Dress Me Up banner for Fat Quarterly

Fat Quarterly is back on sale after the new year EU Vat changes that rather scuppered many PDF pattern sellers.  Payhip has been a great solution for many sellers including Sew-ichigo- it has been totally hassle free for us!  The latest issue (Number 20)  is Paper Piecing and I designed the 'Dress Me Up Banner'.  You can see a preview of the issue here.

It's a collection of simple, clothing themed, foundation paper-pieced patterns.  I designed these to keep the number of different sections needed to the absolute minimum.  All the fabrics are Suzuko Koseiki prints, kindly supplied by lovely Becca of Sew Me a Song and she has a bundle featuring all the prints in her shop with a fat eighth and a fat quarter option or you can find individual prints here.

Although the pattern is for a banner, the individual blocks could be used for quilts, mini quilts, pillows, small projects- the usual quilty stuff!

The finished banner is 8" x 120", I have mine across one wall of my sewing room.  It was a tricky beast to photograph!

Find the issue at Fat Quarterly.  There are lots of other projects inside including a very sweet house themed sewing machine cover and a stunning atomic inspired 'Beam me Up' quilt. 

Suzuko Koseki Paper Piecing Bundle

I'm on half term and I am working away on some paper piecing projects including something for Fat Quarterly.  For the fabric, Becca of Sew Me a Song gave me the chance to make up my own Suzuko Koseki bundle, I could even get very fancy and say curated- I'm imagining myself stroking a London style beardy chin just writing the word, although its not quite the same image on a forty-something woman as it is on a young male hipster.  Anyway, I leapt at the chance and it arrived today.  I am thrilled and I love it. Twelve beautiful fabric fat quarters of rich colour saturation featuring my favourite fabric designer. 

The daisies are a new Suzuko Koseki print and I new I had to include them.  My other choices reflected a mix of colours, large, medium and small prints, light, bright and dark colours and a range of text prints.  I'll be using a neutral background with these to showcase their finery.  The Fat Quarterly project won't be for a while yet, but if you want to get your hands on this bundle, the lovely Becca has it listed in her shop right now!  Here as fat quarters and here as fat eighths.  You will find yardage of the different prints in her shop.

Posting at Purse Palooza

You can find me at Sew Sweetness today as part of  Purse Palooza. It is all about this little bag...

and there are chances to enter giveaways and read other purse/bag related posts - go take a look!

Basket

Charise has the last month in 318 Patchwork Bee and she chose baskets.  I restrained myself from making the sewing basket, I am designing a sewing basket block for Sew Out Loud quilt-a long so I went for knitting, just in case Charise feels she wishes to take up a new hobby.

This is 6.5" with tricksy Y seams to make the handle at the top.  I used my new favourite tiny ruler to add a generous 1/4 inch to my freezer paper pieces, the block is template style piecing rather than foundation.  

I do love the designs in this book, the simplicity and boldness of them is a constant reminder to me to keep it simple, less is more.  The basket is made with Kumiko Fujita fabric, possibly my favourite all time text fabric as there are so many great words and motifs to fussy cut.

The blue yarn is Suzuko Koseki fabric- currently available at Kit's shop The Happy Elephant on Etsy, an excellent source of text, Japanese fabrics and general loveliness.  The needles were bias strips and the tops are buttons cut from a Kaufman print 'Vintage Couturier' all sewn on with needle turn applique.  I used to be a ferocious knitter.  When Lula was born I made her cardigans, hats, jumpers all from beautiful yarns.  Moderation is not in my vocabulary, all or nothing and I did way too much!  My hands and wrists can't take that any more and I sold all my knitting supplies a few years ago but I do love seeing yarn projects pop up over Flickr and Twitter and a small part of me aches just a little to be able to knit again.

Now, back to completing a quilt, I am trying a quilt-as-you-go technique and will share next week.   At the moment it is proving to be tedious but effective.

 Meanwhile the Sew Out Loud QAL starts tomorrow at Julianna's blog!  Details of the final block competition can be found here- start preparing now, the judge is Suzuko Koseki, yes I know, I can't believe it either!

Swapsies

I meet so many lovely people in the online sewing world and every now and again I meet someone I really click with and I can imagine having a cup of tea with whilst swapping ideas and talking fabrics.  Amy is one of those people and we conspired a little swap to follow the rush of Christmas- we have both received our packages so now its show and tell.  Look what I have to show- the cutest little Dresden bag and matching coin purse adapted from Amy's free pattern.

This is a bag with a purpose.  When I teach music in school, I have a little bag with remote control, throat sweets and other vital bits and pieces.   My current bag is a sad and sorry denim patch pocket, well worn so Amy made a replacement.  It needed a strap large enough to cross my body- we move around a lot in music!  You can see me in my work clothes below- the bag is perfect and its little coin pouch partner fits inside!  Both have just the right amount of grey to fit in with my sober serious Mrs Green attire ( gotta have some sort of authority) and the pops of colour make me smile and my eyes glint each time I look at it!

The tiny pouch is the cutest thing with its mini dresden petals!  I can only imagine how fiddly this was for Amy to make.

And Amy included some of her screen printed My Happy Place print (available in her shop)  Such a crisp and neat print on the softest linen.

And a cathedral windows card- this shape really makes me think of Amy!

And I think it was the cathedral windows that lead to me using the petal design on a frame purse in my makes for her.  The flower pattern was from Suzuko Koseki's book Natural Patchwork

It is a tricksy pattern to do with all those curves and I did it the worng way roung and the texts weren't reading how I wanted them to read so the quick unpic came out- but all worked out!  We both added a personal touch with initials!  Fabrics are Japanese linen, Yuwa print and vintage flowery fabric scraps.

The lining is a Suzko Koseki print.   I drafted the purse pattern myself using Lisa's helpful hints at U- handbag and the frame is from Cotton and Cloud.

I found an interesting fabric panel just before I started this swap that I thought would suit Amy.  It is a fine cotton with a lovely text print- I have no idea what it was for, emboridery maybe, but the print stayed on after I washed it.  It was a large rectangle, big enough to make a decent size lined drawstring bag.  The ties are vintage bias binding.

It is hard to photograph white on white, but you get the idea

A very nice swap and a great friendship, makes the world seem a little smaller x

Yuwa in the UK

I had a very exciting last night looking at The Eternal Maker, Suzuko Koseki, Kumiko Fujita, Yo and other Japanese designer prints on sale in a UK shop.   Search under the themes section, in Japanese Imports and there are other designers including Yoshiko Jinzenji and Keiko Goke.   

Anna at Eternal Maker says more Yuwa is coming soon!

I should add, I first got a hint of these on Ali's blog, which reminds me that her Resolved to Sew Giveaway starts tomorrow, you can see a few hints at what is to come but more will be revealed tomorrow!

The Camera Never Lies

I am normally up to date with my bee blocks but Amy's Ocotober Ringo Pie block slipped by the wayside.  Her theme was 'The Camera Shop'.   I have been saving images for a while, I was all ready to do a vintage Super Color Polaroid Land camera with a solid green polaroid coming out of it.  I drafted it, bought rainbow ribbon and kept trying to put time aside to work it through.  It never really appeared in my head, I had the concept but I couldn't visualise it and no fabric was talking to me.  Last week, a new idea crept in, fully formed, fabrics, details- I could see them all.

A vintage film canister, Kodak inspired.  I am lucky.  I have a great memory for colour.  The biggest swatch board is in my head. Unfortunately, once I think of a fabric or a colour, I then have to find it,  search round the zillions of different places where I store fabric.  Most of my stash is small pieces, half yards, fat quarters, scraps.  With this block, I pulled the fabric in minutes and unusually the vintage fabric is the background.

This could only be Amy's block.  She is an intensely creative person, her work has great colour and imagination.  Her personality comes through it as I think it does for us all.  You may not have met your blogging friends in person but you have seen their inner imagination and personality through their work.  

Fabrics- Vintage floral print, vintage green solid, Kona school bus with versacraft ink stamp, Sweetwater Authentic Newsprint, Suzuko Koseki text/number fabrics, Kona Brown, tiny squares of Denyse Schmidt's Katie Jumps Rope.  

 

Once upon a time...

...there was a little house block, built for Leila as part of her Home Sweet Home month in 318 Patchwork Bee.  A house of sewing and Dutch decor, but it didn't look quite right. There was a tear in the side of the grass path- I blame the rotary cutter-and it just didn't make me smile as much as it should.

So I set to work with a seam ripper and some vintage feedsack, kindy sent by Charise and did a little DIY.  As usual this doesn't always go according to plan.  The plus side was the little lady waving goodbye from the door way, the minus was a little damage to a tiny bit of fabric patched up with a door plate number.   The grass was relaid...

And now I am smiling.  Marginally too small- only by 1/4 inch, sorry Leila, I am sure it'll stretch with a bit of steam!   The measuring fabric and the washing instructions are Kumiko Fujita, the roof is Alexander Henry Heath, the Sky is Lecien from Mrs March collection and the chimneys are Suzuko Koseki.  The other prints are vintage and the house is Kona stone.

Wishing an early happy thanksgiving to all of you stateside peeps. We all have much to be thankful for,  it is just hard to remember to take a little time out to think of it but when you do, it is worth it (that's my lecture finished for today)oh and special thanks to Aneela and scrappy loveliness of this yet to be released fabric line she sent me and many other UK bloggers- now there is a generous spirit!

A Little Dumpling

I had a lovely surprise this week.  Charise sent me her bee block for my month in Patchwork 318 Bee which uses designs from Kumiko Fujita's wonderful OOP book.  My theme is Afternoon Tea, and my plan is a table runner for my kitchen.  Now her block was a beauty- witness below

I love the mix of vintage and new fabrics and the texty tea time words, and if this wasn't enough she popped this in too

I feel totally spoiled!  I had already admired the dumpling here, I didn't realise it was coming to me.  The shape is a free tutorial from Keykalou.  It is the perfect size for my thread snips, might even stop me losing them all the time.

The fabrics she included with it are special too-  a new Suzuko Koseki print (and my favourite of her new ones) and a sublime piece of vintage kitchen fabric- you will see more of it shortly as I am including it in some quilt blocks.

Hugs to Charise xxx A very generous and talented lady xxx

Want to see how good she is?  Click here and check out her incredible Swiss ski chalet.

See what I mean!

Promise

Thankyou for all the get well wishes. I am back at work and feeling much better than last week.  I have an energetic job so when I get home I can't get much sewing done until I feel a bit more up to speed.  I did fancy a quick fix instant gratification make.  I bought this months Mollie Makes magazine, mainly for the tiny coin purse frame kit on the front.  At £4.99 an issue, it is at the pricier end of the magazine market. I blindly cut my fabrics out following the instructions and cutting round the templates , I then realised there would be no lining, the seams would be visible on the inside and the whole thing would be too flimsy for coins.  So I abandoned the sparse and slightly inadequate instructions and made it using previous purse making knowledge- see U-handbag for great purse tutorials.  

Suzuko Koseki fabric and a little stamping with versacraft ink.

The lining is Kei dots.  The coins give you an idea of scale, this is a tiny purse.

I am not a great craft magazine buyer. UK magazines are often aimed at beginner sewers and have great aspirational lifestyle pictures but projects with often rather limited usage or not the best instructions.  If I had been new to sewing and had made the purse how they suggested I would have been rather sad about the result.  The crafting tradition and maybe a larger market to see to in USA and Japan leads to more adventurous magazines with a variety of projects for a greater range of abilities.  Don't get me wrong, Mollie Makes is very pretty but there is the edge of whimsy that pushes me over the edge- I am a little irritable at the moment and "things that have been made with love last longer" as a caption was going too far for me. 

I have had a week of frustrating tech which has compounded my grumpiness.  My phone is a Blackberry- I just got it fixed and then the Blackberry crash has made it inoperable for most of this week.  I also working on my first paper pieced pattern for sale on Etsy and drawing the pieces has been fiendishly hard in Word!  I have now sussed it, publication is imminent and I promise Damian that I will be a loveable person to live with once more and not a raging, irritable old bag x

Birthday stuff ♥

Just in case you haven't entered yet, my birthday mug rug giveaway here

I thought I would share the crafty bits of my birthday with you.  Damian excelled himself- he made this card, the funny thing is I found a sewing machine image on my computer this week that I didn't remember using but wasn't sure, it was the source material for this!

You can't see but there is a heart cut in a third section, he is such a honey  x

He also got me these, Kei Kerchief ladies- so hard to find, I had to pounce on them on Etsy, and the linen blend paper fabrics, also Etsy.  My big gift was an overlocker which I have to spend some time with.  I have watched and eye popping DVD that accompanies it with the most annoying music but I can't wait to make jersey clothing for me and Lula.

Ayumi made me this incredible mini quilt and matching pincushion, I can't tell you how much I love it. Every fabric is calling out to me!

And this beautiful stationery set was from my lovely friend Kathy, beautiful hand printed cards- the salutations one cracks me up!

I am a lucky, lucky person.