Not much has happened

Not for three years, any way. I have been busy on my model railroad and making plastic scale models. In addition, my health hasn't been brilliant so I have spent a lot of time sitting around and napping. Oh, and there was a little matter of finishing off my Open University degree. Back out of that now and "living" again!

I have stopped doing patchwork, for the time being, although I still intend to make a bed cover to replace the one I purchased in Malaysia back in the 1990s (which replaced a previous one bought in the same craft shop in Kuala Lumpur back in the 1980s). However, it will have to wait.

I did make a couple of covers for the large pillows that we have on our bed. These have always been a problem as it wasn't possible to buy any covers. As always, there is one mistake in the make up of these two. They are rectangular rather than square and I set the patterns incorrectly so that one has to be "portrait" and the other "landscape" for the patterns to match. Oh well, you live and learn.

Since then, for my other hobbies, I have been concentrating on sewing tapestries. I find that this is a very therapeutic task in the evening. I am often too tired to do too much but sitting doing a repetitive task like sewing is possible. The first tapestry, from Ehrman, that I started, since the last of this blog, was very complex and I wasn't enjoying it. This was their Kasbah cushion.

Image (c) Ehrman Tapestry - not my sewing!

The beauty that is EBay came my rescue and some kind soul took it off my hands. I invested the funds into another one from the same company. This is their Oxiana cushion. Just to give you a guide as to what is involved, this latest cushion is 16" x 11" with  12 stitches to the inch. This comes out at a whopping 25,344 stitches. No wonder that it took me so much time. It was also complicated by the fact that I ended up one column across from the pattern printed on the canvas which took a lot of thinking. In fact, I got it wrong a couple of times and had to unstitch some areas and re-do them. Ehrman were kind enough to send a few extra strands of thread as I ran out along the way. We already have more cushions than we can use. These three, for instance, sit on the bedroom window cill.

Thus, we had to find something else to do with this newly completed one. In the end, we sent it up to Emma K Framing, in Saxmundham, as they have a tapestry framing service. In the process, they square the tapestry up. This is something that I haven't managed successfully so I am glad to find someone who can do it for me on all my future efforts. Three weeks later, we got the finished article back and we are so pleased with it. It makes a superb wall decoration.

As you can see, it was very complicated with lots of colour changes. However, I am quite proud of it. My next project is an anniversary present and, as such, I can't really talk about it as we want it to be surprise. All I can say is that I have about five months to complete a tapestry that has 24,336 stitches which comes out at about 116 stitches EVERY day! Well, I should manage 500 a night so I won't have to work every evening, thank goodness.

Hopefully, it won't be so long next time to update this blog.

My first attempt at a patchwork bag

This was made from a design by Monkey Buttons. I also bought a set of fabrics from them.

The bag wasn't cheap. The pattern was around £15 and the fabrics cost £40. I could have bought one cheaper - well maybe not!

It was made by cutting out 60 triangles. These had to be sewn together into strips and the strips then combined into one sheet. Once put together, I sewed the bag up. It had fusible wadding between the outer fabric and the lining. This is pressed with an iron to fuse it to both fabrics. It gives the bag some body. I then cut some parallelogram shapes - leaned over rectangles - to make the handle. Again, some fusible wadding went inside. I sewed across the fabric along the triangle edges to give a quilted look.

Here is the fabric before making up.

Here is the completed item.

I already have an order for a second one!

A birthday present for my eldest daughter

As Sam loves a cup of tea, I thought that a tea cosy would be a great birthday present. This is a Jolly Red kit and has taken me quite a few months to complete. I still have to turn it into a cosy, of course.

We are off the The Cheap Shop, in Tiptree on Thursday where I will get some backing material, the appropriate sewing thread, some suitably coloured braid and some oven glove filler. Then I will have to hand sew it all together. I tried to machine sew it last time and it doesn't really work.

Here is the finished tapestry.

Next Project Completed

My youngest - Debbie - asked what I wanted for Xmas. I said a tapestry kit for a cushion, so we agreed that she would pick and pay for a tapestry and I would make it for her new flat.

She chose a 13 x 13" cushion that has a London Tourist content.

It has taken me since Christmas to complete this cushion - mainly because I find sewing a constant colour quite boring so I kept putting off those bits. However it is complete now - and also has a major new innovation for me in my sewing progress. As a 12 count (12 x 12 stitches to the square inch) there are 24,336 stitches in the completed cushion!

The major innovation is that, instead of machine sewing the edges and then leaving a gap for the filling - said gap to require hand stitching to close, I chose to install a zip! First off I bought a zip to fit but soon realised that the way forward was to use a 'continuous' zip; i.e. it comes on a roll and you buy it by the foot. I then worked out how to fit it and the following photos show the result.

I think that this has come out very neatly and am very pleased with the final result. I just hope that Debbie is just as pleased as I am.

Valerie has finally finished Winnie the Pooh

Valerie has been working on this for well over a year and has finally finished her marathon task.

It is very large and very colourful. It will make a great nursery floor covering.

We now need to trim it and iron binding on all the way around it will be ready for the floor somehwre.

Tea Cosy Finished

But not the way I thought.

It proved too difficult for me to sew up the cosy using the machine. I took it all apart to start again.

In the process, it turned out that I had cut the back pieces out incorrectly so I had to throw them away. This left me with not enough material so I went back to Franklins in Ipswich to get some more!

I decided that the only way to go was to hand sew because of the bulk of the braid getting in the way of the sewing machine. So, everything you see is hand sewn. It is finally finished. Not quite as tidy in the dark corners as I would wish but Valerie is very pleased with it, which is all that really matters to me. Oh,and Valerie didn't want a hanging loop if you wonder why that is missing!

First steps in the Cosy Make Up

Always start out with a stupid mistake. This wakes you up - or maybe you have to make two mistakes!

Firstly I cut out the reverse of the tapestry side. The straightening process didn't quite produce a perfectly square item but it really doesn't matter that much.  Except that I had the tapestry the wrong way round  when cutting out the reverse so the pieces only matched if the pattern side of the reverse was inside! Fortunately, I noticed that and then cut out the other two pieces and got all three correct. - Error 1. Then I pinned up the tapestry side of the cosy - and pinned it with the back of the tapestry against the front side of the backing. This would have resulted in the reverse side being on the outside - not good! Error 2. Here is the photo of that:

I have to correct that.

Here is the other side of the cosy - correctly pinned with the outer side to the inside. For the non-sewers amongst you, you sew it up in reverse on three sides and then turn it out - put the backing in - and then sew up the remaining side by hand.

 

Lastly, so that I can sew a correct shape for the non-tapestry side of the cosy, I needed a paper template of the exact size of the cosy itself (without the outer sewing edge. I did this by putting a sheet of paper under the tapestry side (picture up) and then went around the outline with a pin. This left a line of holes on the paper which I joined up and cut!

This now gives me a template to draw around. The line so produced with give me a sewing line.

Well here we go!