Fabric Find

I had a Fabric Find on a Friday, how jolly is that?

I was a-browsing in a bucket of fabric during my lunch hour with no prior intentions whatsoever of purchasing any, but when I saw this print I just could NOT resist.

Little meows on midnight blue linen. Those little paw prints just make me want to smile :-)

Some of them have really grumpy faces, but if you've ever had a cat you will know what an Attitude they can have. Scowllll...

I was thinking what a great tote it would make (and I do need a new tote for my work things),  but there's only a quarter of a metre of it so there's not enough. Never mind, I'm already planning a nice new phone pouch, and perhaps a couple of fabric boxes from this print. I paid RM10 for this, what a bargain, no?

Oh, and here's a shot of the fabric meows with a real one, ehehee!

I'm not Milo!

Wishing everyone a happy weekend!

How To Beat The Sewing Funk (Part 3)

LITTLE PROJECTS

Continuing from yesterday’s post, the third thing I do when I’m out of ideas but still want to sew is – I make little projects. Purses, fabric boxes, bookmarks. This is a sure fire way to get your creative juices flowing. Note it has to be a SMALL project. Attempting to undertake anything big or unfamiliar is more likely to only kill your mojo (plus if you're like me you'll also be a hot swearing mess by the end of it). Is there a small project which you’ve done so many times that you can do it with your eyes closed? For me, I can do little pouches pretty decently. Not quite with my eyes closed though, ehee. So I start to make one, but the problem (if you can call it a problem) with these things is that once you make one, you can’t stop! Yes, so I make one, then 2 , then 3 and then if I'm still pumped, I switch gears and make multiples of something else.

Recent examples of this:

These little zippered pouches were double joy to make, because I got to piece scraps AND create a small project. I used squares made from 2.5” squares pre-cut during a Fabric Play and Organization exercise (see yesterday's post).

More examples:

Whoops! Wrong forum ahhahaha!

That's more like it... fabric bookmarks! There is nothing simpler.

And key fobs are pretty easy (and useful!) too:

I actually made 4 zip pouches and 4 fabric bookmarks in one sitting

 but have since given one of each away. The others will probably disappear soon too. You can't make too many of them, because they make great little surprise gifts for friends. 

So there it is - my version of how to beat the sewing blues. Hope I've inspired someone!

How To Beat The Sewing Funk (Parts 1 & 2)

What do you do when the sewing mojo abandons you? Sometimes I find myself in the sewing room, sitting in front of my machine wondering what to do. The desire to sew is there, but absence of creativity gets in the way.

For me, I find myself doing one of the following three exercises:

FABRIC PLAY AND ORGANIZATION

Firstly, I can play with fabric. This involves pulling stash out of the shelves, scraps from bins and pre-cuts from secret hiding places (No, I have no idea either why I hide them. Absolutely none).  I pet them, admire them, fold them and colour code them. Sometimes I trim the odd pieces and group them into project sized categories (strips, 2.5” & 4” squares, scrap bits for instance). While doing this, an idea or two for the next project usually comes along. And at the end of the process I will have tidy, organized shelves ready to be messed up again. Plus pre-cut fabric at the ready for the next patchwork project :-)

4" squares, 2.5" squares and err.. scrap bits

SCRAP BIN CONQUEST

Secondly, I make scrap blocks. Normally I will do this when my scrap bin is on the verge of overflowing. I take random scraps of all shapes, sizes, prints and colours and piece them together. A good example  of a quilt I completed using this process is this Scrappy Log Cabin Quilt.  The blocks were all made from scraps, pieced into log cabin blocks.

Scrappy Log Cabin Quilt

I find piecing scraps a very therapeutic exercise. I actually enjoy it very much. Anything goes, really. You don’t even have to think what sizes your blocks should be. Just piece. At some point you will have a few small blocks to piece into bigger blocks and so on and so forth. Right now I’m working to making a big scrap quilt. It’s still a long way off, but I’ll get there eventually. Here’s an example of one big block made out of many little odd shaped blocks. I taped a pen next to it so you can have an idea of the size...

Smiley, happy pen :-)

And an even bigger 'block':

Think that's enough for one post. If you pop back tomorrow I will tell you the third exercise that helps me get out of a creativity rut. Stay tuned!

Updates

Ok, I have a confession to make. I haven’t gotten very far with my HST Solids Quilt. Actually since my last post I haven’t gotten anywhere at all with it. It’s still sitting there on the top shelf, nicely folded together with its pretty damask gray backing.

Like I said earlier, I think it’s the thought of quilting diagonal lines which is scaring the pants off of me. So I do the next best thing in such circumstances –  procrastinate! Ehehee.

I did, however, attempted to a little modification on my Fairy Tale Friends Quilt. Remember I had some reservations about the white spaces? Coincidently I also had a suggestion from Omong Mak Long  (Hello Mak Long! Thanks for visiting all the way from Dallas! And thanks for your comment [yours too MamaD!] – I will definitely keep that in mind the next time I mess up a quilt top). Anyway, what I did for this quilt was just make a bunch of little yoyos which I then sewed into the middle of the white blocks. It’s not much, but any little bit helps. 

Oh, and I also added a colourful border to jazz it up. What you think?

Those spots are yoyos! Here, take a closer look:

Cutesy!

Yes, I'm yet another crooked photo...

Now all I need is to do is find some suitable backing fabric and then I can start quilting yippee! Which could mean (if I don’t find anything suitable in my stash) some fabric shopping – double yippee! Or not? I don’t know about you, but often times when I go fabric shopping for a specific project I end up with a bundle of everything else BUT what I’d been originally looking for. Whoopsies.

May has been a terrible blogging month for me. I haven’t even been checking my email let alone post anything. Part of the reason I think is that I haven’t been very good at taking photos of my projects, and you know I loathe to post without pictures. So, I’m thinking I might do a post every day until the end of the month, just to challenge myself a little. Hihihi. Let’s see how I do. Of course this may mean a lot of crappy phone photos, but most of my photos are crappy to begin with anyway, so what the heck.

See you tomorrow!

Uninspired?

And we are well into May!  It's madness how time just flies by - especially the older you get ... eek! Yes, so on that rather sombre note, on we go with all things fabric, haha!

Let's see. My sewing seems to have been done in fits and bursts lately. I'll be sewing for a couple of days, then a week will go by without the machine even being on. And then, there'll be another couple of days of me sewing like a demented woman.

I have actually finished my solids quilt top, so that's a big yippee-doo! to me :-)

Here's a couple of rather awful photos, sorry! 

I've got the backing fabric all picked out and pieced for a while now (I chose a really sweet grey damask print from Riley Blake), but I've not started with the quilting yet. I think I'm secretly avoiding it, because I really don't know how I should quilt it. Any ideas? It seems to call out for straight line quilting, but you know what my straight line quilting is like most days - and this will need diagonal lines too - so I'm pretty much terrified!

I've also started another charm pack quilt. I used a pack of Fairy Tale Friends - a line I've been hoarding from a couple of years ago.

I used a lot of teal for this one - co-ordinating squares with HSTs.

This is the top finished - but I'm not exactly thrilled about it. Too much dead (white) space

What to do?

As you can see, inspiration much needed hereabouts.

Hope everyone else's creative juices are flowing better :-)