WIP: Scrappy Bits & Bobs

If you're new or haven't visited for a while, you may not have read about my Scraps 101 Series - I'm making 101 things out of scraps (or partly out of scraps), inspired by Crazy Mom Quilt's current 101 Scraps project.  Here are a couple more Scraps 101 projects as well as some other random WIP bits and bobs.

Scrappy tomatoes ... my tomatoes will need staking soon, I've completely forgotten to pinch out the laterals so they're a bit unruly.  I'm tying them to the stake with selvedge scraps and long strip scraps from squaring up fabric - this is project 8 of Scraps 101.  

Some of you will remember the Sewing Card activity I tried with Ruby - the other day she asked to do it again, I suggested a butterfly but she wanted to do another house.  I punched the holes, threaded the blunt needle and handed it over.  I told her which holes to put the needle through and she did the rest.  She managed this much of it, and we'll pick it up again another day.  So proud of her, that's a pretty good fine motor skill workout for a 3 year old (those are her hands in the photo).

Also, Ruby is making quilts out of lego!! (She calls them quilts, might not be too cosy for her dolls to snuggle under though)  So my recent doll's quilt inspiration has come full circle.

One of my WIPs is a festive lap quilt which has blocks framed in different colours.  I used some selvedge scraps pinned to the blocks so I wouldn't forget which colour to frame the blocks in.  Project 9 of Scraps 101 - and a very handy idea that I'll use again.

A couple of the trees on our town's main street are in bloom at the moment:

Finally, I'm busy getting giveaways ready for Sew Mama Sew's Giveaway Day - so be sure to come back here on December 9.  That's a slice of my life at the moment, what's happening in yours?

Linking up with:

WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced

Building Blocks Doll quilt : Scraps 101

 

Is anyone else inspired by the colours of their kids' lego blocks?  A couple of lego towers Ruby had left lying on the carpet gave me the inspiration for a quilt so I thought I'd try it out using the brown bag technique. 

I took some of the small blocks, matched them to solid scraps from my scrap stash then put the lego blocks in a brown bag and drew them out at random to make two towers, one taller than the other.  I wanted the quilt towers to be the size of the real towers, so the scraps are quite small - they were 1 3/4 inch x 1 and 1/4 inch before piecing.  The background white is scrap pieces left over from Ruby's quilt.

Front and back have two towers, vertical towers on the front and horizontal on the back.  I quilted around the towers (front and back), then added quilted towers of varying length in the negative space.

Front (left) and Back (right)

Good view of the quilted towers

If I make one like this again I'd have more towers and have them stacked at angles like in the photo at the top of this post, to make it a bit more interesting.  This is project 5 of my Scraps 101 series.

Linking up to:

Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts

TGIFF
Can I Get a Whoop Whoop at Confessions of a Fabric Addict
Made By You Mondays at Skip To My Lou 

WIP Wednesday: Quilting Bloopers

I've been quilting the Winter's Lane quilt I mentioned a few weeks ago.  After the problems I had with the brown bag doll's quilt, Lorna suggested using a fresh needle or a bigger needle - I did both those things it definitely made a difference but I've still experienced some bloopers.  Can anyone suggest why I have the problems below, I'm guessing some of it is down to me, and some of it down to my machine/equipment.

1. Loop-da-loop - where did this loop come from?

2. Inconsistent stitch length - it's like my walking foot is encountering some resistance and decides to take baby steps, I moved my desk away from the wall so that the quit didn't bunch up behind the sewing machine but it still happened.  I also think this happens when I go too fast, so I tried hard to slow down and sew at an even pace. It mostly seemed to happen I was quilting the middle of the quilt, and so there was a lot of bulk sitting in the arm of the machine.

In the photo below, the horizontal line is the correct stitch length, and the vertical line (obviously) is the problem baby steps.

An update on sewing with Ruby, she loves using my measuring tape, so we made her one of her own out of a plain selvedge on which I wrote 1 - 20 in a range of colours, she loves using it.

Ruby also has asked to make another doll's quilt with the brown bag, awesome!  I wasn't ready at the moment she asked but I've been putting specific scraps into a brown bag so that we can sew another doll's quilt together soon.

I hope you're all having a great week!

Linking up with:

WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced
I Quilt at Pretty Bobbins

PS - if you'd like to see the finished quilt it is now up on the blog here!  Also, I'm having a giveaway to celebrate finishing the quilt, you can find the giveaway here.

Sewing Card-Inspired Activity

Recently I blogged that I was keen to find ways to sew with Ruby and a couple of people mentioned using sewing cards when they were young.  Instead of a sewing card, I had the idea to use a cheap canvas I had and punched a series of holes using the needle to form the outline of a house.  I grabbed some embroidery floss in a range of colours and a thick blunt needle from my craft room, not sure what type of needle it is.

Ruby really wasn't keen to use the needle so I ended up being the one to do the sewing, but she was intrigued by the needle pulling the thread through the holes and watched intently.  She selected the colours to use and was also in charge of trimming the thread.  She also suggested additional detail in the design (the door handle).  It didn't quite turn out how I hoped, in that Ruby wouldn't use the needle, but she was really interested in the activity, so we will try this again another day and perhaps she'll have a go with the needle.