It's been a busy week for lots of reasons and of course there is always plenty of sewing involved. I have been working on projects for the Sewing Quarter, including classic designs and techniques, creating my own pattern and a felt hand sewn make!

On Thursday 7/12 I was demonstrating the Creative Grids Diamond Wedding Ring templates. I adore this traditional pattern and the templates make it far easier to prepare the pieces and the accuracy of cutting makes piecing spot on!


For a bold look I chose a rainbow of solid colours with a dark background and enjoyed doing some simple curved echo quilting in navy. I decided to use a decorative machine stitch on the binding, it adds a bit of fun and I found one that worked well with the diamond theme. It's actually a utility stitch but it looks great!



Then I took a block from the Crossed Branches quilt design in Stuart Hillard's latest book Use Scraps, Sew Blocks, Make 100 Quilts to make a mini quilt. I really enjoy appliqué and I used blanket stitch and a zig zag, with two colours of 50wt Aurifil thread to mix things up a bit.


It was interesting that Stuart used different spacing of the leaves in the branches and I kept that in, so the diagonals are the same but a couple of the branches have the leave slightly further apart. Details like that add interest I think.

The print fabrics are all Kaffe Fassett collective and they mix really nicely with the warm browns. I did some free motion loopy quilting around the appliqué with a light beige 50wt Aurifil thread.


On Friday 8/12 I got to demo the Party Points table runner I designed! I have been in love with prairie points for a while and wanted a fun way to showcase them. Pairing them with large flying geese creates a nice impact in a modern way.


I did more free motion quilting, making squiggles in the flying geese background and a decorative machine scallop stitch in the border underneath the points. Credit and thanks to Bex Allen for the pretty styling and photographs.


Finally a couple of smaller makes, though the first took some time! This is the elephant sewing companion and pin cushion from Making Pincushions by C&T Publishing. It has such a cute vintage vibe.


All hand sewn and because it's felt it was easy to cut out and work with. And look she holds a thimble in her trunk! One of the viewers named her Thimblelina, perfect!


And finally I got to make a project from Aneela Hoey's gorgeous book Stitched Sewing Organisers. Every make in the book is beautiful and useful, one of which I was lucky enough to receive recently! I made the large foldover mini pouch, a handy little case and such a clever construction. I could make these all day long, so satisfying!



That sums up my week of sewing! We've had the first snow this week, feeling wintery and very inspired. I love crafting in the winter, well obviously all the time, but there's something about being able to make quilts in the winter, so perfectly cosy!

Enjoy your weekend :)


linking to crazy mom quilts