Friday 21 January 2011

Catching up

Well once again the week has flown by and I haven't been blogging again! I'm still sharing my daughter's laptop and really don't want to load it up with all my sewing photos hence the infrequent updates. I'm using the iPad for keeping up with flickr stalking which is fabulous but for blogging, they could do with an app for that! In fact there probably is one somewhere but I don't want to waste my time looking for one :)
I've spent a lovely few hours with Yvonne this afternoon discussing the giveaway we promised at the beginning of January. Don't panic I haven't forgotten! Hopefully we'll manage to sneak it in before the end of January!!
As you know I'm taking part in the Amy Butler Style Stitches Sew Along with Bree This is a brave move for me as it involves the use of paper patterns! I don't know what it is about paper patterns but they freak me out. I just can't seem to get my head around them. It's kind of like maths and me, I'll explain. When sitting my 3 hour Maths GCSE exam I completed it in about half the time and thought 'wow that was easy', looked around the room and saw everyone else still working away and thought 'oh crap, I must have missed something' so went all the way back through the paper changing answers as I went. I have no way of knowing whether I did worse for changing the answers or better but I still think that maths should be hard so if it's easy there's a problem. I digressed but the same is true for me and paper patterns. It must be really hard to use a pattern, so it is!

I started cutting out my pieces for the Cosmo bag last week and it took what felt like forever. I've mentioned my impatience many times before and this was no exception. I like to feel I'm getting something accomplished, i.e sewing and this cutting out pieces lark takes ages. It would appear that Amy Butler is a huge fan of interfacing, and it would be very fair to say that I am not a fan of interfacing particularly after trying to use it for this bag. I don't know if I had a dud batch but it did not want to fuse to the fabric I was using and was the cause of a deep blue fog in my sewing room ;) Ultimately I bodged what I could together so that I could actually get on and sew something and will have to return to interfacing another day. This is the result of my efforts so far.

I'm using my favourite Gunilla fabric range from Ikea. It's nice and sturdy so hopefully it will hold up under the strain of my novice pattern usage. Other examples of this bag in progress can be found here


I'm also about to embark on cutting my fabric for Don't Call Me Betsy's Sliced Coin Quilt Along This should be fun! I'm going to use some of my fat quarter stash of Innocent Crush by Anna Maria Horner with some Kona Amethyst for the sashing. You can see what the other participants are up to here.


Lastly, I've finished Serafina's first birthday present. I used the machine embroidery that I finished last year as the centre piece of a hoop for her bedroom wall. I'm really pleased with how it's turned out.

Catch you all soon :)

6 comments:

  1. Love the embroidery! I fully need to take a trip to Ikea. Can you believe I've never looked at their fabric really? The shame! I love your stack for the quilt along, it's going to be a lot of fun and I can tell your quilt is going to turn out gorgeous!! :)

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  2. Thank you. Ikea do have some fabulous fabrics, you must get yourself there for a look!! It's really reasonably priced too. I'm looking forward to starting the quilt, it looks great in my head so I hope the reality matches up to it :)

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  3. These all look great - I have that Amy Butler book too but haven't made anything yet!

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  4. Join in with the sew along :-) I wouldn't have made anything yet if it wasn't for the fact that I'd committed publicly to the sew along. There's no real pressure to keep up with anyone else and it's nice to see all the different interpretations of the same design :-)

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  5. Your bag looks great so far! I can't wait to see what the finished bag looks like.

    I have that Amy book and think its awesome but feel a bit nervous about tackling the projects. Maybe this sew along is just what I need to give the bag patterns a try.

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  6. Yes definitely worth trying the sew along! We're starting at the beginning and working our way through month by month. Allegedly they get harder as you go through the book. Be good to see some names I recognise in the group :-)

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Lovely comments read with glee everyday.