WIP Wednesday - a growing (retro) flower garden

Not a whole lot of sewing since last Wednesday - we've been struck down with gastro and colds and general grumpiness. I have managed to put a few more flowers together though...

Nine done - so more than half way! I'd forgotten how painful all the trimming was with these - definitely my least favorite part of these blocks. I've found my groove with them now though and I'm finding it SO much easier to get the seams to match - there has only been a small amount of unsewing ;o)

But the other seven flowers are now trimmed as well, so it's just a matter of sewing them all together :o) Now it's getting closer I'm trying to decide how to quilt it - no firm ideas yet, I think there will be a lot of sketching before I tackle the quilting part!

In the next week, I need to get my bee blocks done (and my next tutorial for the QAL) so I'll be having a wee break from these. Still, it's so nice to be knocking over a WIP at last!

Linking up to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced (button in sidebar), and I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone has been up to :o)

xx Jess

WIP Thursday (again!)

Thanks for all your feedback on the Joyce baby quilt from last week. After much consideration I've decided to make another one. I like it, but I don't love it and this baby (who arrived on Saturday, a few weeks early, and who is totally divine by the way) needs the perfect quilt. So I'm trying to decide what to do... there are a few ideas percolating somewhere in there :o)

I've mostly been working on my Retro Flowers quilt this week. Not a lot of sewing has actually been happening - my kids have decided that 9pm is the best time to actually go to sleep. By that time of night, I'm much more interested in some TV time than the cold sewing room so my motivation hasn't been all that great. I have managed to get 6 flowers together though (nearly a quarter of them, yay!) These first ones are some of the more difficult prints to work with. I'm still not entirely sure if the 'abstract' appearance of some of the petals work, but I think once they're all part of the quilt it will look okay.

I have been cutting for another quilt over the last month or so (very slowly...) - an EPP one so I'm thinking its going to be a long time in the making! It's (obviously) totally inspired by Katy's Spring Carnival pattern but the layout will be totally different. I'm still not entirely sure where it's going, but I'm loving playing with these fabrics and creating patterns with them. 

To any bee hives mates reading this, my May bee blocks are next in line (I know, last minute as usual) and will be done in the next day or two. Promise!

xx Jess

My Precious Retro Flowers Update

Now that I've finally gotten my other commitments out of the way, I'm back into the swing of My Precious Retro Flowers. I am determined to do this one through to the finish now I have time (although there does need to be a wee babby quilt made in the next few weeks for my bestie, who's about to have baby number 5...)

So. I still only have one complete flower done (and the petals are still seperate).

But I have actually been working on it! This is my pile of sewn and trimmed curves:

My pile of curves ready to be trimmed:

My stack of fabrics ready to be cut:

My cut fabric ready to be sewn:

And a couple of flowers ready to be pressed and trimmed.

The plan at this stage is to make 25 flowers, and have a wider border (around 10") so we can use this one on our bed.

I'm hoping to have a few more flowers done by the end of the weekend!

x Jess

Gadgets and Petals

You may remember a little while ago I was excited about getting a Curve Master foot for my sewing machine. And was then pissed off disappointed to find when I read the small print that my Bernina required a shank adapter in order to use said Curve Master. I bit the bullet and ordered the shank adapter, hoping all the while that the foot was going to be worth the outlay. I am very relieved pleased to say it was totally worth it. It's my new favorite sewing gadget!

 My curve master foot.

Obviously it's designed to make curved piecing easy. And it does - once you get used to moving the fabric through the foot (you need to hold the top piece up in the air) its very quick and painless to sew accurate curves. What I didn't realise is that it also allows you to sew a perfect scant 1/4" seam on straight piecing too. For someone who is accurate-seam-allowance challenged (like me for example) it is so worth getting one! Plus all my curves sit really flat, and I've had no problems with puckering etc - all due to the foot, not my abilities :o)

I still actually haven't finished cutting my fabric for the Retro Flowers QAL, but I wanted to give some piecing a go so I've cut enough for a few flowers (and will do the rest when I need to. Not in any great hurry to get back to the cutting!)

First petal attempt - you can see the side seams aren't perfectly matched - I'm not really that phased by them (and you can't really notice from a distance, and I'm too lazy to unpick and resew them)

Second petal attempt - a bit better than number one, the seams pretty well match up perfectly (yay!!) Not sure what I did differently for this one, but the seams are much more accurate.

I promise I won't bore you with any more petal by petal accounts for this quilt - I'm just so impressed with the curve master I couldn't resist. 

The other gadgety thing I've gotten this week isn't all that gadgety, but it is extremely useful, so I guess that counts as kind of a gadget, right? The supplies have been sitting in the garage for a month or so... but Mr E is on holidays for the next couple of weeks, and I finally conned him into setting up my design wall. I apologise for the truly awful photo - my sewing room/study is too small to get far enough away to get a decent photo, so it's taken from the side... Anyway, it's simply constructed by covering three pieces of 3mm thick MDF board with batting (I think they were each 120mm x 60mm), taping the batting to the back, and then nailing the boards onto two 180mm long planks of wood. So it's portable and not too heavy to move around, and it's the perfect size for the space between our filing cabinet and the doorway in my sewing space (the only wall in there that isn't a window or taken up with shelves). 

Right, back to some more curved piecing. Oh and trying to come up with something brilliant to make with this little bundle of prettiness for a Fat Quarterly Designer challenge...

 

 

xx Jess

Resistance is futile

I've seen this come up a few times recently in blogs. It seems resistance really is futile ;o)

As I'm coming to the end of my commissions (which seem to have taken *forever*), I'm thinking about my next project (or five...) I've already started the Stained QAL, but me being me, I'm not happy to just have one project on the go. I should clarify there, one NEW project. Oh no. So I've been stalking the Retro Flowers QAL sites trying to resist joining in that one as well. I even entered the giveaways for the pattern and templates.  And I accidentally won a pattern (yay!! first give away win!) So now I have to join, don't I?

Just because I'm a total scaredy cat when it comes to curves (which is rather sad when you consider I have 'done' the curves class. This means I have read all the project posts and not done any. They too are on my ever growing to-do-list...) I just ordered a curve master foot (the pattern told me to, honest!) and the template set. And so I'm really excited about starting it - and I get to do one of my favorite parts of a project: picking fabrics. I'm actually thinking I might delve into my Good Folks stash for this one (I figure pretty fabric might motivate me to keep going for once ;o) )

Is anyone else joining in on the Retro Flower QAL? There are some great prizes up for grabs and the link up isn't until the beginning of June so its a pretty low pressure one time-wise (although I'm thinking all the curved piecing is going to take a loooong time).

Oh and thanks for all our lovely comments regarding my fabulously well behaved children (insert sarcasm here - only about the kids, not the comments!). It seems I was just tired and needed a sewing break (surprisingly I might add). Kids have been a bit better, but more importantly I spent Friday and Saturday nights getting acquainted with a TV series I hadn't seen but have fallen in love with. The Dollhouse - absolutely bloody brilliant series. If you saw and enjoyed Firefly (another Joss Whedon series) you'll love it. Sci-fi/action and just really worth a watch.

I'll hopefully be back in a couple of days with some finished quilts!

xx Jess