Baby quilt finished :-)

I have rather neglected this crafty blog over the last 6-months or so. In 2013 I really had much less time for doing anything crafty like knitting or quilting. I think this is partially because previously I used to do a lot of my craft while I was bored while my ex watched crap tv shows, or as an excuse not to attend various car shows on weekends. 2013 was an awesome year for me in terms of re-inventing myself, finding more time for fitness and being healthy and happy, (which is awesome) but as a result my craft time was quite diminished from previous years. Hopefully I will pick up a bit more craft time in 2014 :-)

This quilt was initially planned to be a queen bed quilt for myself, but due partially to the change in my life in 2013, I decided to abandon this project, and instead realised that this fabric would make the perfect baby quilt with all the pastel colours and bunny prints. So I decided to make a baby quilt for a long time friend who lives interstate near Lismore in NSW whose 2nd baby was due in 2013. :-) My friend is awesome at sewing, and much more of a perfectionist than me, so I spent a lot of time on this quilt, and even had to re-do the binding as I wasn't happy the first time. I sent her this quilt for her baby Bonnie in the first week of January 2014 :-) This is the first time I have made a quilt for someone else, apart from the one I made for my cats.

A new bag

I made a new shoulder bag today. It is fully reversible so I made the two sides in contrasting fabric: blue with gold flowers, and gold with blue flowers. I've made a few of these bags over the last five years or so...they are just a very handy size & easy to make, and very comfy with the wide strap so you can cart everything you could possibly want with you without the strap cutting into your shoulder. The pattern was kindly given to me by a lovely crafty lady from the Big Sur mountains in California. If you want to see some of her work check out her etsy store Coast Mountain Crafts.

My first quilt top finished!

I have now finished the top layer of my first quilt (see photos above). I am pretty happy with how it has progressed especially for my first attempt at making a quilt! Now I need to choose a backing fabric, binding fabric and the padding for the middle and figure out how to put the whole quilt 'sandwich' together. My little helpers were actively involved in a lot of the quilt making, which was obviously quite exhausting for them (see photo below).

Dusting off the sewing machine

This weekend I decided to pull the sewing machine out and have a go at making some cute baby slippers from a fun craft book called "Meet me at Mike's" by Pip Lincolne. I haven't done much sewing in a while, and have never tried to make these baby shoes before so I ended up making a 'trial' pair first, then a much more successful second pair. They look pretty cute. The blue turtle fabric is part of a huge surprise stash of gorgeous Japanese quilting material that my friend Hannah sent me last year. I love all the different Japanese designs, but so far haven't had the time or patience to make a proper quilt. Maybe now I've dusted off the sewing machine to make these slippers I might attempt a small bed quilt or a quilted pillow cover or something like that... :-) This weekend I also made a matching baby bib to go with the slippers. I simply covered the bottom half of a white bib with some more of the turtle fabric, made a hem and sewed around it. Very easy. Together the slippers and bib will be a present for a friend whose baby boy is due later this month.

I also can now post up a photo of another homemade Christmas present. I had an idea of making 'team Teleport' shirts for my brother and his girlfriend to wear on their little junk rig yacht 'Teleport'. I found the boxing kangaroo logo online, and figured out what I'd like the design to look like. Then rather than trying to cross-stitch the design by hand, I asked J's Mum if she would be able to 'digitize' the image and embroider the design using her fancy embroidery machine. She did this and the result was great!  The shirt colour I chose is a dark green to match the hull of their yacht. My brother and his girlfriend said they loved the shirts :-)

New Years Resolution in progress....

So, it's the end of the first week of the new year and so far I've managed to keep my new years resolution and have found time to do craft :-) I made one skirt with some beachy floral fabric that has been in my fabric stash for over a year, I finished hemming a multicoloured multipaneled skirt that I started last year, and I have cut out the fabric to make a third skirt from some red-wine coloured material from my stash. I'm surprisingly happy with the multipanneled skirt - I designed it based on my regular skirt pattern, and didnt really expect it to work as prevously I havent had much success at modifying or making my own patterns. I love the pink and green colours together.



On the knitting front I've been making some progress with the baby rug - only have 1 and a half strips to go now before I can start assembling it :-)
Some new clear plastic stamps that I bought on ebay arrived this week too ("Mindscapes" by Inkadinkado), so I sat down an made a small stash of 7 cards for various birthdays etc in the next few weeks. So all in all I'm very happy with my crafty efforts for the new year, let's see if I can keep it up :-)

Dinner Napkins

Today I went fabric shopping to get material to make a skirt and also some dinner napkins as I'm over using the paper ones. I found some nice fabric that is a chocolate stripy jacquard material. I made 6 napkins from 1m of material, cut out as 40 cm x 40 cm squares with 5 cm hems. I'm pretty happy with how they turned out :-) I think the only thing I would do differently if I was making them again is making them slightly larger.