Mar
09

Another small journal, for a friend this time. I think I am on a black & white & bright kick after using that colour scheme for quilt blocks for a swap. This one is 3″ x 4.2″ x 0.5″. It is coptic-stitched, with 7 5-sheet signatures of 5.6″ by 3.9″ 90 gsm printer paper (well, 3 sheets are red paper of similar weight). The cover is stamped Tyvek again, and the thread is Anchor #20 crochet cotton.

Mar
04

Well, the block isn’t very special, but the reason for making it is. On swap-bot, some of us are making blocks for a quilt to donate in memory of Cheryl LaVon, a member who died a year ago. The theme is “nature”, and she liked deep rich colours, so I hope she would have liked this Churn Dash block:

Feb
20
Filed Under (Fibre and textile crafts, Quilting/Patchwork, Sewing) by jennyk on 20-02-2010

Today I went to my first guild meeting since last summer, so I didn’t have time to make much, just these swap cards using fabric scraps left over from recent sewing swaps:

The talk today was on the history of dyeing.  Tomorrow, the speaker will be teaching a workshop using Procion MX dyes, so my samples from that should be my Thing-a-Day.

Feb
19

Here are the last 2 blocks, for 2 different partners this time.  BTW, all the blocks really are square – the problem is my photography, not my cutting skills.

Feb
17

Yesterday’s blocks …

Feb
16

I am in two swaps for string quilt blocks, one for blocks with the strips parallel to two sides and the other for random diagonal strips.  Both require us to send one block each to four partners, and three of my partners are the same for both swaps.   The swaps are receiver’s choice of colours, but two of my partners chose similar colour schemes, so I worked on their blocks together yesterday.  It was too late to take a photo of their four blocks when I finished, so I took it today.

Feb
02
Filed Under (Fibre and textile crafts, Quilting/Patchwork, Sewing) by jennyk on 02-02-2010

I have signed up  for the Unofficial-Thing-a-Day 2010 challenge.  This is (as it says) an unofficial version of the original Thing-a-Day 2010 challenge.  A group of friends aren’t happy with the official challenge this year so we have set up our own version.  The idea is to try to create something each day through February.  Most of us don’t expect to achieve that, but we hope the challenge will push us to create more than we would have done without it.  If it works well, we may try to keep it up, perhaps in a modified form, throughout 2010.

My eagle-eyed readers will no doubt have spotted that it is now just past 2am UK time on February 2nd and this is my first posted ‘creation’.  I could use the excuse that my scanner refused to co-operate and delayed this post (which is true), or I could say that it is still February 1st on the UTAD blog, but the truth is, I didn’t finish until after midnight.  Oh well, I am sure it won’t be the last time during UTAD that I will post late.

So, late but still my first UTAD entry, and a very small one at that, I present to you a small sewn swap card, using fabric scraps (as usual, click to see a larger photo) …

small sewn card #1

Aug
19

I’ve been interested in quilting for a long time, but my previous attempts to get started have faded away.  I still have a half-finished lap quilt top from too many years ago to remember.  Then I joined Swap-bot and discovered fabric ATCs and postcards, and I’ve been having fun ever since.

doll quilt

Last year I finished my first quilt, also for a swap. It is only a doll-sized quilt, but it was a start. I chickened out of quilting that one and just used buttons to ‘tie’ it, but …

quiltie1"
… when I joined a swap for quilties (small decorative/art quilts), it was my chance to try machine quilting. I have quite a few batik fabrics now, and one of them seemed ideal for this project, as my partner loves red and the design of this fabric lends itself to decorative quilting. I selected a section about 7.5″ square, outlined parts of the design and then filled the larger spaces. This is the result – a long way from perfect, but not a bad first try.