Instant Village Winner

It’s the last day of January, and it’s time to draw the winner of my Instant Village Giveaway.

As this was my first drawing ever, I went for the easy solution: numbering all the comments and using Random.org’s Random Number Generator.

Drum rolls please, the winner of the Instant Village Giveaway is

No 50
who is
Brenda of Scraps & Strings


Congratulations to you Brenda; and to all of you who entered, thank you for playing along!

Clara & Fredrikke, The Taupe Twins

The first sample for my Funky Fowl class and pattern from this post is finished. I have had a big grin on my face while working on it. I’m in love.

Clara

Fredrikke
I have given myself permission to cut into my precious stash, including my taupe fabrics. I have never used taupe before, and love how soft they look.

The Orange Purse

I’m the proud owner of a brand new orange purse, ”The Orange Purse” (please notice the capital T), stitched with lots of love, my seam ripper glued to my right hand, lots of frustration, a broken needle and a happy dance.

The purse is made from the orange linen piece from this post. It has been hand quilted with pearl cotton embroidery floss.

It has a quilted lining, a binding on top, and even a zipper for closing. That zipper took forever to sew in, but it’s there, see?
Instead of buying handles, I have made the strap from a belt. A tutorial on how to do this is coming up.

I was probably the last quilter on earth making a purse, but now I have two on my bragging list (first one here). If I was wise enough to use a pattern or tutorial on how to do these things, it would probably have been a piece of cake. Unfortunately I’m the I’ll-figure-it-out type of person. As soon as a question mark enters my brain, it keeps on churning until I have a solution. With quilts this approach works just fine, but add another dimension and I’m practically buzzing. It sometimes keeps me awake at night. I have found that the 3rd dimension is great until you are sewing your lining into it, and I have. Several times.

The good thing is that I now know how to make the silk purse for MIL; I will not reinvent the wheel this time…

Now I’ll add this to Amylouwho’s Sew & Tell, pop over and get inspired!

Make A Heart tutorial Part One

This is a fun way to use some of the scraps of fabric and batting you have been saving. Make a few for Valentines or Christmas; these are addictive!

My brain and patience cannot upload and move around 30+ pictures at one time so I’ll have to do this tutorial in two parts.

The foundation
What you’ll needFabric scraps; there’s no such thing as too small scraps for this project. My biggest pieces are ca 3” * 2”

Scraps of batting, any low loft batting will do.

Cover one side with fusible web (great way to use webbing that has loosened from the paper; just cut the webbing to size and fuse it to the batting using an appliqué sheet or baking paper for protection).
Spray baste or fuse backing to the other side. My samples are ca 11” * 12” big.
Tulle. Different coloured tulle makes different result. I have used white, red and silvery grey for the samples.
Fluffy yarn
Fun, fluffy snowball yarn works too (take note of the last part of the tutorial though)
Pins (my favourite pin cushion made by daughter)

And what you’ll do
Cut away or leave those threads as you like
Start in a corner with a scrap; you’ll work on the web covered side of your batting:-) Place the next scrap so that there is a bit of overlap
Do the first “row”, and start building the next. Just place the scraps wherever you like; if you’re not happy, you can always add some more or replace pieces
To break up bigger pieces, you can put a narrow strip on top
When you’re happy, use the iron to fuse everything in place
Hold the piece up against the light to see if there are any holes. If something falls off, just put it back. Cover any holes with new pieces.
Here are two of my foundations ready for Part Two.

Make A Heart

The tutorial for making a heart quilt like this and "One World One Heart" is up here.

Have fun!

Make A Heart tutorial Part Two

Cover it up
Cut a piece of tulle a bit bigger than your foundation and place on the foundation. Start pinning in the centre. I have only used 9 pins, centre, sides, top & bottom and corners.
Red tulle

White tulle (does really not photograph well!)
Silvery grey tulle


And off to the sewing machine
QuiltingI have quilted my pieces with straight lines; you can quilt yours any way you like.
To get a straight first line, use a piece of masking tape and sew a line the width of your presser foot from the tape. Continue quilting the whole piece removing pins (and masking tape) as you go.
The white one is quilted with hot orange thread in vertical lines
The red one with hot pink thread in horizontal lines
The grey one with dark red thread in vertical lines (sorry, horrible light...)

HeartCut out a heart template of paper, fabric or use a scrap of batting like I have. It’s very forgiving to pin, does not unravel, is reusable and easy to sew around.

Pin it to the middle of your foundation
Using a thread that matches the yarn you will use, stitch a line just outside the template
Remove the template, and you will have a visible heart
Put your special cording foot on your machine if you have one, or use your regular foot. Set your stitch to a zigzag; 2mm wide and 2mm long works well.

Thread the yarn through the slot/groove in your foot (from the front), leaving a little tail at the back of the foot.

Start stitching at the bottom of the heart. If your yarn is “directional” like this one, make sure you sew with the fluff, not against it!
Follow the heart shape all the way to the beginning. Do not cut the yarn; continue sewing a line outside the first, then inside. Add more lines if you like.
This is the grey one
The white one (I’m going to add lots of embellishments on this)Maybe something like I did on “One World One Heart”

And what happened to the red piece?

Just because you are able to slide the fun, snowball yarn through your cording foot
It might not work that well after all. See how it has stretched??? Oh …! Use your regular foot on bumpy yarn!!
I'll need a few nights in front of the TV unpicking all the stitches on this one and finish the three of them.

Have fun!

Heart Quilt top

Top done, me happy!
The columns spent a day on my design wall (flannel sheet which hangs on two nails on top of our dining room art). I tried out several variations, but did not want it too symmetric, so I ended up with this layout.

I spent Monday night power sewing the columns together and pressed the seams yesterday morning. I still have to snip all those little threads peeking up here and there. It’s amazing how much blocks will unravel being handled and moved around for months and months.
It is sooo pretty, I love it!

For the next progress report I will have to get a fleece blanket for backing (this will be a snuggle quilt, and the hearts are already so stiff from fusible), wash it, and baste the top. I hope! Wish me luck! So, how are you doing on your projects; any progress to report?

Ready, set, cut!

The cutting instructions for Mrs Moen Spring Mystery 2010 are posted here, so grab your fabrics and start cutting!

You need to have signed up for the Mystery and gone through the acquired steps in Blogger to log in. Let me know if you have problems signing in. I think we'll leave the few problems with commenting for now; the important thing is that you can read the instructions. You can always contact me by email.

You can still sign up for the Mystery here.

There will not be any intricate piecing; if you can sew along a straight line, you can make this project.

Julie, Michele (thymegardener): I need your email addresses, please.

Added: Sandi, I have problems with your email address.