A finish at last - Free motion Petal Cushion

I finished two craft projects last week, one was my crochet blanket which I'll do a separate post about and another was, shock horror from my Finish Along Quarter 3 list.

Number 9 on my list was a Free motion Quilting Petal Cushion that all I needed to do was bind, so simple really but still a finish. 

I've really enjoyed going to workshops over the last few years, having a day set aside for me to just sew, whether it's learning a new technique or just 'having a play' it's something I love but never found anything suitable in York that I could make so I've had to travel to scratch that itch. That itch is now well and truly scratched by Leeds MQG set up by the wonderful Lisa Sew in March this year. 

Last autumn however I was looking for a class and saw that Brioni was teaching a class that I liked the look of at The Skep, which is on the wrong side of Leeds to me, but off I travelled on a Sunday in December. I was able to get through the early stages on the project fairly quickly which allowed me to have a good play with the free motion quilting/applique part and I came home with a finished panel. 

I turned it into a cushion when I got home that night, cut the binding, and then it got lost in Christmas preparations and because I no real purpose for the project it sat unfinished and unloved on my shelf until Friday night when I carefully selected (grabbed) it as one of the projects I could take to our Leeds MQG day on Saturday.

I've played with machine binding in different ways before but wasn't quite sure I had it right, however I remembered Karen posting on instagram about her machine binding and she kindly offered to show me how she does it on Saturday. 

It's a bit wonky, partly due to the seam bulk making it harder to sew the binding on that it would be on a quilt, but it was really easy to do and I'm definitely going to try this on my next quilt. 

On the way home from Leeds MQG I went via Dunelm Mill and bought a cushion pad the right size for it and it's now on my chair at work - it's a bit big for this really but it gives it a purpose, gets it out of the house and brightens up my office a bit! 

1 down, 9 to go. At least one is better than nothing and I still have a few weeks left! 

Fresh Sewing Day - August is over

Not sure what happened to August, well 2 trips to the south of England to celebrate friends getting married, Nick stage managing a 2 week long run of Ghost the Musical at the theatre where we volunteer, me duty managing 4 of the performances, and me working in University Admissions which means August is my busiest and most stressful month of the year, that's what happened to August.

Although I had a break from almost all my Guiding volunteering activities and my theatre volunteering was relatively light, I wasn't as productive crafting wise in the evenings and the weekend time I did have as I'd hoped for, I do have a few things to share though.

Firstly my crochet vstitch blanket - started in July with no real purpose but decided to make it into a lap blanket for me. At the start of August it was 47 rows high and by the end of the month it was 100, long enough and ready for a border, with all 200 ends sewn in. This blanket came to work with me a lot but only actually got added to on one or two lunch breaks, but there was lots of opportunity for car crochet when it wasn't my turn to drive, a bit of theatre crochet, and plenty of curled up on the sofa after a hard day at work crochet. Hoping to get the border done over the next week and start using it- a friend is having a baby next month and I know she'd love a little crochet blanket - so I see a smaller gender neutral vstitch blanket starting as soon as this one is done.

Sewing wise I turned a pile of pieces of fabric cut at the end of July into a quilt top, and finished another quilt top from my finish along list, which was really satisfying as it had sat screwed up in my sewing room since i abandoned the pieces last Autumn. I also made 6 more blocks from Katy's book (which is another thing on my finish along list) and pattern tested Erin at Dog Under my Desk's fab new pattern for a little going out purse/bag. Erin's patterns deserve a whole blog post of their own which is on my to do list for this month - and Arm Candy is launching this week and is well worth snapping up if bag making takes your fancy.

September needs to involve lots of sewing, specifically basting, quilting and binding to clear the pile of quilt tops, most of which do have intended recipients. I have high hopes of finish a long finishes to share with you over the next few weeks, one at a time - I can do this. 

So I'm linking up with Lynne for the second time, both for fresh sewing day and small blog link up as my fledgeling blog is tiny at the moment. Have a great September everyone.