Tin whistle June 2011

I started off the month making some more of these by custom order. I've made about half a dozen pairs so far. I don't think I have ever made more that two identical items of anything, so obviously this fabric just really ticks some boxes with the mum's of boys.
I also had a couple of requests for girls pinny's. I only make kids clothes by custom order these days and it makes a nice change from pram liners.

Another denim Pinny, with front pockets this time.

Otherwise I just worked on creating fabulous and unique pram liners for my customers.

Twin set in traffic jam and a cute monster fabric.

As well as a custom order universal liner and stowable blanket set. This is with the blanket stowed:

Blanket unfolded:

Reverse colourway:

Another liner/blanket set. This liner was for sale on my store and the customer requested a matching blanket. Because I had run out of the fabric used on the reverse side of the liner (a babushka fabric) I used a cream polar fleece instead with the strawberries when making up the blanket.

And one more liner

So that was all my custom orders for the month. I also make a fair few extra pram liners that I added to the store. Take a look if you are in the market for some bling for your pram.

Snapshot Sunday- zig zag cushion

Woops I got a little diverted from my other WIPs and made these two cushions yesterday. They are stash-buster projects, except for the cushion inserts and the zippers. The zig zag cushion I sandwiched with some wadding and quilted before I made it up as a cushion cover. These two cushions are are being gifted to the library at my kids school. The librarian has a fabulous blue armchair which she sits in when she reads to the kids, and she mentioned she would like some cushions for it. Lucky I was in earshot. BWa ha ha ha ha.

Snapshot Sunday- Books and JGJQ and WIPs

I know I've mentioned this habit before, but I think I really have found the secret to making time for sewing. Get listening to an Audiobook! This week I downloaded "I am Number Four" onto Matilda's Ipod Touch and have made some significant progress on Jill's Giant Japanese quilt. I love to read, and so often feel conflicted about sewing versus reading a book. Not any more! Once I start a audiobook I find myself actually making time to get into the sewing room (in fact you're lucky I am writing this blog post!). Another pleasant surprise I have found with Audiobooks is that I am much more likely to persevere if its just an average book. Take "I am Number Four", for example. Its a teen novel, and as such the writing style is a bit clunky and juvenile. As a book, I would have put it down after chapter 1, with the feeling that I had better things to do. But as an Audiobook I just enjoy the story while my hands are busy making a quilt!

Anyway... moving onto the actual sewing. Here are some progress pics of the JGJQ (Jill's giant Japanese quilt). I am particularly pleased with how nicely my points are meeting so I took a few photo's of that.

I have been joining 4 small block units into one large (approx 15") block and then joining these into rows. Here are two of the 15" blocks joined.

And here is a completed row. I have done 3 and have another 2 rows to complete.

Since this is a 'snapshot' Sunday I thought I might also take pics of other WIPS happening around the sewing room. In the corner is my Hexagon box. I have been adding scraps to this as I cut out other projects, and even spent one evening (when I was watching TV) making a stack of hexagons. I tried out a fabric glue pen, instead of sewing the fabric to the paper hexagons. Honestly I am not sure it was any quicker, it definitely was messier (glue on fingers etc), and somehow it felt like cheating.

At the Perth Quilt fair (held about a month ago) I bought a chenille cutter. I didn't really need anything when I went along to the fair, and certainly not more fabric, so I decided to look at quilting gadgets instead. This was only about $12 and looked like fun

I gave it a test run by cutting six 8" squares from some unwanted fabric and stacked them together. The top 5 pieces of fabric were placed face up (with the bottom of those being a contrast fabric in blue) and the 6th fabric was placed face down. I then stitched in parallel lines across the quilt about 1/2" apart. The chenille cutter was used to carefully slice the top 4 layers between each row of stitching. Chuck it in the wash to 'rag' the seams edges and, Viola, chenille! I am planning a chenille cushion sewing project with my kids. And maybe next time I have to make a baby quilt, I will use the cutter to make a chenille quilt.

This week I also cut out about a dozen pram liners for tin whistle. I know I don't normally talk about tin whistle sewing on this blog (except to do my monthly gallery post of completed items) but this stack of fabric looked nice and I *WAS* supposed to be snapping pics of WIPs ;)

And last but not least... Ever since I made George those sock monkey PJ's he has been a wee bit obsessed Sock monkeys. I went onto the Internet to show him pictures of a 'real' sock monkey, and before we knew it I had logged into Etsy and 'Jumpy' was on his way to our house!

Manic Monday

Hi All. I am sorry I didnt manage to do a snapshot sunday post yesterday. As the title suggests I had a bit of a manic weekend. Normally Monday is a big sewing day too, but today I was on Kindy roster :) I got to help twenty 4.5 year olds make straw, stick and brick houses- fun fun! In the hour I had left between the roster session and school pick-up time I managed to make 4 little premmie outfits. A friend of my sisters just had boy/girl twins and my sister asked if I could make some outfits for them. The boy was a good birth weight, but sick. So I made him two of the biggest sized outfits.

They are reversible, so this is what I picked for the other side.

The girl was under 2kg, but hopefully will catch up soon, so I made one small outfit and then a larger sized one as well.

The reverse of the girl outfits.
By the way... I drafted this pattern myself, and offer it for free for anyone who wants to make premie (or dolls) clothes. While I prefer you to only use this pattern for non-commercial purposes (for your own use, or to donate to hospitals) I cant police this... so I ask that if you onsell garments made from this pattern, that you acknowledge tin whistle as the pattern source :) Please email me if you would like a copy of the pattern. I can usually email it to you within 12 hours. There are 2 sizes. 0.5-1kg and 1-2kg.

Finally, I got a moment to think about Jills Giant Japanese quilt again. After consultation with Jill, I think I have decided on the layout pictured below. In my last last post about this quilt I had a fairly even split between the random arrangement and the grid one. Jill was leaning towards the orderliness of the grid pattern, but the small scale of the grid wasnt speaking to her. This new layout of larger squares suits the scale of the quilt, and combines order (with the dark and light tones creating a square pattern) but the actual fabrics are arranged randomly within each square. What do you think? It will change the overall shape of the quilt. I had to do a 8x 10 arrangement of blocks when my original plan was to have a square quilt of 9x9 blocks. It just means the quilt will drape longer at the sides I guess. The quilt top will also have a border around it- of approx 10" wide.

Snapshot Sunday- hounds tooth jacket

Ta da! I like it. David hates it. What do you think? I've been wearing it all weekend becase we've been having a cold snap in Perth (it is winter- so I guess its to be expected!). I love the little bit of red that peeps out- and the hounds tooth still makes me happy, no matter what my husband says. Tee hee hee.

This is the pattern I used. I am happy with it. It was a bit involved- but it kept me pleasantly occupied. I'd defiantely use this pattern again if I wanted another fleece jacket for weekend wear.

The only think I'm poo'ed about is that I didnt match the hounds tooth pattern up that well on the front. Arrrggghhhh. I cut them out matching, but somewhere along the line they got a little bit out of sync with each other. It bothers me... a lot. But not enough to not wear the jacket.

I used a stretch velour for the hood lining and facings. It lends a little bit of 'class' to it all (dare I even say that where refering to a jacket made out of hounds tooth polar fleece? LOL).

The inset pockets are also faced with some of the red velour.

And this weekend I also made up Matilda's winter PJ's.

Since she still had bed hair at three in the afternoon, she kindly decided to model the PJ's for me and act as though she has just got out of bed!