Bees and WIP's

 October seems to have raced up on me, the first week is gone already and until today I hadn't even looked at any of my Bee Blocks or BOM's. Today though, I decided to bite the bullet and get at least one of the Bee Blocks sorted.

This month the colour for the Sunday Morning Quilts Bee block is orange. I would have said before I started that I didn't have much in the way of orange scraps, but apparently I was wrong.

Clearly I have more of an orange thing going on than I thought!

September's blocks for the SMQ Bee were waiting in our postbox when we returned from our road trip. I have not really thought about the blocks that I receive from the Bee as I have been so concerned with getting my own in on time. Now that we are almost 5 months in to the Bee though I have suddenly realised that in a couple of months time there will be enough blocks for a quilt. I would never have made 2 blocks a month for myself but I am quite happy to make them for someone else! So having the bones of a quilt comes as something of a bonus :)


Since the last look at my WIP list I have signed up for two Blog Hops and a swap, so the to-do list gets longer instead of shorter. It currently looks like this;

Ongoing

• 7 blocks of In Color Order HST BOM ( 3 blocks behind schedule)
• (Almost) Irish Chain quilt basted
• 9/24 Zakka-style SAL projects completed
• Teatime quilt pieced, backed and basted 
• 5 blocks of NY Beauty QAL completed and fabric cut for remaining 5 blocks
• 14 blocks of Craftsy BOM completed (2 months behind schedule) 
• 12 Sunday Morning Quilt Bee blocks completed (on schedule)
• 3 Star of Africa Bee blocks completed and sent (on schedule just!)
• Travelling Pic Stitch Blog Hop project  (My day is October 12th)

Waiting

• Indigo and violet rainbow cushions
• Last block of Sampler quilt
• Holiday Cushion Blog Hop
• Hoop-la-la swap 

 I am going to have to admit sometime soon that some of those projects in the Ongoing list have stopped going anywhere!

Here is another sneak peek of my project for the Travelling Pic Stitch Blog Hop.If you haven't already checked out the posts on the Blog Hop do have a look. The Blog Hoppers have been asked to select a travel photo from which they create a colour palette to match up fabric for an English Paper Piecing project. There have been some stunning photos posted already with great EPP blocks to match. Check them out below.

1 Katy @ I'm I'm A Ginger Monkey

2 Charlotte @ Lawson And Lotti

3 Danielle @ DJ Coolbear

4 Chelsea @ Pins & Bobbins

5 Heidi @ Fabric Mutt

6 Erin @ Missy Mac Creations

7 Sarah @ The Last Piece

8 Jo @ My Bearpaw

9 Kirsty @ You Had Me At Bonjour

10 Ramona @ Ramona Rose
And in the Let's Get Acquainted Blog Hop this week's Bloggers are

Oct 9
         Amy from Sew Incredibly Crazy
         Foster from Foster Reviews It
Oct 11
        Chrissie from madebyChrissieD
        Marit from Sew, love, live
Plenty there to inspire you!

Linking up to WIP Wednesday

Bits and Pieces

We have been on a road trip, driving from Riga to SW France and back so I have a lot of catching up to do. Although most of our trip was on the main roads we did take a couple of detours to have a break from service station food!

Our route took us through Poland, Germany and France and here are some examples of the places we have been.

Check out the patterns on that German town house, do you think a quilter might live there? If not, they definitely should.

Naturally I took some sewing along with me. My day on the Travelling Pic Stitch Blog Hop is fast approaching so I needed to get in some English Paper Piecing practice. Basting is easy but I discovered that bumpy roads and careful sewing are not a good mix. Still it is nice after a long day on the road to have this little pile to show for it.

They should keep me busy for a few more days.

As a break from the stitching I also took along some buttons to have a go at making a necklace in the August issue of Beads and Beyond. The necklace design was based upon the eye of a peacock feather but I adapted it slightly as I had found some Mondrian-inspired buttons that I wanted to use.

The necklace is really simple to make as the buttons are threaded and then knotted onto the cord. This pink necklace was my first attempt and not bad even if I do say so myself :) I found when wearing it though that the buttons were rather too big as they tended to fall forward rather than lie flat. So I had another go with smaller buttons.

This is a much better size. I think too, because the large buttons are flat rather than with a lip like the black buttons above that makes it lie flatter too.

My daughter-in-law admired these buttons when I bought them, so with her birthday coming up next month I think they may just find themselves heading her way!

Now I am off to catch up on all the happenings in Blog land that I have missed :)

Linking up to TNT Thursday

Miss Maven ruffles my feathers

Have you ever been halfway through a project and wondered why you ever started it? Well, that is where I was with my latest project for 12 WIP's in 2012.

At the beginning of the year I committed to making a bag from Amy Butler's Style Stitches book, having only made the Origami bags since I bought it (and let's face it you don't really need this book to make them!) the book was turning out to be an expensive ornament!




I have been putting this off but couldn't put if off any longer as it was the only one of my remaining WIP's that I could reasonably complete in the time I had available. To be honest I had been underwhelmed by Style Stitches when I first looked through it so hadn't had much in the way of motivation to get cracking on anything. I think that part of the problem was the text heavy instructions. Style Stitches is full of arty photographs of the models and even of the completed bags, but completely lacking in photos of the techniques or process involved in making the bags. The odd hand-drawn illustration here and there just doesn't cut the mustard as far as I am concerned.

 I decided that I would have a go at the Miss Maven Ruffled Handbag, it didn't look too complicated! Hah! First problem was that I didn't have the double-sided fusible Pelltex called for, but I did have double-sided Ultra Firm & Flex, so thought that would be a good enough substitute. Well it was, but it was a real pain trying to fuse the fabrics as the Ultra Firm & Flex doesn't have a protective backing like the Pelltex has, so fusing only one side at a time per the instructions wasn't too straightforward! Lots of peeling the fused handle off of the pressing cloth was involved.

Making the body of the bag was straightforward although now that it is finished I really don't like the large inner pocket, it is just too big even although it is stitched in the middle. It runs the width of the bag including half of the side so it gapes too!
That as it turns out was only the beginning of my problems with this bag. Attaching the handles to the main bag and lining was tricky as not only were there curved seams involved but the double thickness of the handles with the Ultra Firm made manoeuvring the pieces under the needle difficult. Seams were ripped several times! Then this happened

Spotted the problem?

The instructions for this part were to "Pull out the remaining top edges of the exterior and lining main panels on each side of both handles. Match the top edges, and pin the top edges together." Now tell me that I am not the only one who would have matched the lining pieces together and the exterior pieces together. OK maybe I am!! I did try and convince myself that I could use the bag like this, but only managed to remain convinced for 30 seconds before reaching, yet again, for the seam ripper :(

By this time I was determined to beat this bag, and really pleased that I had followed the previous instruction to stay stitch the curved edges, as they were taking a real hammering with all the seam ripping going on.

Finally I ended up with this

The instructions tell you to attach the magnetic snap tabs when top stitching at the end, but I think it would have been better, and easier, to attach them when attaching the lining and exterior together. This by the way is the small bag,  you could probably use the large one to carry a small child if this one is anything to go by.

I suspect that all of this means that Style Stitches will revert again to gathering dust on my bookshelf.

Linking up to Craft Buds Craft Book Month
and Sew Darn Crafty
and Manic Monday
and Sew Modern Monday


Hope you spent less time ripping and more time sewing than I did this weekend :)