Showing posts with label Windsor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Windsor. Show all posts

Tuesday, 9 June 2020

2020 Wk 24 - Hello Blogland People

I cant believe it's June already: we are nearly half way through the year!

I finally received a delivery of white fleece so prepped a whole load of flimsies for quilting:

The Hexi rounds,

A spare I Spy

A spare Children's quilt (probably going to Linus Quilts)

The EPP Elongated Pentagon Plus Quilt

And then I got to quilting!  The children's quilts aren't very exciting, but I'm rather chuffed with the Hexie Rounds: Lizzie did the first 8" of spiral which is the really hard bit, and then I took over and went out to the edges


I used the same Lizzie spiral on the plus quilt.  No need for me to carry on, the 8" was perfect.  

I wondered whether to do every centre and have them overlapping but I halved the work and just did alternate ones.  I need to visit a shop to get the right binding for this one, so it'll be a while!

This quilt found a good home with a colleague's daughter for her 10th birthday

The girls and I attended an on-line painting party, I'm not sure we are made to be painters but it was a great evening!

The Australian hexies and stars quilt top has been quilted, has had borders added and has had the binding finished.  Annoyingly the latest delivery of black isn't the same shade of black as the one I used as the infill border - cant be helped as I cant go to a shop and compare: at least it's finished!



My current hand sewing project is Windsor Castle again.  I didn't like some of the tree designs, so I'm unpicking and replacing with smaller more random stitches

Wednesday, 11 March 2020

2020 Wk 11 - what I made and what I learned

Richmond and Kew quilters has a challenge that started a few months ago - we were given a random animal “pin” badge and were challenged to make an A3 quilt inspired by the pin.

I got a stag: a beautiful beast that we can sometimes see with a herd of deer in Windsor Great Park which is a few miles away.  The park isn’t very distinctive but it incorporates The Long Walk which is very distinctive.  I designed the castle for the embroidery machine to stitch (in two hoopings, that was fun to match up) then added the start of the Great Walk and the trees.  I did try machine stitching the trees but decided to hand stitch instead ...

And here is the ready-apart-from-binding result

My other sewing this week was close to (are you sitting down?) dressmaking.  I had a sweatshirt that was too short.  I bought some extra red fabric and replaced the lower 8 inches of grey with 14 inches or so of red.  I’m rather chuffed with the result

However it’s not perfect and I have learned quite a bit ...

I learned that rather than zigzagging the hem then stitching it down it would have been better to find a double needle and top stitch that way - it would have saved time and would have stopped the hem edge flipping out.

I learnt that it worked well to join the raw edges about 1/2” from the edge, zigzag the raw edges and then top stitch the seam alliance down

And I learnt that sweatshirt fabric has selvedge edges - doh! 🤦🏼‍♀️  I’ll do better next time!

Monday, 2 September 2019

2019 Wk 35 - Dresden Plates and other stuff

In my last post I showed a "blades" Dresden plate made using this method

I thought I ought to be able to teach petal edges using the EPP method as well, (gathering the curved bit separately to tacking the fabric to the template) so I made this one

I had real problems finding on-line templates that actually fitted to make a circle, so many attempts later made my own templates.

Also this week I've made cushions for the lovely ladies at Windsor Baptist Church (I wasn't going to do hidden zips so I went colourful instead!)

And I had a stall at the Church fair - which was attended by a real unicorn!!!

I sold a few things at the fair but the bigger success was  the baby embroidery machine embroidering names on flannels.  I sold at least 4 to girls who are now at university (and one is a new mum) but still have the named flannels they bought from me a dozen years ago - and were delighted to get fresh versions (but still wanted to come and type in their own name and press the 'go' button!)

And I have been tacking hexies (just for a change)

and loving seeing them sorted in a Tupperware box

 And finally a friend, Hayley, and I have been silk screen printing.  A few disasters, but this cut from a Tescos brown paper bag worked really well.

We are meeting again next week to twist the stencil and turn the 4 leafed flower into an 8 leafed flower


Sunday, 7 April 2019

2019 Wk 14 Chertsey Friday

For a change I wasn't teaching at Chertsey on Friday - I was one of the students instead!

Marion who does these lovely landscape weavingings lead the class instread

She warped the frames for us and we learned pigtail knots, ane which way to weave depending on right or left handedness and how to meet and greet one colour to another horizontally, and how to wrap a length of wool to make it easy to weave.  Thank you Marion!  We didn't get far on the day but I'm looking forward to seeing them next month for show and tell

 

 

 

 

And speaking of show and tell, here are some finished or nearly finished wall hangings from last month
 




After that, I went on to sleep out!!  Taking part in a fundraising event for Windsor Homeless Project

My bloggy friends have been really generous in sponsoring me - thank you all VERY VERY much xxxxx


Saturday, 3 November 2018

2018 Wk 44 - Teaching Families

I taught a family learning class today - each child using a pair of jeans as a starting point and seeing how they could recycle them into something else.- I really don't know why I make up samples as the kids are SO much better at coming up with ideas!


Bu no - we had a 10 year old making a summer top using pink jeans as side panels


Another one making a teddy bear

And a fab glove puppet

Along with monsters

Aprons


and shoulder bags with attitude

I thought that would be the end of my jeans stash . . . but clearly not!

And now home to a pile of Football hoodies to be embroidered


and a bigger pile of school sweatshirts - I might be finished by Christmas!

However, 'Im Indoors has finally pulled his finger out, and has hung a bar for a headrest quilt

and hooks for a pole for a wall quilt - just as soon as I find a pole I'll be putting My Small World up