Log Cabin Quilt Part 4 - The Finished Product

I finished it last week, and let me tell you, that binding hides a multitude of sins, as well as highlighting some of them. Tell you what though, I love that it's made from scraps. I love that I used up material and in the process, discovered just how much I have. I love that it's warm and snuggly. I love that it perfectly fits a king single bed (tested by Steve's mum last week).

I know the people who will use it won't be looking at the stitching and commenting about how the stitch lengths are uneven, or the lines wobble. I know that the bright colors and backing fabric will make me want to look at it for a long time and feel good. I know that despite it's mistakes and inaccuracies, I've made a quilt that I love and I learnt a lot doing it. Yay!

Click for Part 1, Part 2, an Interlude and Reflections on the journey that was making this quilt. 

Quilting: The Real Story

While it appears that I have taken the brave plunge into the world of quilting over the last year and come up swimming like a pro, I have a confession to make. I'm not that good. Turns out, that quilting is actually far more complicated than I had first anticipated and though I've tried to hide it, I'd just like to let everyone know it's true, I'm not that good.

Let me clarify some things for you faithful readers out there (and if you are not interested in sewing in the slightest, feel free to stop reading now, because that is what this post is all about). Firstly, making a quilt is actually something more like a three step process. Firstly, you need to piece the cover of your quilt. The bit that has the different fabrics and patterns and fancy stuff. The part that will be on display. Doing that is called "Piecing".

I'd say that in the last year, I've gotten much better at piecing. From my first attempts at getting things straight with corners matching up and what not, to my most recent experiences, the piecing is the most satisfying part of making a quilt. I like using up the scrappy bits of fabric, starting with small sections that eventually come together to make something fabulous. Piecing. That's where it's at.

The next step of making a quilt is actually sewing your lovely quilt top, the wadding and the backing fabric together. This is the part that is called "Quilting"; where you sandwich all those layers together with lots of stitches to hold everything in place. To me, this is the most difficult part. It's not the most time consuming (nope, that's piecing, because you've got all the cutting and pressing as well as the sewing), but it's certainly the trickiest.

All those layers need to be stuck together, either with pins, basting stitches or basting glue and then the entire thing has to be put through your sewing machine. It's difficult to juggle a 1.5m by 2m quilt through that little space on your sewing machine. Actually, the word difficult doesn't really seem to cover or explain just what it's like. This is where (for me at least) things go wrong. The bottom fabric pulls in ways you can't see, the wadding is so thick that it's taking forever for each needle strike to actually get through all the layers, the top fabric, despite all the basting and pins is shifting as you try to pull it through.

Maybe I'm doing it wrong, maybe I'm not going slow enough (actually, that could be part of it :P), but at the end of the day, I've got puckers and pulls and nothing is sitting quite as squarely as it was when I first put all the layers together. It happened on the Block of the Month Quilt of 2013 and it happened again last week when I quilted the Log Cabin Quilt.

I have to admit, I was quite depressed to see what happened after I pulled it through mum's sewing machine (Harriet the Husqvana) that one last time.  Especially given that I'd spent and hour doing it with just this much of a Mary Poppins Song in my head:

"Jelly isn't jelly 'till you set it, anything can happen if you let it!"

Talk about irritating. I did wonder for a while about how to get better, but aside from practicing (which btw, seems like a very expensive way to make a lot of rubbish before you making anything good), I've got nothing.

Anyway, the final part of making a quilt involves putting a edge on your quilted sandwich of fabrics and wadding. This is called "Binding". This part is all I have left to do with the Log Cabin Quilt. Maybe I'll do it today, maybe I'll do it tomorrow. One things for sure, the sooner I do it, the sooner Sophie will be unable to come along and pull out bits of wadding from my lovely quilt sandwich. That'd be nice.

In summary, making a quilt on the whole, is something I can do, and enjoy doing, especially the piecing. Actual quilting, is not.

Children of God

Last night at Church, Stefan Hall spoke on a bible verse that means a lot to him. Though he did end up referencing five verses all up, Romans 8:15&16, which talks about us as the children of God. Oh what a small thing that I've heard a million times, but how wonderful to hear it again. We are not slaves or servants. We are not visitors or renting in the house of God. We are Children! We are loved, welcomed and we belong.

I was reflecting this morning that in the modern world, this may not give great comfort to people. Families change, people leave, and often for children there is no sense of security in the home. But to be a part of God's family is nothing like this. God's family is always welcoming, always loving, always accepting us. God is always calling us home and the door is never closed.

How great is our God that he has called us his sons and daughters.

Heat Wave Procrastination

I cannot believe how hot this week has been. It's more the humidity I guess, but when I'm walking Steve to the bus stop at 7:10 in the morning and I feel disgusting before we have even left the driveway, you know it's bad. While the heat wave lasts, I think I'll take a break from doing too many productive things and rather escape to the air-con at my parents and play with the duplo... I mean my daughter. :)

Days like Today...

I feel like I've had a super productive week. The top-secret Birthday Present for my Dad is complete, the house has been vacuumed (twice!), I'm currently on book four of five in the David Eddings Mallorean Series, I've gone through the stash of material that was stored in the end room, culled and organised it and I've also quilted the Log Cabin Quilt (click for part 1 and part 2 of the journey).

I did have a huge post stored up in my head about the quilting of said Log Cabin Quilt, but today, after a terrible nights sleep, I've a headache, I'm fatigued by the heat and all I want to do is lie down.

So that's what I'm going to do.

Small Things

I would say last week was pretty busy, but at the same time super productive. Monday was three loads of washing, grocery shopping, a batch of these stellar cupcakes and some short bread as well as vacuuming the house. So lovely are Mondays.

On Tuesday and Wednesday the only time we were home was for Sophie's naps. The rest of the time was out and seeing people. Busy, but good, and Sophie survived well. Thursday not so much, but one day out of seven ain't bad.

Friday I had another productive day at home, after a walk in the morning and a visit from a friend. I walked Sophie down to the park around three so we could post letters and have afternoon tea out and maybe some time on the swings. Little did I know that at ten past three the park would be crawling with primary school students running off their last lot of energy while groups of mums gathered around chatting over afternoon tea. Not a safe place for my I-can't-walk-yet one year old. Oh well.

Steve is away this weekend (just overnight for a party in Sydney) and so I decided I'd day trip to some friends in Maleny for a visit. Lovely idea and it turned out rather splendidly. On Friday, I decided it might be nice to take something for their three year old, so I did a quick stitch and produced a marble maze.

Please be nice about the photos. I decided to take them somewhere new, and didn't realise the lighting at Steve's desk in the afternoon would be so harsh. Oh well. This was made out of some old T-shirts that I cut up. Sewed on the felt dots, stitched up the maze, popped a marble in and sewed it closed. Hello choke proof kids toy! Also, because it's squishy, easy to put in your bag and take out whenever and where ever bordem threatens.

I am well pleased. While I had Sally the sewing machine out, I thought I'd finish off some baby shoes that I ambitiously cut suede for a while ago. I did this, and they look pretty nice.

The pattern is the Pleated Mary Jane from Shwin&Shwin. I have to say I'm not a massive fan. Maybe it's the fiddly-ness of the small baby shoe, but they take ages to make sure it's going to all go together right. Also, I don't like the way a lot of baby shoes have the inner soles just stuck in or sewn in but so you can still see all of the edges. So I spent extra time hand-sewing the inner soles down with stitches that you cannot see from the outside.

I feel it was worth it because they are beautiful and very soft, so perfect for a baby, but I doubt I'll be making baby shoes again.

P.S. I did do more work on the Log Cabin Quilt and another chunk of that top-secret Birthday Present for my Dad. Hooray!

Birthday Project - Top Secret!

Sudden inspiration for a birthday gift for my Dad lead to me spending about five or six hours on Friday at Sally the sewing machine. Maybe I should name my rotary cutter, since he played a large role in what occurred too.... Anyway, in the spirit of keeping things secret, I can't tell you what it is, and you will have to wait until October to find out. Heh. I am pretty proud of what I got done though (the whole present is probably about a third finished, but I did get the most fiddly things out of the way) so here is a sneak peek for you all. :)

Enjoy.

Busy Book

Last year, I ventured into the land of felt books with this little bit of excitement and since then, it's been on the to-do list to make another. The next one, I decided long ago, would have a variety of pages that work on a different skill, rather than just encourage creativity. I know that lacing is something that is supposed to be great for kids, and after Steve wore through a pair of his old connies, I was struck with the inspiration for the first page of the book. Behold!

Is it not fabulous? Sorry about the way that it is currently laced, my original lacing did make it all the way to the top, but I thought something went wrong, tried to do it again and came out with something rather worse. Now, I can't be bothered change it. Lazyness wins again. But really, look at the lacing potential! Not to mention the excitement that might come from using it to teach how to tie shoe-laces. And it's general awesomeness from being Converse!

Page one done. I'm not sure how I'm going to sew these pages together, but something will come to me I'm sure. Now that I'm all inspired, I've done the layout (though not the actual sewing yet) for page two, which uses buttons.

Work In Progress

Much of my spare time recently has been spent doing smaller things that can be easily finished and also reading. It's such a great feeling to cross lots of little things off the to-do list. I read somewhere that when you sew a lot, it's really good to have one big project on the go, as well as a smaller one. That way, when the big project gets too much, you can take a break, finish a smaller one and feel productive enough to get back to the big thing.

So while the Log Cabin Quilt has been sitting on the shelf for a while, I've been doing some other things. Things like making great breakfasts for my one year old (and my husband and myself too!). 

Writing Thank-you, Thinking-of-you, and other encouraging cards for friends. Putting together invitations for fun events coming up. Meeting up with friends to talk about how they are going and what God is doing in their lives. Reading books, specifically some of David Eddings' epic sagas. Also, doing a little sewing, but that's a post for tomorrow (a super exciting, stay tuned or you'll miss it kind of post!).

And after two weeks of doing this, I have crossed off enough small things on the to-do list to make me think of the Log Cabin Quilt. This morning, I sewed the boarder back onto the slightly smaller backing sheet and now, the front and back are the same size. This is a good feeling. It's a work in progress, but it is progressing. :)  

Thoughts on Exodus

I've been reading the bible in my quiet times (even as I type this sentence I think to myself "Duh!"). Anyway. I am going through a reading plan that will take me through the whole bible in a year, but has Old and New Testament readings for each day (just to spice it up, especially when things like Leviticus hit).

I'm happy to say that I've finished Genesis, Exodus and Matthew already! I feel like this is a huge achievement, given that it's only the first week of February, but when I think that I've done three books out of 66, it feel a little less grandiose. Oh well.

I've been thinking a lot about what happened in Exodus the last few days. The Israelites have managed to escape Egypt with God giving some pretty spectacular and memorable events to boot. Then they get away and seem to stop for a long time. I'd never really noticed it before, but even before they are at the promised land for the first time, God has them all camping in the wilderness while he gives them some (quite detailed) instructions.

This is the first time that the people of Israel are actually getting instructions from God about what it means to be his people. And boy, it takes some time. I guess that when we come down to it, God is a holy God, and for the Israelites to be his people, they had to learn a few things (and unlearn a few bad Egyptian-influenced habits).

It strikes me that because this is the first thing that God does with his people after their rescue, it stands that it's probably the most important. They get their commandments, they are told the terms and conditions of serving God (which they agree to), they spend a lot of time (and effort, and resources) making the Tabernacle, the holy things that go inside and the outfits for the priests among other things.

This makes me think back to when I became one of God's people. How precious were those first few months, even years, where He instructed me. How great are the truths that I learnt at that time, that I keep coming back to.

Even now, nearly 10 years on, I am again struck by how important it is to leave everything else aside, and get to know God first. I am again amazed by the fact that God wants to know us and will take the time to teach us, with his word, with his Spirit, with his people. How great is our God who loved us first, and loves us still.

Updates

While the Log Cabin Quilt sits on the shelf, patiently awaiting the day I will again have the courage to tackle it (not too far off, I think), I've been doing a few small things to help me feel productive again. I think it might also be because Bub-Number-Two is now fully en-route (20 weeks today!) and despite feeling a little sore (thanks to Sophie putting her knees and feet into my ever expanding tummy) I'm also feeling quite energized.

These are what I've made in the last three weeks for Sophie, most of which happened in the last week actually. Again, I'm using up what is in the material stash, rather than going out and being distracted by a sale rack at Spotlight. :P The shorts were actually once Sarah's, who generously donated them to me. I've pretty much worn them to death, so they have now been recycled into their new life as Sophie Shorts. The bottom right ones still have all the pockets intact and working (including the back ones which you can't see) and also cuffs. I am pretty happy with these pants.

The dress on the bottom left was made for Sam's 3rd Birthday (Party Dress!) from my old frog skirt, which Mum made for me when I was a teenager. Ahh, it's good to see it living again. Self drafted pattern too actually. I made it way too big, so in another year, I'll be able to take out all the extra seams that I put in and Sophie will be able to continue wearing it. Excellent.

The party dress at the top was from Sophie's 1st Birthday. Special thanks to Cheala who gave me her sister's pediatric nurse scrubs to use for dresses. Yet another dress that cost nothing. It also has pockets. :D Here is Sophie enjoying those pockets.

The dress in the middle (the only one not worn yet, which I'm sure you can tell when you look closely at the photo) I made on Sunday. It's supposed to be a size 18-months, but when I put it on her to have a look, it actually fits at the top already. Maybe she won't grow too much....

Aside from doing copious amounts of sewing, I'm also in the process of making a cardboard car track that will hide under our TV cabinet which I'm pretty excited about. That said, I think I'm putting more effort into it than it's worth, because I want to cover it and re-enforce it and what not. Given that it's made of cardboard and will be used by kids, it's probably not going to last that long anyway, so why bother? I don't know, a good way to pass the time perhaps?

Log Cabin Quilt Part 3

So yesterday I went through the stash and found some purple (left over from Steve's Aladdin costume (sorry there were never any photos of that :P)) which worked. I cut it out, I sewed it together and then sewed it on. Hooray, the top is done!

Then I grab the material that I have lined up for the backing, put it down and find out that it's actually an inch too short! AHHH!!! I figure, that's ok. I'll cut it down slightly more and then put a boarder on it to make it the right size and it will all be fabulous. Excellent plan.

I loved the fabric before (thanks Ikea) but now that it's got a cool boarder, it's 100% better. Excellent. Now I put the top on to check that the measurements were correct and it's all ready to sandwich with some batting and make a quilt. The evidence is below, the backing is now two and a half inches too wide! GAHH!!

It may be a while before I can bring myself to do something about this. It cuts so deep when you have a such a set back. Sigh.

Bento Box 2.0

Sophie had another day with her grandparents on Monday, so I got creative on Sunday and made her another Bento. They are pretty fun and easy to make, especially given she can't actually critique them yet. :P

Also, two weeks ago, I made a roman blind for our living room. Unfortunately, things in windows don't photograph easily or well, so there are no pictures of my handiwork. That said, I feel very proud of my roman blind because it blocks out the sun and rolls up easily to let in the breeze. Yay! I used some good tutorials I found linked from here. I also got to use a saw to cut the dowels and wood to size and the drill to do drill things. So handy!

Re-using Jeans

I have been so super slack about updating what I've been doing in the last few days/weeks. So many great things that are slowly fading into obscurity, just like my entire life will one day. Oh well. This, however, will not pass unmarked.  

I followed an on-line tutorial linked to me by a friend to whip this baby up in less than an hour. Luckily Steve had a pair of jeans that needed re-purposing in the circle of life, or this would have taken a while longer to become a reality. Only made one mistake in the making, and you can't even tell. Ha!

Here was where this tutorial came from. :) 

Log Cabin Quilt Part 2

So I did work a lot more on the layout of the Log Cabin squares for this quilt. I ended up taking photos of the squares, whacking them into a table in word and then moving them around as I saw fit. The random layout was pretty quickly discarded and I tried a few others before I stumbled on this diagonal one which worked quite well. 

I was going to get more feed back from people and what not, but I just wanted to get the thing done, rather than have it sit around unfinished. Today, I pieced all of the squares together with the sashing (that's quilting term for the bits between the squares). I even sewed a little while Sophie was roaming around - risky! 

This square is my favorite. I don't know why.

Log Cabin Quilt Part 1

So I don't know if you remember these:

but I had a set of four of them from the 2013 Block of the Month Quilt that I did last year (in 2013 funnily enough :P). Anyway, I loved the block, but I ended up re-doing them for the actual quilt in different colors (and when I did that, I made some extras just cos I love them).

While wasting away the hours earlier this week, I had a strange desire to sew something. It had been a whole week since I'd sewn anything (Sophie's birthday dress) and I guess I was having withdrawals. Also, I couldn't sew my actual next project because I was waiting on getting some things. So I set that all aside, took out the quilting box, found the Log Cabins and thought to myself; "I'll just make a few more and then I'll have a quilt top in the makings."

I now have 48 Log Cabin squares made out of scraps. One of the goals for this quilt was that I would make it out of whatever I had on hand. No going to the material store and buying material (even if it was on sale and a good price :P). I do have enough material to get away with it (more than enough in fact) and it was a great way to use up lots of little scrapy pieces that I had in the box. Excellent.

The tricky thing now is to come up with a nice balanced layout for all these lovely Log Cabins that I am happy with. I was happy this morning with the layout pictured above, but looking at it now, I'm less happy - why are those two dark blue squares in the same row at the bottom? Why are three of the "yellow heavy" squares all on ones side of the quilt? What was I thinking; where is the balance?? Gah!

With 48 squares of Log Cabins, working on the layout is no easy task in itself. With Sophie to help, it's even harder.

Milestone

It's Sophie's first ever Bento Box! She won't remember it and wasn't physically capable of using the cute frog pick, spoon or chopsticks, but man it was fun to make. :) Totally worth it.

For those interested, the food is yogurt, watermelon cut into flower shapes, a star egg, Aunty Shirley's Pancakes (left over from the party) and some cheese sticks. Healthy and delicious. The boxes stacked on top of one another when they were full of food and then into one another when they were empty, so they take up half as much space in the cupboard. 

Five Hundred Twenty Five Thousand Six Hundred Minutes

Sophie turned one yesterday. I have a one year old. In some ways, I am amazed at the growth and changes that have taken place in her short life. And at the same time, weren’t all these things expected? It makes me think of the song Seasons of Love from the musical Rent. How do we measure a year?

I’ve been collecting the bottles from various baby products this last year (not hording, but collecting for future use in crafty projects). Interesting to look at the number of baby powder, soap and hand sanitizer bottles that I now have. In some cases much more than expected, in others (only half a bottle of shampoo used!), much less.

Thankfully Sophie’s life is not measured by these things. Even though, I’m now well acquainted with them and will probably always associate them with the first year of her life.

I'm pleased to say (and as you can see from these pictures here, I'm not lying) that Sophie really enjoyed her Christmas present. There was lots of fun faces made as she pulled off and put on the ornaments. The tree itself held up fairly well too.

She still has yet to work out the buttons, but for now, the fact that the felt sticks is enough. Later on, it was enough that she could chew on the ornaments.

I must say though, that I do love her Christmas dress. It was just the right length to let her crawl around relativity unhindered and also nice and cool for the hot day. Excellent.

So you are probably all foaming at the mouth waiting anxiously for this post, and I do apologise for it's lateness. Some stuff has been going on with my own family and some super close friends that has recently made me a bit distracted (and heartbroken), so please forgive me. (That's right folks, stuff happens in my life that I don't share with the internet, it's called privacy and it can be done!)

In any case, Christmas has come and gone and I can finally share some of what I worked hard on during the year for our friends and family. This is a colour version of the sneak peak I showed back in October. Lovely bright colours! You may even recognise that red-checkered material as something I also have a skirt out of. :) 

Spread out, it looks a bit more like the picture below. A very fun table runner for Christmas. The circles are green felt (which may have begun their lives with the intention of growing up to be coasters) with red chain stitched boarders and yellow stars in the middle. The background material was a remnant I picked up at Spotlight for $2.00 a metre. Score!

I was really happy with how they turned out in the end. I did accidentally cut the wrong size material for the backing fabric, but managed to make something good out of it in the end so all is well.

Another thing I was working on (that again, I did share a sneak peak of) are some Christmas tree ornaments. These again began their lives as felt circles that had button Christmas trees sewn on (by hand) and then were backed and stuffed to give them a fun pillow-y nature.

To give each of them a personal touch, I also embroidered each persons name on the back in gold thread. I was really happy with the results.

I do have one more handmade Christmas thing to show you all, but a) this post has enough pictures, b) I've still got to give one more away (thanks to my sister and her Steve being MIA this Christmas) and c) I seem to have no photos of them anyway (in hindsight, that was a pretty silly thing for me to neglect). :P Don't kid yourselves though, it's mostly reasons A and B that are keeping me from showing you. Not C at all.

Oh, and I have some great shots of Sophie playing with (and eating) her cool Christmas tree and ornaments too! So much exciting Christmas stuff, must remember to share!!