on it!
You know those times where you feel on top of things and you're crafting is going well and it all seems ok? Well that's where I'm at right now. I have a mountain of projects I want to do but there's no hurry. I'm doing what needs doing, what I love doing and breaking it all down so I'm content and not overwhelmed. Happily swimming in sewing mojo...
I have finished piecing all the blocks for the May quilt (it's a secret right now), extra fabric I needed came yesterday so I will be getting the borders on and then the top is done!
I've been doing little rows of my EPP rose stars, here's the latest portion:
Nat and I have been scheming to create a new monthly challenge for all crafters, head over to Le Challenge to find out more and join in the fun... The first theme will be announced this Friday!
Linking up:
Le Challenge - hooking up with Nat!
In our pre-baby waiting hours, we dreamt up a new challenge open to all crafters – not
just quilters, knitters or else. A theme would be set for all to interpret in
their choice of crafty weapons.
Fast forward 3 months and we are ready to set the theme for
the first Le Challenge on Friday 15. There is a blog, there is a button, and
there are two lovely (huh huh) organisers with wild ideas about themes.
<div align="center"><a href="http://le-challenge.blogspot.co.uk/" title="Le Challenge"><img src="http://i1191.photobucket.com/albums/z475/Lucy_Brennan/lechallengebutton2_zps18ffdfca.png" alt="Le Challenge" style="border:none;" /></a></div>
So how does it work?
On the 15th
of every month, we will set a new theme for you (and us) to be inspired by.
Your homework should be in on 15th of the following month. One
theme, one month. All crafts, sizes of projects welcomed, in fact the more varied
the entries are the better.
To inspire you even more, some lovely sponsors will offer
giveaways and every entry will be put in a draw.
So what do you reckon? Are you ready for your first Le
Challenge? The theme will be announced on our blogs and Le Challenge blog.
We will be posting on Le Challenge regularly so be sure to
check out the blog!
Lucy & Nat
quilts by Tracy Chevalier and winners
Last week I did a review and held a giveaway of Tracy Chevalier's new novel The Last Runaway.
Tracy sent me an email and is kindly showing us her quilts!
I'm so impressed with her dedication and quilting... I have yet to finish an EPP quilt myself! I wasn't surprised she's taken to quilting though, it is rather addictive ;)
So on to our winners...
Random.org picked the numbers - you will have to trust me because I don't have time to capture all the boxes and picture them here - they are:
Please could you all email me with your details and addresses and HarperCollins will send the books out to you. If I don't hear from you within 48 hrs I will draw another winner.
A huge thank you to Tracy for sharing her work and thank you to HarperCollins for the great giveaway!
If you didn't win now is the time to order your copy of The Last Runaway.
Tracy sent me an email and is kindly showing us her quilts!
Dear Lucy,
Thanks so much for your lovely review of The Last Runaway. I feel honoured that a quilter liked it so much! I thought your followers might be curious to see the quilt I made during my research for the book.
For my quilting research I read a lot, looked a lot (especially the V&A exhibition in 2010, and also the York Quilt Museum). But I needed to DO it too, so I took a quilting class, and then joined the Flying Geese, a local quilting group that meets every Monday. Indeed, I’m still with the group, and will probably be making quilts for a long time to come.
I chose to make a simple four-patch quilt, as I didn’t want to get bogged down in anything complicated for my first quilt. Also I made it at three-quarters the size of a single quilt, one I use on our sofa rather than on a bed. Even so, it took me a year! (Mind you, I was writing a novel at the same time, so rather busy.) Here is the quilt:
It’s all hand-made and hand-quilted, as I wanted to imitate the process my heroine Honor Bright went through. (Also I don’t have a sewing machine or know how to use one.) The fabrics are from various quilt shops in the UK and US, as well as from stalls at the Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace London.
I learned so much for making the quilt – about sewing (you don’t have to knot, you can backstitch!), about pattern and putting different fabrics together, about fudging and tucking under loose ends. Funny, I do all that when I’m writing a novel, but didn’t realise it also applies to quilting! Making the quilt made it a lot easier for me to write about Honor making quilts. And it is a non-verbal activity, very welcome after all the reading and writing I do.
My next project? I am making a quilt along the lines of the famous Gee’s Bend quilts made by African Americans. They are more improvisational, very colourful, and extremely hard to imitate! Here’s what I’ve done so far:
I'm so impressed with her dedication and quilting... I have yet to finish an EPP quilt myself! I wasn't surprised she's taken to quilting though, it is rather addictive ;)
So on to our winners...
Random.org picked the numbers - you will have to trust me because I don't have time to capture all the boxes and picture them here - they are:
12 - Gill
26 - Katy
2- Archie the Wonder Dog
8 - Andrea
21- Pomegranate Quilts
19 - Svea Polster Broughton
9 - Cayt
18 - Alice and Florence
28 - Strawberry Patch
4 - The Faerie Factory
Please could you all email me with your details and addresses and HarperCollins will send the books out to you. If I don't hear from you within 48 hrs I will draw another winner.
A huge thank you to Tracy for sharing her work and thank you to HarperCollins for the great giveaway!
If you didn't win now is the time to order your copy of The Last Runaway.
adding to the dressing up box
**Make sure you read my review and enter my giveaway, open until Monday!**
As many of you (mums!) know, it was World Book Day yesterday and the kids at school got to dress up as their favourite characters. My son chose a dinosaur from a story he loves and of course my eldest daughter wanted the same (oh my, I will have to be making 3 of everything soon enough!! Those of you that already do have my respect!!). Here are the two dinosaur tails I made using Jessica's fabulous tutorial:
I let the kids pick the fabrics - he went pretty neutral and cleverly coordinated with his dinosaur hoody (seriously HE chose them, the boy has style!!) and she picked a prettier vintage sheet :)
They very much LOVE them!
Probably not the most practical costume for school in reality, although his teacher did say she was amused seeing how many kids he bumped with his tail!
They have also been asking for pirate eye patches, after playing pirates at a friend's house. Well I'm skint and do not want to trawl the shops for such things so I made them. A quick sketch of a skull and crossbones, a bit of back stitch on some felt, more felt to cover the back and hide the knot of the elastic, crude rustic blanket stitch round the edges = two happy pirates!
Linking up:
new Tracy Chevalier book giveaway!
HarperCollins very kindly sent me a copy of Tracy Chevalier's new novel The Last Runaway.
There were so many elements of this novel that interest me; Quakerism, American history and of course quilting. My maternal grandparents were Quaker and I have been an attender myself, obviously I quilt too, so I was excited to read this book and I wasn't disappointed! I have had to stop myself from writing an essay (I could... there are so many things to discuss about this novel) but here is a quick idea of what the book is about and my review of it.
The story is set in 1850s Ohio during the last days of slavery and follows the protagonist, Honor Bright, as she settles in a Quaker community after travelling from England.
Honor is a likeable, slightly naive character and it's easy to warm to her. The people she encounters really shape who she becomes and I found myself waiting for some of them to appear again in the story because they were so alluring.
The structure of The Last Runaway makes for an enjoyable read, with elements of the story covered in letters both to her family and best friend back home, and enough drama to keep a good pace - the kind where you want to read just one more chapter! It is not an obvious tale and there are twists that keep you guessing about everyone's fate. The story isn't overly dramatic though and I appreciated Tracy Chevalier's subtle and unpretentious style.
The intertwining of tales of the slaves, the Underground Railroad and Quaker beliefs was fascinating and the moral/religious/cultural opinions and differences are well construed. As were the smaller details, the styles of quilting and ways of life that varied between the American and English.
Honor had always preferred patchwork to applique, feeling that to sew pieces of fabric on top of large squares of material was somehow cheating, a shortcut compared to the harder task of piecing together hundreds of bits of fabric, the colours blended so that the whole was graduated and unified and made a pleasing pattern. Though some quilters despaired of the rigid geometry and the accuracy required for making patchwork, to Honor it was a happy challenge.
- The Last Runaway, Tracy Chevalier
Obviously as a quilter it was so interesting to discover not only the different blocks they would have been making but also the quilting styles. Tracy clearly did a great amount of research for this novel and she even learnt to quilt herself. The characters so well describe the joys and frustrations of quilting. Honor even struggles with making things she doesn't love (we've all been there!). Even the way the notions, quilt designs and quilting history are recounted is enchanting and these were probably some of the parts I loved the most.
Honor sat and opened her sewing box to lay out her things. This ritual, at least, was familiar. The sewing box had belonged to her grandmother, who, when her sight began to fail, handed it on to the best stitcher among her granddaughters. Made of walnut wood, it had a padded needlepoint cover of lilies of the valley in green and yellow and white. This was an image Honor had known from an early age; eyes shut, she could perfectly recreate it in her mind, as she had often done to distract herself during her seasickness.
- The Last Runaway, Tracy Chevalier
It is not often I immediately want to reread a book but that's what I am doing!
What better way to celebrate World Book Day than with a good book and, thanks to HarperCollins, you can win your own copy of The Last Runaway. In fact they are giving away 10 copies to my lucky readers!
**GIVEAWAY NOW CLOSED**
The winners will be drawn on Monday 11th March by random.org
The Last Runaway will be released on 14th March and I highly recommend it.
not so many words
because my throat is really sore.
I'm making stuff for the kiddies (endless birthdays, dress up days etc!)...
...as well as desperately trying to find time to get the May quilt top finished.
So little time to sew and really feeling the need to prioritise my sewing with the time I have.
Finding it hard to use the machine when I've spent ages trying to get the baby to sleep - she's at that lovely taking two hours to get to sleep and sleeping for ten minutes phase ;)
Linking up:
poorly
Unfortunately all the girls in the house (I include myself there!) are poorly. I think it's some sort of yucky virus and hoping we all get over it fast. I hate being sick and I hate my little ones being sick too.
My eldest daughter has mastered multitasking, rocking her sister and reading a story!
I've cleaned up a bit and this afternoon will be trying to do as little as possible.
I did get some sewing done over the weekend, here's a little peek.
I'll be back to share as soon as I'm feeling up to it.
backing a crochet blanket
My wonderful Nan made a crochet granny blanket for my baby girl and it needed backing with fabric (to strengthen it and to stop little fingers getting caught). Thanks to everyone for the advice on how to do it (I did love Laura's suggestion of a crochet border) - I thought about it a lot and tried a couple of different things but here's what I ended up doing...
I cut backing fabric just bigger than the blanket (I didn't measure because I was trying to be quick but you want it 1/2" inch bigger on all sides so you can hem the fabric).
Then I folded the edges of the fabric over twice (about 1/4" each time), pressed them and stitched the fold down on each side. I kind of just mitred the corners as I went and tucked them in a bit to make them neat.
I used basting pins around all the edges to attach the fabric to the back of the blanket and then hand sewed a blanket stitch using perle thread to sew them together.
At this point I thought I would try quilting it on the sewing machine - it wasn't so successful. Maybe if the backing fabric wasn't so thin, or I had basted it better but it just looked messy. So a bit of unpicking and some thinking later I decided to look up tying a quilt. I found this great tutorial by Jera, which I would highly recommend. Basically you stitch through the layers at regular intervals, without cutting, until you've finished your length of yarn/thread. I used perle cotton thread and it was so very simple and amazingly fast to do.
You then cut between the threads and tie them together. After a bit of research I used a surgeon's knot when tying. There's a very simple youtube video tutorial but it's basically just making another twist over the thread before you pull the knot tight.
Then there you have it, a backed granny crochet blanket!
You hardly notice the bits of perle thread unless you're really looking closely and I'm going for a 'rustic' look with this one (thanks for that phrase Susan!). I also thinks it looks nice on the back, sort of tufty.
It's a really quick and simple way to back a crochet blanket and it's been getting lots of use!
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