February Bee blocks and another mini to pimp my wall

My machine is back and running beautifully thanks to those who asked, the tech re set the tension and gave her a good clean, it may be my imagination but I'm sure she even sounds different!

Oooo I really like this mini quilt I made for my wall, the solids were so lovely to use, I think Ill have to make a whole quilt from them, and my stripey binding fascination is getting worse, I just love how it frames the design. Im entering this in the modern mini challange over at Ellison Lane Quilts. I was supposed to be showing another one but I havnt had time to complete it.





Here are my February bee blocks. The brief was that it had to go with some Dr Seuss fabrics so I'm hoping Lee Ann likes them, I think they should compliment the fabrics well.

I'm still busy hand quilting my monster double dresden quilt,and Im only half way through the horizontal lines, it'll take me a while to quilt up the vertical lines but I do enjoy being able to work whilst watching the t.v.

My Bust Yo Scraps blocks are coming along nicely, I've almost finished piecing them, Im calling it "Citrus Burst" as theres a lot of lemon, lime and zesty orange fabrics running through it. I think I may also back this one with an upcycled bed sheet as I want to see how these sheets machine quilt.

TTFN

Lost without my machine?

My sewing machine is at my dealers. I was having a problem with it where the tension on the back of my work was all wrong, the first few stitches were loose and then it was correcting itself. I was under the impression that the tension should be perfect on both sides so the top thread shouldnt be visible on the bottom at all, but according to the tech man, it depends on your fabric, I was using Kona 100% cotton, so was really quite surprised the fabric was getting blaimed for tension issues.

Ofcourse this didnt happen at all when I tried to demonstrate it to him at the shop, but as Iv had it for a year he agreed to take it apart and clean it up for me. He said problems on the back of your work are normally related to thread or lint getting caught up in the pre tension disc.

Its all ready for pick up tomorrow and whilst no problems were found, he has reset the tension (whatever that means) and cleaned her up so Im hoping she will sew nicely tomorrow.



It's actually been quite nice not having my machine around. I've managed to hand quilt almost half of my dresden quilt, and spend much more time with my son, which I'v begun to realise wont last much longer, as I have just 4 months till the summer holidays, after which, he will be starting school and I will have NO children at home with me anymore!:-( Its made me re-evaluate my priorities, so the quilting will have to take a back seat, these are precious moments that wont last forever so I really need to make the most of them while I still have him all to myself.



The picture at the top is a mini quilt I made in a bid to pimp my wall, it's one of a few I'm working on, I'm hoping it'll add some character to my sewing room.

Gone Quilting...

My £15 bedsheet is attached to the back of this quilt. I've hand quilted my first row, and its pretty easy to quilt through. so far so good.

I've also been continuing to practice my FMQ:



and i've made a mini quilt..but more on that next week.

Happy Valentines day!, did you get anything nice? This is what was waiting downstairs for me this morning:



and this will be our dinner tonight, will you be eating anything special?

February FMQ Challange Day 1

...and oh what a challange. Feathers. Tricky to draw let alone master on the machine, but I practiced (in a money saving way, on paper with no thread) This time I drew and drew and drew till I got the right shape.

Practice 1:



Practice 2:

I couldnt quite get the right shape so I had another go by cheating..



I say I cheated because I drew with my needle over Dianes beautiful tear drop shapes.(the picture above is my work from the back,) and you know what?, it helped get the right shape in my head.

Practice 3:



Better right? It's far from perfect, but I'm doodling on paper every chance I get, on the phone, in the bath, on the loo ...just kidding, but I have practiced quite a bit today.

Practice 4 - on fabric:

Heres my final practice of the day on some fabric. This is the back because the front was a little difficult to picture with the fabric I used:



It's not perfect by any stretch but its beginning to look a bit like it should, and these are really quite addictive!

I'm totally going to keep at this one and post some more results at the end of this month.

If your interested in getting some fabulous instructions click on the link below, it will take you right there. Oh and F.M.I I used mettler 50 Weight thread in the top and bobbin with a size 90/14 needle, sensormatic FM mode, feed dogs down. Top tension was adjusted to 6 pivot height -1

January Bee blocks and your money saving tips in action

These are my bee blocks for Jen this month. I finally got in the swing of making them and got some great tips from Melissa who has made her own tutorial. Thanks Melissa! Lets hope next months blocks wont take me as long now I know what I'm doing :-)



So, lets talk backing. I just LOVE Kona cotton but its so expensive to use as backing. A large single quilt would cost me around £45 to back and this Kingsize 100% cotton sheet was a mear £13 from tescos. I have taken all your advice and stuck to a sheet where the thread count is uder 200. Initially, I planned to get one from Ikea having read about the Dvala bed sheets they sell but I was really disappointed with the colour and quality. Ikeas version of white looks more nearer cream to me. This one from Tescos is as white as Kona white, looks and feels so much better.

I will let you know how I get on when I use it:-)

my lame attempts at the FMQ Challange

So one of my resolutions for the new year is to get better at free motion quilting. This months practice design is this leaf motif. Ok so my version looks more like hearts then leaves.

First, I practiced the design on paper (I am clearly not at artist):

Then I attempted on a quilt sandwich....WARNING this image may make your eyes bleed at its ugliness:

It pains me to put this on my blog BUT this is my first attempt and if I want to see improvement, I'm going to have to a keep a record.

Come on over to sewcalgal if you want to join in.

My sewing room, picnik and a winner

As promised, here is a picture of my sewing table that my husband has modified. I cant wait to quilt a large quilt on this table to see how smooth everything flows. If you want to do something similar to your table, there are some pointers here.



Whilst I'm giving you a tour (and the sewing room is unusually tidy) here is where I keep my fabric. The bottom drawer is where all my fat quarters and larger fabric pieces live. I'm very careful not to let this get out of control. Apart from anything else, my house just isn't big enough to have a huge stash.

The next drawer up is my scrap drawer, up from that, one of my batting scrap drawers and the top drawer is where I keep all my interfacings, adhesives and spray baste.

The fabrics on the shelf are all the mens shirts and tops I have cut up for my friends memory quilt.



To the left is my design wall, perfect for auditioning fabrics and swopping around blocks.



and finally, this is one of my shelves. There are normally loads of books on this shelf but I'm looking for some inspiration and they are all next to my bed.

I'm hoping to add a bit of character to the room before the end of the year, but as it remains messy most of the time I thought I would keep it relatively clutter free for now.

Moving on, I have to say, Im really sad about Picnik going. Since I began blogging, I've used it a lot to tidy up my images so I really hope that whatever Flickr decideds to switch to will eventually have just as many features. Although I have already heard on the grapevine that it will be very basic which is a huge shame. Will you be editing your pictures elsewhere from now on? If so, where?. Are there any other free sites you can recommend for me to edit my photos?

Thanks so much for giving me your thrifty quilt tips. There were loads of great tips and idea there, all of which, I will be using in future to help me save money.

The random number generator has spoken and the winner of the Christmas fabric scraps is:

no 27 - Archie the Wonder dog!

Well done! I'm thrilled to have you win. Your frequent comments and constant support has meant so much to me. Please email me with your address details and Ill get them out to you asap.

:-)