Cross stitch giveaway

Having not stitched anything once again, I thought I'd change it up a bit this week by clearing out some patterns and kits which I don't think I'll ever make. Today, three kits (mostly) - this first poppy one is a complete kit, pretty much unopened (might have been opened, but never used).  I stitched an Iris one like this and it was pretty straightforward, but I don't think I'll do this one.

This one I did actually start to stitch, but haven't got very far on. There should be plenty of thread to stitch the whole thing if you want to start from scratch; however, I will include my fabric and stitching start, if you want to take over from where I left off.

This one, again not started. I just don't think my eyes can cope with a big stitchery on black these days. It's a kit, though - should have everything you need to do it.

If interested, leave a comment and I'll send the bits along (drawing names if necessary). Preference given to those in the UK/Europe/or who are willing to reimburse for postage if elsewhere as kits are quite heavy to mail. When I get to the paper patterns in a few weeks' time, I won't mind so much!

Another little brown quilt top

I mentioned last week that there would be more tops made from these brown blocks; this is another one of them. All the scrappy in the middle were done first, and I had hundreds of them. Some of them got brown borders; others of them got blue borders, but I've used those already. I think there will be one more to follow. 

Ready to stitch

And here's the baby quilt with the binding attached, ready for me to stitch it down. I will probably do this on Wednesday, when I've got some quilty friends meeting up at my house for our monthly get-together. Which reminds me, I don't think I've quite finised the last quilt I was going to bind (binding is stitched down, but not the hanging sleeve)...  I should probably do that!

Scrappy bias binding

I mentioned yesterday that I was going to have a go at making a scrappy bias binding to go on the Woodland Baby Quilt I've been working on. After a little browsing around on the web, I decided to have a play and see what happened.  First I cut some strips of my scrappy fabrics - these are the same fabrics I used in the body of the quilt, as the borders of the little squares. I worked out that I needed to start with a 20" square in order to make continuous bias binding (calculate the length of binding needed, in my case approx 176 inches, multiply by width of binding - 2.25" for me - then find the square root of that for the length of the sides of your square - mine came out to something like 18.9 - hence, 20"), so I cut an appropriate number of strips in the right width.

This is really not a tutorial - there are some good ones on the web if you want one - just a little commentary on what I did.

I sewed these together, realised they weren't quite wide enough, so added another strip of a different fabric I used to make up the difference.

Once I had a square, I cut it in half along the diagonal. 

And then stiched the two halves back together to make a rhombus/parallelogram/whatever.  After that, you turn it over and mark your strips in pencil along the back. I hate this part, and was reminded why I don't normally make continuous bias binding.

Once that's done, you line up the edge of one side of the fabric with the first drawn line on the other side and stitch it together to make a tube.

You then use scissors to cut on the line to make your strip. It's a very clever method, if a bit fiddly. With single fabric binding I would never, ever bother. However, the effect achieved for this scrappy binding might just about be worth the effort...

Once it's folded and pressed, you can see I've got loads of changes in the fabric; there's no way I'd make French fold binding with this many pieces, that's for sure.

Woodland Baby Quilt, quilted

Decided in the end not to quilt this myself, as it was a little larger than I had originally thought it was going to be, so I had my lovely longarm friend Lana (Bewitching Stitching) do it for me, and it looks great. (Close up of the quilting below.)  Going to try to get binding on it tomorrow so I can stitch it down later in the week; we'll see how that goes as I want to do scrappy binding and Lana mentioned seeing online a technique for doing continuous bias binding using scraps (I usually do French fold), and I may check that out. Watch this space!

ATC Friday

This week's selection of finished Round Robin ATCs  - I really like this crab one. Having grown up (largely) in Maryland, I have a fondness for crabs, so it seemed very apt. All I added was the word crab, but it was enough!

I found this one rather hard to work with when it came to me, as it was very dark and had a large motif in the middle. In the end, I just added a couple of flowers to it; the person after me added the butterfly and heart.

Yes, it's more brown!

Another large stack of brown blocks which was waiting to be dealt with, in my block basket, is finally getting a look-in. These are a little rail fence variation, bordered by brown strips. The overall look is fairly scrappy, but still pretty clearly brown. As it happens, I had at least 25 different browns in the outside borders of the blocks - this layout uses one of each design (I have a lot of brown in my stash, as you can see!). There are lots of blocks left, though, so there will be more to follow.

Cross Stitch Wednesday

Well, I haven't done any cross stitch work this week - granted, I spent a few days in Sweden, and as I was planning to take only carry on, didn't want to risk my needles and scissors in the security check -not that I would have got much done anyway, as we were socialising all three evenings we were there. I could have got some work done when I got back, I suppose, but for various reasons, I haven't stitched. Not sure next week will be much better; perhaps it will. Anyway, here's a little spring-ish stitchery which I have out on a shelf - I've just realised I still have a few wintery ones dotted about; now that the weather is finally looking up, I should probably put them away and reach for some sunny ones!

Small brown top

Here's another small top (or rather, probably the centre of a top, which will have a border added to it) made from some of the many, many brown blocks which I seemed to have put up in my block basket. I like brown; hopefully some of the people receiving quilts from Project Linus (etc) will share a fondness for it, as I seem to have so much!

Fabric in

In this haberdashery in Lund (Sweden) I found a small selection of quilting fabric, and picked up a few pieces - imported from The Netherlands, so not inexpensive, but it's nice to have fabric bought from places you've visited...

Embroidery at the Design Museum of Denmark

A lovely collection of embroidery, lace, etc at the Design Museum in Copenhagen - lots of drawers of different things as well as some choice items on display. Such tiny work - sometimes I work on very small linen like 30 or 32 count, but not over one thread!

Textiles in Copenhagen...

Spent yesterday in Copenhagen, including two museum visits - the Danish National Museum and the Design Museum of Denmark.  The National Museum is a bit like our British Museum here, with prehistory, collections from other places (e.g. Roman, Greek, Egyptian), etc - but also a good section (most interesting to me as most different from something in London) on Danish history from 1600 to present. I didn't take a lot of photos of clothes, etc, but couldn't resist this wartime patchwork skirt.

These girls'/women's caps were interesting as well; they had lots of them on display.

In the design museum, there was a textile section, including one quilt in the hexagon style on display. I'm not a keen maker of hexagons, personally, but I enjoy seeing the occasional quilt made that way. 

There was even a little video on patchworking (mostly hexagons). 

ATC Friday

Two food themed ATCs finished for me and sent home; in both cases I was the artist who started them, and then two other players added things to them. One with a chocolate theme; one with a picnic theme.

Moving the brown blocks out...

I have a huge stack of brown blocks, so I'm trying to get some of them made into tops to pass on to Project Linus (and the other charities my contact works with, including hospices and social services). Here's the biggest of the tops made with these brown bordered cross blocks.

Cross Stitch Update

A bit more progress on the Alice In Wonderland stitchery - I've finished the clock and started the rabbit. Won't be much progress next week as I'm away for a few days and I'm not taking it with me (as I'm only taking carry on luggage and I don't want to risk my scissors & needles being confiscated). But there may be a few days when I get back to do a little work - I might at least get the waistcoat on the rabbit done!  I should probably switch back to one of the other pieces I have hanging about as well...

Pairing up...

Having attached borders to all of my waiting top centres (which are heading off to my Project Linus contact tomorrow, where she will find someone to back and quilt them), it was time to pair up some assembled top centres with border fabrics. I managed to find reasonable border prints for 10 centres; there are 4 or 5 in the basket for which I don't have anything suitable at the moment.  Something may turn up!

More little transport blocks

Another set of blocks hanging around waiting to be made into a top. Now it's a centre, hanging around waiting for a border. One step at a time!

A brown top with lots of crosses

Making a start on putting together tops from my huge stash of brown blocks. I only had eight of these blocks with brown crosses in the four patch, so I had to be creative with the layout, but I think it works ok.  Into the basket!

Block Set Update

About time for an update - I have finally begun to put together some block sets, so I guess I can update the picture (and list). Of course, I have added one - that's always the way of it...  Perhaps this year I will actually use the circular flying geese or the birds. 2016 could be the year!

ATC Friday

A couple of finished Round Robin ATCs, where I was the second player  - which means I can show all three stages - the finished card (above), the starter (below) and what it looked like after I made my addition. 

Both with insecty themes, not sure why - just happens that way sometimes!