oh my, I think I might need a lie down!!

I was quite busy at the end of last year....

Busy turning this fantastic bundle of Oakshott Lipari Shot Cottons




into these cushions.....





You can find the pattern in the new issue of Fat Quarterly, yes I know, amazing isn't it, can't believe I'm in Fat Quarterly...

This issue is all about Pre-Cuts and as you would expect it's full of stunning patterns. I'm trying really hard not to add any more projects to my to do list but I suspect I may fail on that front.

Phew it's all a bit too exciting so I'm off for a lie down.

Bye for now

commission accomplished

 

I find it pretty nerve racking making things for other people, don't
get me wrong I love it but I do stress myself out sometimes. When it's
a gift it's not quite so bad but when someone's commissioned you to make something, well all I can say is I'm slowly getting to used to it. I am a real fuss-pot so that probably makes it worse. However it's such a buzz when you hand over the finished item and they love it.

Last week I caught up with making a personalised cushion that Mandi (Hi Mandi if you're reading this) asked me to make as a gift for a friend to celebrate the birth of her little girl Elise. What a perfect opportunity to use the girl version of Children at Play. Kate at M is for Make had a great wee fat sixteenth bundle of this range which worked brilliantly for this cushion. I still have the fat quarter set of the the boy version of this fabric range waiting to be turned into a quilt for Jamie - must really get onto this as he keeps asking me when it'll be done.......no pressure then!

I've got another cushion to make, this time no names involved just some Lotta Jansdotter Echo and some linen - oh dear what a chore that'll be .... NOT, you all know how much I love Echo and of course linen! Imagine that, getting paid to work with fabric you love, I can hardly believe it myself.

I'm also working on an order for 6 personalised pencil cases and shhhh but I've got my final PIF gift on the go too.

bye for now, I'll be back soon to show off my recent giveaway successes!

PS when photographing a white cushion it's probably advisable not to use a white background.

wednesday catch up

The giveaway post is here and theres' still a few days left to enter so why not leave a comment and you never know it could be you!

It's Wednesday again already! How did that happen? It must be a sign of old age but really the weeks are flying past. I'm rather terrified by the sight of Christmas (yes I did say it) stock appearing in the shops aaargh! I know people who have already started their Christmas shopping - oh no that's twice I've said it now! I refuse to do anything about it until at least Halloween is past but then that's probably why I'm always burning the midnight oil so close to the 25th (trying not to say it again). I shouldn't think it'll be any different this year but you never know.

Anyway after that sidetracked paragraph and onto some sewing. Well finally my cosmo cushion cover is finished ya ho! It seems to have taken an inordinate amount of time really but I guess I've learned quite a few things while making it and I am rather pleased with it.

I know a disappearing 9 patch isn't exactly rocket science but it was new to me and I will be using it again. I also learned to do tiny stitches at the beginning and end of quilting rows so that you don't have a zillion threads to tie off.  I used cotton curtain lining fabric on the back of the quilting sandwich and also to line the backing fabric. I'd do this again as it gives the cover a nice substantial feel to it and makes sure there's no feathers poking through which is good since I'll be sitting on this one everyday while at the sewing machine.

I've also now fitted my first concealed zipper yay! I won't say that I got it right first time as I didn't. My hubbie tried to help but soon realised that he'd be better off making a cup of tea instead as I ranted at my own ineptitude. It turns out that all I'd done wrong was to not flatten the coil of the zip enough as it was going through the zipper foot and when I corrected this it went in no problem at all.

So what else is going on ? Well I've only got the lining to sew in on my Keyka Lou cross body bag, which is good right? It is but I'm totally underwhelmed by it :( It looks really boring! The inside look great but the outside is a bit meh! Now this has nothing at all to do with the pattern, it's great as all Michelle's patterns are, no it's my reserved choice of outer fabrics that's the issue. I had thought of adding a fabric flower perhaps but I'm not sure that's really me or I have a cute button or two I could add. We'll see what happens, I'm sure something will come to me soon I hope.

There's no progress on any other projects so far this week but I do have several posts to write about some birthday purchases oh! and my 241 tote which I've not shown you and also I've still not blogged about the fabric swap I was in last month.

So I hope you're having a productive sewing week  and that I've not bored you to death with my ramblings today. I'd like to finish by saying "hi there and welcome" to new followers and thank you to all followers new and old for entering the birthday giveaway!

bye for now

this weeks progress

Well I think this wip Wednesday thing is really helping me make progress with my projects obviously I'm now a day late with this post but I'll ignore that if you can.

progress
cosmo cricket cushion cover
The top is now finished, quilted and I even dug out the serger and finished the edges. Just need to get a concealed zipper now so this should be completed by next week.

dead simple qal
Colours chosen, order with Sew Fresh Fabrics will be placed today (best deal I could find to buy fat quarters and that's including postage to the UK).

keyka lou cross body bag
Outer is completed, lining ready to sew, handles to cut

completed 
noodlehead 241 tote
gym bag for youngest


no progress
boy quilt
dresden qal
all those things I was going to make for the shop


new
noodlehead go anywhere bag


hmmm thought I'd finished more than this, never mind I'm definately making more progres than last month so musn't complain.

Oh and I thought I'd just mention that I'm another year older on Saturday (groan!) so to celebrate I thought I'd have a little giveaway so stay tuned ;)

Happy 4th Birthday!

It was my youngest's 4th birthday yesterday and I have to say that it went extremely well. If you'd seen me the night before you might have not expected it to go that way though. Jamie decided that the only cake worth having was a Ben 10 one so of course I agreed. I'm not the best baker in the world but I have tried over that last couple of years to make the kids cakes. I just think it'll make great memories for them, although the temptation to dash to the shops is very strong.  I have recently discovered the local cake shop which as well as turning out wonderfully decorated cakes sells an amazing array of cake toppers, candles, balloons and cake making sundries. ooo! sundries that sounds posh where did I get that word from?  My daughter was in 7th heaven when I took her down to buy the green and black icing for the cake. She loves baking and  has already eyeballed several must have items from the shop.

Anyway after much cursing,  re-rolling of icing and exclamations of  'why did I decide to do this' I made my first and hopefully only Ben 10 cake.

In an earlier post I showed you the beginnings of a Thomas the Tank cushion, another birthday request so here is the finished result. I wanted to try out making up the piecing as I went along (there is a word for this but my brain has seized and I can't remember it). I can be a little bit too reliant on patterns and being shown what to do so this is my first little step towards thinking for myself. The random pieces were sewn in a quilt as you go style a bit like this sew we quilt tutorial only I didn't use a backing fabric. Also the blue strips directly above and below are 'flanges' apparently, I just thought they'd add a bit of texture to the cushion. I'm really pleased with the piping. I didn't take too much time to make up the binding from scraps of the other colours. Straight line quilting seems to be my favourite which surprises me as I thought it'd be a real pain to keep things lined up but as far as my dodgy arms are concerned it beats free motion quilting hands down. Anyway I'm very please at how it all came together and Jamie took it to his bed last night so I think that's a thumbs up.

Last on my list was another small developing tradition here which is an 'i am' T shirt. One of my first ever blog posts was to show his age three t-shirts so a year on here is this years one. It's very simple and sewn very late at night and in this photo covered in bubbles, cake and crisps. The mark of a good party eh!

So thank you too Jamie's friends for coming and for making his day so special, his first words today were 'is it still my birthday today''?

Anyway I'm off to watch the Royal Wedding and enjoy what looks like another lovely sunny day.

Bye for now

Guess what..... more cushion covers.

materials for making cushion covers

I've made some more cushion covers, I know I think I have a problem. Actually I am finally making some headway with plans I've had for a long time to make cushion covers for our living room. A friend very kindly gave me loads of cushion inserts because she was allergic to the feathers in them. These inserts have been in the loft for a year now waiting patiently for me to make covers for them. So I'm now on a roll and armed with my new piping foot I am churning out covers, well maybe not that much but here are another two.

I have to say that Echino make the most fantastic fabrics, this particular one is I think my favourite fabric of all time....at the moment. This project started as a way to use a piece of the wonderful Echino fabric bundle that I won from The Eternal Maker. I now think I'll have to make a bag from this fabric too, oh dear!

Anyway I hope you're having lots of stitching time.

Bye for now

Nikki

hurdles and pillows

Strange title I know but it does describe what this post is about. Firstly sorry I’ve not been around much lately but recently we’ve had quite a few hurdles to jump here at Sew Quine Stitches. I know we all benefit from a challenge now and again but really, enough already. I’m not going to go into too much detail as I don’t intend to turn this place into a moan-fest but if you could keep your fingers crossed that the house building industry in the UK could pick up a bit it would be a great help. If that works then at least it’d be one hurdle dealt with, we’ll just have to trust that the NHS has the other one covered.

Anyway moan over now for the pillows part. When I’ve not been mopping about I have actually done some sewing. I’ve a stash of pillow forms/cushions that have been waiting for covers for quite some time and I thought it would be a good platform to try some techniques I’ve not tried before.

The first is made using some Amy Butler Fresh Start in tangerine which is decor weight fabric so perfect for cushions. I used some klona cotton from Backstitch to make some bias strips to cover piping cord and following the instructions in Sew Everything Workshop the cover went together very smoothly.

    

For the back I used some lovely organic cotton from Raystitch and put in a central zip. As usual with zips I had a few false starts but it looks fine now it’s finished. Of course if I’d found my adjustable zipper foot before attempting this it might have been a tad easier. Sew Mama Sew are running a feature on pillows or cushions if you're here in the UK and they have a great tutorial about adding piping to cushion covers if you fancy a go yourself.

Talking of Sew Mama Sew my second cover was made using another great tutorial from there for making a cover with a hidden zipper and I really like it and will be making loads of covers this way.

I used some of Alexander Henry’s Spotted owls fabric, which I had stashed for this exact purpose about a year ago. The back is some Kona cotton in stone and the trim is Amy Butler of course, I love this fabric but then I seem to have a thing about dots at the moment.

I have another cover in progress, this time I’m using some of the Echino fabric I won and it’s looking good so far. Fingers crossed it’ll be finished soon-ish. The best thing is these are all being sewn from stash which is such a great feeling, the only thing I’ve had to buy are the zips. Actually I bought continuous zipper as this would keep costs down. Attaching the sliders to continuous zipper is not something to do in a hurry though. I found this video very helpful but I think he’s missed out one vital step… swearing, a lot of swearing, it helps to swear,well it doesn’t really but so far I’ve not mastered attaching the little beggars with out turning the air blue.

If you want to make some covers I’d recommend popping over to Sew Mama Sew for some inspiration and some great tutorials.

So what have you been sewing? I’ve quite a few projects to share yet before we’re up to date so expect another post soon.

Bye for now

Nikki