Rulers

I thought this month that I’d focus on technical stuff.  I saw on UKQU Facebook group that people ask for recommendations for various quilt making items.  I think that it is an individual thing because of what quilters make and how they work.  Over the years as well as amassing fabric, I’ve also gained a lot of tools.

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So for this post I will be looking at Quilting rulers.  Starting off with the first ruler that I had along with my first cutting board, then I went larger with both. I’ve placed my rulers against the wardrobe door. The original ruler is 2nd from left.  You will notice that I have washi tape on the ruler as I marked where I had cutting lines. From left to right are 24” x 6”, 18 x 6”, 12 x 6” and 8.5” x 4.5”.  The last one I find really useful when cutting small shapes and especially when trimming postcards.

Another type of ruler is the square ruler and I have 2 sizes, 6.5” and 12.5” for squaring up quilt blocks. 

Recently when cutting strips for my friend, she had a June Tailor Shape cutter, which has slots every half inch for a rotary cutting blade.  Having found this useful I bought one myself from Amazon and it is so easy for strip cutting and as you will see it has angles like most rulers have, so it’s useful for cutting bias strips. All the rectangular rulers are stored in between the fabric boxes so they are accessed easily.

I also have some specialist rulers too, which I’ve gathered over the years.  These are mainly different type of triangle ones. They don’t seem to be used that often but they do have their uses. 

Here are my collection. I’ve put these shapes on my block board, so please excuse all those threads!

First is my 60 degree equilateral triangle ruler.  Again, I found that placing washi tape is useful for marking and it also identifies that it’s my ruler. Comes in handy when at workshops.

Above is a 2 peaks in 1 ruler, turning around for the half triangle. This may look a little like to the 60 degree one, but laying one on top of the other the angle is narrower- it’s 57 degrees. Often used for rectangular shapes.

 

The above pic shows a half square ruler, an Easy Angle ruler, which I don’t use often the markings are on both sides of the ruler.  I also had a free one from Today’s Quilter from a few years back.

A few different rulers this time. At the bottom is a Dresden plate ruler, which is found useful for tumbler blocks too when using the wide end measuring up.  There’s another washi tape marker.  I’ve also got a hexi ruler, but unfortunately it measures the height of the hexi not the side measurements. 

I’ve got a couple of rulers that I bought on a whim, but are hardly used and these are half circle and half heart.  I find them easier to use with a pencil in the slots then cut with scissors or free rotary cut.

All the shape rulers are stored in a small Seasalt hessian bag along with their instructions.

So that’s my ruler collection.  How do you use yours?

A July Furtle

Last month I finished crochet kits that were hanging around and this continued into July.  I made Gareth the Fox, which I wrote about earlier this month and is now lounging on top of the storage unit in my room.  I already have a rabbit, blue tit, owl, cat and chicken so there’s quite a menagerie now. The rabbit now has a scarf to go with her coat.

I finished off my Hostfagring shawl which I wrote about here

I’ve also finished off my cardigan, I’ve even got buttons. Really pleased that I’m adding to my made cardigans rather than buying cheap thin ready made ones. This was a Stylecraft pattern made with Stylecraft Bellisima yarn.

Another knitted finish, which I only started at the end of last month is the Sprindrift Shawl, by 

Curious Handmade . Quite and easy shawl by ticking off the progress on the pattern. 

Earlier in the year I made the Attic 24 Dahlia Blanket from the Dahlia yarn kit,  I still had some yarn left in the pack after making a large blanket and a mini one. I used what was left to make another mini for my youngest granddaughter using the same stitch pattern but a different colour order

And then trying to get as much as I can out of the yarn I then made a coat hanger cover. I added some Polyanthus flowers and leaves.  All are Attic 24 patterns.

As for sewing I managed to put the Youngish Quilter blocks together at the beginning of the month and started quilting them.  I am using the walking foot and straight stitching, but adding in one or two wavy stitches as well.

Earlier this week I put together a few of the blocks from the first Splendid Sampler blocks from a few years back

The weaving embroidery is finished.  I spent a few mornings listening to the radio and working on that to get it done. I finished off with a felt backing but didn’t have quite enough of a whole piece so I joined two smaller pieces together and cut out a circle backing. Im really pleased how this looks and may tackle another one sometime.

Some blocks were made for Siblings Together

Birch trees for Dianne

9 patch blocks for Jane.

Phew, that was busy month.  Even though things outside are eased, most time is still spent at home, so I still find plenty to do.

There’s a couple of new things for August which I’m looking forward to - a new kit so I can add to the menagerie.

I'm linking this post to Mini Archie's Monthly Furtle Around the Blogosphere, so pop over and see what other bloggers have been up to.

A Week of Finishes

I’m finished with the mask making for the time being, but as masks and face coverings are required in shops since Friday, there may be more to make.  Who knows?

In the meantime I have been finishing off some projects.  You will have noticed that my monthly marker for this month was this woven embroidery 

I set to and not only got the weaving finished but also trimmed the excess fabric and backed it.  Now I have to find somewhere to hang it.  Before it was hidden I took a photo of the back, with all the starts and finishes.  The circle in different colours is the stem stitch that’s sewn for the final finish.

And below is the finished item.

I started this at West Country Embroiderers back in October at a workshop given by another member of the group. The basis of the landscape design was simple with the sky, hills, fields and road/river and as you can see I did sections at a time.  It was an enjoyable and relaxing make.

My second finish was a cardigan I started back on Christmas Eve and the yarn and pattern is by Stylecraft in their Bellisima yarn.  It was a darker red than I wanted but I liked the way it turned out.  It has a stitch pattern on the sides of back and fronts also down the middle of the sleeve, which is in the photo below.

It did hibernate during the past couple of months as I had some trouble with the stitches to be picked up and knitted for the front button and buttonhole bands, but I decided it had to be finished so I did what I had done and re did it and it worked out ok. 

My third finish (well, just finished the knitting last night) was this Spindrift shawl.  I’ve yet to sew in the starting and ending tails and to wash and block, which it needs to get into shape, but it’s looking good.

The Spindrift shawl is a free pattern by Curious Handmade and the yarn was a Flower Power charity fund yarn special dyed by Sherry Iris (on Etsy.com) in Wild Strawberry.  I’d been looking for a one skein project to use this and the shawl was just right. This picture was taken last night as I’d finished it.  There will be better photos next time.

It starts off with a few stitches but with increases in each row, there’s a massive amount of stitches at the end and a picot edge.  It feels lovely and I shall enjoy wearing.  But first, washing and blocking!

But don’t worry - I won’t have nothing to do!  I’ve started to crochet a mini Dahlia blanket with the remains of the Dahlia yarn pack, like this one below that I made earlier this year, but with a random colour selection as the yarns in the pack dwindle.  This a a super pattern by Attic 24 . The stitches used look the same on the front and back, which is really brilliant and quick too. 

I’ve still got some quilting and there’s the ongoing Sew 4 the Soul project too.

So still plenty to keep me busy!!

Guess What I’ve Been Making?

More masks!

I made 11 Friday and yesterday, then another 4 today.  Some were given to my daughter and others made for my friend’s group and some for TG.  There may be more this week. This time the folded ones.  I had to buy some elastic cord and Vilene to proved the third layer.

One thing I haven’t blogged about but has been plodding along with has been my Sew4thesoul book, which I started at the end of June and will be ongoing for a little while. The book consists of wadding pages onto which fabrics is sewn on and using embroidery to embellish like the strip piece that I made a few months ago (and still is ongoing as well).  Here are some pics of the pages.

First 2 pages and circles and strips

These are pages 5 and 6 (the photos didn’t load in the right order) has Suffolk puffs.  On page 5 I used the pillowcase fabric I used for the Frontline Facemasks and will embroider the name.

pages 3 and 4 were crosses which I embroidered on the printed fabric on the left. I painted the flowers with watercolour pencils.  I made a pocket on the right with another printed piece and used ribbon yarn for the cross and connecting thread for the tag.

Pages 7 and 8 are fabric weaving and I’ve used fabrics that I’ve dyed ar painted from some time ago and added lace, ribbon and a strip of sari ribbon.

As I’ve said all the pages are in progress and I’ve  not joined page to page as yet.  The pages are currently joined at the spine.  I really don’t want to hide the backs of these pieces as they look really interesting.

I used wadding scraps joined together to make the pages.

Watch out for more progress on this.

A Finish and a Quilt Top

Following my last post, last weekend I finished blocked my Hastfagring shawl and it drapes really well, so here are a couple of photos of it hanging up.  It looks quite good, doesn’t it

My finish this week is the last of the Little Box of Crochet projects from back from September 2018.  It’s a lovely little sleeping fox called Gareth, after England Football manager Gareth Southgate, who was famed for wearing a waistcoat. Fox Gareth is crocheted in Waistcoat Stitch (hence his name) which looks like a knit stitch and creates a very firm fabric.  It’s not an easy stitch to do as it is hard on the hands with the firm Rico Cotton and together with changing colours it became challenging to do, but I managed to get the tail, head and ears done (the body was made ages ago) and sew the parts together this morning.

All the bits ready to sew

And there he is, done!

As for quilting I have a quilt top made. The Youngish Quilters Block of the Week’s last block was made on Thursday morning.  It was another appliqué block but stars this time.  Having run out of Bondaweb I turned to using the iron on Vilene appliqué method that was used for the Orange Peel block instead.

I didn’t really like using plain white sashing for framing the blocks, so I utilised the white background fabrics on the horizontal bands and other colours for the vertical ones with assorted squares for the corner stones.  It looked less stark than plain white fabric.

I needed some wadding and also backing and binding.  My local quilt shop, so local I can walk to it had wadding and threads for quilting.  Wool Warehouse had some of the Cocktail Time fabric (it’s now discontinued) so having ordered the fabric on Thursday it arrived on Saturday morning.  I’m hoping to layer up tomorrow to get on with quilting.

Another finish I hope to get done this week is my dark red cardigan which has been hibernating for a few months. The sleeves and side seams have been sewn, so the front bands have to be knitted up. If I can get the picked up stitches right that shouldn’t take too long.  See how we go.

July 2020

Below is my monthly marker for July

This is part of a darning picture that I started last year at one of the West Country Embroiderers workshops  and still haven’t finished.  Here’s a full photo of the embroidery.

I’ve got a couple of finishes already this month as I’ve finished the Autumn Garden (Hostfagring) shawl and it’s even been washed and block and it drapes well,  but I’ve had problems trying to display a nice photo.  But here is is being blocked. The two little balls of yarn are all that’s left!

I used Stylecraft Batik Yarn Cake in Stargazer with the addition of another Batik yarn, the yellow, which is Old Gold. I started this shawl back in November last year and crocheted the gold tip and then started on the rest of the shawl, which was in 6 instalments at the beginning of June and it came together really quickly.

Another quick-ish make has been on Sunday afternoon was a coat for my Luna Lapin.  I already had 3 felt sheets but it wasn’t quite enough,  so I substituted some pink fabric that was used for Luna’s dress for the coat facing and facing the collar.

This pic shows the fabric lining inside. I also cheated with the buttons as I didn’t make buttonholes but put  popper fasteners on instead.

She wanted a scarf 

So I knitted her one.  She’ll be cosy when winter comes.  Luna Lapin is designed by Sarah Peel and her website is here.

Another finish has been my last book, which I finished yesterday - The Midnight Line by Lee Child, which I really enjoyed reading and the storyline was really believable with short chapters that fitted well with my half hour reads.

So my next read, which I started today is The Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson about his growing up in Des Moines, Iowa.  I also bought a book today of Favourite Poems.  Poems that are familiar in some way to us and I just wanted something different to read, alongside the Bill Bryson book.

I was pleased this afternoon after months away to go to Kingston Lacy and although we could not enjoy the kitchen garden it was a nice walk that ended with ice cream.