Burda Style 9494 (View B)

If anyone is interested in participating in a Pay It Forward this year, hop on over to this blog post, I'm about to get busy making something fabulous to send to three lucky people! 

Two dresses for Ruby and one for Pepper-Mae, using View B of Burda Style 9494.

 

I'm not really happy with how the pattern handles the ends of the zipper at the neckline, although after making three dresses I now realise it may actually be my interpretation of the pattern and I might try a slightly different approach next time.

 

I like to get maximum value from any pattern I buy so I will no doubt make more.  I traced each pattern piece in 3 different sizes so that I could make the dress in multiple sizes.  The fit in the bodice is quite big on my girls, but they'll be able to wear them for a couple of summers.

And some matching hairties using scraps, which are project 32 and 33 of Scraps 101.

Linking up to:

Monday Makers

Fabric Tuesday

Sew Cute Tuesday

Let's Bee Social

Teddy Bear sleeping bag

Recently I had fun whipping up a quilted sleeping bag for a teddy bear, inspired by a Flossie Teacakes pattern, although I didn't buy her pattern and made it from memory, so it actually looks quite different.  I made one using scraps left over from my Vintage Improv quilt, then of course I had to make another one because I have two children and they are still learning how to share.

I like the look of curved edges but didn't want to make bias binding because it just seems like such an inefficient use of fabric, so I used cross-grain binding and I'm happy with the finish (seeing as they are just play-things for my kids).  The binding on the back of the curve has a couple of little tucks in it, which you can see below - I machine stitched the binding and had to do the curves a couple of times, so the stitching is a bit messy, but my kids don't care!

Curved binding from front

Curved binding from back showing tuck in binding

Both of these are made almost entirely from scraps, including Frankenstein batting (I cut the Kate Spain binding from yardage, otherwise everything came from scrap bins) so these are projects 30 and 31 of Scraps 101.

Loving the improv low volume background on this one

In other news, I have recently succumbed to the charms of Instagram, you can find me here - I'd love for you to come and say hello!

Linking up to:

Finish It Up Friday

TGIFF
Anything Goes Monday

Scrappy Pasta Necklaces: Scraps 101

Rainy day, school holiday fun.  Pasta necklaces made with fabric covered pasta - great use of fabric scraps!

• Glue fabric scrap onto pasta - we found it best to paint the glue onto the fabric then wrap the fabric onto the pasta.
• Thread pasta onto string (we used milliner's elastic). 
• Sprinkle on a bit of glitter (just because ...)

This is project 29 of Scraps 101.

Selvedge Scraps/Improv gift cards: Scraps 101

To make these I sewed selvedge strips to a piece of cardstock ...

Selvedge strips sewn onto cardstock

then sliced it up and sewed the strips onto other pieces of cardstock.  This is project 28 of Scraps 101.

Linking up to:

Frugal Friday

Finish it up Friday
Sewjo Saturday
Sew Cute Tuesday
Made By You Monday
Fabric Tuesday 

Scraps 101: Ticker Tape Quilt {Guest Post}

Today I am so excited to welcome Mariana Galvagno from Coser Tejer Crear as my latest Guest Blogger for Scraps 101.  If you haven't visited Mariana's blog before, why not pop over and say 'Hola'!  

Hola a tod@s! Hoy es un dia especial para mi. Una amiga de blogland me ha pedido que escribiera un post especial. Sarah, de mila+cuatro, esta embaracada en una aventura de retales. Su objetivo, usar todos, absolutamente todos los restos de tela de sus proyectos. Y hoy voy a comtribuir con una idea más que puedes utilizar para darle uso a esos pequeńisimos pedacitos de tela que estan dando vueltas por tu mesa de trabajo. Si, hasta los mas pequeños, esos que miden dos centimetros o tienen una forma extremadamente irregular.

Hello everyone from all over the world! Today is a very special day for me. A blogland friend of mine, Sarah from mila+cuatro, asked me to write a guest post for her Scraps 101 Series. Her main goal? To make as many beautiful and useful things as she can with all her scraps. I hope my contribution will inspire you to make something with all the little tiny scraps lying on your sewing room. Yes, even the smallest ones, those 2cm wide ones with irregular shape.

Se llama Ticker Tape Quilt. No es una idea mia, que va! Hay muchos ejemplos en la red. Pero voy a contarles como hice el mio.
Comence a coser hace 4 años nada mas. Y mis primeros proyectos fueron hechos con ropa que a mis nanos ya no les quedaba. Principalmente muñecos de peluche. Luego vinieron los quilts. Y, como nos pasa a todas, de cada proyecto me quedaban pequeños trozos que me costaba horrores tirar. Y nos los tiraba. Y asi nacio la idea de hacer Ticker Tape Quilts.

Its called Ticker Tape Quilt.  It is not my idea, of course not! There are zillions of examples on the web. But I'm going to tell you how I made mine.
I started sewing 4 years ago and I mainly upcycled the clothes that no longer fitted my kids. I made cloth dolls and rag pets. Then came the quilts. You know what I mean when I say that it was impossible to part with the leftover scraps, don't you? They kept piling up and filling up my scrap jars. So the idea of a Ticker Tape Quilt came to mind.

Lo que necesitas:
Retales de todos los tamaños y colores. Hasta los mas pequeños sirven!
3 piezas de tela en el tamaño del quilt que quieras hacer, agregandole 1 pulgada alrededor. Estas telas se convertiran en el frente, el relleno y la trasera. Puedes reciclar toallas viejas para usar de relleno. O tambien coser guata de otros proyectos. He hecho ambas cosas y funcionan igual.

Cinta de bies. Hecha por ti misma con retales de 2,5 pulgadas de ancho cosidas entre sí o comprada. Es tu eleccion. Mide el perimetro del quilt y agregale 20 pulgadas más.
Basting Spray

    

What you need
Scraps in various sizes and colors. Even the tiny bits work!
3 pieces of fabric in the size you want your quilt to finish, plus one inch all around. These will be the Top, Batting and Backing of your quilt. You can upcycle old towels to use as batting, or sew batting leftovers. I've done both and they work wonderfully.
Binding. Home made with 2.5 inches wide scraps or store bought. Your choice. Measure the perimeter of your quilt and add 20 inches to that number.
Basting Spray

Manos a la obra!
Haz el sandwich para el quilt pegando o juntando las tres telas.
Comenzando por el extremo superior izquierdo, cose el primer retal de tela; aquí tenemos dos opciones: la primera es usar una puntada zig-zag y la segunda es usar una puntada recta. Si usamos la puntada recta es una buena idea tener a mano Frey Check, un producto para evitar que se deshilachen los retales. Asegurate de que no se han movido las capas del tu sandwich. Yo uso el mismo hilo para todo el proyecto. Y generalmente elijo un color contrastante.

Continua agregando pequeñas piezas, de izquierda a derecha en la primera fila y de derecha a izquierda en la siguiente fila. Esta es una opcion.
Tambien puedes empezar por los bordes y luego ir llenando el espacio del medio. Lo importante es que te diviertas y uses todos los retales, hasta los mas irregulares y raros.

    

    

Get to work!

Make your quilt sandwich by spray basting the layers.
Start on the upper left corner of your quilt and sew the first scrap onto it. You can either use a zig-zag stitch or a straight stitch. If using straight stitch, make sure you have Frey Check handy, to avoid those tiny pieces to frey with time. Make sure there is no shifting in the layers. I often use a contrasting thread but thats just me.
Keep on sewing your scraps from left to right in the first row, right to left in the second row. This is just an option.
You can also start on the borders and fill up the middle.
Whats important is that you have fun and use up all your scraps, even the odd shaped ones.

 

Una vez que hayas acabado de llenar todos los espacios solo te queda agregar el bies y ya puedes disfrutar de tu Ticker Tape Quilt. Y esta técnica es genial para hacer cartas!

Once youve filled up all your quilt space you are ready to bind it. And you can enjoy your Ticker Tape Quilt. Also, this same technique works great to make cards!

 

Gracias Sarah por permitirme compartir esta experiencia con todos. Nos vemos en Blogland!

Thank you, Sarah, for letting me share my experience with you all. See you in Blogland!

Thank you so much, Mariana!  Mariana also has another great scrappy project on her blog - Fabric Postcards, check them out here!

Linking up to:
Anything Goes Monday
Sew Cute Tuesday
Fabric Tuesday

WIP Wednesday: February wrap-up

Last Wednesday of February, which means Spring is ever so closer for many of you, for us it means Autumn will soon be making it's presence felt.  I've got an awful lot on the go at the moment - here's a quick round up.

The girls and I dug up the last of our Rocket potatoes this morning, this is our haul from the four plants that were still in the ground:

Most days we get 6 eggs, they are usually still warm when I collect them, they all lay in one nesting box, even though there are 4 boxes to choose from! 

In the studio, there are many things in progress - taking priority is my entry for the Radiant Orchid challenge, I told myself I wouldn't give out any sneak peaks, to try and capitalise on the wow factor, but I can't talk about it and not show something, so here is a little snippet:

Scraps 101: we've got a guest post coming in the next few days, so stay tuned for that.  I'm currently trying out some things with selvedge scraps, so far I've sewn them onto some cardstock, and I think I'll slice it up and make some improv style cards with it.

I've got two bed-sized quilts in progress and two new patterns to go with them, one of them is for Pepper-Mae using the lovely Charley Harper fabric:

Also, in January I set a goal of completing a set of 4 improv pieced placemats - I haven't finished them, but I've got 5 of them pieced (made an extra one), here's a peak at them:

Finally, there's still time to enter our current giveaway - so check it out.

Linking up to:

WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced 

Scraps, rubber stamps and an inkpad: Scraps 101

I used some scraps leftover from my mum's quilt to make a label for my basting pin jar ...

My husband drilled a hole in the lid so I can add pins without having to take the lid off.  This also doubles as a fantastic toy for any toddlers you may have lurking around your sewing room.

I also made some reusable block labels at the same time.  Previously I used scrap pieces of paper with a number scribbled on them pinned to quilt blocks to keep track of them, now I've got these reusable block labels - much better for my pins and of course they look much more impressive in my WIP photos!

I also made some block labels using a marker, which was much quicker than stamping it. What do you use to keep track of your quilt blocks?

These are project 26 and 27 of Scraps 101.

Linking up to:

Let's Bee Social at Sew Fresh Quilts
Really Random Thursday at Live a Colorful Life

Pincushion: Scraps 101

No scraps series would be complete without a pincushion, surely.  I used four 2 and a half inch squares and a fabric covered button for the front, and improv-pieced the back, which I love.  I'm loving these fabrics together, the photo doesn't really do it justice.

This is project 25 of Scraps 101.  There is so much you can do with scraps that are 2 and a half inches wide.

Linking up to:

Sew Cute Tuesday at Blossom Heart Quilts

Scraps 101 - Be Scrap-ful! (with Serena from Sewgiving)

Hello everyone!  I'm Serena from Sewgiving and I have a confession to make ...

Recently I was contacted by Sarah to see if I would like to contribute to her Scraps 101 Challenge.  I said "Yes" immediately and then sat back and thought to myself - oops I don't have any scraps.  You see, when I finish a project, I, Serena of Sewgiving THROW MY SCRAPS OUT - uuuuuuugh! sharp intake of air from the ENTIRE quilting community.  That's right, this little girl from nothing has grown into a wasteful creature.  I don't like clutter and, well, to me scraps are clutter.  But from reading everyone's blogs I can see that whilst they are the most common cause of storage issues, they are also little rough diamonds just waiting to be polished up and played with.

I usually only buy enough fabric for the job at hand and I.DON'T.HAVE.A.STASH ... are you still with me or have you fainted?

The only scraps or cut-offs that I do keep are the little triangles that are the result of when you trim your binding pieces after joining the strips.  I was hoping to make my future grandchild a baby quilt out of them.  It's going to take a lot of saving, but with daughter's only aged 2 and 3, I've got plenty of time to save!

So without further ado (and because I have no other scraps to speak of) I shall dive into my treasured lot of triangles and prettify my new daggy 2014 diary ... ugly, isn't it?!

I started by pairing solid and patterned triangles together to see how big (or teeny, weeny small!) they would end up.

Then I measured my diary to see how many I would need to sew together to cover the diary.
I added a seam allowance of 1/4" to the final measurements and figured that I would need to add a small strip of fabric to the bottom to round things up.

I have a few layer cake pieces of Aneela Hoey's Posy range left from a recent baby quilt make, so I used these to make the final pieces of the cover.  You see, I'm getting the hang of this scrap business already!

I needed two pockets on the inside of the diary cover for the diary to slip into.  To one side of each pocket I folded and ironed 1/4" twice then top stitched for a neat finish.

I cut a piece of the text print, for the lining, to match the size of the HST front panel.

Now the diary cover needed a bit of substance added to it, so I used a bit of quilt wadding left over from my last quilt (I'm feeling more thrifty by the minute!) and quilted the front HST panel.

After trimming up my newly quilted front panel, I sewed the stripe pockets to the text lining (wrong side of stripe fabric to right side of text fabric) to complete the inside panel.

I then sewed the two panels together (right sides together) leaving a small opening at the bottom so that I could turn it out.

I then pinned and ironed the opening closed and top stitched to finish.

And there we have it.  One scrap-o-licious diary cover for 2014!

Scraps 101 has been such a wonderful series to follow so far and I'm pleased that I've been able to contribute a little to it.  If anything, it has taught me to be more aware of what little pieces of treasure I could be throwing out ... I shall be more grateful or scrap-ful in future!

Thanks for having me Sarah!

Serena xx

Thank you so much, Serena!  If you've never visited Serena's blog then now is the perfect time to pop over and say hello because she's having a GIVEAWAY!  Woohoo, who doesn't love giveaways?

I am simply astounded that there is someone in the quilting world who throws away their scraps!  Does anyone else throw them away?

Linking up to:

Finish it up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts
TGIFF hosted this week at Quilty Habit
Can I get a Whoop Whoop?
Frugal Friday at The Shabby Nest