Christmas is coming

As every webpage and blog seems to want to remind me, Christmas is FIVE WEEKS AWAY. I'm always behind on this because as a transplanted Northern Hemispherer, Christmas in the middle of summer is plain weird and gives me none of the seasonal cues I would have had in Canada - like snow and cold. One of the biggest problems I have is that none of the traditional Christmas things make sense down here - rich heavy food, snow and winter-related symbolism, 90% of Christmas cards, wreaths, anything with red velvet. For those in the Northern Hemisphere, try to imagine having Xmas in July - can I interest you in some mulled wine, a roaring fire and snowflake imagery? No?

To that list I can also add most Xmas tutorials or winter issues of magazines not produced here or in Oz. However, I just took a quick look at the most recent Sweet Paul (winter 2011) and discovered that a non-traditional take on Xmas like he has lends itself very well to a summer Xmas here. So if you're reading this while reading jandals (or flipflops or thongs or whatever your lingo is) then have a look, you might be surprised.

Source: sweetpaulmag-digital.com via Hazelnuts on Pinterest

Linen

I really love natural linen and I have no idea why - but I'm drawn to it again and again in its various shades. I particularly love it paired with cotton, either plain or print and most especially red! I don't like wearing it because it does that nasty wrinking thing that makes you look sloppy after 30 seconds, but in anything else it's my favourite and my best (to quote Lola).



This is the beginning of my second pillow for the challenge, and my first ever attempt at hand-basting. Now I know why I will never do this for a larger project, it takes forever! But linen, she's a difficult mistress and until I get some 505 spray I'm going to have to suck it up and do it this way. And there's no denying, the basting has a certain appeal! This linen is a darker shade, with an almost green tinge to it, which makes it hard to pair with things but I think it'll be better for the pillow than a more natural oatmeal.

As a complete contrast, how about this photo I put through various iPhone filters until it looks (to me anyways) almost baroque in its hues




Unfortunately I can't remember which apps I used - I think Snapseed and Super Retro...I need to write these things down! It's funny with Instagram, forcing you to use the square format is quite good as it challenges you to think about images in a different way. I had a hard time not changing the linen photo to that size!

What I've been doing

You may have noticed that it's been a bit quiet around here. No, this is not because I've got a book deal, or because I'm pregnant or any of the usual bloggy reasons :) Just real life, window painting, visiting parents, school holidays, Instagram and my AMQG challenge. This challenge has gotten me all secretive and shifty-eyed, skulking the internets looking for inspiration while not letting on to my fellow members what I'm up to and most definitely not blogging about anything. I know this is wrong so I'm here to at least post a photo of the back of it. What? You thought I'd post the front and give it all away? You'll have to wait until the 1st December for that big reveal. The challenge is to produce a cushion using the green fabric and I'm quite pleased with my colour choices here, and even more so with the fact there is an invisible zip running up the side of those blocks. I've got another pillow in the works at the moment, in natural linen, so there may be another sneak peak to come.

Once that's done I'm onto the kitchen windows so posting may be sporadic for the next little while. I do hope you stick around though!

There's always Instagram photos though...

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.