Blog of the Month - True Up

So many nice blogs out there and I feel like sharing. It is time for blog of the month!


Do you like fabric? Then you will love Kim Kight's blog called True Up. It is all about fabric all the time. I see it as my higher education program for fabric and fabric design in particular. At first I got even a bit intimidated and overwhelmed by all the information. How can I ever learn all of this? The overall tone is however very positive and encouraging so don't be afraid.

Kim reviews all the most interesting new fabrics on the market but gives also attention to new upcoming designers. She is just so unbelievably generous! Every now and then she has designer interviews that I love to read. In her Textile Stew she gives the best links to what is going on in the blogging world. On Sundays you can check who is having fabric sales, international shops included. I love her international approach. There is no borders when it comes to love and fabric!

If you are looking for a fun but informative blog about fabrcis you need to look no further.

Beans

I have not (yet) found anyone who shares my enthusiasm over growing beans. Which makes me kind of a geek, i guess. I think it is the most amazing thing. You put the beans in the ground. Then for few weeks nothing happens. And then in just few days this comes up:

The magic doesn't end here. If everything goes well, one day you will find a very rewarding surprise under the leaves. 

The Baby Blanket

Here it is! The baby blanket is all done and ship to the little baby. It is made of soft cotton jersey, both the top and the backing and the batting is 100 % cotton. The most important principle for me was to make it as baby-friendly as it can be. It is soft, it can be washed in 60 degrees Celsius and the colors I used are high quality non-toxic textile colors (although I would not use anything else for any of my projects).

The Making of
The cotton jersey was quite challenging to work with because it stretches so much but totally worth it being so soft. I actually don’t believe I managed to make a real rectangle of it but close enough. I did not want to use interfacing since I was afraid that it would then loose some of the softness. I first printed the top fabric using a simple self made stencil.  For quilting I used two shades of embroidery thread and big stitches. The quilting part was really fun to do. The most challenging part by far was the binding. I decided to do the double fold French binding and it took me trial and error and three different sources, but I did finally got it and it was so worth it! Here are the sources I used:

 * SunShowerquilts

 * Heather Bailey

 * and Anna Maria Horner's book Seams to Me

For the next time I would like to remind myself to

 * mark very clearly the stitch line

 * by some proper stenciling tools 

All in all I'm very pleased with the quilt. It has a homemade-feel to it that I think makes it very cozy. If you like more professional clean cut looking quilt I think it would be hard to make it with the techniques I used so this might not be a project for you.

A Bonus Quilt
The little baby I made the quilt for has a 2 year old sister and of course I had to make something for her as well. I made little doll quilt using fabric scraps that I buy from here. I started and finished the project the evening before I sent the package and did not have time to take daylight pictures. The colors look much better in real life. It was lot of fun to work with this very colorful mini-quilt after working with only blue and white.

I did not add any batting to it. Inspired by the binding experience with the first quilt I tried to make bias cut binding for this one and I must say I still don't like cutting them. I thought I would not have time to hand sew the binding so I tried to topstitch it. It turned out that I'm still terrible at it. So it saved me no time and looks much worse than if I just hand blind stitched the backside. I hope the doll won't mind. 

The Joy of Doing

I have been working on this little baby blanket that I hope to finish this weekend. I even think it might be my first product launch, will see. The project started the same way most of mine projects get started. I got an idea, got all exited about it - and then got completely stuck because I thought I did not have the right tools for it. Irritation, frustration, endless surfing on internet looking for places where I could by the stuff I thought I needed. Very irritated by the fact that I would not  be able to start right away due to the lack of tools.  
Luckily for me this time I was able to take a deep breath and turn the thing around. Instead of thinking what I don't have I decided to focus on what I do have and let that be the starting point for my design. I knew I could not cut complicated shapes since I did not (and still don't) have utility knife, so I made a simple designs. I did not have contact paper but manage to find something similar that is more expensive but worked. I could get started and enjoy the doing. Now I did finally reached the point where I just have to wait for tomorrow to get the stuff  I need to be able to go on. But I did enjoy several hours of doing instead of giving the whole thing up or waiting until everything would be perfect and I would have all the right tools. 




  

Blog of the Month - Craft Sanity

So many nice blogs out there and I feel like sharing. It is time for blog of the month!


This time it is actually more the podcast that I'm so crazy about rather than the blog, although the blog is nice as well. The podcast and the blog is called Craft Sanity.  The woman behind it, Jennifer Ackerman-Haywood, must be one of the nicest people in the world. I mean I don't know her or anything but just listing to one of her podcast and you know what I mean. 



In her podcast she interviews all kind of creative people and the way she does it is phenomenal. It's more like a real good conversation between two best friends. Or actually three friends the listener being the third one. This is a true power to the people kind of thing. She is exited about something and interviews the person behind it. The person in question gets free marketing and the listener valuable information. No marketing departments or sales reps or editorial boards involved. Just people liking each others stuff and sharing. All this in a fun informal way that I just adore. In Jennifer's own words: Craft Sanity - works for me. 

Sweet Alabama

My craft library has tripled it's size during the last months. The excitement of browsing on Amazon and waiting for the books to come from United States is getting a bit addictive. Couple weeks ago the post brought me book called Alabama Studio Style by Natalie Chanin. I doubted for a long time if I should buy this one or the first book of the same author instead. I finally decided to buy this one since it has recipes as well and I thought if I don't like the projects at least I have a new cook book. I love it. Before I knew it I was hand sewing a basic tank dress for myself. And it is already done! The sewing part that is. I still need to color the fabric which of course in the book was the first step to do but since i didn't have the tools for coloring in hand I skipped it  and started sewing.

Why is this book so great? To be honest, I don't know! I read all the reviews on Amazon and I kept thinking that they are all so enthusiast about it but I don't really see why? What is it that makes it so special? I still don't know what it is but I love it.  As I said I have been purchasing quite a few books lately and most of them I have just skimmed through. With Alabama Studio Style I was cutting fabric the next day and week later bought more fabric to start on another projects from the book. 

I love it that it is all hand sewing. That is one of the few thing that you can actually do when looking after small children. Or when your watching TV. I hope I can get to the coloring soon so that I can post some picture of the finished dress, but since that is not one of the things you can easily do when caring for a 1-year-old it can take awhile. In the mean time please enjoy other peoples creations. 

Fabrics

The quilt shops seems to have it easy - they have this one type of cotton fabric that they sell and that's pretty much it. It is even called Quilting Weight Cotton. But outside the hardcore quilting world things get more complicated. Anna Maria Horner recently posted about her new fabric type, voile. She is also have a collection printed on flannel. Last week I got my new books from Amazon including Alabama Studio Style and she uses cotton jersey for almost all of the projects. When looking at the options to make nappies to my youngest one my head really starts to spin. Bamboo, hemp, silk wool and all kind of combinations of these with different textures. 

What I do know is that I love the combination of hand sewing and cotton jersey as described in Alabama Studio Style. At least if it jersey that I'm working with...and if it is, is it double, interlock or single? I really don't know. I need some help.