A Little of Everything

I love the title of this book, AND the sub-title ...In true Anna Maria style, the book is filled with some great projects in fab fabric. The first cab off the rank for me was this "I'll Have One of Everything Bag".

I made it in a mixture of Japanese prints and some lovely silks ...

The handles are really interesting - they are 6 strips of fabric plaited together- giving a wonderful texture ...

I found the instructions fairly easy to follow ...

The end result is an interesting shape and a great way to showcase smallish pieces of fabric - lots of possibilities with this one .....

Another Two

.. and sew it seams that Mr Elephant has been rescued from an unfortunate accident ..

You may (or may not) recall that my laziness in transferring applique designs resulted in mixed success at the deskjet printer. Well, Mr Elephant wasn't all that successful ... but he did actually print .... anyway, with some textile micro surgery he has been mended to a full recovery .....

I used the in built "honey comb" type stitch to do some multiple rows around his shape, a cute button eye and the ever so bobbily pom pom braid to top it off.

The back has an invisible zip - I would have shown a photo, but you wouldn't have seen the zip anyway .... (oh dear)

And next on the catwalk today we have a rather demure Japanese Motif centred on this black cushion.
The cushion edges were bound as one would a quilt, with only two sides featuring the hint of some more Japanese fabric ....

And that might be it for cushions for a while .....

My First Quilt

and sew it seams that after sewing for many years, in 2008 I finally learnt how to make a patchwork quilt. I joined the lovely Chris and Sharon at Belmont Patchwork Heart and my first project was called "Pandora's Box" featuring some beautiful Japanese fabrics.

I was intrigued at the cleverness of how quilt designers worked out patterns and cutting etc. I was also impressed at how quickly it all came together - well, the patching of the quilt top was pretty quick.

I hand quilted the whole thing together, which, I must say will probably be the first and last time I'll ever do that. I really enjoy hand sewing, but hand quilting is just plain tough on your fingers, and the quilt becomes very heavy and hot to work on..... which is why they made machines....

Overall, I was bitten by the patchwork bug and I'll show you a few more of my projects in coming posts.

By the way, these photographs were taken at the breakwall of MY beach - I've been waiting and waiting for a non-windy early evening to photograph all of my quilts, but it was not to be. We had to shove them all back into black garbage bags and trudge back to the car .......