2018 Wk 42 Leather and Poppies

Crafty Church ladies worked on poppies for the Horton lads who went to WW1, and the one lass that died locally in a ammunition factory explosion.  All the names have been written on these poppies, one for each, and pinned to these wooden crosses.  Carolyn is working on mounting all the information sheets she has put together, again one for each. 

And I have been patchworking leather!  A customer de-constructed the seat covers from a leather sofa and cut them to size to fit together.  He wants them as a backdrop for his pet photography business

He took photos of the 4 sections so I could plan the best route to joining them

and we started sewing them together with a zigzag stitch

and they are looking good - we are about 2.5 hours in and about 1/3 of the way through

 LOTS more of these left!

2018 Wk 41 Finishes

I have been frantically finishing the quilts on the rail of shame as they will be on show in two week's time at the Richmond and Kew quilters exhibition

Finished but need sleeves:

Also being finished is a quilt both Jackie and I have worked on - it's being finished in Ireland ready for the show . . .  My Small World.  I am SO looking forward to seeing it in real life!

I got this pack of lush fabrics from Lisa's Jim for my birthday - he's a good boy!!!

On Saturday I attended a wet felting class at Chertsey Museum - and made this poppy

And on Sunday my oldest friend (should I rephrase that?  The friend I have known for the longest time) came over with a suitcase of her late dad's shirts.  Linda and I have known each other since school age and I knew her mum and dad very well - a lovely couple.

Anyway, she and mum have cleared out dad's clothes: most have gone to a homeless shelter, some jumpers have gone to the grandchildren and the rest came to my house.  We turned a lovely jumper into a cushion

And are in the process of turning the first 1/4 of the shirts into a patchwork for mum (and will gradually work on the rest for Linda, her sister and her daughter)

It was an honour to be allowed to be involved and lovely to catch up with what the two families have been up to!

2018 Wk 34 - catch up

I've been doing the boring pre-school embroideries, but also some hand sewing, embroidery design and prep for the next few Chertsey Museum classes.

This mandala pattern is one that I designed and stitched using variegated thread - I've since made the satin stitch wider, so we'll see how that comes out.

I finished the edges of the two interchange wall hangings:

And I created this celtic cross embroidery design

It needed several tweeks, but I've now stitched it on the purple stole fabric and the two sides are ready to be stitched together to make the reversible stole

At Crafty Church we have started getting ready for our Remembrance day (100 years) display.  We've decided to go with poppy shapes.  (or rather approximately poppy shapes - I see a red snowman, but I have been assured that when I see loads of them I will see poppies - and to be fair they are very similar to the British Legion poppies!)

Janet is taking the sizzix and the circle dies to cut poppies for all 36 from the village involved in WW1

 I'm teaching Quilt As You Go hexies at Chertsey early September, so I sizzixed these

and made some of these

 
 which will be joined into this sort of shape

And finally, not me, but Jackie made this and I think it's far too gorgeous not to share! Perfect for a baby girl's essentials - a few nappies and a pack of wet wipes: and a pocket for mama's phone too

2018 Wk 20 A finish and a visit

I have finished a Chemo quilt that Niki requested for a colleague at work.  There is a LOT of white at the moment but she is taking it to work with a handful of fabric pens so that people can write in the white squares - I'll hopefully be able to post another pic when it's been  decorated!

We had our monthly (!!!) Days For Girls meeting this weekend.  We were aware that some ladies were being put off by the high quality expectations from the charity, so we added a new project - boomerang bags.  These can be made to roughly the suggested size, can be overlocked OR zigzagged, can be made of the donated fabrics we would otherwise have to reject as they aren't ok for D4G and are the simplest construction imaginable

We got one finished and several more are close to being finished.  We were going to give them away but decided we would sell them to people in the churches which would raise money for the D4G fabrics!

We also found we were spending loads for time each month sorting through and seeing what needs what doing next - so with the help of loads of zip lock bags we now have bags of items all at the same stage and we feel much more organised!

Mum and I went to see the poppies at last.  We missed them at the Tower on London, but two sections of the display are now doing a road trip and one is just a short drive from her at Fort Nelson, Royal Armouries Museum, near Portsmouth

They looked amazing!.

And Brian and I spend all of yesterday at the girls' house.  They had hired a sanding machine and wanted to do all the upstairs floors in the one weekend.  I wish I had filmed them using the machine.  It was an industrial one, and was stronger than them.  They switched it on at one end of the room, they then ran with it, trying to slow it down, and trying to turn it off in time that it would stop before it hit the opposite wall, then they would drag it back and repeat.  Dad showed them how to master the beast, and 12 hours (!) later the whole of upstairs has been sanded - despite all three bedrooms having the usual amount of furniture - much of the time was taken moving it from one room to another, do you remember these puzzles?

It was a bit like doing one of those, but worth it in the end.

Today they are varnishing - today I am staying at home!

Fab Felted Flowers

(This description of how we made these fab flowers is more to remind me than a detailed tutorial)

These are the main ingredients: roving in red, darker red and black, resist (a piece of plastic packing material, it needs to be flexible and cut into a circle a bit bigger than the proposed poppy size) plus a tea towel and some bubble wrap (note to self, white tea towel next time, working with red on red is a tad difficult)

Put the disc on one end of the bubble wrap, on the towel.  Pull fine sections off the roving and lay them so the ends are in the centre hole, spreading out over the edge.

Spray, this helps to anchor them to each other for now (warm water and a little bit of liquid soap)

Flip the other half of the bubble wrap over the top, and flip the bubble wrap sandwich over - lift off the top half of bubble wrap, now you can see the resist and just the ends of the wool.

 

 Fold all the outer ends of the wool around the edge and towards the side 2 centre, spray

Repeat with side 2 up, and flip and fold the ends onto side 1, spray

Lay just a few strands over the  top of the wool on side 1, spray

 

Repeat the first steps again: strands onto side one,

 flip

 and fold and spray

Then strands onto side two, flip and fold and spray.  If you want to add a few strands of darker red now it the time to do so.

loosely bunch up some black wool, and add it in three points near the middle.  Spray and flip

Put the bubble wrap back over the top, spray the wrap and start stroking the flower through the bubble wrap, gently so as not to risk moving the black sections.  You need to stroke for at least 10 minutes, moving your work around as you go, so you are stroking in all directions.  Flip over, and repeat

When the fibres have all felted together (you cant pull any off), fold it in half and roll firmly between your hands,  then fold back on itself and repeat.  This will have distorted your circle into an oblong, so fold in half (at 90 degrees to the first fold) both ways ad roll again to restore the circle.  It will have shrunk, but the resist wont, so it will look a bit bloated.

Cut around the edge, but just inside the edge, so one side is a bit bigger than the other.  Once you remove the resist it should look something like this (there should be just one piece as the centre will have felted all the way through)

To create the petals, cut the top circle into thirds, from edge to about an inch off the centre.  Do the same to the other side, but offset (see dotted lines)

 Snip the corners off each section

Scrunch in your hand and roll firmly to rough up the cut edges. stretch each leaf width ways so it falls into waves

Take some black roving and wrap it a bit like winding a ball of knitting wool to make a small ball for the centre, roll it between your fingertips for ages, then gently between the balls of your hands until it has felted.

I've almost certainly forgotten some stages, but I plan to have another go, so I'll edit thee notes as appropriate

Sew the ball onto the front, and a pin onto the back, and as always, wear your poppy with pride!

Getting closer to target

Sorry if this is getting boring, but I need to celebrate every achievement towards my target (UFO list in the right column): In 30 days I go to Australia, and there are still a lot of quilts and bags that need to be done before I go.  Today I was frantically sewing so that I could move the Green and Pink Pinwheels, and the Cream Orphan 9 Patch Blocks into the next piles, just so I can blog about it (how sad is that?)


So Green and Pink Pinwheels has joined Swirls and Flower (to the) Power (of) 9 as just needing the binding hand stitching, but these are not needed yet, so they have gone on a top shelf in the sewing room ready for after Christmas

A job that never even made it ONTO the list has also been finished.  The Bling Inn  at the Army camp near where I teach is due to be officially opened tomorrow, and they asked me last week if I could make the opening plaque - it got finished late last night and collected today.

This is the Red and Stone Woven rail fence (nicknamed Cricket Stumps) for the living room - yes - a quilt I am actually going to keep! These blocks are each 10 inches, so it's huge, and I wasn't able to work out the placements of the blocks at my house as I have too much stuff and not enough floor, so mum helped me sort them at hers yesterday.  All pinned, but put away with the other after-Christmas quilts

There are about 20 different dark and very dark reds used, and generally each line is of the same fabric.  There is one deliberate substitute as otherwise it would have to be shorter, but if you see any mistakes please dont tell me!