SMS MBOM October

An interesting block to do because it's skewed when you cut it down, but as the pattern indicates, rather wasteful of background fabric. It was doubly wasteful when I discovered that I seem to have sewn my seams just under 1/4" so the big block of white was too small and I had to recut a longer one. Even then it's not perfect because the bottom left corner of the dark grey fabric is cut off. I'm just surprised I was that much off with my seams, but it's a new 1/4" foot and perhaps I've not adjusted it properly. Anyways, it 90% worked and with any luck the bit I had to replace will be used up in a future block; and once it's sewn into something the corner would have looked cut-off anyways.

Here they all are (so far) together - they're starting to look like something!

Stuffed animal sleeping bags

I've had the Flossie Teacakes stuffed animal sleeping bags Pinned for quite awhile but finally got on to making them after Cat gave me the gorgeous Heather Ross Far Far Away fabric as a gift. The pattern comes in three sizes - Daddy Bear (Teddy), Mummy Bear (Foofoo) and Baby Bear (Snooks). I don't know if Teddy is really a daddy bear (its sex varies from day to day to be honest) but the bag fits beautifully.

I'd like to make a longer one to accommodate Puppy, as he fits nicely in the largest width-wise but is too long - the beauty of the pattern is that it's easily altered to accommodate a range of animals of different sizes and shapes.

I bought the pink fabric from Stitchbird because I really felt that they had to be set. Not because I like buying fabric, oh no.  All the rest of the fabrics came from my stash so I feel vaguely virtuous about the whole exercise. Vaguely. Though if I have to get a fourth version to make Puppy's bag...



Just simple straight line quilting but you could get fancy if you wanted - they'd be a great project to try out free-motion machine quilting.

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Note: Just to clarify, the pattern for the sleeping bags isn't mine - if you'd like to make one the pattern is available from Flossie Teacakes at the link above.  Thanks!

Hazelnuts on Holiday

I'm enjoying our trip down south, documenting it all on Instagram of course! You can follow along if you're on Instagram (link to the right there) or if you aren't an addict you can try websites like Inkstagram or Webstagram to view photos.





- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Cathedral Window pillow

I finally finished the Cathedral Window pillow! I'm really pleased with how it turned out too. The points aren't perfect and I had to do quite a bit of tacking them down in the middles so it would lie flat, but yeah, not bad for a beginner! It's bold and bright (though the grey in this first picture has gone a bit blue, the second one is more accurate) and is one heck of a solid pillow! Tina will have to make sure there are no pillow fights with it or there might be a trip to A&E.



Next time I do one I'll sew the edges down by going in continuous circles and passing through the centres, which will make sure things are all sitting nice and flat and the weak points at those points will be reinforced without the need for that extra stitching. This one I did by sewing the four sides of each colour, and I didn't think it gave the nicest results.

I used this great tutorial over at A La Mode. The second part to it is here.

A blog holiday

It seems I inadvertently took a blog holiday! I didn't mean to and sadly I haven't really even been on a holiday - I've been doing a lot of this:

(the green isn't as neon as that in RL!) I'm on the final stretch in the living room, and the spare room is all finished!

I've been doing a bit of sewing in between coats but nothing major and nothing finished! We're heading off on a family holiday on Monday so my sewing machine is going for a tune up and hopefully I can get lots of stuff finished when we get back! I'm sad I'm missing the Kid's Clothes Week Challenge though, I love that! Spring is suddenly upon us and wardrobe needs have changed radically so I'm desperate to make myself a few things and also some for Hazel. It'll be so nice not having this painting hanging over my head anymore when we get back, I won't know what to do with myself!

Instagram fun

Although I had a slight hiccup with the new upgrade, I've been enjoying Instagram enormously, particularly playing with filters and using other apps to produce images that don't remotely resemble the original! On some levels that bothers me because I do like pictures to look like reality, but I can't deny the appeal of the filter.

I'm always interested to hear about other people's forays into photography with the iPhone so I thought I'd just put up a couple of mine of a Magnolia tree at the top of the drive down to Hazel's school and just show you how I did what I did - nothing particularly complicated and I haven't managed to come to grips with putting an image through numerous filters on various apps.

Clockwise from top left: SOOC; edited for contrast and saturation in PS (Photoshop) Express; Cropped and edited with X-Pro II filter in Instagram; same photo but using the Gotham filter (sadly gone since last upgrade, I'm pretty ticked off about that, hope they bring it back!).

Clockwise from top left: SOOC; edited in PS Express for exposure, contrast, saturation and focus - all to get it looking like it did to the eye at the time; run through the app Snapseed (can't remember if I did two filters or just grunge at 400). I came across Snapseed a couple days ago via a contact on Instagram and am really liking it. The filters are interesting and the basic photoediting tools are probably better than PS Express's, plus you can crop to various dimensions easily, so I suspect I'll be using it a lot.

That winning feeling

You'd think all I did was enter giveaways these days because dammit I won another one! I suspect this is my luck for the rest of the year, or maybe the next two, but I'm pretty pleased anyways. The giveaway was at The House of Marmalade, a blog about corsetry that I've been reading for quite awhile now and which I find endlessly fascinating - despite not owning one! Corsets really are rather gorgeous objects. Anyways! The giveaway I won was from Dragonfly Fabrics in the UK and was a Colette pattern and 3m of ribbon. Woohoo! And then of course they had a sale on summer fabrics and hey, it's going to be summer here at some point so I showed Hazel a few things and bought what she wanted (like that's any guarantee of success, but I live in hope). There's a voile (top) a cotton with blue flowers that she fell in love with immediately (interesting crisp weight with a bit of a wrinkly texture, I'll have to think carefully about what to make with it) and two lovely knits. I've always wanted to try a Colette pattern but have been a bit unsure about the examples I've seen (the skirts always seem too short to be honest). I went with the Chantilly dress because I thought it would suit a curvy figure the best without being too retro. And the whole package came wrapped up in the most gorgeous ribbon, pretty much as nice as the spotty raspberry ribbon that was the prize. And as usual I'm amazed how fast stuff comes from the UK - I think this took 3 days? I guess that's the benefit of lots of planes travelling back and forth between here and the motherland.



I'm posting this during the All Blacks vs. France rugby game - am I the only person in New Zealand not watching? I'm sure I'm not but they may try and deport me anyways because I admitted it (plus I talk like a furriner).