Christmas goodies

Last week at the last meeting of patchwork and quilters at Drayton we made a Reindeer. Mine looks a little funny, not as good as the other ladies but it was still fun to make!

I also made some little tree ornaments in the form of snowmen and gingerbread men. I made four of each for the charity sale at sew simple this Saturday. Not long now until Christmas!

Grab and go project bag

I decided to use up some of the yarn I had been spinning. However, some of my earlier efforts were not very even so I decided to make a felted bag. I used a mixture of different sheep wool. These included Wensleydale, texel, whiteface woodland, Dorset horn and some unknown fleece that I learnt to spin with at Norfolk yarn. 

The pattern I used was Grab and go pattern from etsy. However, I used an 8mm crochet hook instead. It looked absolutely massive before I felted it! It was about 1 meter across!! I used about 500g of yarn that was about an Aran / chunky weight. This was much more than the pattern suggested as I used a larger hook and yarn. I felted it in the washing machine at 40 degrees on a short wash ( about 40 min), but I ended up washing it another two times before I was happy with the felting. I think it was because the bag was so large! After felting it was less than half the original size. The pattern states to use eyelets, however, I ended up taking them out.

Here are some images... 

Cushion cover with stripes and buttons

I wanted to use some alpaca fleece that was not good enough for spinning. So I thought I would fill a cushion with it. The cover is made from a piece of linen fabric that I got as an off cut from a upholstery shop. I used one of the many stitches on my new Pfaff quilt expression 4.2 sewing machine and added a few buttons from my rather large stash of buttons. I was very pleased with the overlock stitch on the pfaff, brilliant for finishing off the linen fabric that is so prone to fraying. I made a sleeve out of calico and stuffed it with alpaca fleece before i sewed it up by hand. I placed this inside the cover so that i could remove the cover for washing. Anyway enough of my rambling here it is....

Free motion without fears!! Thanks to Linda Turner

On Saturday I went to a class lead by Linda Turner (organised by Norfolk Quilters). I had previously tried to free motion but I really needed some tuition. Linda was such a good teacher, she really made it a fun class. I did not realise how many things you need to know before you start, for example using the correct needle and thread. So here are some examples of free motion. They are just small practice pieces I am not making into anything particular. I am going to use them as a reference to decide what free motion pattern to use on future quilts. The top left image is a section i have turned into a book mark by satin stitching the edges. The first set of images are from my earlier efforts...

After some practice I felt it was getting much easier. I am much more pleased with the next batch..

I absolutely love it though and can't wait to do some on a proper quilt!!

English paper piecing

I have had my first go at English paper piecing this month. I inherited the fabric so it was not what I normally would have chosen but I thought I would give it a go. I used both paper and card hexagon templates and I found that the paper ones were easier to work with. I cut the fabric to approximately a quarter inch larger than the hexagon papers. I folded the fabric over the hexagon paper and tacked it in place without knotting the cotton so the tacking was easier to remove. To join the hexagons I used whip stitch. Here are the hexagons I have joined so far, I am planning on adding straight boarders and some appliqué on top of the hexagons to cover some of the less attractive fabrics. I was thinking of making the lower one in to a Christmas theme quilt. I will keep you posted.

Petrol blue annis shawl

I found a free pattern for a shawl on ravelry (http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/annis) and decided to have a go. 

I used austermann merino lace in teal.  

Here is the finished results...

It turned out to be a quick knit although I found the long edge cast on a little tedious. 

But worth it in the end. 

Colouriscious zip pockets

I spun some Aran weight yarn from some colour blended merino (Yorkshire range from Wingham wool work). I tried to ply the yarn so that the colour changes coordinated. Here is the finished yarn.

I knitted a simple rectangle and sewed the side a bottom edges to form a pocket.

As the yarn is not super even I decided to felt it to smooth out those oversized stitches. I also crocheted a similar pocket to test how the colours would come out with the different techniques. I used treble crochet on the crochet pocket so it came together very quickly. However, I forgot to take a picture of the crocheted version before I felted it. I popped the pockets in the machine at 50 degrees on a standard cycle. Once I reshaped the pockets and allowed them to dry I sewed on zips. Here is the finished result. I much prefer how the colours came out on the knitted version. I think felting is a great way to use up my handspun yarn while I am still learning to spin.