Retreat plans Trip around the World

The first finish of last weekend was a Trip around the World quilt top using my pre prepped strips. It is only four foot square but it's a good  lap quilt size.

My aim was to have a dark blue cross with low volume strips either side. The strips came together quickly and I finished the quilt top early on Saturday morning.

I packed my three finished projects in my hand luggage, leaving my sewing machine and goody bag with purchases to come home on the ferry on Wednesday evening with Kim.

That meant that I could quilt the quilt top today using Superior Thread's King Tut in De Nile. I will trim the quilt tomorrow and cut the binding so it's ready to bind on Thursday. This afternoon I am going to see Book Club at the cinema. I might try and load another project to quilt this evening,

Retreat plans 3 and 4

My third retreat project is the Lisa the Unicorn pattern by Elizabeth Hartman. All of the pieces have been cut and bagged up with the pattern. The fabrics are all by Karen Lewis from her Blueberry Park ranges except for the Kona grey. 

Kim has my sewing machine in her car along with one design board to keep my pieces in some sort of order. I may piece this on the Saturday with the Trip around the world blocks as a leader and ended project.

I have one more project which is my improv quilt from Poppyprint's class for the London Modern Wuilt Guild which may remain untouched, we'll see.

Retreat plans 2

@pommesdeterre is organising a scrappy trip around the world sewalong on Instagram. So I have jumped down that rabbit hole. I selected green, turquoise, low volume  and navy scraps and fat quarters from my stash. I then cut strips for sixteen blocks and organised them by colour into IKEA ziplock bags.

The plan was to pack these for retreat in the bags but I soon realised that the sewalong timetable meant that I should have put my strips into block sets.

So I drew one strip from each bag at random and put them into 16 bundles ready to sew. You know that it was too tempting, so I did sew a couple of strip sets together and have two finished blocks as well. They are now ready to pack along with thread and my 2.5" wide ruler and the instructions from the Quiltville blog. Two more projects still to prep along with my sewing machine. 

Retreat plans 1

I am going to the Simply Solids retreat with two friends next week. Kim is taking her car whereas I don't use the cross channel ferry and prefer flying. Today we are taking our sewing machines to Kim, so I have been focussing on getting projects together to work on over the two and a half days of retreat.

I had originally planned to work on the Everything in its place bag by Annie Unrein but I finished that project last month as a reward for finishing the appliqué elements of another UFO. so I am going to make a Flora supply case in matching fabrics. I have pulled together a kit for myself in a ziplock bag with the pattern ready to go. I quilted the exterior fabric on my long arm with an area of a graffiti pattern. The only item that I needed to purchase was the folded elastic.

I have also added my rounding template to my kit which is available in my Etsy store. 

June 2018 UFO progress

My plan for this month was to have H and U finished by 8 June. It's the 9 June today and I have just finished the cream around U. I find cream or white backgrounds tedious and slow going. I have to force myself to do one strand of cream, one of the brown and then reward myself with one strand of colour. This is a kit by Emily Peacock.

I have been distracted this week with laser cutting acrylic at our local library. More on that tomorrow. I have opened a little Etsy store. Also our local WI entered a group competition and I spent a day or more making a tablecloth, napkins etc to pull the entry together. I am glad that's now finished.

I can now see the end in sight, literally. I have stitched right to the end of the pattern on the top border as well as working on the final letter - G. I am away for five days this month, but I will also be without my sewing machine from tomorrow so won't be able to sew and will focus on either this project or a shawl which I'm knitting.

June 2018 UFO challenge with APQS

I saw this morning that number 11 had been chosen for June's project by APQS. You can join in on Facebook. I quickly retrieved my Quilyer's Planner to look up my list. And hooray, I am already working on it as part of the #100days challenge.

Here's how it looked on 7 May. Lots of cream to do and H and U have been worked on but to the right of U, nothing.

Here's how it looked earlier today with the folk art hand complete. Mentally I have divided the panel into five areas - two hands and H, U and G.

To complete this by the end of June, allowing for five days at the Simply Solids retreat, I need to get the H and U finished by 8 June. Today I am going to focus on the cream, turquoise and brown around the first two letters, but first I need to wind on the canvas in the frame to the first bullseye in the H. 

At least I have a plan, let's see how I progress before I start getting bored with it.

Everything in its place bag

I have completed my Everything in its place bag this morning. I have used two Tula Pink fabrics from Sewhot.co.uk with an Alison Glas fabric for the lining. I followed the Crafsty class with Annie Unrein which I bought when it was on sale with a 50% discount. It come with the pattern too. You can watch and rewatch the videos as many times as you need. 

My tips are to do exactly as Annie says as otherwise your zipper tags will come off. I used Bosal as my wadding and quilted it on my Handiquilter mid arm. I have some small pieces left so I must use them. 

I ran out of the vinyl so had to wait for an order to complete the project. Do use busy prints so the multiple rows of stitching are less noticeable.

I had the grey mesh left from the makeup bag that I made for my daughter and it matched perfectly with the Alison Glass fabric.

I love how the stripe looks gut straight and on the bias. You can never go wrong with a striped binding.

QP BOM Christmas quilt finished

I may have been quiet recently, but that doesn't mean I haven't been crafting. Today I finished the binding on the Quilter's Planner block of the month. Although the sewalong doesn't finish until the end of the year, I decided to finish my blocks and quilt.

Whilst trying to rest up my foot which I injured on the foot of our sofa, I set my HQ18 to quilt this very Christmassy quilt. I have a basket of Christmas fabrics so picked out different combinations to reach block. The holly leaf background fabric came from stash.

This is a different setting than that given in the planner, but I am pleased with my design.

Craftsy offer for US Mother's Day

Despite it not being Mother's Day in the UK, it might be worth checking out this offer of free classes this weekend. I have just been watching one of the classes for the Everything in Its Place bag by Annie Unrein.