La Passacaglia Progress

There's hasn't been much sewing happening here as there has been work Mondays to Fridays (of course) and a few trips away at the weekends (yay!). 

The trips mean my La Passacaglia has been growing - it's a fab travel project!  I know some of these tops are made from beautifully harmonising fabrics, but mine is all scraps!  I try and choose carefully for the fabrics in each cog, but the next cog will have no relation to the previous!

So my three cogs to date:

And my Poland Project (that's this weekend's travel) has started

The only other sewing related work has been some embroidery for a customer:

Time to get up and pack!  Have a great weekend!

The Way to Work!

I'm working at two schools at the moment - one contract generally finishes at 1pm, the other starts at 3pm, so I have a two hour lunch break!

Sometimes I have popped home to hang washing out or do other chores, sometimes I have gone shopping , occasionally I have even taken myself off to the gym, but today's idea was the best one . . .
A packed lunch, a park, blue skies, and hand sewing!

Twenty I-spy bricks now have a sashed end, and I had a lovely relaxing lunch break!

A Flock of Felt Friends

I had a long day yesterday, but the evening work made up for all the daytime work!

Eight ladies at Chertsey Museum for the Craft & Wine evening . . . making Felt Birds

They are so easy - A big circle of felt for the body, and another about two inches less in diameter for the wings. a small triangle of yellow for the beak, two beads or buttons for eyes and a few lengths of ribbon for the tail (cut to length, arrange and stitch a few holding stitches.)

Stitch the small circle to the big circle.  Create a hanging thread in the centre,  Fold in half, sew on the eyes.  Start to sew the bird closed enclosing the tail ribbons at one end and the beak at the other, remember to push in stuffing before stitching it closed.

Cute eh?

End of Easter

So the Easter hols are, to all intents and purposes, over :-(  My alarms are set for tomorrow and I'm off to bed!

Just quickly going to share a bit of sewing I managed this weekend - "thank you" pouches for some lovely people who have donated stuff!!!! 

Back to working 40+ hours a week from tomorrow so not much sewing :-(

Fourth Box of Fun

This fourth goodie box is HUGE! When I opened a fabric package from Sue I was delighted, but had no idea that it was one of two packages!

Box two was filled with sewing stuff:

Threads, button packs, lots of felt, ribbons, cording, a yo-to maker, wool and a knitting video.

AND

Loads of paper craft goodies:

Stencils, shrinkie sheets, coloured papers and cellophane, stamps, card blanks, flowers petals, paint brushes, sticky glue dots, glue and washi tapes

Sue: this is amazing, thank you so much!  I've got Kids' Crafty Church this afternoon, and Crafty Church next Saturday - they are going to have a great time!!!!

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Good Things Come In . . . Fours!!!!

After the excitement on Wednesday with my two packages, I've now had a further TWO donation deliveries!

One came from Kathy in Oregon USA. Kathy works for the US post office: she usually blogs about planes, yard sale finds, and sewing projects, but also blogs about the rural postal count each spring. Posties are paid based on the post count during a two week period, so Kathy does swaps and Pay-it-forward this time of year. I sent a few packages to her, and today I got an amazing package! (Kathy knows how to get the most out of her postal fees)

She sent me lots of fabric squares and triangles, and some map envelopes,

And loads of blue and yellow scraps as well as HST blocks, 4 patch, and flying geese

AND ... A kit to make a pop up clutter catcher (see her own version here) and a lovely hand made card!

Thank you, thank you, thank you Kathy!

The fourth package . . . I'll show you tomorrow!!!

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Elephant Fun

I was contacted recently by a Chertsey mum asking if I could help her daughter with her A'level (*) art work project (due in in six weeks). She wanted to do some screen printing - could I help?

(A'level = Advanced level, usually 4 subjects studied from age16-18, at college)

We finally got together today and had a lovely play!!!!

First M used the thermofax screens to get an idea of how to print (I think she got the hang of it, don't you)

Then we looked at stamping and blue glue batik (both can be done by M without any special equipment) before moving on to making our own screen prints. This part was new to me too, but what fun!

My first screen was this geometric design: I used the positives as well as the negatives

M meanwhile cut out an elephant shape, and again used both the cut out elephant and the paper with an elephant shaped hole

She printed several sheets using the same stencil

And then moved on to fabric

Thank you for a great afternoon, M, I had a fab time, and I wish you all the very best with your A'level. I hope you can send me some pics of your final project, and do let me know what your teacher says of your samples!!!

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Back Up A Bit

I was so excited to show you some of the sewing that Jackie and I did, and then the squishies that arrived, that I missed Friday's Fun With fabric class and then Monday's sewing with Jackie!

Jackie is great a making quilt blocks, and quite often puts them together, and even gets them quilted occasionally, but I think she'll agree that they sit around in various stages not actually getting to the 'finished' stage.  Don't get me wrong - I'm not having a dig - I have just as many UFOs, and none are are beautiful, or as complicated, as hers, but I feel they should be finished so they can be used and loved (or put in the 'finished' cupboard!)

So on Monday we turned our attention to these three beauties

We found fabric, pressed it, cut it, joined it, pressed it again and machined it to the front. Now Jackie can sit and sew and they'll be done in no time!

On Friday I introduced the Chertsey Museum ladies to Foundation Piecing.  There was a variety of options for them: I had some Courthouse Step foundation fabric, some pineapple block, and some ordinary Flying Geese - all bought from here  which some ladies wanted to use,

The others felt brave enough to try either the 1/4 New York Beauty or the 1/4 Circle of Flying Geese - or even both!

They didn't get far as it's only a 90 minute session and there was lots of ooooh-ing and ahhhh-ing over the samples (especially Jen's stunning wall hanging)

But all have gone home with homework and at least one piece of foundation fabric, if not 4!!!!

The Internet is A Wonderful Place

I remember when we started using the Internet - there was concerns that emails would be the death of real mail, and all our posties would be out of work.

In fact, what has happened is we shop much more on-line so we get postal deliveries from shops, and we make friends on line and get postal deliveries from them too!

I found a group on Facebook called the $7 Quilt. The explanation was:
I went to a garage sale and this lady was selling 2 buckets full of 2.5 squares and triangles already cut up ( traced with pencil and cut by scissors). I told her she should keep it and finish a quilt with it, and she said no that she wanted to get rid of it. I bought it for $7.00. I have made a king size quilt with it and still have a lot of fabric left. Some fabric is great, others are real thin, but I use them anyway just for the story of the quit. In the process I have added fabric to the buckets and it has grown... [An] idea I have is to sell it for $7.00 and the next person could make a quilt and add some more fabric and sell it for $7.00 and see how long it would take to run out and how many quilts it would make. 

I joined the US group, but then found there was a UK group too - called the £7 Quilt, and I joined that too.  I expected to lurk for a while and see what happened on the group, but within a few days I was asked for my address as the 'bucket' (actually a bag; much easier to post) was ready to be sent to me!!!

So this arrived from a lovely lady called Jane

At about the sometime there was a post on a yahoo group I dip in and out of: UKandoGroup: Sue asked if any one does "craft for charity or know someone who does please". I replied telling her about Crafty Church, and she sent me this package:

Jane said not to pay the £7 as she hadn't paid originally, and additionally neither lady has accepted anything for postage, so I will make two donations to Cancer Research, and I am sitting here trying not to dribble on the lovely fabrics and decide what I can do with the £7 Quilt pieces, and what the Crafty Church ladies could do with Sue's donations

Look What We've Made

This trip to Ireland has been a bit different to previous visits - the usual sewing, yes, but the chats have been a bit more emotional!  I'm not blogging about the elephant in the room bcause we all know he's there and he deserves to be ignored (when we're not cursing him or calling him very unkind but well deserved  names!)

So let's look at what we've made!

We had some paper like fabric (amazon.co.uk sell it here) and had a go at embroidering on it then sewing it

I love the way it crumples, but the embroidery worked like perforation 

We'll revisit that!

We made some boxy pouches (link to instructions here)

And some makeup type cases

And a chemo carryall for Jackie to take everything we can think of: blanket, kindle, iPod, water, purse, knitting/sewing  etc (no link - made it up as we went along, but very loosely based on the Everyday Tote bag)

You can see we are loving this new fabric from IKEA!

Home tomorrow but we should get some more sewing done first!!!