from a thoroughly British brand. What's not to like?

Surprisingly, fat eighths proved the perfect size for making the slightly-smaller-than-garden-party-sized bunting that I was after, so I'll pop a quick tutorial up at some point next week.

Incidentally, if you're wondering about the abundance of crappy iPhone photos at the minute, it's because we left our camera with my mother when we went camping a couple of weeks ago. Whoops. Hopefully I'll have it back next week.

Liberty print restocking sale!

I'm on a mission to clear a bit of space for another restock at the end of the week, so all my fabrics are a whopping big 30% off for one week only! To receive your discount simply visit my shop and enter the code RESTOCK30 at checkout.

Although the sale will be running all week, I'm down to my last handful of fat eighths of lots of the fabrics I stock, so if there's something you've got your eye on, snap it up before it's gone. I am sometimes able to restock fabrics, but not always, so there's no guarantee it will be coming back in stock.

This discount code applies to all items in my etsy shop, including Liberty print fat eighths, handmade buttons and vintage haberdashery. Happy shopping!

Wonder when I'll get time to actually use these...

On the left, a beautiful cashmere mix knit, on the right an amazing off-white leopard print Roberto Cavalli fabric. I have been in possession of both of them for a couple of months and neither are any nearer turning into finished garments.

On the upside, the reason for the lack of garment sewing is an insanely busy Etsy shop (hurrah!) and big changes afoot for our family - think relocation, new career and general excitement all round! More details on that as soon as I get five minutes to stop planning it and start writing about it.