Sending Thanks.

Just wanted to pop in today to send out happy thoughts to all those people who came to see us at The Knitting and Stitching Show in Harrogate over the weekend (and Thursday and Friday). 

Once again it was a fantastic show and thank you to all the people who came to visit us again after meeting us the previous year. I'm absolutely useless at remembering names so I'm not going to list everyone as I'm bound to miss someone out! But I do want to say a particular thanks to the ladies who stopped by to say they had all made a pinny from Natalie's pattern (can't wait to see the pictures), and the lady who said after our quick tutorial on layer cake's last year she went home and made her very first quilt, and has now gone on to make loads more! 

I will leave you now with the picture as I left the restaurant on Wednesday night after set-up. Snow! Yes Snow! I had visions of being snowed in for the weekend (at least I would have had plenty of quilts to wrap up in!) but it disappeared as fast as it fell.

Final Show.

Just a quick reminder to you all that we are going to be at the Knitting and Stitching Show in Harrogate from Thursday through to Sunday.

It is our final show of the year so please come and say hello.

Winners!!

Just popping in really quickly today.

The deadline has passed and after a very high tech drawing method (see below) the winners were picked. 

I have emailed both you lovely ladies and will get the tickets posted out to you asap. 

Thanks for checking in.

x

Knitting and Stitching Show Harrogate

The very kind people at Twisted Thread have given us some free tickets for their Harrogate show coming soon on the 21st to the 24th November 2013. 

We have decided to give them away to 2 lucky people. 

To win simply follow our blog and post a comment telling us you have and you could win a pair of tickets (one for you and one for a friend?)

We shall be there in the same spot as last year so be sure to come and say hello. 

Closing date is Midnight on Wednesday 13th November 2013 to give us time to post out the tickets to the winners. 

FQR London..... a finish!

One of the classes I took while at the Fat Quarterly Retreat in London earlier this year was Paper Piecing with Joanna and Julianna. I have never tried Paper Piecing before but really wanted to give it a go as I have seen so many fantastic patterns created using this method. 

I did find I quite challenging, I think it has something to do with following instructions and planing ahead. I'm not very good with either, I tend to rush ahead with the fabric choices in all of my sewing, which could be why I end up with so many WIP's!

However a few weeks ago I decided to pull out the unfinished typewriter panel and have another go. 

I'm calling it a success.

Some of the bits don't meet where they should and I had to unpick quite a few seams once I realised I had put the wrong fabric in a few crucial spots but overall I'm pleased. 

The biggest cock-up I made was in pulling away the paper at the end, again no patience! I should have just sat and carefully removed them. Instead I ripped and yanked resulting in me having to re-stitch a few of the seams. Then I had the bright idea of soaking the whole thing to make the paper softer and easier to rip.... bad idea. The ink from the pattern soaked through in a couple of places and I now have a nasty line running down the body of my typewriter, but you live and learn. I won't be making that mistake again.

The panel now hangs on the wall in my little sewing room and I love it. Who know's I may even give paper piecing another go?

Serrenade Quilt

A couple of weeks ago we received a lovely email from one of early customers Chris. She bought a layer cake from us at our first festival of Quilts last year and has made this amazing quilt using it.

She used a Moda Bake Shop pattern called Flying in Squares which you can find here. It's only the second quilt she's made! Isn't it fabulous!

Have a look at the other free patterns on the Bake Shop site there is some lovely ideas.

X

Not Even a Mouse

I'm sure like me you are a sucker for cute Christmas fabric well what about this one?

This is just one of our newest Christmas fabrics we have in the shop. 

Along with this one.

This one.

And this one.

We have put together a couple of little Christmas bundles for you. There is also a couple of free paterns for Christmas quilts here and here on the clothworks website.

Bundles Galore.

As part of our preparation for the Quilt Show at Malvern we have begun cutting lots of Fat Quarters. While I was doing so I decided that we needed some bundles putting together for the shop. 

So far we have listed these:

Which you can have in either Fat Quarters or Fat 1/8th's. You can find them both in the bundle section of the shop.

I also have these two ready to list

But I can't seem to do it at the moment, my brain has stopped working. I have been up since 4.15am to get my middle child to a school PE trip so I may just go back to bed and try again later. 

Tracey x

Fat Quarter Pinny Published!

Just to let you know my Pinny pattern will be in the October issue of the "Sewing World" magazine.  

Just ever so slightly exited to see my name in print. 

Natalie xx

Mini Scrappy Tripping

Please excuse the over load of baby pictures but I had a little visitor yesterday and I made the most of the opportunity to take a few pictures of my baby niece Summer.

We didn't know if Natalie was having a boy or a girl but once she was born I decided it was the perfect time to make a totally pink quilt. 

Having three boys I very rarely get the chance to sew with anything other than masculine colours so to be able to sew a pretty & feminine quilt was a really nice change.

I decided on a Scrappy Trip Around for the pattern following the instructions for the Scrappy Trip Along that you can find here. I used just 6 Fq's for this one so not quite so scrappy, but if you cut your strips carefully from each FQ like this:

You end up with 9 blocks and a baby quilt measuring 35 inches square. Just the right size for a cot, a pram or just a roll around on the floor!

This quilt will be with me at Malvern in October and Harrogate in November. 

Baby Summer however will be at home with Mum! (She may visit Malvern but I can't promise x)

Don't forget just 6 FQs go into making this quilt so you can have a beautiful baby quilt top for less than £20.00!

Ombre Quilt.

Alternatively titled 50 Shades of Grey or should that 64? 

We have back in stock the Grey Ombre Simply Style by V & Co. You can find it here. 
It dosen't look like much here in this picture.

But over on Vanessa's blog from V & Co. I found  this fantastic tutorial for this really simple but incredibly effective quilt. 

Natalie has made it here using just one metre of fabric for the front cut into 5" squares and then mixed up and joined back together. 

Absolutely stunning and yet so easy to make.

Hello September

In August I.....

Attended one wedding.

Two Birthday Party's.

Was at the Festival of Quilts.

Had lots of children for sleepovers.

Went Camping.

Cleaned out my Sewing Room/Office/Dumping Ground.

But didn't do much sewing at all.

I did do this.

And this.

But haven't finished either.

Let's hope I manage to finish them in September.

Festival of Quilts

I've been really busy the last couple of weeks what with the Fat Quarterly Retreat & the boys breaking up from school/college, so I have been absent from blogging, sorry!

Another really important event that has happened is the birth of Natalie's beautiful little girl Summer.

Mum and baby are both fine and doing well hoping to visit us on the stand at The Festival of Quilts later on this week.

In between celebrating family Birthdays, I have spent most of last week and the weekend cutting fat quarters in preparation for the above mentioned Festival of Quilts. 

We have had a delivery of these lovely fabrics from Riley Blake 

I have cut lots of these as I'm sure they are going to be popular. I was also thinking of putting them into some fat 1/8th bundles, what do you think? 

Helping me on the stand this year is Angela so if your visiting the show do come and say Hello.

Hope to see you there!

Making words.

For a while now I have wanted to make a sign for our stand at the shows we do. 

I have had this book for some time and using it as inspiration, sat down one night and sketched out the letters on graph paper. 

I would have liked to go a bit more wonky and improvised but I decided to play safe for my first attempt.

I had a little bit of assistance vis Instagram to get the A looking just right (thanks Angela!) it needed to be a bit more rounded out.

For the background I used this fabric from Aneela Hoey's Sew Stitchy range, (very appropriate with the pins don't you think?) and the French Knot Fabric from the same range for all the letters.

After a trial run I had to do a little adjusting to the depth and I added a couple of spools and a border using all the scraps I had left over.

It had its first proper apperance at the Wimbledon International Quilters exhibition we attended, the binding wasn't finished but we both sat and finished that throughout the first day we were there. 

It's had one or two outings already so a few of you may have seen it, hope you like it!

Rebellious Quilters....

This past weekend we spent a lovely day with the Rebellious Quilters in Oldswinford Stourbridge.

Thank you Janet and Ann for inviting us.

Tote swap

I little while ago I signed up for my very first swap. 

I joined the Secret Tote Bag Swap Hosted over here by Lia. 

I may have mentioned before that I am not very good with deadlines, well I have to amend that to say that I'm not very good at deadlines that I set for myself, I am better at deadlines set by other people. 

I finished making the Bag this weekend and as I have until the end of the month to post it I am a week ahead! 

I wanted to make a bag that was a useful size and yet looked pretty as well. My partners requests were quite reasonable something modern but not pink. 

I had a good rummage through my stash and pulled out these fabrics along with some linen that I had bought with the intention of making a bag but had never seemed to get around to. 

This is how it finished up.

Look at that jazzy lining!

I hope she likes it! I added a few goodies into the bag and have sent it on its way. x 

Patchwork Pouches.

I usually leave the presents for the teachers to the very last day and end up getting them either wine or beer  which is not very imaginative! 
This year I am determined to get a head start and make them each a pencil case.

I wanted to go with a patchwork feel, and spent some time mulling over colors and patterns. I trawled the internet looking for the right pattern but couldn't find quite what I was looking for so in the end I cobbled together these...

My first attempt at a pouch was a bit of a disaster.
I wanted to show off my fancy zip but it ended up looking messy so I pulled it all apart and started again.
This is the after after picture.

The best tutorial I could find was this one. 
Anna's tutorial for her wide open mouth pouches is really easy to follow and I used her technique for getting the zip to look neat. Zips and I don't really get along every time I have used my zipper foot I have broken a needle. 

I'm quite happy with how they ended up. I actually fitted two zips without a breakage and now have two pencil cases I feel happy to give as gifts and two prototypes I can use just for me! A win win situation all round!

I'm going to put a few pretty stationary bits and some choccies in before I give them at the end of term.