Tis the Season For Giving

Meow! Milo here...

I heard Human Mummy say there's a charity project on organized by Pondok Craft. (see this link for more details : http://www.pondokcraft.blogspot.com/).

Apparently Auntie Ayu (the pretty lady from Pondok Craft) is calling on crafters to make back-to-school items, which will then be distributed to orphanages. Human Mummy says little children live in the orphanages, and they don't have mummies and daddies to buy them things for school. She also says that's why we have to join the charity, to let the abangs and kakaks there will know that there is plenty of love for them.
I think this is a fabulous idea, and I can tell you, am SO excited to help out.

Human Mummy says she is going to try to make pencil cases, coin purses, gym bags... I think she's getting carried away a bit ehehheh.

Did I mention how excited I am?

I hope Human Mummy will get started soon. If you see her could you please tell her to let me into her sewing room to help?

* abang - Malay meaning elder brother

kakak - elder sister

Strippy Fun!

I've been having fun with strips of fabric. Strips are cut from odd bits of fabric, but not so small so as to be scraps. A variety of fabric is chosen. I gave up trying to match them after a while. There doesn't really have to be a theme, although I've made mine to consist mostly of earth tones.

Can anyone spot Molly's foot?

 Most of these strips were cut along the width of fabric, and are about 3 inches wide.

Strips are then pieced together randomly to make several nine patch blocks, each block having a cream/off-white centre block, and enclosed in a matching cream border, like so:

Each finished block (minus the border) is 7.5 inches. So far I've made about 30 of these blocks now. I'm going to make a much needed new tablecloth for the kitchen table.

Molly interfering again!

More pictures soon!

Coasters

As I sew I have a habit of chucking small bits and pieces of leftover fabric into a box. (It's sooo difficult to throw them away isn't it?) Well, the box will inevitably overflow at some point, so once in a while I go through it and try to make something out of the contents.

This time I came up with coasters. I got the idea at the office one day. I was trying hard to concentrate on work, but got constantly distracted by a sticky ring on my desk from where my coffee cup had been the previous day.

These coasters are really simple to make. Which is really great, given my schedule these days. All you need is two squares, 4" or 5" squares work wonderfully, and one square of batting.

So what you do is place the front and back pieces together (with right sides facing) on top of the square of batting. Like in the (blurry) photo below.

 Line everything up and  stitch with a 1/4 inch seam allowance along the edge, leaving about a 2 inch gap (for turning) between your starting point and stopping point. Trim away excess batting and trim the corners to reduce bulk.

Using the opening you left earlier, turn everything inside out. Quilt as desired. Don't forget to quilt over the gap to close it. I used simple straight line quilting in my coaster here.



You can also make them out of smaller pieces of scraps, like I did. Just piece enough of them together to get the desired (4" or 5" square) size, and repeating the steps above.

I love just mixing the fabric and colour randomly. That way when you flip the coaster over it's like you get a totally new one!

These babies are going to the office with me. Let's see if I can make enough for my colleagues too.

Wishing you a good week ahead!

Something a Little Different

Let me start by wishing all my Moslem friends a belated happy and blessed Eidul Adha and all my Hindu friends a belated Happy Diwali. Hope you guys had a good one.

It's still terrible at the office, but am happy to report that we're surviving so far. It doesn't help that Boss has gone on long leave, leaving us here to hold the fort. I'm usually happy when he's not around. You know what they say about the cat being away and all that... But I must say I've never been so desperate for him to come back to work, hee hee.

Anyways, since we got the day off for Eid this last Wednesday, Yummy Hubby and I went back to visit Nenek* B. We haven't seen her for a few months now, so the trip was long overdue. Nenek B lives with As, an Indonesian lady, who helps around the house and garden. In between running after Nenek B and her many chickens and turkeys and pottering about in the garden, As likes to sew. And I notice that she likes to sew one item in particular: Floor mats. Little rugs.

Everytime I visit, I usually buy one or two of these little rugs from her, so there's always one on display in my house. As gets scraps of fabric from the kampung's dressmaker, and turns them into these babies. I've always admired her work. I've noticed that over time she's become very good with details like colour. 

Basically, a rug is made of many, many small pieces of scraps, each folded into a triangle-type shape, sort of like a prairie point. These little triangles are then arranged, slightly overlapping each other into rows on a fabric base.

You can just about make out the hand stitching at the back in the picture above.

Truly a work of art, don't you think?


* Nenek - Malay meaning grandmama.
Kampung - village.

Home decor a.k.a Kitty-proofing

"The Office" a.k.a the sewing room is being redone. Nothing too major, we're just putting in a built-in wardrobe along one wall to hide all the junk. The room was just becoming too full of stuff. Not surprising really, as it serves also as a storage room and a study.

So anyway, in the process my sewing machine got (literally) buried under a pile of things, and I can't get within 2 yards of it it without rearranging half of the room.

In the meantime my blog is getting cold, so I'm going to show you a little something I made earlier. It's an easy way to give any corner of your home a new look. So here we go.

Take one chest of drawers from Ikea.

I use this chest to store our photo albums. Very practical, but a bit blah, don't you think? I figured it would also make a good two seater, so I got some plain white muslin and stuffing and made a nice two seater cushion. Like so:

A bit more comfortable, but still a bit bland. So then came the cover. A simple navy fabric, for a nice clean look.

We were quite happy with the result, until the kitties decided to make it their unofficial day bed. Because the cover is a navy and therefore very dark, the fur left behind by my sleepyheads became quite visible. I spent some weeks religiously brushing the seat before deciding enough was enough and that something had to be done about it. And like a lightbulb going off in my head I decided a little quilted seat cover would do the trick nicely. The result:



This little quilt is basically made up of Ohio Stars and Prairie points.

A close up:

The beauty about this seat cover is, now all I have to do is wash the little quilt as the need arises.

So satisfying!

Hope you had a good weekend everyone!