Thursday 28 September 2017

An early quilt top...unsurprisingly unfinished!

So in checking my blog for whether I'd ever mentioned this quilt top before I learnt a few things:

1. I make a lot of kindle covers (not all for other people, I think I've lost two so far)

2. I'm rubbish at finishing things, my early to-do lists seem to contain projects which are still in progress 

3. I need some quality control on my blog as I've posted about the same thing twice at least once (if that makes sense).

Anyway the point of today's post is the dilemma I'm having over an unfinished top. My very first quilting class was how to make a french braid, or at least that was the outcome of it. Which I then made in to a top. Unfortunately my choice of fabrics as based on a random jelly roll I'd picked up some time before and to tell the truth I'm not madly keen about the colours.


The top consists of four columns of braid and a fairly large quantity  of the border fabric - it seems I always had a taste for large quilts!

I feel bad leaving this top unfinished and I really can't bring myself to bin it, so I am going to finish it and them decide it's fate. At the moment I'm leaning towards donating it to Project Linus or a charity raffle prize but we'll see.  Judging on my past abilities to finish things that decision will be way off in the future!

Saturday 23 September 2017

Great British Sewing Bee Live

An excursion to London Town today with my sister to investigate the Great British Sewing Bee Live  at the Excel.

We really weren't sure what to expect given that the only major crafty event we have ever been to is the Festival of Quilts, although we had realised we were unlikely to see any quilts (we were wrong there was the odd one on some of the stall holders stands). It was quite evident from the start that the emphasis was on the paid for talks and workshops and the stalls.  

I definitely can't complain about the stalls - lots of fabrics (which I resisted), less clothes patterns than I expected (which I didn't resist) and some interesting ideas, such as make-your-own lampshade kits and a 3m free motion  quilting frame which will definitely receive some exceptionally serious consideration.

There was a couple of interesting galleries.  One consisting of garments made during various seasons of the Great British Sewing Bee...




These garments were all made by contestants from the fourth season - Rumana, Joyce and Angelique.

There was also a gallery of vintage clothes made from Liberty fabrics...




A very small sample of what was on display.

As we didn't have tickets for the talks or the workshops we had a bit of time left to go and visit the Science Museum, always a fascinating experience since its recent overhaul.  We did search for Tim Peake's space module but apparently it's on tour and currently in Bradford,  luckily the Apollo 10 Command Module hadn't gone wandering...



And if anyone is interested here are the sewing patterns, which I sharing with my sister...



I've never made a garments before so I may be bring somewhat optimistic assessing myself as an adventurous beginner. I'll let you know.

And no knitting was done on the train!

Tuesday 19 September 2017

UFOs - a manageable plan (hopefully)

After getting mostly sorted after moving house and developing a bit of free time for reading or crafting I've decided I will make a concerted effort to finish all my half done projects. Rather than list absolutely everything here I'm going to target a small number at a time. First in my sights are the, fingers crossed, quick wins which are:

- My mystery blanket (which hasn't been a mystery since 2012!)

- My friend's Kindle cover

- The Xmas quilt

- Magic loop socks

Nothing too challenging I think, so hopefully something will get finished before I get distracted again (I'm not sure visiting the Great British Sewing Bee Live on Saturday will help, but maybe I could take my magic loop socks to do on the train!?)