Dolly blanket

One of my other sisters asked me to make a patchwork blanket like this one and this one I made for my other nieces but instead of a full size one, she wanted one for my niece's doll as apparently the dolly needs a blanket.  As my sister doesn't like oranges or browns or greens and she doesn't seem that keen on yellow either, she told me she wanted it in blues and turquoises, at this point I'm wondering who the recipient really is, but as my niece hasn't turned two yet getting her opinion on colour choices is rather difficult to get.

So here's the little blanket, I hand stitched the oblongs together, put on the fleecy back like the other two as had enough left over and put some cute lavender colour binding round the edge which I machined and then machined round all the oblongs.  I'm no quilter, I need lots of practice yet and my designs so far are as simple as I can get them especially with a tight deadline as my niece will get it this weekend as it was her birthday yesterday but I'm pretty happy with it.

Front view of blanket showing some blue floral, plain dark blue, chicken fabric and mice fabric and some sneaky pink and blue flower fabric too and some flocked fabric too

Back of blanket showing the machined stitches outlining the oblongs and a few 'puck ups' near the binding

As the caption states, there were a few 'puck ups' on the fleece backing, if you're wondering why I've suddenly gone for very descriptive captions on my photos, it's because my good friend Giles pointed out that for the visually impaired it's hard to know what the picture shows if all the reader could tell him was the jpeg number!  Take a look at his blog on his adventures as a visually impaired quilter, I can highly recommend it!

I'm off to finish another patchwork cushion.  Happy Sewing!

This weeks sewing

By the end of this week I'm hoping to have sewn two tops and a skirt.  I've had a bit of a rest from sewing this week as crocheting two cowls slightly pushed my luck with my RSI.  So I took a bit of a breather.  This week I'm going to see how fast I can sew now I've got the hang of button holes.

I've cut the fabric for the two tops, just plain cotton as they're to go with a very busy print skirt I want to make.

It's a wonder I get any sewing done what with Fizz having to sit on anything I'm working on.  As you can see she's trying to look as cute as possible.  They're both going to be Lotus cami tops as seen here.  I'm going to make them a bit shorter as feel the blue one I made was too long to wear with a skirt and looks far better with trousers.  Need to find some buttons though, but can't decide whether I want them to blend into the fabric or stand out and be interesting as they're just a plain colour.  Looks like I'm taking a leaf out of Diane Von Faustenburg's Spring collection with strong block colour, if only I could design...*sigh*.

I am however, trying to alter a pattern as have been thinking about the lovely tree pattern fabric I have that I'm making these tops for and have decided that although I want an A-line skirt, I'd like it to have a little bit of interest.  So I'm thinking of making a skirt like this one but instead of just having facings on the inside, I'm going to put them on the outside so I can put some piping in between the facings and main part of the skirt.  I'm sure there's a proper word for the things that are facings on the outside but I don't know it yet, answers on a post card please! ;)

After rummaging in my stash I found some satin bias binding that will go with the skirt fabric and bought an orange zip that instead of putting in the back I'm going to put in the side.

At least I got a Fizz free photo this time.  I can't tell you how much I love this fabric, the colour, the pattern...ahh.  It will bring some much needed sunshine since it's been such awful weather lately, all wet and very very windy.


In other news, I finally got to finishing the other quilt out of the bits left over from the first one, but it's a lot smaller, so after some discussion with my sister, the big one will go to my older niece who's had her eye on it for some time now, and the smaller one to my new baby niece.

Happy stitching!

My first patchwork blanket

My sister is heavily pregnant and went into early labour the day before new year's eve, so I've been on tenter hooks and panicking wildly as wanted to make the new baby a patchwork blanket.  Thankfully, it's slow labour that she's gone into apparently and it seems to have gone quiet for the minute, which is really good as until today the baby would be classed as premature and my sister and the baby would have to stay in hospital for at least 72 hours.  Not fun.  Added to that is the fact that on her first baby she had pre-eclampsia and was forced to have an emergency caesarian, so I'm keeping everything crossed that it all turns out ok.  Anyway...I wanted to get the blanket done in time for the new arrival so it's a bit rustic...and it is my first attempt so do be kind!

The fat quarter's I used were bought from Ray Stitch, I substituted two Amy Butler fat quarter's for two more child related patterned ones I had of mice and chickens.  I suddenly realised at 11pm New Years Day that as I rounded the third corner with the white binding that I didn't have any more, so I had to improvise and use yellow on the fourth side.  I know it doesn't match and ordinarily I would have gone out and bought enough to finish it all in the same colour but what with the time constrictions I thought it was better if I just finished it.  I'm thinking that it might be my 'design quirk' for any patchwork blankets I make in the future will have one side of binding in a different colour! 

And now for a close up:

The back isn't perfect, and I cheated there too.  I didn't go for batting and cotton backing but instead got a plain white thin fleecy blanket and used that as the back.  It's soft and warm and cuddly snuggly.  I really like the patterns on the fat quarters, especially the little mushrooms!  I tried to keep the pattern as simple as possible and straight lines only, well they were straight until I started cutting and sewing! haha! 

In the words of narcoleptic in a cupboard there were a few 'puck ups' in the fleecy blanket as shown here:

It looks a bit worse here as I had no little helper to hold it for me and had to improvise with the bannister and some pegs.  Overall I'm really happy with the result and I've got patchwork left over as didn't want to make it too big so thinking of making some sort of bag to keep a few nappies, wipes and a change of clothes in for the baby.  At least it's one thing ticked off my new year sewing list already!  Yay!  I would have posted about this earlier but had some technical difficulties with the laptop, mainly that the 'enter' key wasn't working so needed a new keyboard...anyway difficulty over so lots of things to tell you all about in the next post!