Auditioning the Fabrics

Posted on 22 November, 2015 by patchworkfairy

Hello! I haven’t been around on here for quite a while so today I decided to write about ‘auditioning’ the fabrics for my grandaughter’s new quilt!

I’ve been getting over the knee replacement (much harder than anticipated) and also the return of the dreaded Sciatica!! Having two bad legs has been pretty difficult pain wise and then to find there is an 18 week waiting list to see the Pain Consultant has been very demoralising. Especially since the initial appointment only leads to another waiting list for the actual injection treatment, which is the only thing which made me better last time.

Anyway DH did some research and suggested buying a home ultrasound kit and it actually seems to have made a difference. I’ll never know if this time the sciatica was going to be milder or whether the daily ultrasound treatments have stopped it in its tracks so to say. So I’m cautiously optimistic that I am improving and ohave started going about for a bit longer without any terrible repercussions.

I’ve only managed a limited amount of sewing in the last few weeks and it been more a case of sitting down with crochet hooks and a bag of cosy yarn! But never mind that today! Today I must tell you of a new term I learnt in my weekly patchwork class, it’s called ‘Auditioning’ the fabric for a project. So, if like me, you thought you were just messing about with your stash when you were wondering what to make and/or what to use, you weren’t, you were auditioning your fabric for a place in the final item, in my case it is a quilt.

Auditioning Patchwork squares for the quilt top!

DD is obsessed with pink girly everything after having two boys but I think it’s nicely balanced with some non pink in it.

That’s it for this week, hopefully I will be able to make it to the Knitting and Stitching show in Harrogate on Saturday and I’ll have lots to write about next Handmade Monday!

Crochet-a-Long and a new project book!

Posted on 28 September, 2015 by patchworkfairy

I am very excited this week! I have started the Spice of Life Crochet-a-Long (CAL) run by Black Sheep Wools (you can see my blog post of my first visit to the shop here). There is a Facebook page for the CAL which has lots of wonderful pictures of people’s blankets as they complete the first part. A new part is published on the BSW website each Tuesday. I am slightly behind as I have only managed the first two rows but I will catch up soon. I am also very excited this week because in perusing all the pictures last week I noticed some had a lovely looking project book in the background in which they were recording their blanket progress. Facebook is wonderful for finding out stuff – of course I wasn’t the only one who liked the idea of a new project book and someone had already enquired in the comments as to where to get them! Quick bit of link-following and via the magic of PayPal I had ordered one. Today it arrived!

Crochet project book and two rows of crochet in Grape colour

Only two rows done but got my nice new project book

It’s published by Doodlestop – they make all sorts of wonderful accessories for knitting and crochet- the yarn holder is definitely on my present wish list! The WIP-0-PEDIA has some useful information at the beginning then the rest is printed pages with headwinds for you to record your WiPs details, like yarn used and pattern source. As I never remember these things a couple of years down the line, I intend to fill in all the details at the start of each new project as I tend to become bored and to start new projects before finishing the others 😀

And on that theme, here is my other WIP – summer blanket in cotton as I thought it would be more pleasant in the hot weather than crocheting with wool or acrylic. This is the one I started on the day of my admission to hospital in early August for my Knee replacement. The latter is also the reason why I haven’t got very far with it!

WIP-O-PEDIA book and a summer blanket in cotton yarn

My summer blanket – typically being finished in Autumn!

this too will now going to be recorded in my new book. I’ve always loved new stationery so combining this with new crochet projects is just, well, perfect!

I should be able to have a good sized piece of CAL blanket to post next week as the pain from the surgery is much less now and I am starting to feel more ‘normal’ and able to do things without needing a nap every hour! Post surgery napping time is essential for recovery but really eats into your crochet time!

Linking up with Lucy Blossom Crafts Handmade Monday!

ATC August 2015

Posted on 23 August, 2015 by patchworkfairy

This week I thought I’d share my ATC which I made as part of the ATC August 2015 swap over at Very Berry Handmade! I haven’t got a lot else to show as whilst recovering from surgery my days are mainly taken up with exercises, resting with ice packs and sleeping!

So what is an ATC swap? It stands for Artist Trading Card and is a small, handmade card which is crafted to a theme. It can comprise all different crafts as long as there is some stitching involved. The them this time was a bit more flexible than previous swaps as it was ‘My Favourite………’ I chose to add the word ‘crafts’ on the end and so made a card with a mini quilt, some crochet, a mini Quillie, a little greetings card and some freehand embroidery.

i had a lot of fun making the card, it distracted me from the immediate aftermath of surgery and focussed my mind on something other than the pain! It’s not my best work as I just wasn’t in the best state to craft it but I decided it was ok enough to send to my swap partner in France! I had collected all the things needed to make my card into a little box before surgery and so everything I wanted was within my grasp once I was back home. It will be a while before I am back in my craft room, but part of that. Is my fault as it’s so messy in there it’s dangerous when you are walking with two sticks!!

Little card with mini patchwork quilt, some crochet and a little greetings card.

ATC My Favourite Crafts

Linking up with Lucy Blossom Crafts!

Post-Surgery with a bit of crochet!

Posted on 16 August, 2015 by patchworkfairy

Just a short post from me today. Been into hospital and had my total knee replacement surgery! I am so glad to be home 😀. I took my crochet in but only did some whilst waiting to go to theatre as afterwards it was enough of an effort just to get myself to the bathroom and back!

Now I am resting most of the day with little walks and knee exercises inbetween. I have been so glad of my soft Liberty fabric patchwork quilt, my warm colourful ripple blanket and a new bright owl fabric cushion I made last week before I went in. All of these have helped add a little bit of comfort to a rather painful time!

Yellow owl fabric cushion and crochet granny square in pink, cream, green and peach variegated cotton with two lilac rows.

My growing granny square and owl fabric cushion

The crochet is going to be a big granny square summer blanket using Rico Creative Cotton which is soft and not splitty at all

Well that’s all for now, time for my nap!😀

Linking up with Handmade Monday as usual over at Lucy Blossom Crafts

Caravanning and Competitions!

Posted on 10 August, 2015 by patchworkfairy

Gosh what a lot’s happened in last couple of weeks! I’ve been away camping, or caravanning, as I should say now, for a few days as I do every year, with extended family and friends. Here are my two grandsons early one morning.

My two grandson enjoying breakfast at Granny’s Cafe!

This year I had a new (to me) little caravan which was very nice and cosy! We decided to change up from the Camplet because even that was too much for me to help put up now. My little lightweight Freedom caravan is only 450kg and means I can just roll up, park, stick the kettle on and I’m there! This year however there was a large kerfuffle with the awning which came with the caravan as I left the instructions at home ! With the help of some friendly campers, my poor husband and our friends finally got the awning up in the dark! Next morning I discovered a full set of instructions in the awning bag ………

i couldnt help help making a few little comforts for my new ‘van just before I went…

My indoor-outdoor bunting

I had some very pretty fabrics from the Abakhan secret sale and managed to knock up two new cushions and the bunting just before we went. The bunting was made using waterproof fabric so I could hang it inside or out! With 100 purple solar fairy lights and a ceramic table top solar light changing thing my little patch looked very pretty and welcoming! Can’t wait to go away again and OH and I had been planning a little trip in early September for our wedding anniversary but last week I got a call from the hospital as they had a cancellation … So I am going in this Thursday for my total knee replacement 😱 it has put an end to my summer plans with daughter and the grandchildren but at least after it’s done I won’t be worrying every time I hold my new granddaughter in case my knee gives way. It was awkward on holiday as I couldn’t really walk about with her or jog her up and down and somehow babies always seem to know when you sit down with them, even if you are still jiggling them about!

To finish off my exciting fortnight, once I got back home I discovered I had won a competition in a craft magazine and a box full of Sewline products was delivered! It’s full of fabric glue pens, air erasable fabric pens and similar. All very useful and wonderful to have. I will have plenty to keep me busy after my surgery and am planning to set up a little craft station downstairs during my recovery period.

My box of Sewline goodies!

So that’s a quick round up – not sure if I’ll be in hospital next Sunday so might not make it in time for Handmade Monday again, but hopefully I will manage a quick update at least. Hope everyone is enjoying the summer holidays, whatever you are doing!

Abakhan Secret Sale!

Posted on 19 July, 2015 by patchworkfairy

Well you can tell from the title where I went this weekend! Yes, the Abakhan Secret Sale again! It all started with this in the post:

Secret Sale Golden Ticket

this exciting ticket entitles the bearer and guest to enter the Abakhan Secret Sale an hour before the general public. I was lucky enough to be sent one again and as my friend and I had enjoyed the last one so much we couldn’t wait to get to this one!

This time the sale started earlier and was in a much larger building with more space to look through all the lovely things. There are boxes and boxes of craft bits and bobs as well as fabric bundles, rolls and bolts. There are also slight seconds of things like foam, wadding and cushion inserts which don’t seem to have more than a few dusty marks on them or a small piece of foam pulled off. I especially like the uphostery ex-display fabrics which hang up on a rail as there are some real bargains £1 a display hanging which has fabric priced at £15.99 a metre in some cases! It was also lovely to meet Will Abakhan who had sent the tickets out and was on hand to greet customers as well as helping in the cafe later in the day!

Some pretty fabric – few metres worth

Our complementary refreshments after an hour of bargain hunting!

As a golden ticket holder we were also provided with a hearty bacon bap to aid our recovery after athe early start (8.30am) and bargain hunting!

After a very tasty bacon bap and coffee we embarked on the next bit of the day – buying things from the ordinary shop with our 15% discount! This proved far too tempting as every time one of us found something and wondered whether it would be suitable the other was all encouraging and ‘yes it’s perfect’ type thing – so we egged each other on until we had to go back to the car to offload all our stuff! The staff were fantastic all day – they carry things to the car for you and are very helpful all round.

I think Mostyn is the best Abakhan branch of all and I am so lucky to live near it. In fact I can easily get to the Birkenhead, Liverpool and Chester branches as well which seems unfair when lots of people don’t have a branch at all!

I havent ant got any pictures of our special dessert which we received after our second shopping spree but it was delicious! It’s definitely worth looking out for the next secret sale in a few months, especially if you keep an eye on their Facebook page and spot the chance to win a golden ticket. It’s a smashing day out for crafters!

Marilyn enjoying our breakfast baps

Linking up with Handmade Monday again this week!

Cutting a straight edge on fabric

Posted on 28 June, 2015 by patchworkfairy

Been making curtains this week – for my sister’s new (secondhand) caravan. We got some really nice flowery fabric in the style of Cath Kidson as my sis wants to do out the whole ‘van in floral vintage style. The fabric is from Abakhan in Liverpool and is incredibly wide – it’s the widest I’ve ever worked with at 6 foot! The pattern repeat is quite small so it’s made it fairly simple to match up a pair of curtains.

The pretty roses on the fabric

One major problem I have when using patterned fabric is how to cut straight edges so that the pattern doesnt go wonky across the curtain. With rotary cutters and a long ruler it’s easy to cut a neat straight line but it could be a straight line which doesn’t follow the straight grain of the fabric and hence the pattern ends up wonky!

I thought I’d describe how I make sure my curtains are properly squared in case anyone else out there has been wondering how to do it, especially when there is no selvedge as a starting point!

Firstly inspect your fabric for some nice frayed ends – you might need to pull a bit to get hold of an end but tweezers come in handy for this bit!

Nice easy to grab strands!

See the strand coming out

Strand removed

Two strands removed to form two cutting lines at 90 degrees to each other

So with a bit of gentle pulling of one or two strands of fabric you can pull them straight out and leave a blank line – it’s a bit like drawing up curtains – pull gently and then smooth out the fabric and pull again till the strand comes right out.

As you can see above once you have pulled a vertical and horizontal thread out you have two perfect lines to cut along!

Once you have your perfectly aligned cut fabric you can move onto hemming! My Wonderclips come in very handy here as they’re much easier to use than pins – for a start they don’t hurt you!

Keeping the hem in place with Wonder-clips

So that was my week – and will be more of the same next week as I haven’t finished them all yet! Hopefully I can take a picture of the caravan all decked out soon!

Linking up with Handmade Monday again this week 😀

Patchwork and Crochet!

Posted on 22 May, 2015 by patchworkfairy

Finally finished binding the new baby quilt I posted about last week so I can now return to making blocks for the quilt I am doing at my patchwork course on Mondays. So far I’ve only done a Dresden plate and half of along cabin! If you are not a quilter you won’t know what I mean so next week I will be including some pictures of the finished blocks and their names! The other project I am making is a cotton crochet blanket for the baby. I loved the colours in my vintage rose bouquet so much I thought I would crochet a blanket based on the Japanese Flower pattern I used for my mum’s scarf in this post. Here below is a pic of the flowers and the first two flower motifs.

My mothers’ day flower bouquet

First two motifs

The motifs won’t sew up into straight lines but as it will be used in July it should be ok to be a ‘ holey’ sort of blanket!

As well as making things I am still mulling over the course I recently completed – the same one Vicky did – as yet I am unsure as to which direction I want to go forward with my Folksy and Etsy shops – in terms of what I make so I am not adding anything yo them until I make my decision. It does make my shops look rather forlorn though with only a few items for sale. However it’s worth taking time to get things right and I do have a new granddaughter on the way so need to make things for her!!

link up with handmade Monday

Using a Seam Ripper – aka Frogging!

Posted on 10 May, 2015 by patchworkfairy

I’ve really enjoyed making the ’round the world’ pram quilt and am finally at the binding stage. I had to look at a you tube video again to remind myself about making mitred corners – can’t seem to retain any information on how to do things like that any more! I also made a lot of use of my seam ripper – aka frogging! Rip it Rip it Rip it! Here is the quilt just before binding.

Round the World Pram Quilt

I decided not to over quilt it and just do some heart shaped lines in the middle with straight lines round the outside. The centre heart is made using variegated quilting thread and an embroidery stitch, whilst the overlapping hearts are in delicate Aurifil thread.

Despite using the seam ripper rather a lot I still have some points not matching! The worst thing though was sewing a whole strip of pink spotty border on wrong way up! And of course it was the last one and so just when I was about to stop for the night grrrrr. This is why it’s often better to stop when you’re tired rather than keep going to try and finnish things! Whilst I was frogging away I remembered the blog post I read somewhere about using seam rippers correctly and how amazed the writer was that they had used it incorrectly for years. It was quite funny because I had inadvertently realised there was a better way to use them only a few months before I read the blog post but I thought it was just me being silly – never thought other people might be using it the wrong way too!

So, how do you use yours? If you pick at the seam, breaking the thread every few stitches, and pulling out sections bit by bit, as I used to do, you will be amazed to find there is a much faster way to frog! I have tried to take a picture of how it should be used but it was quite hard to get it to clearly show the action. Basically you hold the seam vertically in your two hands and then run the ripper downwards between the two pieces of fabric, – parting the seam easily and quickly. It can be tricky to hold the fabric and use the ripper, but once you get in position it’s fab!

Pushing the ripper vertically down the seam

If you’ve never tried it like this you’ll be so excited you’ll be hoping you make a mistake just to hear the satisfying riiiippppppyyyyy noise!😃

I’m linking up with Handmade Monday again at Lucy a Blossom Crafts now!

April 2015 ATC Swap – “Home”

Posted on 3 May, 2015 by patchworkfairy

April has been a mixed month! I’ve been trying to complete things for my new granddaughter’s arrival whilst also taking part in the Very Berry Handmade April 2015 ATC swap – “Home”. It’s too late to join in this one but if you fancy the idea just keep a look out on the blog for the next one, probably in about 2-3 months. April is my birthday month and we went to South Wales for a few days which rather slowed me up completing my ATC, especially as after a fabulous few days I went and tripped full length on the car park during a rest stop on the way home! My arms took most of the fall and luckily I don’t seem to have set my sciatica off again but – honestly – I am a danger to myself!!

Firstly let me show you my ATC – the theme was “Home” and so quite open to interpretation. After a ~~short~~ ridiculously long ‘think’ I decided that I am very happy at home when sitting in front of the window in my craft room, sewing, with a large mug of tea at my side! I hope my swap partner likes it!

my ideal day at home!

As I said, it was also my birthday at the end of this month and so I enjoyed myself whilst watching Create and Craft one day by spending some birthday money (thanks Mum!) on this lovely book by Janet Clare. All the quilts and embroidery pieces are inspired by nature and it’s a very interesting read as well as really making me want to start one of the projects RIGHT NOW!!

Birthday Book

The book has all the information for making your own mixed media art pieces as well as quilts. There are plenty of instructions, such as for ageing fabric and for applique work and also lots of templates to use as you wish. Two of the quilts which I really want to attempt first are the “Joys of Spring” and “Nature’s Beauties

Joys of Spring Quilt

I thought I would make my own version of the nature quilt and this spring season is a good time to start taking some photos for my ideas. The garden has bluebells growing just now so I think they would make a lovely pretty applique!

Well now I am linking up with Handmade Monday at Lucy Blossom Crafts and I’ve just remembered that I need to finish my HM ATC and send it to Lucy, I wonder how many she has received yet?!!