Goals - Setting and Missing

Well hello there! I'm not sure that I remember how to do this blogging business. I could go on about life getting in the way yada, yada, yada but I'm sure that you don't really want to hear it so lets get straight to business shall we?

Today's the seventh of October and the last day that I can link up with Leanne over at She Can Quilt with our finishes from Q3 of the Finish Along. You might remember my goal setting post from three months ago where I listed 18 projects that I wanted to finish during the quarter. Ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha!

I have made progress on some items but only actually finished three - and only one of these qualifies for the FAL as I hadn't started the other two at the start of the quarter.

The list of shame - 

1. Anwen's quilt. Not finished :-( 

I really am struggling to decide on how to quilt this. I think that the main problem is that it's double sided and I really couldn't decide which side to make the front. Soooo.... I've 'unbasted' it and am going to turn it into two separate quilts - one for Anwen's bed and the other as a rather large lap quilt.

Anwen has decided that she want's me to finish the one with her name first and after a lot of deliberation has decided which vintage sheet she would like for the back.

She actually went for the blue sheet at 9 o'clock (not the pink one she's pointing at)

I'm determined to get this one done before the month's out so I'm going to set it as my October goal for A Lovely Year of Finishes over with Shanna at Fiber of All Sorts and Melissa at Sew BitterSweet Designs.

2. Get Shirty. DONE!

Can you see those dark clouds rolling in?

I decided yesterday that I had to get at least one qualifying finish for Q3 so starting quilting during afternoon nap time, got some more done whilst Dadi took Marged for a two mile walk and then just about managed to finish the quilting and attach the binding to one side in time to finish the binding in front of Downton on +1.

I knew that work would take me to Aberaeron and Cardigan today and as both towns have some beautiful spots where a quilt shoot would be possible I bundled the quilt in the car and hoped I'd get a spare minute in which to take a pic. On my way home I was thinking to myself that it was getting darker earlier everyday and before long after work quilt pics would be impossible. I suddenly remembered that I hadn't taken a picture of Get Shirty! I pulled into the next lay-by, threw the quilt on a hedge and took a few snaps before the light completely vanished. Hence three terrible shots of a crumpled quilt that don't show any of the quilting detail.

Although you can't see it in these pictures I've used three different quilting designs in the four main areas (clockwise from top right) stipple, stars, flowers and loop de loop. I also tried a different quilting design in each of the squares including pebbles, checkerboard, organic fmq straight lines and a square stipple.

I used a cream Coats 100% cotton for the front and am happy with the result but regret my choice of bobbin thread.

You can see the quilting a little better on the back

I used a variegated Gutterman sulky in blues and greens. It was far too dark and shows all my quilting imperfections! I think that a lighter aqua/lime variegated thread would have been better or even maybe a lilac to match the border.

This quilt was only ever supposed to be a practice quilt and will be keeping me company on the sofa until I one day manage to make myself a liberty quilt - hopefully my quilting skills will be vastly improved by then.

3. House quilt. Haven't touched this in ages. No reason why not just need to get my bum in gear. - untouched

4. Nephew's quilt. Done!

My first nephew!!!!!!

And received. Proper blog post to come.

5. A quilt for another baby due at the end of July. Nobody knows what colour (pink or blue) this baby's going to be so I haven't even bought the fabric yet. - Baby boy Cian has arrived and I've got a charm pack to start on.

6, 7, 8 & 9 Osian's, Elisa's, Rhys' and Megan's quilts. I think getting even one of these done during Q3 is a long shot but who knows? Yeah right!

10. Mum's quilt. Before the end of the year? Although her birthday is in October. - I bought her some flowers.

11, 12 & 13 Zig Zag quilt, impromptu along and distribution. These have all moved way down the list. Main reason for this is that they don't have recipients, they're just designs that I'd like to try. Nope - not touched them.

1. Charms cut for Zig Zag quilt        2. Fabric for impromptu           3. Inspiration for distribution

Oh, so only 13 quilts on the list. Completely manageable! (boy do I make myself laugh!)

On top of this there are a few other projects I'd like to get under my belt.

1. A few zipper pouches. Anwen really liked the way I'd appliquéd the butterflies onto Cadi's Quilt and as her birthday is coming up and I have some of the Cocoon fabric leftover I thought I'd make her a zipper pouch. Her friend had her birthday a few weeks back and is still waiting for a pressie and another friend has her birthday two weeks after Anwen. I thought that it would also be nice for Cadi's two sisters to have something to match their sister's quilt. So that's five pouches in total! - I've cut the butterflies out for the applique! 

2. A new bag for me. Done and blogged (but doesn't qualify for the FAL)

3. After moving things around a little at home the little table that used to hold our printer is now next to my corner on the sofa. It was a thrifty find when we first moved in together and the top has seen better days so I thought a little something quilty might do the trick for tarting it up. I might even drag something out of my ancient UFO pile for this one. It will also give me a good opportunity to practice making bias binding and sewing it onto a circular mini quilt. Not even looked at it.

4. Shorts for Anwen. I now have the pattern and the fabric. This is one make I hope to get finished before the end of the week. Autumn's here - this might find it's way on to next years Q2 list!

Hoping to turn a thrifty old skirt into a pair of shorts with the aid of a free (to me) pattern 

5. Shorts for Marged. I seem to have been neglecting Marged recently so depending on how Anwen's shorts go I might try making a pair for Marged out of some fabric from my stash. See as above.

So there we have it. A very disappointing quarter. All that's left to do now is link Get Shirty up to 

And Anwen's quilt to 

Here's hoping for a much more productive fourth quarter!

WIP Wednesday on Thursday. No wait a minute it's Friday now!

So I went back to work on Monday and I've already given up on keeping up with my blog reading and I haven't touched my sewing machine since Sunday afternoon. Work hasn't been too bad but trying to do everything that I already wasn't doing very well when I was home all day has proved to be near on impossible!

Anyway I had hoped to post this on Wednesday but I haven't been near the laptop all week (I do my blog reading on my mobile) so here it is.

We visited Cadi a whole week after she was born. Considering her parents and sisters visited us a few hours after we bought Marged home from hospital this was very tardy of us! Unsurprisingly I didn't manage to finish Cadi's quilt in time so I promised that they would receive something before the end of the month.

So this is how far I've gotten:

The idea was to fussy cut the large flower and then fussy cut some of the petals and scatter them along the quilt as if they were being carried away by a gust of wind. I like it but I think that I should have added some more scattered petals. I've already made the binding out of the same cream background fabric but with a scrap of the Madrona Road for the corner opposite the large fussy cut flower but I still think that it's a little too bare. I had planned to use the same cream fabric (I have quite a bit of it) for the backing with just Cadi's name (made from scraps of the Madrona Road) appliquéd in the bottom left hand corner but since then I've acquired two vintage sheets that I think would fit the bill just right - what do you think?

I love both of them and can't decide which to use

A close up

My husband thinks that this would make the quilt a little 'too blue' for a baby girl and although I don't think that a presant for a baby girl has to be pink I think that it would be a little 'too blue' full stop.

So I was thinking of adding a little something to the quilt top. I don't like spending too much time with Mr Seam Ripper so instead of taking it apart to add more petals I thought that I'd appliqué some butterflies to the top. (As inspired by this wonderful quilt by Emma @ Sampaguita Quilts) I don't have that many scraps but I think that I've got enough pinks to add a splash of colour to the top.

So what do you think?

1. Do I go with the cream backing as originally planned or do I go with one of the vintage sheets?

2. If I go for the vintage sheets which one? The blue flower on white (on the top in the pictures) or the white flower on blue (on the left in the pictures)

3. Should I add the butterflies to the quilt top or leave it as it is?

I'd really value your opinion.

And here's a list of my other WIPs in the order that I hope to finish them in.

1. Cara's quilt. Hand sewn half of the binding on. Hope to get the other half done on a road trip on Sunday.

2. Get shirty. Quilt front and back ready. Need to piece the batting (lqs only sell 45" wide 100% cotton batting!?!?!) and then baste.

3. House quilt. No Progress.

4. Anwen's quilt. No Progress.

5. Nephew's quilt. Still haven't started. Really should think about starting to cut!

On Hold - not allowed to start these until I've finished at least two from the list above.

1. Zig Zag quilt
2. Osian's quilt
3. Elisa's quilt
4. Rhys' quilt
5. Mum's quilt
6. Impromptualong (Fabric arrived yesterday!!)
7. Megan's quilt
8. Another baby quilt
9. Distribution

I also have two quilt tops that have been UFOs for over ten years. I'm hoping to share these with you one day but as I'm planning on hand quilting then (they're hand pieced) there's plenty of time for that!

As an extra incentive to finish it before the end of June I'm going to link up to A Lovely Year of Finishes for the first time and making Cadi's quilt my June goal!

Since I'm in the linky mood I've also linked up to

this week with Annabella @ Life's Rich Pattern (very, very late)

And because a blog post from me isn't complete without a family snap an explanation of the crinkly quilt top above.

Need I say more?

An up-cycled (late) Sunday Stash

So..... (Sorry it's a very wordy intro but there are some pics of lovely fabric below I promise you - skip this bit if you want)

We all know that sewing/quilting isn't the cheapest of hobbies. Most (non-sewing) people seem to think that those of us that try to make things ourselves do so to save money! If they only knew - maybe they'd appreciate things a little bit more.

Anyway, things are a little tight around here. We have a plot of land that we hope to build a house on (sewing room included - yes an actual room all to myself and my sewing paraphernalia) so every spare penny goes in the pot in the hope that we'll be able to move in before we retire! Only thing is I've recently rediscovered my love of patchwork, quilting and sewing in general and after picking up a few hints and tips through some wonderful blogs and YouTube videos I went a little mad at my lqs. Not fabric but the essentials - cutting mat, rotary cutter, ruler (can't believe I'd been cutting fabric with scissors for so long) and other bits and pieces. Bill? Over £100. That's a lot of money. I also bought a walking foot, quarter inch foot and darning foot online. Another £60. All of these things are essential and apart from the odd rotary blade (I'm on my third already!) I'm banking on them lasting a LONG time so in the long term it's not too bad but it is a lot of money to pay out in one go.

Problem is I'm trying to stick to a personal allowance of £30 a week. My little moment(s) of weakness above has obviously blown this out of the water recently but I really need to get back on track. Now when you consider that I'm supposed to buy my clothes and shoes, have my hair done, pay for daughters gymnastic lessons etc (I haven't even mentioned my chocolate addiction) out of this money it doesn't leave a lot for fabric. So I've decided that I can have an extra £30 a month to fuel my dirty little habit. Still when you consider that batting and thread has to come out of this allowance too - not a lot left over! I needed to find a cheap supply so that I can build up my stash. At £13 a meter my lqs doesn't really fit the bill so what are the alternatives?

UK fabric websites - on the whole by the time you've factored in postage they're not that much cheaper than my lqs (but they do tend to offer a much better selection than my lqs) unless you find a good deal like this one.

US websites - again a MUCH better selection than my lqs and dirt cheap compared to UK prices. But I'd wan't to stuff that flat rate envelope to within an inch of it's life to make up for the shipping rates which would mean saving a few months worth of quilting allowance - I want fabric NOW!!!! (and I would prefer to support British companies)

So what other options are there? Well I'm a strong believer in up-cycling - isn't that where the roots of quilting lie?

So I started looking around charity shops for 100% cotton garments that I could chop up and turn into quilts. I found that most of the ladies wear, although very pretty and had the look that I looking for, wasn't the right weight. They were too thin and flimsy and I thought that they would be very difficult to work with. Men's shirts however were exactly the right weight! Maybe not always the prettiest of fabrics but if I looked hard enough I could find some pretty decent pinks/lilacs/light blues. So I bought a few shirts, most for around £3 each and then cut them into usable pieces of fabric. I compared these to the size of a fat quarter. Each shirt easily gave twice, if not three times (depending on the style of the shirt - sleeve length/pocket placement etc) the amount of fabric you get in a fat quarter for the same price! I hadn't started to use them but my fabric stash was starting to look a bit healthier.

My mum saw what I was doing and she started keeping an eye out for me too. It wasn't long before she phoned and said that she'd bought some shirts for me. However I'd forgotten to tell her that I was only looking for 100% cotton but when she told me that she'd only paid £2 for the six shirts it didn't seem too bad. When she finally got them to me I fell in love with the colours in some of them and decided that I would make a lap quilt for myself out of them if only to try fmq for the first time without wasting the good stuff (designer quilting cotton).

Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of the shirts before I cut them up. I'd decided that I wanted to try making a chevron quilt so cut all the fabric into 5" squares

See - pretty colours!

There was a lot of waste that came from cutting squares out of non-square fabric and I was loath to throwing them away so I played with them a bit. I cut them all into rectangles as big as their shape allowed. Some were 1" x 10" others 4" x 6" and lots were all the sizes in between!

I didn't really have a plan I just sort of made it up as I went along! I sewed all the 1" strips into a long strip, all the 1.5" strips into a long strip, all the 2" strips into a long strip etc. I then cut these down to (if I remember correctly) 44" strips and any strips that weren't long enough I cobbled together (sewed a 3" strip to a 2" strip to make it 4.5" and then sewed it to the end of another 4.5" strip etc) until I had very little scraps left. I then threw these strips on the floor next to the sewing machine and with my eyes closed picked two strips up and sewed them together so that I didn't spend hours deciding on a layout for the strips. It was so much fun working this way - I usually spend hours and hours and hours drawing pictures etc planning quilts so this was like a breath of fresh air.

The quilt came out a little smaller that I'd hoped so I went to my stash and used one of the 100% cotton shirts to make a border and ended up with a 50" x 60" quilt top that I love!

No 'In Progress' pics for the top sorry

Horrible 'scruffy' bed shot

'Stained Glass', 'Can I complain that the
sun's too bright?' shot

As these weren't 100% cotton fabrics they weren't the easiest to sew with and my hoover had to contend with a lot of fraying up I really do like the end result. This is going to be my new lap quilt and the 5" charms will have to wait for another day.

Only problem is it needs a back and there weren't many scraps left. I made the binding out of a pink 100% cotton shirt and had some of the pink left over.

Like my 'spool'?

I also had some 5" charms that I'd worked out I wouldn't need for the chevron quilt (I only had 9 charms of the green stripe fabric and needed 10 for one row in the chevron quilt!) but that wouldn't be enough. I suddenly remembered an unneeded (not unwanted) wedding gift that I had lurking in the attic. A set of cream poly cotton bed sheets. I like to sleep on cotton sheets and since the quilt top had a lot of poly cotton in it why shouldn't the back? So I sewed the charms together to make an off centre cross

and used the left over pink to make my first (!) star

and added the poly cotton sheet to make a quilt back. I almost like it as much as the front but I wish that the cross was a little more off centre (not enough to get the seam ripper out though!) and that there was a little more contrast between the pink star and it's cream surrounding.

I think that they look quite good together - meet 'Get Shirty'

Look! What's that I see? Blue Skies? In June? On a Sunday? No it couldn't be!

I've already got my batting ready (from my lqs) so it just needs basting and then away we go! I'm a little apprehensive about the FMQing but considering that the quilt top and back combined cost me the princely sum of £8 I'm not too worried as if I really stuff it up I haven't wasted a fortune's worth of fabric.

As I've said I really enjoyed working on this but it is quite labour intensive to say the least. It can take up to an hour to cut up each shirt and although it's quite therapeutic to do in front of the tv I now have a quilt that needs the binding hand sewn to keep me occupied at night.

So what next? Well my mother is a lover of the car boot sale. I used to go with her quite often but Sunday School is at 10.00am every week so we're usually in Chapel on Sunday mornings. She has found me a few bargains - namely some fabric that was still on the bolt (I'm saving that for another Sunday Stash post) - but since getting the cotton-mix shirts she's not wanted to buy too much in case it's not what I'm looking for. However last week was half-term and as Sunday School takes a break during 'normal school' holidays and the weather was so nice I decided to go with her to a Car boot or two. We went to one last Saturday Morning together and to another one on Sunday Morning. This Saturday my mum went to a car boot without me as Anwen had a birthday party to attend and on Sunday we went to two different sales separately (since mum was away in North Wales). Between us we amassed quite a stash:

For the grand sum of .........wait for it.......£13.40 (give or take a few pence!)

That's only just over the price of one meter of designer fabric at my lqs!

Now I know that what I've bought is used and not all of it's 100% cotton but I'm still learning this quilting malarkey and I need cheap fabric to practice on and there is nowhere that you'd be able to find this volume of fabric for this price new! There are one or two fabrics in there that I might regret buying a little (Oh what finding a bargain forces you to do!) but there are others that I absolutely LOVE.

I've broken the bundle down into lots:

1. Sheets and duvet covers.    2. Pre-loved clothes
   3. Pillowcases.                      4. Just plain old fabric

As I'm not planning on buying any more fabric (with the exception of one little big bit) for the foreseeable future and it's now after 2.00am on Monday morning (and this is supposed to be SUNDAY stash) I thought that I'd go through one pile a week for the next month (and then I'll have a little big bit of a surprise for you!).

Sorry for going on so much. I really need to learn how to write a shorter blog post!

Nearly forgot to link up to Sunday Stash at Finding Fifth!