Baby Quilt: signed, sealed and almost delivered…

 

I sewed leaves on the back with important details. The leaf with her name I have not shown

I have finished the baby quilt and I am quite pleased with it. I have sent it by registered mail and it should arrive tomorrow! I’m excited to see what they think and I’m wanting to see her wrapped in the quilt. I bought a Gumnut Baby hat through Etsy and it matches perfectly. I have also purchased a Gumnut Baby Book to go with it too. I’m so excited…

The photo doesn’t do justice to the colours in the quilt.

My nephew’s dad is my brother. Both his parents have passed away and I feel like it is part of my family duty to make up for the loss of these grandparents for the baby. I hope they would have been pleased with my efforts.

The close up picture is a little better… but it is brighter than this

My nephew has a twin sister, so I have plenty of material left over for her first born too. Being twins I think it is fitting to have a matching quilt. I will put green material with hers so there will be a point of difference, but also that connection.

This is the cute little Gumnut Babies hat. I have left the plastic on so it remains pristine for bub…

So now I’m itching to make another one. I just might get the “twin” quilt made. you never know when you might receive happy news…

🙂

Moving on…

A beautiful wattle near us

So ok it’s been “a while” since I posted anything… My life has been full and I haven’t A: had time and B: felt like I had anything very exciting to contribute to the blogging world. I was reading some other blogs and admiring their art, craft and produce. I thought I might add a few things I’ve been doing and some thoughts I’ve had.

I love this bridge. We walk the dogs to this spot along the river

We have moved from the red dirt, salt lakes, blue,blue skies and salmon gums to a farming area. We moved in August when the fields were green and splashed here and there with that beautiful bright yellow of Canola crops. At first we didn’t have a house to move to, but I put out the “please find us something” vibe to the universe and my good old Aunty Bev found us a place. I know it was her because it’s in Beverley and she was named after the town… The house is a little small and we have had to cram our abundance of stuff into it. Perhaps the universe is telling me to downsize lady! I had been slowly ferreting out the unused, unnecessary and anything unwanted before our move, but it seems I have more work to do.

The baby quilt, unfinished but not far from being ready. The colour is brighter in the flesh.

Before our move we had a week off work and took our “new” van up the coast with some friends of ours. Along the way we stopped overnight to visit a friend who we hadn’t seen in over 16 years. It was a lovely catch up, plenty to tell each other of the interceding years. The van worked fantastically! Our dogs loved it, they have their own lounge in the van. She’s an old girl but well built and has been looked after. It was nice to just pull up and wind the legs down, pull out the awning and sort out a couple of things inside. Only took us 10 minutes, me inside and my husband outside. Our old van was the wind up type with the pull out end. We had it down to a good half hour but now it’s so much quicker and we get to have a coldy sooner. Bonus! After this happy holiday we got the news that we were moving.

Close up of some of the characters

The photos are a bit blurry, still getting use to a new phone camera

I have finally set up my sewing room, just in time to make a baby quilt for my nephew’s first baby, a little girl. So beautiful… I bought some May Gibbs material a while ago, being a big fan of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie, and I have used this to make the quilt. I went with a simple 4 patch, 2 squares of the May Gibbs material and 2 plain: yellow and cream. When I started the quilt my little great niece hadn’t been born so these colours suited either sex. I am currently contemplating the quilting pattern for the edge. Once I have that sorted then it just needs binding. I think I will make some leaves for the back of the quilt to write her name etc on…

The “darker pattern”

I love making baby quilts. There is something whimsical and fun about them. They don’t take long either. It’s been about 3 weeks from selecting the materials, choosing a pattern to use, cutting, sewing and quilting. I’ve been going to work on and off as well. It’s nice to see a quilt come together and show it’s character. I found a Gumnut Baby beanie, online, to go with the quilt. I can’t wait see photos of her wrapped in the quilt with her little beanie on.

The quilt squares in sets of 4

I have also been setting up a vege and herb garden. Some of my plants died in the move so I needed to replenish them, and some were in the ground so we left them for the next people to enjoy. I have a deck area in the new house and the plants seem to enjoy the aspect. My clever hubby has set up a watering system for me too, salvaged from our last garden. We put up a blind at one end to minimise some of the wind and create a bit of shade for the hot summer. I bought some self watering pots on a stand and they seem to be working well. Nothing beats cutting your own lettuce and herbs for a salad or to put in your sandwiches. I’m waiting on the strawberries and some tom thumb tomatoes.. yum! My husband had to leave the passionfruit vine behind so I’ve got one of those on the go too. Might be a while before he can pick some fruit, just as well the vine in Perth is producing some fruit for him.

The self watering pots in a stand

One bonus of our move is being closer to our family. We only have a 1 1/2 hour trip now, which is much better than the 8 hours we had before. Our eldest son has had some medical issues this year and being so far away was very stressful. I still lay awake at night worrying about him, but at least now I can jump in the car and see him and return home again if I wish to. We count our blessings when we can.

Tomato and Basil

Lime in the foreground, Rosemary behind

Well that about sums up our last few months.

Snoopy taking time to smell the flowers

Annette’s Tea Cosy

The teapot

The teacup, saucer and matching plate

While we were back in the big smoke we visited a friend of mine. We met Annette and Trevor when our boys played basketball together. That was over 10yrs ago now and we have all remained friends long after the glory days of basketball. While we were there we got chatting about her tea set. She showed me a gorgeous little teapot with red and white roses. The teacup that matches has a lovely shade of yellow inside, which makes it look like it is aglow with sunshine. Anyway in the course of the conversation I mentioned that I had been making tea cosies and would she like one? So here I go again, (as John English once sang..). I took a photo of the little teapot and set, as I wanted to match the red colour on the lid. There are many shades of red so, fingers crossed, I have managed to get a colour that compliments, rather than clashes. The proof will be in the pudding.

Three pieces of material soon to be a teacosy

After washing and ironing the materials it was time to fish out my trusty Simplicity pattern. This has a variety of  kitcheny type products you can sew to spruce up your home.

I cut out the pieces using the pattern. The fiddly bit is pencilling in the lines and dots, but makes it easier once you begin to sew.  You have to add buttonholes to thread through the ribbon and leave a channel for the elastic so it pays to mark these out clearly.

I added a splash of yellow to match in with the teacup and saucer. In the above photo you can see the main material with the band material on. To the right is the inside material which has had the padding added and quilted. I like to use wool wadding as it keeps the teapot toasty warm and is easy to sew on, but any padding would do. The inside material is sewn to the yellow band and, once sewn down the sides and turned through, allows some of the inside material to show at the top of the tea cosy.

Two halves ready to be joined by elastic and ribbon to make a tea cosy

One of the “tricky” parts to the tea cosy is sewing in the buttonholes on both sides of the cosy. I used the buttonhole function on my machine, doing a practise one first. They turned out great, the more I do the better it gets 🙂   (Don’t look too closely at yours Fran..)

The buttonholes

Once you have the halves together you stitch in the channel for the elastic and a channel for the ribbon.  Then you are ready to put the elastic through. I used a safety pin to thread it through, pinning the end of the elastic in place so as not to lose it when it’s pulled through.

Elastic being threaded through the bottom

Once both sides of the teacosy are threaded with the elastic you sew the ends together, another tricky bit. Trying to keep the tiny ends together while sewing on the machine was a bit of a trial, in hindsight I could have handsewn them with less fiddling about. Once they were sewn you conveniently hide the sewn together ends in the channel.Thank goodness because mine looked woeful!

I was now ready to thread some ribbon through the top but only problem is I forgot to buy some while near some shops. Nothing here so I had to think of something alternative…. I remembered I had bought a lovely book from BH&G which had knitting and crochet patterns in. Plus the bonus was you also got a set of knitting needles, 2 crochet hooks and a large needle for threading wool, all for $12.95 delivered to your door. Bargain! So I fished out some red wool I had and crocheted a “ribbon”. It has been many years since I have crocheted so it was good to have the book to remind me of the stitches.

So I chained a length that I thought would be long enough to fit through and be tied, then did a simple double crochet to make the “ribbon.”  I toyed with putting tassels on the end but decided against it. Instead I curled the ends up to form a sort of flowery ball thing… Anyway I was happy with the results and hope my friend is too. She can always replace it with some pretty ribbon if she’d rather that look. Now I just hope it will look okay with the little teapot.

The finished tea cosy

Another one bites the dust, well turns 50 anyway…

  I have another school friend who turns 50 in December so I have been making her a wall hanging also. This one is made up of tiny little squares, and when sewn together, make an interesting pattern. It reminds me of the Amish style of quilting. This one was also in a kit that I purchased a while ago now. After washing the fabrics I started to cut the pieces as instructed. The pattern requires several different colours cut into strips and sewn together, then recut.

I used pins to wedge the layers

The kit came with an instruction book but it also contains a couple of different projects in it, so I might have to look at tackling them in the future.
I had forgotten how fiddly those little pieces were and how careful you have to be when joining them together. A few millimetres over the project can really add up. Fortunately most of it lined up, a couple didn’t quite match but overall it isn’t too bad.
I had started learning patchwork over 16 years ago with a wonderful patchwork club in Dongara. The club had experienced ladies and some complete novices like me. Over the years we were able to attend some terrific workshops, with visiting guests from all over Australia. We learnt different techniques for sewing, and even learnt how to dye our own materials. I used that knowledge to make a baby quilt for my niece. It’s great fun and was so easy because you did it in the microwave. It is an Australian business too.

I use tape to get a straight line

About 11 years ago we lost my mother-in-law to cancer and then barely a year later I lost my own mum. That sure took the wind out of my sails. We had moved to Perth and I guess without the wonderfully inspiring patchwork ladies to get me going again I just stopped sewing. I just didn’t feel inspired anymore. Then about 5 years ago my darling father-in-law, who passed away this February, dobbed me in to sew a QUEEN sized quilt for a family friend! He thought I needed something to do…

You can just see the stitches on the quilt

The family friend had a picture of what she wanted, oh dear not even a pattern. Oh well I got out some graph paper and started to draw what the photo looked like. After we were happy with the look we went off to buy some material. I loved this part of the process! We spent the morning deciding on patterns and colours. The graph paper pattern helped me to work out how much to buy, well fingers crossed lol.
So after a couple of months I had finished the quilting and handed it over to a lady who uses a large machine to quilt your work. We decided on a pattern and then I waited for it to be finished. Once that was done all I had to do was bind it. I was very nervous when it was time to hand over the quilt. It is hard to make a quilt for someone who has a pattern in mind. You just don’t know if they will like it until they see it. It turned out to be quite an emotional hand over. There were tears all round and she loved it! Phew!

A closer look at those stitches. If you squint they look terrific lol

Well back to this project. I decided to hand quilt this wall hanging. I had some lovely multicoloured thread in my stash and thought it would look great. Which it does but the thread is a nightmare to work with! It is constantly breaking and always right in the middle of a run, grrrr. I like to use wool wadding in my projects, it sits nicely and is easy to sew. When I started to put the sashing on I realized that the measurements they had given were a bit out. I had to use the longer pieces for the shorter sides. Fortunately the backing material is the same as the sashing, so I used that to get the longer lengths. It meant I have to use something else on the back but that was not so bad, at least I have the right sashings. I learnt a valuable lesson. From now on if I am using a kit I won’t be cutting the sashings until it is time to use them. That way I will know that they are the correct length.

After much swearing, tutting and sighing I have finally finished the wall hanging. I will be seeing my friend next week so the big handover will happen then.

The finished product