Grommet Bag Completed!

Quite a while ago I made a Grommet Bag for my mother for mother's day. Of course, I couldn't post about it until it made it all the way to Australia and she had opened it. By the time this happened I completely forgot about it. But here it is!

The pattern I used only needed 4 pieces of 20"x18" material (2 for the outside, 2 for the inside) for the main part, 2 strips of 5" of 32" fabric for the straps, 2 pieces of 5"x5" for the phone pocket and 2 pieces of 20"x14" for the inside pockets. The outside pocket is mostly decorative and is made out of 2 fat quarters of of contrasting fabric with a big button. You also need 8 grommets.

The wadding was supposed to be 4 pieces of 20"x18" for the main part, 2 strips of 2 1/4" for the inside of the strap, 1 piece of 9"x10" for inside the front pocket, 1 piece of 5"x5" for the phone pocket and 2 pieces of 7"x20" for the inside pocket.

There's a similar pattern for a grommet bag using 5" charm squares at the Moda Bake Shop.

You can make the pockets to whatever size you what. Just measure whatever you want them for and sew the seams accordingly.

One thing I strongly suggest is that you just use a thin cotton for the wadding. I was forced to use polyester and it's just a nightmare to work with. I ended up only using it for the main part and the straps and I used interfacing for the rest of it so that it wasn't so bulky.

Mum loved the bag. I loved it too and plan to make another for myself.

Grommet Bag

I've signed up to a class in May to make a Grommet Bag at my local sewing store (Sew Creative). I'm currently umm-ing and ah-ing over what material to choose for the bag. Here are some pictures I've collect online so far.



I was also thinking perhaps I should use Japanese inspired prints (so that I have a bag to match by riduclous collection of Dogstar). I tend to like wearing black, reds and greys so thought these prints might look good!

Amy Butler's Sun Surf Halter

I've been desperate to extend my quilting skills to dressmaking and was prompted along the other day when a bunch of Amy Butler patterns caught my eye while I was material browsing in John Lewis. I purchased quite a few of them but thought I'd start off with the easy Sun Surf Halter.

I have never made any clothes before (except for a pair of very baggy pants I made in sewing class in year 7 under the direction of a rather cranky teacher that used to throw chairs at us) so thought I would buy some cheap plain cotton first to practise on.

I learned a few things (like remember to buy matching thread for your machine, try to stitch in a straight line, and having the sewing machine and iron plugged into the same socket so you have to keep switching is a big pain). I also think I will make a much smaller size next time.

I'm very much looking forward to being able to wear this to the beach!

Finished Barrels of Fun

This was my second quilt and everything went a lot faster than my first quilt despite the fact that this was a much bigger quilt. I used polyester for the batting and do admit that it's a bit of a pain to work with. In my first quilt I used cotton and it sandwiched a lot better than the polyester and was a lot easier to feed through the machine and quilt.

I was in a bit of a rush to get this one finished so that our guests had something to sleep under so I didn't do that much quilting. I absolutely despise the sandwiching and quilting part of the process (up to attaching the binding which I love to do by hand in front of some BBC romance) so I may or may not quilt some more of it in the future.

Overall I'm super pleased with myself for finishing it so quickly and I just love the colours and the pattern. It cheers the room up nicely and I'm sure our future guests will be happy to have something to sleep under.

Dream a Little Dream & Wildflowers

 

  

Do I spend my pay on food or material?

First Steps on Barrels of Fun

I have well and truly started on my next quilt now. As I mentioned in the last post it's called Barrels of Fun and it can be found in Fat Quarter Fun. I won't copy out her instructions here (because I'm sure she could sue me) but I highly recommend the book so if you do happen to pick it up and try this pattern (or one like it) here's a few tips.

First of all, the instructions said to cut out some squares and rectangles and join them together on a diagonal. I think there is a typo in the text and the way they tell you to line it up is actually reverse to the picture they show you. Basically, the back of the piece after they've been put together on a 45 degree angle, sewn and then trimmed should like this picture:

After I had figured it all out I sewed away until I had done all of my pieces.

Then I had to think about how I was going to pair them up. Each block would have 8 of these pieces so I wanted 2 from each colour group. So I paired them up making sure that every two colours would pair with another two colours (so that I had four different colours all together).

Then I had to sew the pairs into the blocks of four. Basically, I made sure that each block had a windmill in the middle with blades of four different colours.

 

Then I had to piece the blocks together. Each intersection of four blocks made up a new windmill so I had to make sure each of those windmills also had four different colours. I'm sure you could do it another way but I thought this would at least make sure the colour was distributed evenly across the quilt (with the exception of some double colours along the edge).

It took a while but finally the colours all lined up (it helps to have a combinatorist in the house). I'd love to hear comments on whether or not you think the colours are distributed evenly.

The last thing to do was to make sure that when I sewed all the pieces together I wouldn't destroy my order. I did this on my first quilt and was very angry with myself. This time I labelled each row with a number (1-5) and each column with a letter (a-d).

Now I just have to sew them up and add the borders! I would also love suggestions about border colours. I was thinking perhaps a navy print (like the one with the cherries on it). I'm going to have a small inner border, a medium sized middle border made of the same fabric as in the quilt and then and even larger outer border.

Next project: Barrels of Fun

From Karen Snyder's Fat Quarter Fun I'm putting together the above block to make Barrels of Fun with the following material (feat. a lot of Amy Butler's Love, Joel Dewberry's Deer Valley and others).

Binding

When I left Australia I had sandwiched my quilt and had begun to quilt the middle section over the blocks. When my sewing machine finally arrive here in the UK I finished off the quilting. The last little bit to do was the binding. However, I felt that finding out how to bind the quilt was a bit of a pain so here's a few things I learned:

1. Deciding on the width of your binding can be deceiving. If you want something that's a little less than an inch (see photo) cut 3 inch strips.

2. If you have finished quilting your quilt and still have a bunch of wadding and backing hanging around the outside don't cut it off! Wait until you attach the binding and then cut it off just under a 1/4 of an inch.

3. Cut your binding down the longest side of your material. To know how many strips to cut measure the middle section of your quilt both ways (say, 45" x 60") then add these numbers together (105"). Double it (210") then divide by 40 (5.25) and round up to the nearest whole number (6). This is how many strips you should cut.

4. Join your strips using diagonal seams (bias stitching, apparently). When making the diagonal seams you'll be putting one strip under another, good sides facing each other, at 90 degree angles. To make the seams all go the same way just make sure that if the strip was the one on the bottom for one end then it should be the one on the top for the next end.

5. Then use Step 1 of this fantastic guide to start you off.

6. Then use this to do your corners.

7. Then back to this to finish off.

8. Bliding stitching the binding to the back of the quilt is mighty easy with a cup of chai, banana bread and 6 hours of Pride and Prejudice.

Finished!

I have finished my very first quilt. It took many months but it is finally done. In hindsight I think it would have been better to have more blocks and less border but since it was my first quilt I wanted to get lots of practise with the borders. It's only a single quilt but since I went a bit crazy with the borders, as you can see, it almost fits on a double which will be good when we have guests.

So I'm super happy with my first attempt. I think it looks quite pleasant and I'm looking forward to starting on the next project!

Beyond Fabrics

I don't really like going down to London but since Cambridge is a little dry on the quilt shop side of things I thought trying to find some patterns and fabric while in London for a play would be a good idea.

It wasn't.

Firstly, there are barely any shops in London for quilting and only two out of those few received good reviews. Secondly, those two are at opposite ends of London so only one was a possibility in one day.

The one I chose was Beyond Fabrics which claims to be in the City of London but is actually in the East End and due to current works the closest tube stop is in Zone 2 and is quite a walk away. We ended up getting a bus closer to the area it is in from Bethnal Green. And to be honest the area is really dodgy and a little scary. However, once you get to the street that the store is on you feel like you are in a different world. It's very cute and very retro and there are lots of surrounding stores that are worth the visit.

The Beyond Fabrics store is quite nice. The staff were very helpful and although the fabric stock wasn't as large as I had hoped they had some wonderful designs in there. I ended up just buying a book (Fat Quarter Fun) but do intend to buy some fabric online.

If you are in London it's certainly worth the visit. Brick Lane is close by as well so adding Beyond Fabrics to your East End trip is easy!

Cotton Patch

More material is on its way to me. This time it was from Cotton Patch. The website was not as easy to navigate as Quilter's Cloth but I did enjoy how many different prints they have. The only other downside is that their material is cut in long quarters and I have no idea how this is going to work out if I decide to do a fat quarter pattern. Does it matter?

Quilter's Cloth

So I'm back into the swing of things. My sewing machine finally arrived and I just have some quilting around the borders of my previous quilt and then the binding to do and then I'm done. The quilt looks absolutely beautiful despite the fact that I had no idea what I was doing the entire time I was making it.

We are now living in a flat in Cambridge owned and furnished by the college. I'm grateful that I don't have to buy furniture but it's a little hard sometimes to make odd bits of furniture blend. At the moment my living room has a dark blue fouton with sky blue cushions constrasting with the bright red couch and the green curtains. So I thought I'd make another quilt that would go over the fouton as an extra blanket for guests and that would tie the colours of the room together a little better.

I had a walk around Cambridge and there's not really much, close to the centre of town, on offer. John Lewis has a few dozen rolls and Cally Co had about the same. Sew Creative had a few more but nothing that jumped out at me.

So I decided to go online shopping instead. Luckily for me the week I was looking for material was the week Quilter's Cloth launched their website. It's a fantastic website, very easy to use, and has a great range. I spent a neat amount of money and am looking forward to buying from there again.

These are just a few that I bought. Not too sure if I'll use all of them, though.