My first Sew Together Bag!

The Sew Together Bag by Sew Demented is all over Instagram and probably other places too and I have been meaning to try this pattern for ages but haven't been brave enough until now. 

I kept it simple for this first attempt, so just a single piece of fabric quilted for the outside. Many others have made elaborate outer casings for the bag. I have plans to try other designs but not this one.

I had some Parson Gray fabrics which are I have not found a use for until now. I mixed in a kona solid too, a teal maybe, not sure what it's called though to calm down the patterns a bit!

Fabrics

The pattern said to cut all the pieces first, so I actually took some notice of this and prepared all my pieces. I must say it did help! Made putting it together much quicker!
If you are considering making one these bags I recommend checking out this great tutorial by The Quilt Barn.  It will lead you through the process of making this bag step by step, with loads of helpful pictures! Not sure I would have made it through to the end unscathed without it ;-)

All the Pieces cut and ready to go!

It didn't take too long to get to the point of having 3 zippers installed.

Three zippers installed

The hardest bit I found was doing the binding. I'm not very good at machine binding and this calls for it. I often find that when I am topstitching I miss the underside of the binding because I have sewn too close to the edge or I have pulled the binding too far over on the underside and the stitches are too far away from the edge that it looks wrong. I usually spend a lot of time with my stitch ripper at this point!

But I got there. It doesn't look too bad for a first attempt. It works which is even better! Now for a few pictures.

Unzipped

All zipped up and ready to fill!

I thought it was going to be a bit busy with all the different patterned fabrics but with the Kona solids it has toned it down a bit.

Now I have made one I think there will probably be more to follow! There is also a mini version worksheet available here!! Oh the possibilities are endless!!!

This was one of my Finish Along goals for the first quarter! Yay! 

Finish Along Q1 Goals

I have decided there are a few things I need to finish this year! Although that won't stop me starting things in between! :) So I am going to join On the Windy Side's quarterly Finish Along to help me focus a bit and try and get some long time WIPs finished.

Some goals for this first quarter!

1. To finish off the Flowering Star quilt! It's about 3/4 quilted and the binding is organized so what really is stopping me!! No deadline, just a desire to finish it!




Flowering Star

2. I always leave it too late to start sewing Christmas gifts and then run out of time or energy! So this time I made a start on next years Christmas sewing a few days after Christmas! I know the interest for this will soon fade so I am making this one of my early goals. Here are the 2 finished mats, the other 2 are partially constructed!

Chalk cloth placemats

3. This poor quilt has sat basted for too many years! It was supposed to be for my youngest daughter. I really should quilt it. I don't know if I still like it or not! Too many new and gorgeous fabrics around I wish I'd used instead! My stumbling point had been indecision on a quilting pattern. Anyway, I will finished it and decide what to do after I see it complete! Deadline of Nov 25th!


Red & White 9 Double Patch

4. I have this set of blocks that need putting together into an actual quilt! I know how I want this to look so it should be fairly straightforward. Deadline of October 2nd!

Dr Who blocks ready to assemble

5. I have as many of these moderninstabee blocks as I think I am going to receive! They are so big (18") are crowding my design wall too much so I want to get these sewn together and quilted! No real deadline for this one so I suspect it will end up being moved along!

Moderninstabee blocks ready to assemble

6. I have lost track of how many of the Sew Together bags I have seen on IG! I have had the pattern for a while and I really would like to make one! So this is on my list too! I have some Figures by Zen Chic which might work nicely for it!


7. I started this Old Romance Cardigan pattern by Jojiknits back in September! It has 2 sleeves so I think I have done the hard bit! Really must finish it off!




Old Romance Cardigan

8. I made a Minecraft hat for my son for Christmas and a skeleton one for my husband, sadly neither of them fit my husband very well!! My knitting is always too tight! That said, my husband has been squeezing into the Minecraft hat, so I am in the process of making him his own, larger hat. This needs finishing before our slightly cold weather turns into spring and he doesn't need it.

 
Well, given I have 3 college courses on the go this term and everything else that goes with family life, I think this list is far too ambitious for one quarter, but hey I can try!

Linking up with 

A Lovely Year of Finishes - January goal

Happy New Year to everyone.

I am going to kick the year off with some organizing, and not only in my sewing room! The house needs some serious purging and organizing but won't go into that here!! 
In terms of sewing, this months goal is to make 2 more fabric boxes for my scraps. Back in the Spring of last year I made a series of fabric boxes using my scraps and blogged here about them.

Fabric boxes

I have 2 colours remaining, brown and black/grey. So using this box of scraps in the photo below I will finish off my collection of boxes. And I guess make some more room on the shelves for them, somehow!

Brown and black/grey scrap fabrics

A simple goal for this month to get me started.

Linking up with :

A Lovely Year of Finishes 2015

I am going to join Sew Bittersweet Designs and Fiber of All Sorts again this coming year and see if I can complete some long overdue projects! 

Sewing took a backseat these past few months due to going back to college but I am hoping now I am in the swing of study again (ha!) I might be able to do both! Time will tell!

Check it out here! I grabbed their button!

It's been a while!

It has been a while since I blogged! I went back to college in September and it took over all my spare time, so very little sewing happened until term ended at the beginning of December! I then set to making some Christmas gifts! 

First off, I caught up on some blocks for the moderninstabee, two Ziggy Stardust blocks:

Some oven gloves for my daughter who loves to cook!

Some fun scarves for friends and our kids.

Some knitted hats:

Late on Christmas Eve I eventually finished this Doctor Who Dalek cushion for my hubbie. The pattern was not easy but so pleased I persevered with it and I am really pleased with how it turned out! The pattern is by Soma at Whims and Fancies.

There are a few things that I haven't taken pictures of too. But now I put it all in one place I realize I was quite productive! :)

Small design board!

I have a design wall but more often than not it is full! How dare it! Or sometimes I am working on a smaller project and it would be good not to lose the positioning when I move it to the sewing machine. Because without a doubt I drop a piece or transpose a couple!

So when I saw this tutorial by Lori Holt to make a small portable design board I couldn't resist making one! This tutorial is not new so how come it took me so long to find it!! 

I got a foam board from the dollar store, found a piece of scrap wadding and a couple of jelly roll strips for the pretty binding. Within an hour I had a 20" square portable design board.

The tutorial is great and they are so simple to make. I got a bit carried away with the glue gun so I have some splodgy messes on the back, but hey, who is going to see those! 

I made the large size first as I was about to make some large blocks, but now I am thinking I might need a smaller one too! And here is my first block on the board. It will be 16.5" when all sewn together so my board sizing was ideal.

Flowering Lonestar Pattern Giveaway!

Last week I posted about a quilt pattern I had been testing for Melissa at Sew BitterSweet Designs. The post went up whilst I was away from home and I didn't know at the time of writing that I would be lucky enough to be able to give away a copy of the pattern.

Melissa launched the new patterns on Monday, you can read about it here, and see a variety of stunning quilts made using her pattern. It's quite amazing how a change of fabric or colour alters the pattern There are endless possibilities with this pattern.

This is Melissa's Flowering Lonestar. I love the bright fabrics against the grey background and her quilting is just stunning. 

If only I had picked a simpler quilting style I might be able to show a finished quilt but I am still quilting it! So here's some pictures of the quilting so far.

Pictures of the quilting on the Flowering Lonestar

The giveaway: CLOSED NOW

To win a copy of the flowering Lonestar pattern just leave a comment, anything you like.

And Sew Bittersweet Designs followers get a second entry, leave a comment letting me know how you follow Melissa.

If you'd like to follow me too, comment here how you do and you'll get a third entry.

The giveaway is open to anyone since it's a pdf pattern, good luck. Please make sure there's some way I can contact you, in case you win. I'll draw a random winner next Wednesday, August 20.


Linking up with:

  

Flowering Lone Star

** Update: I was away when this was post published and didn't know that Melissa was so kindly allowing me to giveaway a copy of the pattern. Come back later in the week for a chance to win! **

I have followed Melissa at Sew BitterSweet Designs since taking part in the Lovely Year of Finishes last year. She put out a call for some pattern testers a little while back and the pattern was a lone star. I love stars. So I just had to give it a go.

The last time I did a Lone star pattern it involved several tiny ones (6" stars) encompassing a slightly larger one, and it was foundation pieced (picture here). This time the lone star measures almost 50" and is just pieced!

It didn't take me too long to decide on the fabrics, these just sort of jumped out at me! Some bright,  yummy Kona solids.

The pattern was well written and really easy to follow. The hardest part of it was cutting all the pieces. The fun bit was then to decide on the actual layout. I arranged the pieces in different ways, consulted with my kids but when I didn't like their choice (the top left pic) it confirmed the layout I wanted to go with.

The final star looked like this:

The next step were the y-seams. I am not a fan of y-seams. The pattern explained well how to do it and they worked, with a lot of starch and a heavy iron! I just didn't like doing it! 

Flowering Lone Star

I knew I didn't want to do any more y-seams so to avoid that I pieced some stars using HST instead using all the colours from the front. I placed the stars in the corners so they would be in the white space on the front to help determine my quilting pattern. 

Back of the Flowering Lone Star

Basted and ready to quilt. I struggled with how to quilt this. I attempted a variety of ideas but was stomped because wanted to match the thread to the front and also to the back. I read a lot of well known FMQ blogs and books and most will say they use the same thread top and bobbin. But I didn't want to do this and it gave me a lot of grief. I eventually got the tension right which meant that my dark top thread doesn't show (too much) on the light backing fabric. If you look too closely little dots can be seen on the back, but I can live with that. 

So to start with I did some simple straight line quilting on the large lone star. I haven't yet decided if I am going to do some more quilting on the star or leave it as it is.

I am quite heavily free motion quilting in the white space corners. I outlined the star from the back and then pebbled out from the star points. I have then done a maze filler pattern in the remaining area.

I am happily quilting but it's taking me much longer than I thought it would, as these things often do. 

Melissa is launching her pattern today and I had hoped I would have finished the quilting to show off her great pattern. But sadly it is not finished. So here is my quilt as it stands at the moment.

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