How can it be Friday already?

The weeks are just flying past and we find ourselves at the start of the school holidays already. April is a short month this year for the kids as they seem to be on holiday more than they're at school. I need to start work on birthday gifts for my youngest who will be 4 the day before the Royal Wedding. I have some Thomas the Tank fabric ready and waiting for a couple of projects. However the top of his birthday wish list is a Ben Ten bike and  no matter how hard I try I won't be making one of those :) oh and it has to be a blue one!

So what have I been up to this week? Well I am very pleased with myself as I managed to piece the inner circle on my block for the Lily's Quilts QAL. I have to say that I was very skeptical as to how this would come out as my track record on accurate seams and curves in general is not good. In fact as I was sewing it I muttered the whole time to myself how this was going to be a disaster and that I would no doubt have to rip it all out and start over a zillion times. So you'll understand my joy when after pressing it looked great and first time too yey! I'm not sure my family really appreciated why I was jigging about shouting "it worked, it worked" but they nodded wisely and smiled so I take that as understanding or is that more like humouring do you think? 

Now my next thing to do is to fix the outer edge of the dreseden plate as I managed to have a discrepancy in my cutting/sewing and the yellow blade seems to be at least 1/4" shorter than the rest. I'll deal with this next week as I don't want to spoil my excitement over managing this weeks task.

Also this week I made a coin purse for my friend. She loves all things owl so I used some of the Alexander Henry Spotted Owl fabric have in my stash to make her this wee coin purse/button holder.

I'm very pleased at how it came out and me being me I had to put binding on the inside seams as I just can't stand unfinished seams. I can see me making loads of these as thay make great presents and also are a re fab way of using up all your scraps. I love it when I feel I'm making use of every last bit of fabric, maybe it's the guilt of stash building kicking in there.

Did you know today is the first Fresh Sewing Day ? Lynne of Lily's Quilts has teamed up with Sew Fresh Fabrics and on the first day of the month there is a chance to win gorgeous fabrics by sharing you favourite sewing project of the last month. I can't decide really but I'll go with the owl purse as it hopefully it  made my pal happy and I loved how it turned out. What's your favourite project, why not share it over at Lily's Quilts. I'm of to have a look myself.

Anyway I've rambled on enough today, bye for now and happy sewing.

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

Orla Kiely Charity Bag at Tesco

I love, love, love Orla Kiely designs and I guess many of you do too. Unfortunately my wallet doesn’t love her quite so much but there is hope. Together with Tesco she has designed a range of Orla Kiely reusable shoppping bags to raise funds for charity.




They’re only £4 and 50p of that will be divided up between CLIC Sargent the children’s cancer charity and Orla’s personal charity.

My local Tesco probably doesn’t have any yet (running out of bread and milk last time hubbie made the trek) but as soon as they do I’ll be snapping 1 or 3 up.

Bye for now

Nikki