Try Again .................

Next month, together with some of my husband's family, we're holding a coffee morning for Macmillan Cancer Care in conjunction with their "World's Biggest Coffee Morning" event.  Some of the bits I've been making for the craft table:

 

 

I'm having lots of fun making small things with not too much outlay and can't wait to see what, if anything, will be popular on the day.

Am hoping that the blogging glitch that put me off has righted itself

More Cooking than Stitching

I've kinda lost my way a bit this week with the stitching.  First off I removed the paper from the back of the patched sleeves and noticed a lot of the bottom stitching was quite loose ..........a huge disappointment with myself for not checking earlier!  Thankfully it was only a top tension issue and tightening it up a notch seems to be ok.  I just need to get on with it!  The elephant is stuffed though ................

Cheese and bacon whirls (of which I ate far too many) ..............

Basically a cheese scone mix (salt, white pepper and mustard powder for plenty of flavour) mixed with egg and milk and with more cheese and minced lean unsmoked bacon laid on top before being rolled up and cut into slices.  A great use for Sainsbury's cooking bacon (£1.09 for 660g) as is the Bacon and Onion suet pudding we had for dinner last night.  I was going to take a pic this morning but the remaining portion in the fridge has gone!  For a cheap and easy dinner if anybody is interested .......

Bacon and Onion Suet Pudding

250g SR flour

125g Suet

Pepper, mustard powder and a little salt for seasoning

225g lean unsmoked bacon (rashers, chopped or minced)

1 large onion chopped

Mix all dry ingredients together with water for a manageable dough and roll out on a floured surface to about (guessing here) 9" x 12".  Place bacon and onion on top and, starting from the short end, roll up like a swiss roll.  Parcel in foil and, making sure any joins in the foil are on top, place into pan and steam for 2.5hrs.

We had apple shortcake this week too, here's one I made earlier:

I can't remember which recipe I used for the one in the photo but this week it was from Nigel Slater's "Kitchen Diaries" .............. just as he says except I don't caramelise the Bramleys too much as I prefer the crisp clean look of the apple and cooked for a little longer (more like 1hr rather than 40 minutes but that could be my oven and the fact I placed the baking tin on a tray) to prevent a soggy middle ............ the apples keep it moist anyway.  Oh, and I've ate far too much of that as well!
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Starting "the" Jacket ............ tentatively

Selecting the fabrics is the easy bit!  There won't be enough of the batik to line the whole but that's ok, I quite like that different parts will be lined with different fabrics. The more mishmash this is the better.  I have lots of different fabrics but I don't have a lot of many of them.  There are a few half yard pieces that are new as is the batik (I would have purchased enough to line the whole jacket had there been enough) but much is scrappy bits left over from other stuff.  This is what delights me the most, using up what I have and trying to make it all work together!

Not sure yet but it might need some further colours ..........

 

Now for the uphill struggle!  How many more days can I spend thinking about this before getting started?  I can't think of a better alternative to paper piecing for now .............. a) I'd rather there wasn't anything between the main fabric and batting for smoother quilting and b) probably the less layers the better.  The Pillsbury Doughboy I could be but let's try not to get to Michelin Man!  The more I quilt it the less puffy and quilty looking it will be right?  Well that's what I'm hoping!

The baking parchment isn't wide enough for the pattern pieces so I'll sew sheets of it together.  It's quite strong yet does tear ok when needed ............. I don't want to be rustling like a packet of crisps walking along the road if I can't get it all out!

Using Vogue 2915, I shall crazy quilt the pattern pieces onto paper (back, fronts and sleeves) extending the pattern a couple of inches all round to allow for shrinkage when quilting ........ except for the length of the sleeves which drown me already!.  The random patches need to be upsized from that which I'd normally use ............. nothing smaller than 3" perhaps?  That might actually be a challenge!

I plan to free motion quilt the top fabric onto the wadding and lining.  Although I'm not actually there yet, this is where I'm stuck.  I don't want the quilting to extend into the seam allowance so that I can stitch the side and sleeve seams through the top fabric and wadding only if that makes sense.  It would leave less bulky seams plus I could neatly hand stitch the lining in place where applicable.  Problem is, as the quilting is going to "shrink" the pattern piece, where is the seam line going to end up so I know where to stop the quilting?  Oh and there's another thing, should I carry out any embellishment before or after the quilting?  Maybe I should make a mini jacket first ............ and hope it doesn't put me off!  Perhaps starting with a square ie. cushion size would be easier for measuring thus more helpful for sampling?  I've had the pattern cut out for two days now but I seem to be making this all sound rather complicated .............. thought processes take time.  Searching for answers one finds other stuff ............ pretty stuff that one can "pin" rather than clog up the laptop with so many bookmarks that other people can't find their stuff ................  getting addicted to "Pinterest" was not part of the plan and, I am quite sure, will not help stitch the jacket!!

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Thinking about "The Jacket"

Wearable art or wearing a quilt?  There's a very fine line between the two and I've got to be careful not to cross over to the latter ............ particularly a crazy quilt!

I know what shape of jacket I'm going to do and I know the theme (think sea) but I'm still undecided about which technique to use to create the fabric.  Foundation pieced crazy quilting?  What to use for the foundation?  Something light that is going to behave when freemotioned with the wadding (I'll be using Hobbs 80/20) and backing.  It's got to behave in the washing machine so muslin is out!  I have some cotton lining which is rather stiff so I could wash that to see how that comes up or perhaps piece onto paper ............ I'm sure I could get some help to remove it all!!

Square and/or rectangular patches would be easier.  No need for a foundation, much quicker to make up and less wastage of fabric!  Hmmm ........... not reknowned for taking the easier option I really do need to think about this.


I've ordered a book hoping that there might be some useful hints and tips within.  I couldn't find much about it on the web but it was cheap so not too much to lose if it's not helpful. 

Yesterday, as part of my birthday treat, we went to Goldhawk Road.  It's not the sort of place where I'd want to hang out for any length of time but, for anybody that doesn't know, it is fabric shopping heaven!  A One fabrics (right next to the Shepherd's Bush market entrance) was the first stop.  Much of their stuff is priced unlike some of the others nearby - I find it somewhat offputting when picking up a roll of fabric, being told it's £3.95 a metre then you can have it for £3.50 when you put it back.  I'm sure you could haggle well in a few of these places if you're that way inclined though.  Anyway, amongst the dressmaking cottons were some quilting fabrics, mostly Woodrow ............. who could resist at £3.50 a metre?

A Cooke's Pie and Mash shop next door is a treat for the husband (no bathroom there though) ............ photo from a previous visit

A few doors along is Unique Fabrics where they had cotton solids for £3.95m ........ they would be £6.50 to nearly £10 at the shops nearest to me.  I had all the bits I needed so didn't even venture into the shops over the road yesterday but I have been in all of them before!  The small market is also worth a visit ........ chillis and other veg that's on the more expensive side in the supermarkets here are ridiculously cheap ......... it's worth taking a cool box just in case!!


As an aside, has anybody used the V&A's Patchwork pattern maker with any success?  I need to find the "right" photo to have a play around and remember that it's not going to convert into an intricate cross stitch chart lol!

I'm off to do some tidying up, put the washing on and THEN I can start sorting out some fabrics for the jacket and hope the postman hurries up with my book.
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Patchwork Mania!!

I'm a bit, well erm, besotted with patchwork (particularly patchwork clothes) right now.  I think it's one of those things that's been with me forever and just emerges from time to time.  When I was little, in the 60s, my nan had a little bundle of pinked flannel nursery squares which I played with and stitched together for dolls blankets.  If I remember rightly they were samples from a time when she worked in a small local department store.

I loved this faux patchwork cotton print dress that my mum made me c1972/1973 .........

 
For many decades patchwork eluded me.  The angular symmetry and often dowdy colours in abundance had no appeal whatsoever.  I bought some templates and Laura Ashley pre cut squares back in the 80s but ended up stitching them together as they were to line a toy basket and have never used the templates.  I did the obligatory pieces for C &G and a few more recent bits that I've blogged about but nothing much.  I seriously thought about doing a patchwork jacket for my large scale C&G piece but knew I would make the embroidery so involved that I would never finish it.  I was going to use my Indian jacket for the main pattern.  I haven't worn it for years .......... it had an accident in the washing machine when a viscose velvet patch came away at the seams.  I'm sure I can find something somewhere, dyeing if need be, to make it wearable again.

Sitting round the kitchen table a couple of days ago coversing with my husband, mum and dad, my head was full of "what to spend my birthday money on".  Saying that I'd ordered a pattern for a coat mum remarked "patchwork I expect".  No, but I do intend on making a patchwork jacket at some point.  "Ah, Dolly Parton and her Coat of Many Colours" said dad who proceed to tell of the story behind the song.  I didn't even recall the tune let alone know that it was true.  I'm well and truly hooked on the song at the moment and I AM going to make my patchwork jacket!!

It's the domesticity and resourcefulness of patchwork that is so appealing.  A short while ago we visited a local quilting exhibition where there was some very nice stuff but most of it would have been made for the "show" and, although very nice and well made, had little appeal to me.  There was one quilt that stuck in my mind and it's the only thing I can remember much about .......... worked by a WW2 Canadian war bride in whatever fabrics she had to hand.  It was stitched with love and care and for a real purpose ............ the emotion almost weeping from the fabric and stitches.

I absolutely adore Jane's dress at the Museum of Childhood, lovingly made by her mother who sat up all night stitching these pieces of fabric together so Jane had a dress for a party.

I've kind of been losing my way a bit for quite a while, longer than I care to think about actually, but I'm sooooooo excited about this patchwork thing at the minute I am going to explore further and get the stuff sorted for my jacket!

Plans ..........

But first ............ from the Amazon wish list ............. "The Sewing Accessory Bible".  I love it!  Relatively inexpensive and quite a bit that's second nature but good for refreshing and deciding whether particular additional feet will be of use to me.  I'd never thought about using some of my automatic stitches for faux candlewicking either!

"The Artful Bird".  Many of the patterns need some enlargement on a photocopier so I haven't really had that good a look yet as it's a "want to dive straight in" kind of thing .........
 

Amy Butler's "Style Stitches".  Not that I actually need any bag books but my daughter should actually like some of them!!

I don't remember this being on the list but I had borrowed it from the library (yet to look) and I do really like "The Gentle Art of Domesticity" .............

Lastly, one I actually ordered myself  ............

The plan is to get the house in some sort of order (I've probably said that before!!) so the "Chelsea" blind is now in the bathroom ...........

I need to make a matching smaller one so a few hours today establishing the size and number of blocks needed via the "Quilt Assistant" design tool ............ it's much easier than drawing it out on paper when it comes to moving the blocks around to establish easy straight runs for stitching them together!

Three jobs imminent now then ................. draw out 109 log cabin squares, find the couple of squares that I know were left over from the last one and see which fabrics I can still match up from my stash!  I wrote that the other one took approximately 200 hours so this, in theory, should be about 80.

Wishing everybody a happy, healthy, peaceful and creative 2012

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Patchwork Christmas Stockings

Being inspired by some pretty Christmas stockings I've seen on the web recently, I set to making a few .........

The reds and pinks look better in reality but to give some idea ........

I used this free tutorial for a template and did line them, they are a fun project.  Now if I could only find more hours in the day to move onto designing some with something a bit more ............ the ideas are there but I'm running out of time now!

There's still time (until the end of November) to comment on my 200th giveaway blog post to enter the draw for some embroidery goodies (a selection of threads/yarns etc.).  I'll also include comments on this post and my facebook page in the draw.
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Designing a Bag ..........

A quick 10 second sketch for a "Flowerpot" Bag.  First thoughts were summery pinks and greens but out came the fabrics and I decided on something more in keeping with the season.  The cotton shirt that I grabbed before the latest sort out went off to the charity shop a couple of weeks ago would be perfect for lining the crazy quilted outer panels.
 

An Inner zipped pocket .......

The actual shirt pocket unpicked and stitched to the lining the other side is handy for those quick to grab items ...........

Not quite sure about the planned 3D fabric flower(s), I'll do one and decide before finishing it off.  I'm really pleased with the upcycling of the shirt, not only due to the price of cotton these days but it adds a personal touch!  When I think of the pretty cotton dresses my daughter used to wear (many years ago!), I could nearly cry that I didn't think of keeping them for the fabric lol!
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Garden Party Purse

Another one for the pressie drawer - the first "scrappy" project from the recent sort out.  There's a riot of summer garden colour in this wallet.  All the fabrics in the patchwork came from the scrapbag including the binding leftover from the bag in my first ever blog post.  A few crazy quilt stitches and beads add some extra interest:
 

   

Talking of gardens, this was part of ours in March ............

 and now ...........
 

 
There's still quite a lot to do but it's so much more managable for us now thanks to an enthusiastic young gardener who lives nearby, friends and freecycle for a lot of the bricks and paving.
 

If anybody know how to get rid of these weeds, we'd be really grateful for some advice.  Suddenly appearing out of nowhere a couple of years ago we've having an awful trouble getting rid of them and they're spreading like mad!

Thankyou for all your recent comments, I do read them all and digest what you say - thankyou!!
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Meet "Hope"

When I won the lovely box of Coats threads for my comment on the "Threads of Feeling" exhibition at the Foundling Museum I just knew that I had to make something in keeping with the exhibition and the foundlings.  My token isn't suitable to be pinned to a page of a ledger for hundreds of years, it has no reason to be, but it is apt.

Why a camel?  Well, the camel remains largely unchanged and adapts itself well when faced with the most severe living conditions.

The first pair of boxer shorts came my way when, after just a couple of wears, they were torn (probably more due to user error than substandard goods) and I felt the fabric too good to part with.  Within a year or two I had accumulated 8 or more pairs.  Fabrics from the clothing of my own family and having laundered them day in, day out over a number of years - as a compilation I would recognise them anywhere no matter how long I had been parted with them.  What better fabric to use?


From the Coats collection, Duet 100%  polyester thread has been used to stitch the patchwork and then camel together.

Every cloud has a silver lining so my token has some decorative stiching on the patchwork of the inner legs in silver Alcazar again from the collection.  The same thread is also used on the tail.

 
Shisha mirrors to ward off evil.  Actually they're large sequins which are a little more flexible for a stuffed object but the purpose is there.

The hand embroidery threads, beads and sequins were items I already had and the stuffing is from a pillow that I'd bought to use for making a cushion pad.  The buttons on the tops of the legs were from the shorts so nothing was purchased new.  Everything used, apart from the machine threads won, was already in my home.

I nearly forgot to mention that there's a good bit of DNA evidence that he's "mine" too.  There's many a hand stitched item that ends up with a speck of blood here and there but this one had more than a speck.  Pushing a large need from a button on one leg through to the other leg it went right through my thumb and quite a bit of blood escaped before I'd realised it was bleeding.  I used reputedly the best thing to remove it, the enzymes from my own spittle ............ it's still a bit noticable so I'll have another little go later. 

There are those, at home, who think he is more an interpretation of a dinosaur and has the neck of a serpent but, hey, this is my intrepretation and my new attempt to not be so self critical of my work in public lol!

Lastly, he's called "Hope" because there is always hope .............. nobody can take hope away from anybody.  Thankfully I've never been in a position where I've had to contemplate leaving my babies at the foundling hospital but he's my token "token". 

Edit:  Just realised that in my eagerness to take pics and get him put away I forgot to stitch in the mouth.  I shall get onto that now.
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Down to Cornwall

Any thoughts of visiting Clovelly on our way down to St Ives were quickly dismissed due to the rain on Monday.  Neither of us could remember if we'd been to Bude before - if we had it were more than 20 years ago so no harm done to have a little look.  Driving into the centre of the little town himself spotted the "Remnant House".  Oh my, I was in heaven!  A visit to the bank, lunch, drink and a read of the paper in the car and I was still looking!  Boxes and boxes of fat quarters to search though and even a box of cotton "scraps" at 40p a piece to delve into ............. perfect for I Spy quilts ................

Aside from the quilting cottons, rolls and rolls of dressmaking cotton.  Some I've seen in Fabricland and they're a little more expensive here but loads to choose from.  Some old favourites .............

I resisited the box of shiny and glitzy scraps on the floor being pre-occupied with quilts and bags in my head but now back home so wish I hadn't!!!!!

St Ives ...............

The shops were mostly closed but one can still look.  I fell in love with the wonderful vibrant colours in  the work of Yvonne Coomber

Ok, so my legs are long past showing such frivolous shoes to their best but ...............

and there just has to be shells of course ..................

There's a few more days of Cornish time to blog about but meanwhile, back on the home front, there's the camel ...........

Isn't it that someone is supposed to sit astride a camel not that the camel sits astride itself?  I just knew I should have put some darts at the top of the inner thighs to prevent flaying legs!  His lower jaw isn't very horizontal either ........ still, it is an original lol!
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A Week Away

We've just returned from a week in Devon and Cornwall.  Not long enough to do all that we'd have liked again but a lovely week with lots of inspiration for future pieces should I get round to them eventually.

The first full day found a little curtain shop just outside the Pannier Market in Barnstaple with some ex display samples 4 for a £1.  Who could resist picking a few out?

Still in Barnstaple, on to Heathcoat Fabrics  where they had a nice selection of mid range fabrics of many types.  I was particularly looking for bag and/or quilting fabrics but didn't see anything I really wanted to buy.

Wonderful textures on the seafront at Ilfracombe ..............

An evening stroll looking for somewhere to eat didn't see many particularly inspiring menus - well not for those looking for a treat on a sensible budget and it was rather offputting to see the restaurants empty until we came to the Smugglers on the quay.  It was full and we had to wait about 20 minutes for a table.  Most starters were about £5 with mains starting at £7.95 and coffee £1.20.  We were happy with our choices.

The camel did start to get a bit of decoration before we went ...........

We'll see where the stuffing of the object leads.  Last time I tried a necked animal with head insert the head tilted to one side.  The seam allowances are a bit scant to allow for smoothe curves so will be interesting to see what happens!
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