A light bulb moment & UFO

I was browsing through a magazine before I filed it with my thousands of other magazines and had one of those light bulb moments....

 

Instead of marking pages with sticky notes, then filing it away....

 

or laying a magazine near my machine, open on a page I really like...

I should organise myself and just grab a magazine at random and force myself to make one of the projects in that magazine... and keep doing that every month for a year, ending up with 12 random items from 12 random magazines.

Shame I didn't think of that at the end of last year and made it a 2014 project of the year!... maybe next year... AND I might even blog about it and ask for fellow participants to egg me (and each other) on.

After that light bulb moment, I decided to pull out one of my UFOs and finish it...

Believe it or not, I only have 2 quilting UFOs and they are both BOMs.  (I have a knitting UFO and a crochet UFO as well).  One of the quilting UFOs, is a Christmas quilt purchased from the Fat Quarter Shop, a few years ago.  I have made all the blocks and only have to join them & add the borders...I have all the fabric to make it up...

... the other UFO is from a shop in Orange NSW.  It is made up of beautiful Japanese styled fabrics...very rich in colours...(photo taken at night time under artificial light, so the colours aren't their true vibrant self).

Today, I started & finished "Month 10" which are the 4 corners before the borders.  Next will be "Month 11" which is sashing the 9 blocks together and joining in the 4 corner blocks.  "Month 12" is adding more borders and finishing the quilt.  Again I have all the fabric...even the backing for this one.

Until next post...
Jewells

Easter Quilt & Kits

I finished this quilt yesterday.  It is an Easter Quilt.  

The fabric in all the centres, the outside border & the backing have Bunnies & Easter Eggs. 

 I quilted it with Bunnies & Hearts.

 

 I made the quilt out of an old 12 (8.5") block kit I had made years ago.  

I added sashings and borders to the blocks to make it bigger.

The next 3 pictures are some of the new kits I have been making.  

I decided to make the new kits with alternating borders, as the old kits had all 12 blocks the same (as in the quilt above), but now the new kits have two lots of 6 (8.5") blocks... still ending up with 12 blocks that makes a quilt 24.5" x 32.5" without borders or sashings.

 Here I have catered for the boys and made "Tractors"

 

 The next kit is for girls, called "Owls".

 

Then I revamped some Christmas kits.

  
I have boxed them up in old video boxes and will be selling them for $10 each. (Hope they sell!)

Until next post...
Jewells

Cushion Covers & Charity Bandages

Mum & I have been busy sewing items for my stall.  

All 12 of the aprons are now made, plus two sets of the following cushion covers. 

 

The most expensive part of the covers, were buying the inserts to go into them.  I managed to source 4 cushion inserts on eBay for $22.99 including postage.

Then last Saturday while out at Garage Sales, I came across this bag of crochet cotton for $3.

So I decided to make some "Leper Bandages" for a friend who has been nagging asking me for ages to knit up some for her charity.

Apparently, the more colourful the better, so the bag of "scraps" is ideal for this project. 
The bandages get sent to a remote part of India and she was pleased to tell me that her charity has now sent so many to this particular hospital, that the hospital no longer has to buy bandages.  She has even showed me photos that were sent back to her to show that the bandages are really used.

They are so simple to make..
Cast 22 stitches onto size 10 (3.25) needles, knit (garter stitch) for 1 metre... cast off, leaving last stitch,
then crochet 60 chain.. Sew all ends into bandage.

Until next post...
Jewells

ALL Flannel fabric now out of my stash

That's it!  I have realised I don't like working with flannel.... 

so I have taken ALL of it out of my stash and cut it up....

...and will be selling it on eBay! 

 

With my baby cutting machine (which I only have 3 shapes to cut).. I cut 4.5" squares...

then I cut 2.5" x 4.5" rectangles & also half square triangles that make 4.5" squares.

I also cut triangles by just using my rotary cutter & ruler to make kits to sell..

that end up making a 24" x 32" quilt top like this..

 

 and I also decided to cut some of the fabric to make three 40" x 48" baby quilts to use up pieces of left over wadding I have, using the above design.

 (By the time I have made them, I will REALLY be OVER flannel!)

 

All of the above photos show most (not all) of the flannel I have cut!

I now have a hole in my cupboard to store the cutting machine I used on this fabric, plus other fabric!

Just give me "normal" cotton fabric to sew.. much nicer, and less fluff in my machine!

Until next post...

Jewells

Last week's sewing & quilting

 

As mentioned in a previous entry, I have been cutting out and Mum has been sewing. 

Above are 5 Christmas Swags that Mum appliqued (by machine) and I sewed on all the embellishments & joined them together, (as Mum has trouble holding a needle now a days).

 

 Meanwhile, I added the black border and the outside border to a Christmas panel I fell in love with.  I have a thing for the Cardinal birds and have heaps of fabric & patterns for these birds.  I then quilted it with a holly & berry stitch.

 Then I decided to use up a roll of lofty wadding that I bought from Spotlight YEARS ago.
 I made a cot quilt out of it, using white fabric front & back, then a lemon "baby items" stitch on the front & white on the back, then a lemon binding to finish it off.

All of these items are now folded and put away for my sale later on in the year.

Until next post..
Jewells

Preserving

 

 Over the last couple of days I have been both busy in the kitchen and the sewing room.

Today I am showing you the "kitchen" items.

The above photo shows 2 bottles of "Curried Ketchup" ... so easy and quick to make.

The other bottles are "Lemon Cordial", again very easy to make... and SOOO nice.

 

...and now my fig tree is over producing again and I have made up a few batches of "Fig Jam" and I have another batch to make up this afternoon... jam takes a LOT longer to make, but worth the effort.

I have more lemons to do something with, so I will be making "Lemon Curd/Butter" from them... nice & rich with 8 eggs & 375gms of butter in it.  I will be taking my jam & Lemon Curd to Bingo with me to sell next Monday, as the ladies keep asking for it.... thank goodness for that, as when I retired from work just on a year ago, that way of selling (on the front counter) stopped and I had to find another way to sell my jams.

Until next post...

Jewells

My First PAID Quilting Job

After practising on 33 quilting projects of my own, I nervously quilted 2 quilts (edge to edge) on my Gammill Statler Quilting Machine for a friend (Robyn) this weekend.

Everything went without a hitch, but I must admit, even though my machine is computerised and you can set it and leave it to do a row, I stood there the whole time watching each stitch as it went along.

Robyn left the thread and pattern choice up to me..
 I used a yellow thread on the Bright quilt and a pattern called a "Daisy"
and
on the Tartan quilt I used a navy thread with a pattern called "Wish Upon a Star".

As Robyn struggles with attaching the binding, I did that for her (at no charge), so all she has to do now is hand attach the binding at the back on both quilts.

I was wondering if I should offer adding the binding to all who I quilt for... as I think it looks better to receive a quilt like this from "the quilter" than receiving it with all the extra floppy fabric that has to be cut off before you start the binding!...what do you think?

Now to parcel it up and send it off to her... I only received the quilts on Friday, so I think she will be shocked at the quick turn around!

Until next post...
Jewells