Family Passport Wallet

I just love this pattern!  In case you haven't seen it before, the design is by Amber Carillo of "One Shabby Chick", and really it's two designs in one as the pattern includes a 4-passport version and a 6-passport version.  I've made one for our family, one for my sister's family, and now one for the shop!

Three out of the four fabrics used were from this little bundle, which I won from Fresh Squeezed Fabrics a few months back.  I only had fat 1/8's, so not enough really to do anything big with, therefore this pattern was perfect for them.  The outer fabric and the purple on the inside are both from the Outfoxed line, the pink dots are from Michael Miller, and finally the creamy crosshatch fabric is an unknown cotton fabric that I bought!

This week I will be linking up with {Sew} Modern Monday @ Canoe Ridge Creations

On a "real" project....

Yes people, I did FMQ on a REAL project today!  Like I said a few days ago, I decided to make a cushion cover in the Sparkle Punch style with a little bit of my Kate Spain "Joy" fabric.  I finished the top yesterday and figured that it was a perfect (ie. small!) project for trying some FMQ.  I decided on pebbles, and it went really well!  I'll admit it's not quite as easy as it looks like it should be, but the result is really fun and kind of puffy and pillow-y.  :)  Here's a peek...

And in other news, does anyone remember this pleated wristlet I made a while back???  It's now listed in my shop.

Giveaway winner!

Thank you so much to everyone who entered my 1 year blog anniversary giveaway.  I had 132 comments!  THANK YOU!  Of course there can only be one winner, so without further ado the winner of this 3 FQ bundle is...

#40 - Deborah!  Congratulations Deborah, I will be emailing you shortly.

W.I.P. Wednesday

I feel like I don't have much to show this week because most of my energies have been going toward getting my Etsy store OPEN!!  Yes people, I just clicked "open shop" about two minutes ago and I am full of nerves and excitement.  I would love to have you come take a look, check it out, give me feedback, whatever!  I only have 3 listings at the moment but my mind is just churning with ideas.  I went with the shop name "Winding Bobbins", you can find it by clicking on the button below.  And if any of you feel so inclined to give me a little shout out or link on your blogs, I'd sure appreciate it!

Phew, okay, so that's out of the way, now what have I been working on?  This week, I finished a baby quilt out of a charm pack of Cuzco by Kate Spain.  You can read more details about the project here.  I couldn't be more pleased with how this project turned out.  Incidentally, this quilt is now listed in the shop.

I've also been practicing some more free motion quilting.  Here is my latest practice piece:

I cannot get over how fancy this looks, but honestly this was the easiest design I've tried so far.  It just seemed to flow so smoothly and I love the result.  I'll definitely be using this design on a project some day, hopefully soon!  This one is called Crybaby Meander. (YouTube link)

And finally for this week, I finally pulled out the Kate Spain "Joy" that I won a while back to get started on the Sparkle Punch quilt that I had decided on quite a while ago.  Well let me tell you, I made a few stars and realized that I can't do this.  Of course I have the capability to do it, but even the three stars felt tedious and I know I'll burn out long before a quilt top is finished.  So I'm going to do what Toni did and make a cushion cover out of what I've started, and probably a plus quilt out of the rest.

Well, that's all for now folks.  I'm looking forward to seeing what the rest of you are up to this week.

Fresh Squeezed Fabric - pin it & win it!

                                                               Source: etsy.com via HeatherDD on Pinterest

I wasn't going to blog about this, but it seems to be sweeping blogland/Pinterest, so I figured why not!  Everyone is helping everyone out and it's kind of fun.  The idea is that you pin your favourite FAT QUARTER bundle from Fresh Squeezed Fabric, then if you manage to get enough re-pins to equal the dollar value of your selected bundle, you win it!!  I picked a pretty small bundle so I only need 14 re-pins.  Clicking on the above picture should take you to my pin, but if not you can find it here.  If you're participating, leave your link in the comments and I'll re-pin yours as well!

Thanks, and good luck to everyone participating!

Cuzco baby quilt

Not quite as fast as Jess, who just made a quilt in a day (!!!), but I think this is a record for me - start to finish in about 4 days of on/off sewing time.  And I couldn't be more pleased with how this little quilt turned out.  It is now listed in my Etsy shop.

{finished size: 34" x 42"}

My inspiration was this quilt by Lu.  I loved it when I saw it and knew that I'd use my Kate Spain Cuzco charm pack.  Then, completely against what I normally do, I used pure white as a background and as you can see, I got carried away and bordered and bound it in white as well!

For the first time, I used a double layer of cotton batting for this quilt (thanks to all who gave me advice about this last week).  The batting I was trying to use up is so very thin, so I thought it wouldn't make much difference, but boy was I wrong!  It adds so much more weight to the quilt and a lot more poof too!  I am glad that I didn't venture out to do FMQ on this one though, with the double layer of batting.  That said, I don't know if anything other than straight lines could keep with the simplicity of this quilt anyways.

The quilt is backed with a quilting cotton I found in the clearance section at my local Fabricland - it doesn't even have anything printed on the selvedge so I have no idea what it is, but it suits this little quilt perfectly.  The above photo doesn't quite do it justice (on a side note, I learned that it's really difficult to photograph pure white on a sunny day!)

And, exciting news, this little quilt will be going into my Etsy shop, which should hopefully be opening up in the next week or so!!  I'm sort of setting October 1 as my launch date, not that I expect a booming business but I'm excited none the less about getting started.

I will be linking up with {Sew} Modern Monday @ Canoe Ridge Creations, and Fabric Tuesday @ Quilt Story, Finish it up Friday @ Crazy Mom Quilts

Craft Book Month

It's been Craft Book Month over at Craft Buds, and I have a little something to share.  I've shared this project before, a few weeks ago, but didn't really talk much about the book that the inspiration came from.  I loved the book "Quilting Modern" by Katie Pedersen and Jacquie Gering since I first saw it.  So many of the projects are ones that I would love to make, but this is the type of book that doesn't give you exact measurements to follow - more so, it gives you techniques and project ideas and yes, patterns, but there's a fair bit of improv involved!  I feel like I'm in the unfortunate category of those to whom improv does not come naturally; I wish it did!!  Craft Book Month gave me the little push to start taking baby steps, and I came up with this:

Which became this sketchbook cover:

I used the "stitch & flip" method described in "Quilting Modern", and since we're talking baby steps for me here, I'll shamelessly admit that I pretty much copied one of the example layouts on page 103 of the book.  :)  I LOVE how it turned out, and it wasn't even too painful!  ;)

My ultimate goal as far as this particular book goes is the Supernova quilt.  It's my absolute favourite project in the book and I can't wait to get a few current projects off my plate so I can give it a whirl.

P.S.  If you'd like to read a few more details about the above sketchbook project, see a few more photos and read why I made it, you can visit my original post here.

Little bit of everything....

Guess who I got to meet yesterday?   Chelsea, from Pins & Bobbins!  It was really cool, and kind of strange I must say (and I think Chelsea would say so too!), to meet someone that otherwise only lives on the web.  Chelsea was great, she seems like a really fun person to be around and I'm looking forward to getting to know her better.  I'm planning to go to our local modern quilt guild for the first time in October and it will be sooooo nice to have at least one familiar face there, me being a bit of an introvert.  :)

I had brought this finished Cuzco baby quilt top along on our little quilty date yesterday, thinking I might find some backing fabric at the shop where Chelsea and I met up.  Unfortunately, it was just another over-priced Canadian retailer (why IS that?????) so all I did was browse.  It was a beautiful shop with lots of modern fabrics and cute stuff, but I'm not paying $19/m for fabric no matter what it is.  So on the way home I stopped in at Fabricland, which I have a love/hate relationship with, and found a perfect backing in the clearance section.  I'll show you soon, once the quilt is totally finished!!

Okay, now I'm looking for advice!  I am considering setting up an Etsy shop.  For a couple of reasons.  First, I have made SO many things for our own home and you can only give away so many unsolicited things to friends and family (at least in my opinion!), I obviously want to continue this hobby so I need to find other avenues for my creations.  Second, there is something that our family is saving up for that I would like to contribute to as much as possible.  I'm not looking to make a ton of stuff specifically to sell, more so just to list the many things I seem to make with no intended recipient, the above Cuzco quilt being a prime example!  So I just need the nerve to take the plunge!  I know that many of you have Etsy shops, and I'd love it if you'd help me with a few things I'm wondering about.....

• I am having a difficult time finding a definitive answer of whether or not Canadian-based shops can accept direct credit card payment through Etsy.  Does anyone know?
• How do you decide how much you will charge for an item?  for shipping?
• Have you done anything in particular to promote your shop, or is word of mouth and through the blog a good way to start?

Finally, I need a shop name!!  I want to come up with something simple, but catchy and not too cute-sy.  I've thought of "My Quilted Home", which feels a bit 'country craft' to me, "Coastal Quilts", since I live on the Pacific Ocean, though I'm not sold on it, or something plain like "Heather's Quilts", but I'm not crazy about that either.  Also, probably not everything I list will be quilted so I'm wondering if I should go more along the lines of "handmade" something or other.  I don't know!!  Share your ideas with me!  And if I use your idea, there may be a little prize for you.  :)

Thanks all!  Time for some lunch for me.....

W.I.P. Wednesday

**I am having a 1 year blog anniversary giveaway which will run until September 26.  You are all welcome to enter here**

Another week has gone by and my machine has been humming!  In the last week I have finished an {un}nesting block, a sketchbook cover, and a bee block.

Also as I posted earlier this week, I've been doing some free motion quilting practice, with pretty good success!  I'm not sure if I'm quite ready to try it on a "real" project yet (or maybe I should just jump right in!) but I'm having a lot of fun practicing and realizing that yes, I can do it.  :)

Clockwise from top left:  Loopy Flowers, Concentric Circles (from Angela Walters' book), Echo Shortcut, Pebbles

I also started a small quilt project using a charm pack of Cuzco by Kate Spain.  I was so inspired by this simple HST quilt made by Lu, so I decided to use my charm pack for a version of my own.  This will finish at about 32"x40".   A question - have any of you doubled up batting in a quilt?  I have some cotton batting that I would like to use up, it is SO very thin so I was thinking of doing a double layer for this quilt.  Any opinions?

I also finally received the fabric that I ordered for the background of my "Joy" Christmas quilt, and I have to say I'm feeling kind of disappointed about the colours I chose.  I was going for a variety of neutrals for the background, similar to what Faith did on this mini quilt, however 3 of the 4 colours I ordered are pretty much indistinguishable from each other, and the 4th colour is very different from the other 3.  So I don't think it's going to work in the way I envisioned it and I will be reconsidering the background, but still it's great that now I have these neutrals to work with in other projects, and......I'm now the proud owner of this, which should make my decision making a lot easier in the future:

Have a good week everyone!

1 year ago ...

*Giveaway is now closed - thanks to everyone who entered.  Winner is #40, Deborah*

It's been one year since I started this blog and time has flown by!  I've made so many new friends, not to mention just a few quilty items...

I appreciate each of you who read my little blog, all of the support you've offered, ideas, suggestions, inspiration, and encouragement.  And I love just knowing that there are so many other people out there who like doing what I like doing!

So, I have a little something to give away.  It's not much, but I wanted to say thank you.  Leave one comment to be entered.  And though I'm not normally a fan of someone having to be a 'follower' to enter a giveaway, just this once I'm going to say if you follow my blog (via friend connect, google reader, bloglines, rss, pinterest, etc.), feel free to leave another comment letting me know, for an extra entry.

Up for grabs are these 3 extra fat quarters (cut from 1/2 metre cuts....) each measuring approximately 21" x 22".  

The giveaway will close on September 26.  I will ship internationally.  Good luck!

{Sew} Modern Monday is back!

Megan took a break over the summer, but {Sew} Modern Monday is back and I'm excited to have something really cool to show this week.

This is a bee block that I made for Charlotte, of the Twelfth Zodiac blog.  I am participating in my first online bee, and it has been a lot of fun so far.  Just having the chance to try blocks that I normally wouldn't try, and fabric combinations/colour choices that I normally wouldn't choose.  This block is a perfect example.  I wouldn't naturally put green with the pinks and purples like Charlotte did, but I love the combination now that the block is finished!!  Once again, as I've said before, I am glad that there are people out there who have colour sense like Charlotte does whom I can learn from!

Can I show off a little? FMQ progress...

I took a deep breath and gave it a whirl this afternoon when the rest of my family was out, and guess what?  I could actually do it!!  This is the Echo Shortcut pattern from Leah Day's site (a treasure trove of FMQ designs).  It wasn't too difficult, considering that you sort of take a little pause after each arc, so I actually found it quite manageable.  I filled a 10" x 8" section which took me what felt like forever, but I feel such a sense of accomplishment.  

I will say though, the arcs are pretty close together, I'd say 1/4" each or less, and it creates a very dense finished feel to the fabric.  This would not make a very drapey or soft quilt, but the same design done on a larger scale would be perfect.

And I have to ask, does it look like bunches of bananas to anyone else???  ;)

FMQ Sketchbook

Have you ever read the blog "May Your Bobbin Always Be Full"??  I came across it via Pinterest, specifically her free motion quilting sketchbook. (p.s. Chelsea, if you click the link, beware, there is an icky spider picture just a little ways down ;)  If you are a machine quilter looking for inspiration, DO check it out.  Being newly inspired myself, I decided that I needed a sketchbook too.  A plain one is fine, but one with a patchwork cover is even better.  :)

I had pinned several different tutorials, and ended up going with this one at FairyFace Designs.  Being a part of Sarah's beginner sewing series, the tutorial was simple and easy to follow.  The one change I made was adding a very light interfacing to the cover (not the lining) and to the interior pockets.  It adds just a tiny bit more structure and keeps the patchwork in check at the same time.

For the patchwork, I used the stitch & flip method described in 'Quilting Modern'.  I love the book, but as I've said before, improv piecing does not come naturally to me.  So I pretty much copied one of the examples on page 103 for this layout.  Baby steps, right?

I added just a little fancy stitching to the edges of the inside pockets, which worked out really well.  And since this is my FMQ sketchbook, you get to see a few of my preliminary, first try, FMQ sketches.  NO idea how I would ever actually sew these, except for the loops and maybe the stipple.

Overall, the project was a success.  The fit is pretty good when the notebook is closed, and a little weird when the notebook is open, but I have a feeling that this would be the case no matter which tutorial was used.  

Have a great day everyone.

back in the {modern} groove

Three posts in one day - I promise, this won't be a regular occurrence!  I didn't sew very much over the summer, but I'm quickly getting back into it now that my crafty time has increased......a little sneak peek for you, one more little project.  Just finished, but it's too dark to take proper photos.  Until tomorrow.....

{un} nesting block

If you read my post a few hours ago, you know I had a bit of trouble using a decorative stitch to finish off this little project.  But I figured that if I fiddled around with it and tried to make it work, I'd be potentially wasting a lot of thread, and really I didn't want to spend that much effort on this project, so I went with a simple double straight line of stitching instead and let's call it done.

The pattern is 'Stack & Nest Quilted Blocks' by Elizabeth Hartman.  It has instructions for 4 different sized blocks that nest into each other.  The one above is the 5" block.  As usual with Elizabeth's instructions, they are very thorough and clear, very nice finishing techniques, and lots of helpful photos.  I recommend it!

The pattern calls for a heavyweight sew-in interfacing for one step, which I'd never used before.  My fabric store does not carry the common brand names that I see around online (Timtex, Peltex, etc.) so I just picked one of a few choices that were there, and it worked out great.  The block has really good structure, stands up perfectly on its own, but is still soft and quilty.

Just had to include a photo of my favourite part of this Heather Ross fabric.  The little underwear-toting owl.  My kids were pretty amused by that.  :)

So as with most of my sewing projects, all's well that ends well!

When a small project takes longer than it should....

My plan was this:  make just one of these nesting blocks to hold all of my extra cords for this and that - eReader, iPod, etc. - that normally clutter up my desk.  I had received the adorable Heather Ross FQ that I got free from Spoonflower and thought it would be perfect for this project.  It is!  But.....I ran into a bit of a glitch.

I had this great idea to finish off the upper edge with one of the decorative stitches on my machine.  Super cute, no?

It all seemed to be going smoothly until I stopped to readjust my presser foot and......waaaaait a minute????

Huh.  Clearly something became misaligned as I went along!  You know where this is going, right?  Enter seam ripper.  Bleh. 

My machine has this goofy alligator stitch, see it there?  #31?

It's meant to be used to "realign the pattern" and the manual gives instructions on how to do this, which I have fiddled with a bit in the past.  I guess it makes sense that depending on the thickness of what you're sewing or how fast you're sewing, that things could go askew.  But really, this is very askew.  Thank goodness I didn't make it all the way around before I noticed!  So needless to say, a little frustrated with my machine.

Hopefully I'll be back a bit later, after spending some quality time with my seam ripper.

Imagine my surprise...

Not really having anything in the works at the moment, other than waiting on Mr. Mailman,what's a quilter to do?  Throw the darning foot on the machine and see how it goes!  I have done very little free motion quilting, in fact I haven't even practiced since I finished my Sparkle quilt in March.  So imagine my surprise when I could actually do it!

I even tried some pebbles - fun and so easy .....

I've been so inspired lately, seeing so many quilters do beautiful free motion quilting on their home machines - in particular Megan and Katie.  They, and many others, have been reading Angela Walter's new book which I'd love to get my hands on too, at least just to have a look through.  Maybe on my next project you'll be seeing some FMQ!

Last Minute Gift....

My sister and her family are making a long distance move, leaving this weekend.  Last week she wondered about the passport wallet I had made for our family.  Of course I was happy to make one for them too!

I didn't have time to be as indecisive about fabric choices as I usually am, especially considering we don't live in the same town so the wallet would have to be mailed in order to get there before the weekend.  So due to the short order, I kept it pretty simple using Kona Coal for pretty much the whole thing, but I spiced it up with just a little bit of patchwork.

I managed to scrounge up enough passports in our house so you could see that this wallet holds 6.  There is also an outside pocket that runs the length of the wallet for them to hold loose papers or other travel documents. 

The pattern is by Amber of One Shabby Chick, do check it out if you think a passport wallet like this might be something your family could use - the pattern includes a 4-passport and a 6-passport version.  We haven't traveled with the one I made for us yet, but I'm already happy to have something to hold all of our passports together, even while they live in the drawer most of the time!