A life in lists

Baggy

It was my parents' 25th wedding anniversary a couple of weeks ago, and since they are two of the most practical people I have ever met and are therefore completely underwhelmed with non-functional gifts, I thought I'd make a couple of useful bags, which we filled with a couple of chocolate bars and drawings from my children (which are, natually, the finest art one could hope to see).

I actually made three bags, but apparently failed to photograph one of them. In my head they're for taking on camping holidays (am I the only one who always needs an extra bag for something whenever we go camping?), so the third, unphotographed bag is made from a Dear Stella print with lots of tents on (we will gloss over, for the moment, the fact that that they camp in a van, not a tent. It's pretty fabric, so who cares?).

The pattern is Jeni's amazing drawstring bag pattern which pops up an awful lot around the blogosphere. I've used it a couple of times before, but never posted about it, so it seems itabout time that I add my rave review to the consensus. This is a seriously well written, well thought through pattern. Lots of little details like sized bags, a calculate-your-own-pattern-dimensions sheet, and photographs at every single step (I am really visual, I need photographs) make this a pattern I am genuinely looking forward to using again.

The bags (and the chocolate, and the artwork) seemed to go down pretty well - I may have finally found the handmade gift that works for my uber-practical family.

Aproning

I made this apron using some denim in my stash and a mini Liberty print charm pack aaaages ago, and have been meaning to blog it ever since.

I always love the way different Liberty prints play together, no matter how random the colour combination.

Pretty, no?

I saw three zips come sailing in...

Useless triva of the day: I Saw Three Ships is one of my favourite Christmas carols. 

This triple zip pouch (made in a gorgeous new season Liberty print and lined with grey striped linen that's been kicking round my stash for years. I have about two yards of it, for some reason) is headed off to someone who I owe a gift to big time (complete with one or two goodies stuck inside), so I'll show it more fully then, but I just wanted to post to play along with the triple zip along before it finished, and this won't have arrived before then. I was planning on using a combination of three prints, but in the end I liked the simplicity of one floral, with another yellow print for the zipper tabs.

Pop along to the Flickr group so see (a few hundred) more amazing triple zip pouches! It's fab pattern, and waaaay easier than it looks (although I did finish it a la Hadley, as the print is directional).

In other news, I didn't use fuseible fleece, just normal batting, and it worked fine as far as I'm concerned.

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.

Saying thank you

One of the saddest parts about our imminent relocation is that Teddy will be leaving the lovely Montessori nursery that he has attended for the past 18 months.

Teddy did not take well to nursery (understatement of the century), but the staff persisted, very gently and patiently, and he now seems to really enjoy the time he spends there and is always full of stories of dancing to music and making telescopes out of toilet rolls and pouring water (there seems to be lots of pouring of water) and all the other things that are wonderful when you are three and a half.

It's a small nursery, with only 15 staff members and a couple of occasional extras, so instead of the usual boring box of chocolates for the staff room, I decided that it was totally sensible to make 17 individual little gifts.

why do I have such old lady hands? I'm 29, for Pete's sake!

It was only yesterday that I had this genius idea, but after a rather full evening's sewing (ok, plus an hour or two this morning) I had 17 little lined zippered pouches of varying sizes and shapes (because, you know, making them all the same would have been too simple) for the teachers to choose from. Each one will come complete with a mini-thank you card, a lip balm or hand cream, and a couple of nice chocolates.

All the fabrics were in my stash, and I <del>bribed</del> encouraged Teddy to help choose which prints to use (although I must confess that I put my foot down over some leftover lurid train fabric that he attempted to add to the pile). He did choose the Lotta Jansdotter fabric though, which I thought was in rather good taste. I'm hoping that all the teachers will find something they ilke in there, anyway.

The downside of this imminent finishing of nursery is that I may actually have to look after my children a bit, at least until we move and Adam takes over so I can work full time on my new business and my etsy shop. Exciting times!

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!

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.

FQ retreat: The Classes

I know there are an awful lot of exciting and perfectly photographed blog posts about the FQ classes floating around blogland this week, but I'm afraid I'm still going to add my badly-snapped iphone photos and hastily typed memories to the list. Sorry about that.

The first class I took was the Fat Quarterly Design Challenge (my group was led by John, but I think most of Team FQ took a turn leading a session). It was a great class to gently ease into retreat with, and was a real insight into how quilt designs can come together from just a few simple prompts (such as shapes, themes or colours) and how the Fat Quarterly crew put together their issues. And their book, come to that.

My designs were Not Good, but it was a great fun class, and fascinating to see how differently a dozen people could interpret the same idea, and how simple block designs could be put together in different ways.

I actually have a quilt based on this block already in progress (1" squares, anyone?), but I've been avoiding photographing it as I'm not sure if it's going to look like a big fat pile of rubbish when it's finished, and I like to keep my worst disasters to myself. Maybe I'll pull it out and photograph it one day this week.

Next up was embroidery with Aneela. Like many of us crafty types, I dabbled with cross stitch as a kid, but that's basically the full extent of my embroidery experience, so it was a great to have an introduction to 'proper' embroidery with someone who can create beautiful pieces like this.

My little robin was a little wobbly round the edges, but I'm pretty pleased with him and plotting a wintery project to put him in. I also started a stocking (I'm thinking Christmas themes was quite a good idea since it will take me that long to finish all the french knots), but I'm not showing it off here just yet. And not at all because I haven't taken a photograph and can't be bothered to dig it out of my case right now.

Sunday morning I took a freezer paper piecing class with Kerry. Not only was she the best teacher I have had for a long long long time (and not only because I've been out of education for a long long long time), she was also super lovely. Which is doubly fab because I'm soon going to be living a heck of a lot nearer to her! (Relocation coming just as soon as we find a house to live in). And I'm not even slightly planning on distracting her with some Liberty print before making off with her entire stash of fabulous Japanese prints. Because that would be mean.

I've done freezer paper piecing before, but not with much success, and having a few tips from someone who actually knew what they were talking about, and could express it really clearly (she teaches kids. She's good at explaining things in words of one syllable) made all the difference. I was rather proud of my efforts:

Not sure what to do with them - I definitely don't have a whole quilt of that in me! Maybe a pin cushion or two.

Ooh, and look:

Kerry made this fab freezer paper pieced quilt with, among other fabrics, some destash from me!

Last up was the class I was most excited about, the one with a properly new-to-me technique and a rather talented teacher.

Lu Summers taught us how to do portholes! Exciting.

This is one of those real 'ah ha' techniques, where you suddenly get it and have to resist the urge to rush out and make approxmately a million porthole blocks right that second.

I managed to contain myself, and just churned out the two during class:

The fabrics were chosen more or less at random (I only started packing for FQ at about 9pm on Friday night, with a 6:30am train booked for Saturday morning. I may come a teensy bit more prepared next time), but actually worked really well - it's a mix of Liberty and something that is either a Moda crossweave or an Oakshott shot cotton (I'm off to buy more later so I'll let you know). It worked so well, in fact, that I'm plotting an entire quilt of this for our sitting room. Because, you know, I need another WIP right now. On the plus side, the portholes are be a great use for any Liberty scraps you might have kicking around or have bought from me. And since I have a lot of Liberty scraps, I'm calling this an essential project. I feel sure that Adam will agree. Ahem.

All of that up there basically means that not only did FQ Retreat give me the opportunity to meet some wonderful people, it also taught me plenty of new stuff. Which is rather fabulous.

Fat Quarterly Retreat: Same time next year?

From arrival:

To departure:

Retreat was a busy, wonderful, inspiring and all round fabulous event. The teachers were great, it was an absolute pleasure to finally meet all of the lovely Brit Bee ladies, and there were more fabulous quilts, handmade bags, pouches and sewing kits to inspire me than I ever could have imagines.

I'll focus on the classes (and the quilts!) over the next few days, but here are a few images from an exhausting but fantabulous (yup. It's a word) weekend to keep you going:

Fingers crossed that a date is set for FQ 2013 soon...

Hop along to FQ

Are you going to the Fat Quarterly Retreat? It's only a couple of days away now, and I am comically unprepared. I've been so insanely busy with my Etsy shop this past couple of weeks (no complaints though! That etsy shop is precisely what allows me to afford things like the FQ Retreat) that I haven't even had a chance to look at the supplies list.

Did I ever even show you the lovely name badges that Tammy made for me?

She's such a (crazy) perfectionist that when she slightly singed the first nametag she made (the aeroplane one. I couldn't even see the singing till I looked closely in daylight), she made a replacement! I love them both so much that I think I might wear one each day. She also included this fabulous patriotic fabric, which I am appalled to say I didn't even notice until today when I went to toss the envelope (slovenly? Me? Never. Lwet's gloss over the fact that the envelope arrive almost a month ago). Thank you so much Tammy for the amazing gift, I feel awful for not thanking you for the fabric when I said thanks for the name tags! I'll be able to thank you in person in a couple of days, anyway.

I'd love to tell you about the classes I'm doing, but I'm so busy packaging orders today that I haven't even got time to look up which classes I'm doing just at the moment (must remember to double check the supplies list and make a last minute dash to The Eternal Maker if necessary).

Suffice to say, I'm looking forward to a jam packed weekend of sewing, glorious fabrics, and ogling other people's quilts. I haven't quite worked out how I'm going to stuff my sewing machine, various bits and bobs and acres of hand piecing into one wheelie suitcase, but I'll work that one out later (no doubt in a last minute flap).

Incidentally, if anyone attending wants to place a Liberty print order this evening, I'm happy to package it up and bring it to retreat and hand it over before classes start.

If you want to check out the blogs of some of the many many many other attendees to Retreat, pop over to the Fat Quarterly blog and peruse the list.