A patchwork quilt perfect to picnic on.

Having had a frankly vicious clear out of my wardrobe recently I had a red corduroy skirt and a very cute red white and blue dress that really were past their best. No chance on eBay and just rude to give to charity shops. Only one thing to do and that was to chop them up and attempt to make a patchwork quilt which would be large enough to cuddle under in the winter but small enough to lug around for a picnic blanket. I do like a multi-purpose project.

Through trial and error I finally think I may have some handy hints on the whole patchwork quilt thing that may not be 'correct' but I find have resulted in a reasonably competent result fairly quickly. So here goes.

Equipment

Fabric

Paper
Pins

Fabric scissors

Thread

Sewing machine

Padding or batting

Top Tip: I like to use old blankets for the padding. Cheaper than proper batting and stops the blankets going into landfill. Just run them through the washing machine to get rid of any moth or other nasties. 

Method - Time taken: It depends on the size but I reckon that it was about a 20 hour job spread over a number of evenings.

1. Decide how big you want your squares. To state the bloomin' obvious the larger the square the faster the project. I went for 21x21cm. Cut out your template. (Although there are 'proper' papers out there I always end up using paper swiped from my printer.)

2. Start cutting squares of fabric. Put a good film on the TV as this can get tedious.

Top Tip: Don't be tempted to cut more than one patch at a time. I find that one always ends up wonky.

3. Take your padding and lay it out on the floor  "What?" I hear you say! "Bit early for all that, isn't it?" The one thing that was driving me mad in the past was laying out the squares on the carpet to play with layout and then messing it all up as I forget what when where. SO! Lay out your padding and start playing with how you want it to look. When you are happy with it all pin the squares to the padding so that you don't lose the pattern if you can't do the whole lot in one sitting.

 This also means that you can fold the whole lot up and put it away. If like me you don't have enough fabric so need to hunt down a few more bits you can see where the gaps are and can come back to it later.

4. Squares all laid out. (I did a few mini squares to add some variation and use up some tiny bits of fabric.) Time to start stitching. This is the tricky part as the goal is to make it all match up like this:

This is the one part that even really experienced quilters (and I am really, really not including myself there) find a pain so give yourself a break and don't get too cross if it doesn't quite work every single time.

Top Tip: Put a bit of masking tape on your sewing machine to help you keep the same distance on every single square.

5. Once all the squares are nicely ironed strips pin two strips together face to face and sew together. Iron and keep adding strips.

6. Top of the quilt is done. Have a cuppa and congratulate yourself.

7. Pin the patchwork to the padding and trim the padding to fit it. (I suggest going over the edges by an inch at this stage.) Then spread out the bottom fabric and put it on top of the patchwork with the right sides together. Keep spreading and fiddling until it is all smooth and straight.

8  Pin like crazy. The more pins you use the less likelihood of slippage. It is worth pinning the three layers of fabric like this:

It is a pain to do but it stops slippage. (You can buy a walking foot for your sewing machine to help solve this problem but at £30 they are expensive unless you plan to make a lot of quilts.)

Sew the three layers together around around the outside. Leave an good sized hole in one of the sides to turn the whole lot inside out.

Top Tip: Ensure you have loads of cotton on your bobbin. Few things are more annoying than getting to the end of a seam and discovering that it is only half done because the cotton has run out.

9. Now cut away the excess padding as close to the seams as you can while leaving enough to hold it in place. Small scissors make this easier. Snip all three layers diagonally across the corners close to the seam to help the corners look pointy.

10. Turn it inside out and press the edges with a hot iron with plenty of steam. The aim is to get the edges to look neat and flat.

11. Sew up the hole in the side.

12. You are done! If you want to add some quilty definition you can. I machine sewed around the smaller blocks in the middle to pick out the pattern a little.

Top Tip: If the bottom fabric is a different colour to the top use a different coloured thread in the bobbin so that the stitching is more discreet.

Have a picnic in the park. Or if the weather isn't going your way have an indoor picnic. I would seriously recommend an indoor picnic. It feels like being a child again with a tent made out of blankets.

Felt birdy decorations

One of my friends has just had a lovely baby boy. Having never made anything for a newborn before I thought it was time for a challenge.

Problem 1: It has to be safe. I clearly do not want to be responsible for anything nasty.
Problem 2: It has to be wipe clean or washable.


I settled on a playmat/ blanket as something that would be handy, potentially save the carpet from baby glurp/food/poo, but also colourful and fun as well.

I started with a patchwork of grey fabric from an old skirt and some blue and white striped fabric from those wedding cushions. As you can see the patchwork skills have improved somewhat. I've actually read the book I was given...I'm not ready to talk about how to patchwork successfully yet because I don't feel successful yet! I do have an idea brewing though.....

The whole thing was tasteful but somewhat drab. Decoration time! I wanted to do cheerful birds but wasn't quite sure how. Embroidering them would take ages and be totally impractical against the aforementioned baby glurp/food/poo. Felt would be perfect and look great but isn't machine washable. Making birds from fabric scraps would drive me mad trying to get a neat edge on all of them.

I did a google looking for inspiration and stumbled across this Folksy shop. The Felted Rainbow:

WASHABLE FELT!

I had no idea it existed. Problem solved. A few clicks later and a small bundle of brightly coloured felt was on its way.

In the meantime I had to come up with some bird shapes. Drawing  is not my number one skill. However with a bit of faffing with some google images, tracing and making it up as I went along I came up with a few shapes that I thought would pass. I was hardly going for realistic birds anyway. (Feel free to use them!)

Top Tip: Scanning them meant that I could play about with sizes to fit the squares.

Having cut out the templates it's time to pin them to the felt and start cutting.

Top Tip: It is very tempting to cut more than one layer of fabric at a time to save time. I find it rarely saves time as one of the layers invariably ends up a bit skew-whiff however well I've pinned it. Instead I do this boring bit in front of a good programme on TV.(Blackadder - now free on Netflix. Hooray!)

Felt shapes cut, laying them out is the fun part. A bit of tweaking later.....by this I actually mean a half hour absurdly serious discussion with my Matey over dinner....and I was ready to pin the birds to the blanket.

Machine stitching the felt to the blanket as closely to the edge of the felt as possible is easy but time consuming. You don't want to go too fast as the fabric will need constant moving to fit the shape of the felt. This is where my ancient hand turn machine is amazing as I can do one stitch at a time if needed.  At the end of the seam go over the start of the stitching for about a centimetre to secure it really safely from investigating little fingers and snip the ends of the threads:

At this stage the birds look more like ghosts and tadpoles. Wings are what they need. Smaller versions of the same shapes as the birds pinned and sewed on in exactly the same way. I decided to go slightly clashing colours as I felt that the grey and blue background would balance them out nicely and the whole effect wouldn't be too gaudy.

 
Just a bit of detail lacking. Using some embroidery thread I stitched on some beaks, legs and eyes.
Nothing fancy, just a basic in and out stitch and randomly placed appendages. I wanted it to have a simple look and for each bird to have a different personality.

The eyes are three stitches one way and three stitches the other way back over the first three. This makes for a mini pad of thread so the eye sticks out a bit.

The beak is even easier. Three stitches for the top and three for the bottom and all tied off very, very securely at the back. I put at least four knots and a few stitches just in case.

You can draw the features on in advance with tailors chalk but I like to place them randomly.

The legs are now a doddle. Four stitches down and three to the left and another three just above to make feet:

So there we go. Dead easy washable felt embroidered birdies, perfect for cheering up just about anything.

Easter is over!

Golly! It's been a week since my last post. I've been on happy, happy holiday and I've been awfully busy celebrating so there hasn't been much time to sit down to type much.

Much chocolate has been scoffed and Spring has truly Sprung. I know the weather is yet to realise this but the clocks going forward makes all the difference to my cycle home.

Having taken a few days off post Easter my Matey and I went to the Doctors, Dissection and Resurrection Men exhibition at The Museum of London . It's only on for another week and a half but I would highly recommend it as I came out having definitely learnt stuff and pondering the continuing and controversial issue of the need for donor bodies for Medical Science to grow.

I often don't go to exhibitions that are ticketed at museums in London. I feel that the whole of museum is free so why do I need to pay for a small exhibition when I can occupy a day in the main part. However when I do fork out I always realise that it is often easier to really learn something from a small and well curated exhibition that focuses in on a subject. Wandering round a vast museum it is easy to learn nothing at all despite being surrounded by fascinating objects.

I did finally get on with a very small project I have been meaning to do for sometime now. (Why is it that the small tasks are always neglected.) The recycling system has changed in our area so we now have plastic bags to put it all in. The only problem being that the bags go everywhere and with a small kitchen it's hard to fit things in anyway without a sprinkling of green bags everywhere. Simple solution. A bag stuffer! This was one of those things I always thought was a bit naff and too cute for me. Until I was given one for plastic shopping bags and discovered that they do the job very well. Time to make a new one for the recycling bags.

This is a truly easy job and takes about half an hour.

1. You need to cut out a rectangle of fabric for the main body and a strip of fabric for the handle.
 

2. Iron both strips in half and sew along the long edge to make two tubes of fabric. (It is worth ironing the seams open at this point for a nice finish.)

3. Turn the strip for the handle inside out and iron.

4. Fold the two ends of the main body tube over twice so that you have a hem that is wide enough to feed some elastic through.

5. Sew the bottom hem leaving a small gap, around 1cm, for the elastic to feed through. I always double stitch around the gap to make sure it is really secure.

6. The top hem needs the two ends of the handle inserted under it and folded back up to keep it hanging nicely (see the photo below). Stitch the top hem in exactly the same way and stitch the top of the hem where the handle is.

7. Using a safety pin as a needle feed the elastic through the gaps at the top and bottom, decide on the best tension for you to be able to get the bags in and out and tie a knot.

8. Trim any loose threads and stuff with plastic bags.

 

Told you it was quick and easy! Free as well if you use leftover bits and bobs.