rope baskets

At January's meeting of the East Midlands Quilt Group, the lovely Ange showed us how to make rope bowls using cotton cord.  I used white 4mm cotton cord to whip up this baby.

I say whip up, it took me the entire meeting, in between gossiping and stuffing my face with cake.  They are brilliant fun to make and the possibilities are endless.  I really wish I'd taken photos of some of the other bowls the group made.

The next day, I wanted to make another, so decided to use up the rest of the rope, just keep going until it was all used.  I also incorporated some fabric scraps for a dash of colour.

It turned out massive!!  I made a right mess of attaching the fabric scraps, but I really like it anyway.

I wanted to use up the rest of the roll so that I wouldn't have oddments of cotton cording hanging around, but now I want to buy more and make more baskets!

Hey!

In the area where I live, we have several wheelie bins.  A green one for general rubbish, a brown one for garden waste (or, in my case, rabbit poo) and a grey-lidded one for recyclables such as bottles, glass, paper and card.  To save going outside every time we finish a milk bottle, we had a canvas M&S bag in the corner.  It was gross.  Things had spilled in there, I'm pretty sure something had crawled in there to die... it was filthy.  A replacement was needed.  No photo of the filthy one as, quite frankly, I'm ashamed of myself (though I am exaggerating a little).

Laminate plastic tablecloth type fabric (not designer, I'm not made of money, it is a bin), cheapy black poly-cotton, a few hours of swearing and a recycling bin is born.

The laminate is on the inside for easy wipe-cleaning and I stitched up the four sides to try to give it structure as I'd failed to interface it.  That didn't work, but it's fine when it's full.  The swearing was not down to sewing with laminate, that wasn't a problem.  It was down to my inability to do the most basic of maths.  The first one turned out very wide and very short, that got unpicked, the second was too thin and too tall, that got thrown in a corner.

Now, we all have hay all over our kitchen floor don't we?  Also in our hair and all over our clothes, but there's nothing I can do about that.  But the kitchen floor annoys me.  I sweep, 2 seconds later it's covered in hay again.  Something needed to be done.  Where's that tall, skinny failure of a recycling bag?

Ta dah!  This has the laminate on the outside as it gets taken outside and put on the floor so the outer needs to be wipe-clean rather than the inside.  It's lined with the black polycotton. The hanging tag is so I can hang it on the door, once I've sorted out a second set of hooks.

The perfect solution for everyone's spilt hay issues.  Feel free to copy as I hate to think of you all sitting there with your hay-covered kitchens.

I can't believe I nearly forgot!  This is also my second 2014 FAL Q3 finish for the quarter!  Yay me.

 
See my goal setting post here.

the taming of the stash

I've always said I don't have much of a stash.   

Turns out that's not true. I've got a 4-drawer unit full of fat quarters.  This is how the contents of those drawers looked:

I did some ironing, some folding and some colour arranging and now the pink/red/orange and black/white/grey/brown drawers are nice and neat like this!

I removed anything that was less than a fat 1/8, folded all the FQs, then folded the fat 1/8s nicely too.  Anything smaller is to be a scrap.  Want to see my scrap cupboard?

Yeah, I know.  Just call me Mrs Organised.  Actually, that's only some of my scraps.  The rest live in this linen basket:

As you can see, I've started sorting them by colour.  At the time of writing I've sorted all the scraps in the linen basket, but none in the cupboard.

I decided something needed to be done.  These scraps had to be tamed and organised.  Cue a lot of ironing and some quilting as you go.  Wow QAYG takes FOREVER.

I'd think I was going great guns when I'd find a bit of raw edge hanging out or a spot I'd missed!  I resorted to folding the edges of a scrap and stitching it down.  Eventually, after a LOT of sewing and one and a half spools of thread, I had enough...

... to make this basket.  It measured 33" x 14" when it was a flat piece.  I QAYGed (can I say that, or should it be QAIW?) onto a piece of wadding with part of an old sheet behind it.  I then applied firm interfacing to that and it stands up really well.  As I couldn't be bothered with binding, I made a lining from an old pillow case.  It's a simple tote construction with boxed bottoms, no pattern.

It has a large hanging loop as I'd like to fix a rail up somewhere to hang them all on, but so I can take them off.  It requires some more thought.  I didn't interface the loop which may be a mistake.

I intend to make one for each colour of prints, then I'll think about solids.  I don't have so many scraps so I'm thinking I might do divided baskets to hold 2 colours - possibly à la Vera as I LOVE her basket.  I doubt I'll do them all as QAYG as it's so time consuming.  I think I'll also use it as a way to make blocks that I like and then practice my FMQ.

I put some ironed scraps in.  I've now added all the ironed scraps from the linen basket, I think it will be full when I've done!  Maybe it's time to start on the Tula Pink's City Sampler: 100 Modern Quilt Blocks quilt! *

*affiliate link.  If you click over and buy something, I get a few pennies towards a voucher.

p.s. my craft room is an absolute tip!

noodlehead divided basket

Good morning ladies.  I've got the day off work today and I'm trying to avoid doing any housework, so I'm starting with a blog post, then I'll get on with the thing that needs doing that I took the day off for... more about that later in the week.  Hopefully.  

I didn't tell you about the last meeting of the East Midland's Modern Quilt Guild.  The lovely Moira booked us a church hall in a location halfway between my house and my work.  I set off on the Saturday morning, all smug as I couldn't get lost this week as I usually do.  Then I found myself nearly at work.  I had to turn around and drive back!  I was late anyway as I was waiting for a man to come and fix our dishwasher following the letter we got telling us our dishwasher is likely to blow up and burn the house down.  Great, thanks for that Hotpoint.  When I arrived the other ladies were steaming through their projects.  

Some of us were making Noodlehead's Divided basket.  Moira had suggested the pattern and as I'd been umming and ahhing about buying it anyway, I went for it.  You can buy the pattern here.

Now, I had a little problem.  Looking through my supplies prior to going to the meeting, I didn't seem to have enough fusible fleece.  I grabbed some interfacing, thinking that would do.

It didn't!  How hilarious is that floppy mess??  I chose not to sew the lining inside the outer, but to try and do something with it when I got home.  Strangely for me, I set to the very next day.

Turns out I did have enough fusible fleece, it was just in 4 pieces, but that's not really a problem as it was fused in place, then sewn.  The fleece still wasn't really thick enough.  I think for future baskets I'd want a very firm interfacing and maybe some thicker fleece too.

The outer is some of the Femme FQs I won a while ago, they're linen-cotton mix which I thought would give it more body (clearly not).  The lining is some stripy fabric, I'm pretty sure someone designed it and manufactured it, but I don't know who.

Sewing in the divider was tricky and I struggled with it, but the rest was a breeze... until it came to sewing the lining to the outer.  The lining was a bit too small.  I'm not sure if it was the fault of my crap sewing or my crap cutting!  I fudged it eventually and don't have any huge puckers or tucks.  

It's currently living in the bathroom holding cleaning supplies and the centres of toilet rolls (I give them to the bunnies who love them), but it mocks me every time I go to the loo, so I might have to make another and relegate this one to my craft room where there are dozens of uses for it.

Oh, forgot to mention my handles.  Yeah, they definitely need some interfacing!

The pocket is lined with the lining fabric.

I think I took this photo to show you the hideous pucker in one of the corners that I didn't notice until it was all sewn up.  But maybe my camera just went off, it doesn't look like the kind of photo you'd deliberately take... 

Coming up this week, something completely knew and a some tiny little crochet items.  Maybe the afore-mentioned project that I've taken today off for too. 

corners!

So, last Weekend I had a list of sewing to do as long as my arm.  There were the chair cushions for mum, the new cool bag I desperately need for a lunch box, the big pile of WIPs I have, preparation for the upcoming blog hop...  So what did I make? 

 

A picnic bag.  Yes.  With napkins.  I know, I know, it's October, I live in the coldest, windiest, rainiest country on earth (or so it feels) and there's no prospect of a picnic any time soon.  I don't know how to explain it!

 

I'd gone up to my craft room and spotted these dumped on the sofa.  I felt like cleaning up, but instead of tackling the piles of fabric, patterns strewed all over the room, mountain of boxes in the corner... I decided I needed to tidy up these poor picnic plates and cutlery.

 

I had the perfect fabric in my stash, some food print fabric I'd bought from Fabric Land ages ago with no plan in mind.  Add in some IKEA solid red and Bob's your uncle.

I made a very simple drawstring bag with boxed bottom.  It's not for the food, we have a large cool bag for that (not the smelly one I take to work, a family-sized one), it's just for the plate and cutler.

And for the napkins.  Because I decided we needed napkins too.  Hmmm.  I used the pattern in Stitch by Stitch: Learning to Sew, One Project at a Time.  It shows you how to do the perfect mitred corner.

Unfortunately, I didn't really understand the instructions the first two times.  The bottom corner in the picture above shows my messy corner.  Then I got it, you really had to push the corners out.

Ta-dah!  I'm really quite proud of them.  Useless though they will be for the next 9 months.

So now I have two perfect napkins and one bag.  And two not-perfect napkins waiting to be unpicked...  It may take a while as I may have the urge to sew a lifesized giraffe, or a TV-cover or something first...

BUT, at least the corner of my sofa that held the plates and cutlery is now tidy.  Yay, a victory! ?!?!

Zakka Style Week 24 - Nesting Boxes - post 2

This, ladies and gentlemen, is my last Zakka post.  It's a pretty long one too, hope you don't get too bored...  I've already written about my own version of the nesting boxes which are week 24's project, but I mentioned I'd also made a box the same as the instructions in the book, so I'm showing you that today.  If you want to see the other boxes made for the sew along, the linky post is here, and this week's host can be found here.

Before I go further, I just wanted to say something about my last post.  I think I was a bit vague with my comments on my photographs.  What I was trying to say is that in general, my photos are a bit crap.  I've mentioned a couple of times that I'm trying to improve them and what I was trying to say was that the photos in the last post were a big improvement, except the one of the materials which was appalling.

Here's a progress shot of my two pieces of patchwork, just to prove I really did make two boxes!

I struggled FMQing those flowers, mine are pretty rubbish.  I also had no idea what to do with the ends.  For my version it was easy, I tied them in pairs and the ends were hidden by the lining.  For this version I had to sew each and every one in, and there were loads!

Here's a close up of my appliqué work.  I like these leaves and the way they're constructed which makes them 3d.

The box above is my version with the far to big faux lining!  Below is my box construction using the instructions in the book.  Too much hand sewing for my liking!

Having said that, I much prefer the finish.  Look how sturdy it looks... even without the quilted base. 

I would have loved to have made a set of 3 nesting boxes as in the project, but I just didn't have time.  The hand sewing alone took me two evenings (I don't slow THAT slowly, I just don't have very long evenings!).  Thinking about it, I could have made my version smaller or bigger so I would have had a set of 2...

See the inner quilting?

And here they are side by side.  Oh, I haven't mentioned the fabrics.  I bought them from a little shop in Hay On Wye which we visited for our first wedding anniversary (and our honeymoon, thanks to that damn volcano!).

See how well they stack.  Hmmm.  And now for a little retrospective of the last 24 weeks.  I joined in with 18 of the projects, of those only one was late, the elephant bookmarks.  I don't think I've done bad, and I've certainly had my money's worth.  Here's a little look back:

Week 1, the zig zag tote

 

Week 2, the house pouch

Week 3, pincushion

 

 

Week 4, sewing kit

Week 5, pencil case

Week 6, quilt block magnets

 

Week 9, messenger bag

 

Week 10, travel organiser

 

Week 13, patchwork potholders

 

Week 15, elephant bookmark

Week 17, linen pouch

Week 18, bread basket

 

Week 19, cookie mix

 

Week 20, pocket pillow case

 

 

Week 21, picture frame

 

Week 22, pleated coin purse

 

Week 23, memo board

 

Week 24, nesting boxes

Overall, I've really enjoyed this sew along, there have been challenges and new techniques.  I'm going to feel a bit lost without the weekly project!