Showing posts with label future plans. Show all posts
Showing posts with label future plans. Show all posts

Sunday, November 6, 2011

Between Now and the End of the World

I've noticed a lot of you more-organized-than-moi bloggers making lists of all your projects. So, here's my list!

I'm not assigning any priority to this list, it's just a list of things I'd like to accomplish sometime... and since the world is due to end in 2012, I've nominally selected the end of the world as my target date, or whenever the cups of tea and biscuits run out, whichever happens soonest.

If this post appears garbled as you first read it, bear with me... there's going to be lots of links to other blogs or pictures, so it's quite possible I'll need to make corrections if I type the code wrong or miss out a quote mark for example! In fact, I'm far from sure I've got all the links to the pictures right, so sorry if there's some random photo which doesn't relate!

So here goes.

Between Now and the End of the World I would Like To Finish:

  • My second quilt, based on the Rainy Day Quilt posted by Quilting in the Rain as part of Madam Sam's 3-month series on Sew We Quilt. My version has lots of fabrics with clouds, raindrops, yellow duckies and rainy day sayings, but I don't have a photo yet, so here's the original:
  • Charity block for Irondequoit Quilt Club. This is simply a 9x7 square block of a wide variety of colors, each one alternating with a lightly patterned white square. I've been making decent progress with this over the last couple of weeks! Sorry, no photos yet!
  • Now for the ones I haven't even started yet... Coasters, as designed by
    Laura from Quokka Quilts. I'm really looking forward to creating many of these, and some of you lucky folk may be on the receiving end one day! I'm just struggling to pick out appropriate fabrics, though this week I decided that one of the lovely black and white fabrics that Thearica from Pigtales and Quilts sent me would work nicely, so I just need some less-busy fabrics for the rest of that set... I'm thinking some subtle patterned pink and grey would work well.
  • Flowers, as featured in this tutorial on Sew We Quilt. These sound so pretty and easy and a great use of scrap material... though I'm finding the step-by-step instructions to be a little confusing... mainly because I can't really see what's going on in the photos. I may be picking your brains for some tips in due course! I've already started collecting leafy patterns and bright flowery colored fabrics for these! Here's the original pic
  • More coasters! Another tutorial from Sew We Quilt, the style of which seems quite similar to the squares I'm doing for my Rainy Day Quilt, with the borders around the squares. I like the apparent simplicity of these and will probably try a couple of sets!
  • Black and White Quilts. I stumbled across these from a comment left on my blog from a reader of the Blogger's Quilt Festival over at Amy's Creative Side. These 2 quilts are from Eileen's Ladybug Lovelies blog and I can see the contrasting patterns. I love the simplicity of the Bountiful Baskets quilt, and if I can manage a Supernova quilt I'd like to try that too! First photo is the Supernova and here's the Bountiful Basket ... and here's an alternative Supernova in a step-by-step that Sarah from Narcoleptic in A cupboard told me about.
  • Bowls - another from the Sew We Quilt tutorials. This quilted bowl (which I can't find the link to...) struck me because it seemed an unusual thing to make by quilting! I'm not sure if I'll get around to this one, but maybe, time permitting.
  • I have a design idea for a belt, well more a sash. I would bow to you ladies if you don't think it would work! Imagine a small square, say 3 inches square, or even slightly rectangle seems to look quite nice. Attach thin strips to two opposite ends (like the individual squares in my Rainy Day Quilt). Now, imagine as you are putting the quilt together, you sew each one in turn, pairing two of them with a layer of batting between. However the batting is only as wide as the center square, so you sew / quilt along the sides of that center square, and then you finish the border strips separately, so they have no batting inside. Them. Then you turn them to make a diamond shape and in the point of one of the borders you make a button hole in one of the strips and sew a button in the point of the other strip. Repeat, and when you've finished you can join all the individual units together, buttoning one to the next, forming a belt or sash that you can wear around your waste! (or if you're a gunslinger you can wear it across your shoulders and stick your bullets to it, for that stylish mercenary look). No pics for this yet, it lives only in my wild imagination!
  • and I'd forgotten about this until I was going through the list of Sew We Quilt tutorials again.... a quick and easy drawstring bag, which I liked the sound of )I've always liked drawstrings!)
  • Finally, and this is unlikely to see the light of day, but I had an idea for a modern Christmas table runner, many of which you all were making for the Crafty Christmas Club I think. I thought a modern style runner but with a snowflake-like jagged piece of lace-type material attached to the back, and another piece attached to the front and kind of overlapping the gaps of the back strip might look nice. Of course this might be fiddly to make, even assuming I could find suitable material, but it's an interesting idea and I'm sure it'll keep until next year, assuming the world doesn't end as planned...
Hope you enjoyed that scenic detour into my ideas! If I achieve a couple of these I'll be happy :)

Do tell me what you think, especially any suggestions, even if it's a "it'll never work" lol.

Oh yes, and at some point I want to make things with triangles and circles, and maybe one of those lovely Dahlia designs as a medallion quilt ...

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Putting the Pieces Together

OK, I admit I haven't actually tried the machine yet, but I am pleased to say that the LCD display isn't a barrier for those of us with less sight than most... in the words of a classic song "it goes bip when it moves and bop when it stops and whirrrrrrr when it stands still"... well sort of, it makes whirring sounds each time you press the stitch select buttons as it cycles through the stitch patterns, and the buttons also make a clicking sound, so it should be possible to keep track of which settings I am choosing :)

For the last 3 days I've been working till 10pm... not a whole barrel of laughs that, but it does give me some time to do a bit of quilting when the phones are quiet! I got through a few of my 4-square blocks, so just a couple more to go and then I can pick up sewing the 4s into long strips.

Mum and dad have been visiting from Ye Olde Worlld United Kingdome, and left to return there yesterday. It was great to have them here and go fabric shopping with mum! (and even dad got a piece of fabric, a large panel with the red Canadian maple leaf on it!)...

We called in to the Blue Boutique, the "high end" Goodwill store that has designer and better quality clothing... Dad again was the only one to buy anything! (is he a secret shopaholic??!!)... I saw this quilt-style jacket and I think I might try something like it, longer-term as I get more proficient both at quilting and with the machine... I'll be picking your expert brains when I get to that point I'm sure! Here's a photo of the jacket though, just to whet your appetite (this one is made by Brooks Brothers)