What's on my sewing table?

Happy Sunday people!

Anyone else really looking forward to a 4 day weekend next weekend?!

Just a quick post to let you know I am still here and still sewing!

I have a Colette/Seam work Osaka finished except that it needs button holes - my machine doesn't seem to be playing so I need to hunt out my manual to work out why. For some reason button holes scare me, I am seriously contemplating hand sewing them but we shall see.

I had a very productive day yesterday

I HATE cutting and marking fabric, it's definitely the worst part of sewing and normally the reason I procrastinate so much before starting a new project so I decided to go on an epic cutting session of Colette laurels ! Wasn't the most fun I've ever had but absolutely worth it. I have 5 now cut and ready to sew. I have used tailor tacks instead of chalk so doesn't wear off and I'm ready to go! 

Does anyone else tend to bulk cut? 

Not sure if everyone will find it a bit weird / boring to be cutting 5 of the same top? This is one of the things about sewing I want to aim for - using the same pattern a number of times to show how versatile they are!

Hope houses great Sunday!

Thank you for reading,

Kristy xxx

Colette Laurel Top - Part 2

Back in January I posted about how I had done a few muslins of the Colette Laurel Top as part of finding a perfect woven top to complete one of my challenges for 2016.

And I think I have cracked it!!!

Total crap photo alert:

I am so happy with this - I was dancing around my living room in it to prove it fit correct last night (yup I need to get out more)! I also need to get some proper photos at some point but who has time for that?! I just wanted to get it blogged!

There isn't anything else to say about this from my previous post so I aren't going to bore anyone! I will say I will be making more though so watch out!

I also leapt into my next project - the Seamwork Osaka skirt which so far is going swimmingly well!

Hopefully I will be back soon with more on that!

On Saturday I went to the Knitting and Stitching show with some lovely ladies through The foldline again and spent too much money again...

£3/meter but she gave me the end of the roll, about 1.75m for the price of 1.5 - when I got home there is a whole patch missing in the corner so she wasn't being as generous as I thought!! I have no idea what type of fabric this is, I think it is polyester and maybe more of a bottom weight fabric.

And I have literally zero idea what to do with this - it is sooo not something I would normally wear, I mean , it has colour!!! and a lot of it, but I totally fell in love and couldn't not buy it. £3/m and bout 2.5m to give some options!

Anyway I am at work at 7am for a reason, and it isn't to write this blog! I best actually do some work!

Toodlehoo
Kristy xxx

Unselfish Sewing - Mothers Day Presents

Hello Everyone,

I do love a good meme picture!

How are we all? I hear there is snow up North - we are basking in (cold) sunshine today, I just hope this carries on all weekend!

I am going to the Knitting and Stitching Show tomorrow with a group of lovely ladies from The Foldline London Meet Up thread and I am really looking forward to it! I went last year and said I would only go with friends next time so that's what I am doing :):):)

Anyway, this is a pretty quick boring post but I wanted to share a bit of an update of what I have been up to.

My last post that I was making my Mums Mothers Day present...and here they are (in unfinished photos)

Three cushion covers and a couple of fabric baskets. So easy to make! 

The cushions are 45cm squares of fabric with a zip in the middle - these 3 cushions took less than half an hour to cut and sew  - none of the edges were finished as they won't be washed much and was a decent seam allowance so I wasn't that bothered!

For the baskets I started by following this tutorial found through Pinterest (the best website ever!) but I didn't want to cut any bias binding as I am lazy and didn't have much fancy fabric left (but mainly I am lazy) so I made 5 interfaced lined squares of my fancy fabric and sewed them together as the tutorial suggests, I then joined another 5 together as before out of my lining fabric but left a gap in one of the side seams. I sewed the two boxes right sides together around the top edge (this was a little tricky to keep straight lines) so it looked like a weird cuboid type structure. I then turned everything around and pushed it through itself (through the side seam gap) so it was right side out, pushed the lining into the interfaced box, sewed the side seam gap up and pressed the hell out of it! This all took about 1 hour to make 3 boxes and my Mum was very impressed!

A quick update on my Collette Laurel Quest - I have one cut and semi sewn together, I am just inserting sleeves and still got the neck binding to put on.
It is sat in my new UFO basket which I have on display to give me some motivation.

And A Hexie Update...

Back in August (eeeshk) I said I wanted to make myself a hexagon quilt...well I am still going, I decided against using a fabric up to 5 times and have decided just once per fabric. This was always going to be a slow project, but blimey it really is! I have bought a few cheapo 5 inch pre-cut fabric bundles and I am nearly through them and will be moving on to buying some charm packs. It is really hard to buy these packs with no repeating patterns in them but I have found some online (and maybe find more at the Knitting and Stitching show tomorrow!). 

I have about 120 sewn up now...I thought this was a lot and then I used this amazing quilt calculator and realised just how wrong I was!

Image captured from CD Designs website 

 Still over 600 to go...

The charm packs I want to buy will be more colour coordinated I think and hopefully start to bring the colours together.

Also, after all this hard work I think I am going to invest in getting this professionally long arm quilted as I don't think my machine will handle it all that well. A quick google search told me this should be about £200 - but at my current rate this will not be finished until after 2020 so no big rush! 

Well, this post turned out to be longer than I expected...sorry!

If you have managed to read all this, thank you!

Speak soon, hopefully with some actual clothes to show you! That would make a change huh?

Kristy xxx