On my sewing table at the moment...

Back in April when I was away visiting my friend J, I promised to make her some new birthday bunting as she said hers was looking a little sad. Of course on returning home I had lots of things to catch up on and the bunting was filed at the back of my mind! However, it suddenly came to the front of my mind again when I was looking through the calendar and was reminded that her daughter will be 21 soon so they will need bunting!

 I know that J's favourite colour is red, so I searched through my fabric and scraps to find what I had in red, then added in some blue as well.  I decided to make the lettering out of the patterned fabric and search again for solid colours for the flags. Discovering that I don't have many solid colours, but did have some nice neutral linen, I decided to make a more 'grown up' bunting - as her children are now grown up, and the colours would match well with her decor!

The flags are all made and the letters outlined, and I have just cut some bias binding....

....I had some wide ric rac, so now just need to put it all together and get it sent off to her.

 I have also been making up some cushions, from the material that I printed last term at my screen printing course. My plan was to make new cushions for the garden bench, just to make it a little more comfy when sitting out in the sun - and we have been lucky with the sun over the last week or so. The red cushion with the cotton reel is for my sewing chair.

The main fabric is linen, and the backing on the green is a cotton ticking and the red is a linen with a lovely tiny flower, and I made self coloured buttons.

I've got a few more printed squares to make, but need to match up some backing fabric.

Must get on and finish the bunting.......

Screen printing catch up

Last week I started back at my screen printing on fabric course. This term is only six weeks, so I need to think quite carefully what I want to achieve.

But first a catch up on last term when I designed some simple patterns that I could print out to make patchwork or to sew with. When I went to London recently to visit the Kaffe Fassett exhibition I bought some lovely linen at The Cloth House, so in the last few sessions I printed out one of the patterns onto this new linen and some cotton and have used it to make a little clip purse.

This was me trying different combinations and colours and material with the designs to see what worked well together.

Then printing the flower design onto my new linen - which had a line running through it - looks quite neat!

I've made quite a few of these purses now using the pattern from here.  Here I am just machining the lining and outer fabric together, and you can see the interlining and interfacing.

Now turned the right way out, and I'm about to glue the frame onto the bag. I forgot to take any photos as I was too busy concentrating on not getting glue everywhere!

Finished purse...

... and with lining showing.

It is quite exciting to use my own fabric design that I have hand printed to make something! I think I will make another purse using the yellow flower sometime.

This term I am planning to print some slightly larger images, so that I can make some cushion covers for the garden seats.

Birthday, screen printing and knitting

These past few weeks have flown by! I just don't know where the time has gone....

... but I have been rather busy making a present for C. She recently celebrated her 21st birthday, so I was beavering away finishing her present -  hmm only had 21 years to make it!!  A card also made from some of my Laura Ashly scraps.

Of course there was cake - I made this cake for her 6th birthday and it has always been her favourite, so thought I would make it again - she and her house mates loved it! We spent the weekend with her which was a real treat. We ate lots of lovely food and had a great evening with her and her friends when we took them out for a meal. It was just a flying visit as they are all so busy with deadlines for the end of term.

At my screen printing course I decided this term I would concentrate on making some simple repeated patterns. I would then combine them and make samples of printed material that I can use for patchwork or sewing. I made five simple designs and have mixed some lovely colours to use when printing. I tried out some of the patterns on white cotton last week, and this week will use some linen and coloured cotton. Its all a bit experimental at the moment.

I have also been knitting socks for C. When she came home a few weeks ago she saw some wool she liked and asked if I would knit her a pair. Again using Regia wool - I just love how the pattern appears  - it makes me smile :-)

Finished

Finished my latest pair of socks!

I even managed to get the stripes to match!

Just what is needed to keep my feet warm and cosy.....

.... especially as we woke up to this again today - and it is still snowing!

The wool I used is Regia 4ply and is appropriately called snowflake! I've used this wool for socks lots of times now,  I find it really hard wearing and it washes well - which is just as well as I live in my knitted socks in the winter.

I also screen printed a few more of my dip dyed bags last week at my screen printing course. No course this week as it is half term, but I'm busy with new designs for my next class.

Hope you are keeping warm and cosy.

what a blogging small world!

Back in November I was pleased to find out that I had won a fellow bloggers give away. 

The occasion was to celebrate the 50th post that Mags (from Mags Creative Meanderings) had made, and when getting in touch with her we realised that we actually lived reasonably close to each other so I suggested it might be nice to meet up. With the run up to Christmas and with me hurting my back, and then the snow, we only managed to get together this last weekend.

We decided to meet at Farfield Mill as the Mill is hosting a Quilt Festival from now until April 7th. (more about this in a later post as I forgot to use my camera) It was the first time Mags had visited the Mill, and with the quilt festival running it gave us a common interest - however as we went around the exhibits chatting away we slowly realised that we had a lot more in common. We had actually met before .... in fact we had worked together in the past when we were both much younger!

It was just so strange, we had not recognised each other and I guess had not been looking for connections at all - apart from our crafting interests, but once we realised we had a common past things just fell into place.  Also, I guess we had both changed a little over the years :-) and at that time Mags hadn't shortened her name, and I use my middle name on my blog.  So over a pot of tea - and huge piece of cake - we chatted away about people we had both known and generally bought each other up to date about of lives.

Mags thinks she may have a photo of us at her leaving do when she moved to a new job away from the area - that will be interesting if she can find it!

I would also like to thanks Mags for her very generous give away gifts - it was just like Christmas opening the package and I now have a beautiful shawl and loads of lovely goodies to play with.

On the crafting front - I have now made all my blocks (all 36) for the scrappy round the world quilt. The tutorial I have been using is here and I also picked up some good tips from here. I have been laying the blocks out and moving them around to get the scrappy look!

 I now need to sew all the blocks together. I have the backing and the wadding ready, so it it may actually be finished quite soon now.

I've also finished my screen printed Tea Towel experiment - it has been a good learning curve, and I will now be moving on and starting a new project.

While I still had the screen available I printed an elephant onto one of the dip dyed bags I made earlier. I rather like this, I may make a few more as the screen has not been cleaned yet!

and my Amaryllis is now flowering! Beautiful.

Screen printing update

Just a quick update from my screen printing on fabric course. We have now finished for the Xmas break, but unfortunately I didn't quite get as far as I wanted to. The plan was to print linen tea towels as xmas gifts for family and friends, but the whole process has taken longer than I imagined, or what I wanted to do was a little more complicated than my beginner ability!

I needed to order a second screen or lose the first images I had made, so that took a week. Then, when I put the photo emulsion on I couldn't have done it quite right, as when I washed the screen after adding the image, part of the image washed away - so I had to clean the whole screen and start again.

However, during the last session I did manage to print the base elephant and get the overlaying image printed onto it.... ta dah!!!! My purple elephant.

Bit of a smudge and not quite aligned, but hey, I'm pleased with my first attempts and can't wait for next term.

First attempts at screen printing

I am having so much fun learning new things at the moment! I'm taking a 'screen printed textiles' course this term - screen printing was also on my wish list of things to learn this year. In fact it is something I have wanted to try for a long time, but have never had the chance really until now. What I would love to do eventually is design and screen print my own fabric so I can use it to make things.

I'm now a few weeks into the course and it is getting more exciting as I have just made my first screen. Before that we were spending quite a lot of the time on design, and I was a bit overwhelmed as I had so many ideas of things that I wanted to do that I had problems narrowing down my ideas.

But, as you can see, my image is an elephant, which will be overlaid with a paisley pattern in a second (and maybe third) colour. I will need to print the shapes out first, and then clean the screen and make a second screen with the overlay patterns on it. I'm probably being far too ambitious for a first effort - so we shall see how it all turns out.

I'm working with a lovely group of people. There are just six people on the course, so the group is small and we get lots of attention from our tutor. We are all from very different art/craft/design backgrounds and working on quite different ideas for our finished product, so we are all learning from each other as well.

I will hopefully be printing this coming week - I'm so excited!