Baby Clothes!

I recently (well... in December/January) made another 'baby bundle' out of old baby clothes.

This time I made a mini pillow, a name drop, a couple of birds and three hearts!
I especially like the name drop; since Tom is such a short name I decided on using slightly bigger letters and since all the letters are 'symmetrical' I made the letters different on both sides :)

Quits!

Recently my Mum and a few of her friends have started a quilting club, they meet once a month in our local hall - a lot of the work is done outside the club but the time together gives them a chance to share tips and get some advice from the more experienced quilters!

So, my Mum has started her first quilt and made quite a lot of progress already!



Although it looks fairly done, a lot of the squares still need sewing together!

Since I have now finished my internship I will be joining the quilting club and so it's my turn to start a new project!
I picked up a brilliant union jack pattern and a jelly roll at the Malvern Quilt show in 2010 and thought I would FINALLY get started on it:



I'll keep you up-to-date on my quilting and I'm starting to make a bag so I'll blog about that at some point too!

Merry Christmas!

I've been fairly absent from the blog world for a few months, I've been doing an internship in London so haven't found that much time for Newton Rose :(

However, I just wanted to say MERRY CHRISTMAS to everyone and I hope you had a brilliant day and are now having a wonderful boxing day!

Here is our tree this year, its a bit wonky...



I also DID make a couple of my gifts this year, I made a phone case for my dad with our home co-ordinates cross-stitched onto it... and an apron for my brother...

I'm not sure if anyone has seen it but my brother and myself very much like the show masterchef Australia - it's very different from the British version and SOOO much better! It was on everyday on a random sky channel but has now come to an end (after about 3 months!)

So here is my brother's Masterchef Australia apron :) :


(sorry for the slightly blurry photo...)

Coffee Morning/Evening Thing!

So,

Last weekend I had a coffee evening/morning with a raffle, lots of cake, coffee and tea as well as my Newton Rose things and Phoenix cards! I also managed (thanks to my very awesome cousin) to get coffee and tea donated from Starbucks - so thank you very much to them!!!

The money was for 'St David's Foundation Hospice Care' (who I have been volunteering with for the last year); They help LOADS of people here in South Wales so I really wanted to raise lots of money for them!

I am SO pleased to say that it was a success and we managed to raise £163.15 :)

Here are a couple of pictures:





Thank you to everyone who helped to make it a success!!

Hoop Art!

Lately I've been experimenting with hoop art :)
Basically using an embroidery hoop as a frame....

I've seen the idea in quite a few places now and finally thought I'd give it a go (with varying degrees of success!)

While I was researching what was already out there (some of which is totally amazing) I came across a couple of people sewing messages onto a sort of 'notepad' type design - the idea is a fab one and although I won't be selling these (since the idea is clearly not mine) I couldn't resist making one for myself....

here is the result:




Not sure how many people will 'get the joke' - probably just a few - but lets just say that heteroskedasticity consumed my life for a while last year!



P.S. I have a coffee morning coming up soon where I will be selling some of my 'hoop art' - I'll be posting dates/times etc soon so check back :)

Bunting!

A lovely lady gave me some almost finished bunting the other day... so I thought I'd finish it off :)

Not sure I'll be making more anytime soon but I think it looks awesome - perfect for a party decoration!

Here's the finished result:

Finished Quilts!

So... I've FINALLY finished my quilt, and what I didn't mention before, I actually made 2 quilts! One for me and one for my very awesome friend Sarah for her birthday :)

Here they are (mine is the one with the pink bias binding):




I made sure to take some photos of the 'work in progress' so I can give a more in-depth explanation of how I made them:

Once I had cut out all 280 8 inch squares I paired them all up and with right sides together I pinned along one side. I then used the sewing machine to sew along the pinned line.
A really good way to save a bit of time is to sew all the squares in a 'continuous strip' (pictured below) - this saves having to stop and start sewing for every single square!




Once I was done it looked a little like strange bunting...
I then cut up the 'strip' into the original pairs. Each pair of squares was then opened out and the seam ironed flat:



The pairs were then joined to make fours and the fours joined to make eights etc until the sides of the quilts were completed.
I cut out wadding to the size needed and pinned one of the patchworked sides onto it:



I then flipped it over and lined up and pinned the other side to the reverse of the wadding.
I then tacked through all three layers in order to keep the sides in the right place while quilting.

I decided to hand quilt the quilts and used quilters tape to mark out where I wanted to sew - it was REALLY helpful and I definitely recommend it if you want to quilt straight lines!



Once I had quilted, the last step was to add on the bias binding. For my quilt I used pre-made bias binding which my mum had left over from making curtains about 15 years ago! This definitely fit in with my idea of using up materials :) The bias binding is pinned and then sewn along one side of the quilt. The excess fabric is then cut away so that when folded over the bias binding sits straight! I then hand-stitched it down...



Once the tacking was removed I had finished!!
I also added on a cross-stitch 'label' to both quilts - here's mine:



I hope you all like them :)

Pan Grabber!

As yet another 'practice quilting thing' I decided to make a couple of pan grabbers....

We use one in our household to open/close the wood burning stove and our old one has completely fallen apart - so I came top the rescue :)

I patchworked and hand quilted them, like I'm doing with my quilt, but mostly they were a good way to practice using bias binding (especially those corners!).

Here are the two sides of one of them:



and an action shot taking chips from the oven (sorry about the quality):

Birthday presents and CAKE!

Quite recently it was my very good friend's birthday!
I love to handmake all gifts I give to people but the hard bit is generally not the making of the gift but thinking of what to make in the first place!

No two gifts should be the same...... well... not exactly the same :P

Anyway - so for my friend I decided to delve into the cushion side of life and managed to come up with some new ideas :)

I then got my brother to take some good 'in focus' pictures (since he always says my photos are rubbish... which they probably are...):







I also made her a very awesome cake (I got the idea from the martha stewart website!):

Cushion covers and a new walking foot!

I thought I'd take a small break from quilt making (before I begin the insane task of trying to decide what goes on each side) and make some cushion covers!

I saw them as a way to practice patchworking a bit and also to try out my new walking foot :) A walking foot (for those who don't know) is a clever little sewing machine foot which works with the usual feeding things on your machine to feed the material through from the top as well as the bottom! VERY useful as it means that your material layers stay lined up and you don't end up with a funny little bump of excess fabric...

Anyway - so here are my cushion covers:





I'm really pleased with how they turned out!

Now it's time to get on with my quilt...