Owl key chain holders

       I planned to make some small Christmas gifts for some ten children, who came to my house every Sunday night to recite Chinese classics. Surfing the web for inspiration, I stumbled across Craft Passion's owl key chain holder. I fell for the design right away and made them. And voila!

       Darker colors seemed to work better with this pattern. My nephew and neice preferred the blue ones. I told them, though, that they had to work hard in class to be in the running. Fair play is important after all.

       I'll try to post pictures of the children with these owls, that is, if I remember to do that. Before that, let's listen to these owls' hooting.

Owl language interpretation: Merry Christmas!!



Puzzle quilt

Yesterday I finished the second quilt in the year.

Like the name of this quilt, I was quite puzzled after finishing it because I planned to have six rows but I ended up with only five. I still couldn't figure out where the last row went.

I had so much fun shopping for fabric and trying to get the best look.  It is going to a baby girl of my friend, to thank him for the helps he had given me before. I even attached a label to the back.

Though hand stitching creates a unique look, I am not really into it that much.








If you hold the quilt against the light, you get this amazing effect:
















Finally, to show you a complete look of the quilt.

Giveaways

A few giveaways:

1. Corrie at Retro Mummy is giving away fat quarter fabrics. It's a generous one and 3 people will be chosen.



2. Tea Rose Home is holding a Thanksgiving giveaway.
There are some good prizes. Pop over here if you're interested!

Good luck, everybody!

Pinwheel quilt finished

Ta-da. Here is my baby quilt which took me 10 months to complete.

My dad was holding it for me this morning. I love this picture. Can you see the pinwheels turning? Sit further back in your chair and I'm sure you will.

Here is the back--shells and stars.

I thought there should be a sky, some sunshine and cloud above the pinwheels, so I appliqued some on. I liked it how the quilting made the sky looked filled with cloud.



About the width of borders, I sat brooding about it for an afternoon, net-surfing for ideas. Finally I decided to cut the bias strip 2.5" wide, which allowed me just enough leeway for the stich in the ditch finish. The finished width on the front is 1/4".

I also spent some time doing the square root calculating to determine how much fabric was required for making the strip. It turned out that a mere 24" square of fabric produced the length I needed (about 234"). I'd have to write a formula for this on excel at my leisure. Arithmetic made me dizzy.

See those little clips? They were so handy during binding process. No pins, no fazing pinpricks! When I came to the corners, I used double-sided tape to secure the mitre. They made my life easier.

By the way, I followed the tube method to cut binding strips. Check out the super clear video tutorial from the link. It was fun and saved me the hazard of joining all those ends. But you want to be extra careful when cutting the tube not to catch the fabric under the layer you're cutting. 

That's what I have to share. I find it helpful setting deadlines for my quilts, otherwise I have no idea when it can be done. I'm off to start piecing another quilt which is due the end of November.

I am Free Motion Quilting!!

I can't believe finally I get to use the darning foot I purchased more than 1 year ago. I've been studying about FMQ and practiced doing it for some time.

I finished piecing and basting my quilt, and the quilting is in full swing. When I was basting, at first I put the quilt on a mattress but found it didn't work as it got wrinkled. Then it dawned on me why other quilters laid their quilts on the kitchen floor when basting: because other areas are carpeted. From this I learned that only flat and solid floor worked. Hours of basting almost finished me and I decided to use an adhesive spray for my subsequent quilts.

My sewing table was quite small. But I made the most out of it by adding a few things to reduce the dragging force of gravity.

 Books! Literature books came in handy at this time. They were just the right width. Don't I love literature! Thanks, Charlette Bronte and all! 

I also used my ironing board, which is the same height as my table, for suppor on the left side. With them, I was all set.

About the quilting pattern, I wanted to try circles to create the turning effect of pinwheels. But the result was funny so I switched to meandering right away.

Meandering proved to be much better and I stuck to it. I'm almost half way through. Free motion quilting was a lot quicker than I had thought. I could literally "quilt in a day", if I wasn't disturbed.

Off to continue quilting right now. It's my first time free motion quilting a big quilt. Hopefully it turns out alright.

Giveaway News from other sites

Micki on Irish Muses is holding a Accuquilt Go giveaway.
She's so generous that each person can have 4 entries at most.
Go and check this out.


Bear Bits is also giving away a very cute bear:
http://bearbits.blogspot.com/2010/10/my-fall-giveaway.html#comment-form

How cool is that!

Tutorial: zipper pocket

When making handbags, it's always nice to have a zipper pocket for privacy.
I managed to take photos while I made one. I might not have done it perfectly. But the following is virtually the steps to making a zipper pocket.

1. Prepare the materials
You'll need your lining fabric, pocket fabric, and a zipper.

Cut the lining fabric according to your bag pattern. 

Choose a desired length of zipper based on the size of your bag and your personal preference. Here I used a 6" zipper.

As for the pocket fabric, it is 8*16". The width should be 2" longer than the length of your zipper. You'll also have to decide the length of your pocket according to the size of your bag. The length of your pocket fabric is (length of pocket+1")*2. If my pocket should be 7", then the length of the pocket fabric is 16".

You might want to iron on some interfacing onto the back of both pieces of fabric.

2. Draw a rectangle on the wrong side of your pocket fabric. The rectangle should be 1" away from the top and two sides.

Ignore the numbers in this picture. The rectangle is always 3/8" wide. Add 3/16" to your zipper for the length.

Draw a dotted line along the middle of the rectangle. At 3/8" from each end, mark a diagonal line to the corner to make a "Y" look. Refer to the next picture for this detail.

3. Find out the center of lining fabric and pocket fabric, lay them right sides together, the pocket fabric on top of the lining. Note that the top of pocket fabric is 1" lower from that of the lining fabric.














4. Sew around the rectangle.

5. Cut along the dotted line. You can lay your first snip by folding the fabric in half as shown below.

Keep cutting until you reach the "Y".

Cut the diagonal line, go as deep as you can. Take care not to cut the thread.

You'll end up with two dogs ears at both ends of the rectangle.

 6. Turn the pocket fabric to the back of the lining through the hole.

After you turn the whole pocket fabric to the back, press the fabric nice and neat with your iron. There shouldn't be any puckers as in the photo. When I was sewing the rectangle, I went a bit askew at the corners.

7. Insert and baste the zipper to the rectangular opening.

8. Sew around the zipper using a zipper foot.

   Start from the tail of the zipper. At this point, the zipper is closed.

As you sew towards the head, pull the zipper to the back so the head won't be in the way of your needle. Be very careful with this because zippers can easily break your needle.

Keep sewing and you're almost done!

9. Turn to the back. Fold the pocket fabric in half lengthwise to form the pocket. Pin and sew around the 3 sides. Make sure you don't catch the lining fabric as you sew. That is, you only sew 2 layers of fabric instead of all 3.

10. Voila! A zipper pocket finished. Laugh, clap and celebrate!

Pinwheel Quilt in Progress

I have a pinwheel quilt in progress. This quilt was meant for my boyfriend, who broke up with me soon after I posted my quilt plan.
After that I stopped quilting for several months; the quilt started to incur guilt within me.

Now that I want to give it to my father, the quilt needs to be bigger than previously planned. I am making it into a 4*6 feet quilt. I've finished piecing the pinwheel blocks:

I'll add several borders to it and it'll be ready for quilting.
I've also been musing about the quilting patterns and ideas keep coming up. I'm so excited about it.

Besides joining the blocks together, I made several hexagon bookworms. Aren't they cute? They're easy to make and practical in use. Here's a tutorial from Sew Many Ways.

Garden this morning

r since I picked up quilting, I started to appreciate mother nature more closely. The morning sunshine, the ever-changing sky, vegetation, and all. It seems that all quilters' got a garden or something.
This is what it looks like in my home:

See that green pepper above? It grows really fast.

I just love these pinky flowers. They're pretty common; I see them all the time.

And some lotuses. It's a pity I can't upload their scent.

3D white flower bag

A few weddings of my cousins are around the corner.
I made this bag for Mom to make her the most graceful aunt at the banquets. I call it 3D because I used four layers of white fabric and interfacing for petal applique to override the black tone underneath. The petals were thick enough to stand out before I quilted around them.

Pictures at different angles:

Did you get it right? My hexagons are used for the side of this bag.

The bottom. It's pretty wide and will hold a good many items.

Two pockets inside the bag. One is zippered. (By the way, I'm thinking about posting a zipper pocket tutorial on here.)

It took me eight whole days to finish it. My sister-in-law said whenever she sees my work, she rejoices. Guess what? Me too!

Hexagons First Attempt

I am so tired from sewing hexies which I've started 3 days ago.

Now that the top is finished and I'm tired of any more stitches, it's perfect time to show them up here.

There aren't many of them, about 60. I used paper piecing and had much fun through the process. I especially loved the crispy feeling as I sewed through the paper and fabric. But later it took me much time to rip off the threads on the front. It's part of the reasons I'm so tired now. (Yawn~~) Here is a new and detailed tutorial on hexie paper piecing from Sew Many Ways.

It's quite scrappy because I managed to use up remnants from quilt kits I bought last year, and I did use them up! Most of the fabrics came from Japan. Somehow we idolize Japanese quilting in Taiwan. From the photo, you can instantly detect the cultural difference: Japanese fabrics are darker in tone, and so are the finished projects.

I'll quilt them tomorrow. It's not a quilt apparently.

I'll leave you wondering for some time before I finish the whole thing. ^^

Tinkering: bag handle

A week or two ago, a friend of mine brought her bag to me and asked if I could help her fix the handle. Her bag came here like this:

The fabric at the middle of the handle was broken due to constant use and the batting was showing.
I ripped off one of the handle and checked how it was folded and attached to the bag.
As I had a clear idea, I started "tinkering".
I cut two strips of fabric, each measured 6*47 cm
(The finished handle should be 2*45 cm)
I also cut out batting and ironed it to the wrong side of the fabric.

Folded each end 1 cm inward.Pressed two sides of fabric toward the batting. Made a French seam on the wider side and have it cover the other side.
Then, went to the sewing machine to close the seam.

I hand sewed the straps onto the bag, following the original placement.

I used pins to mark the places. It's crucial to make sure the placement is correct, otherwise you might end up with uneven length.


Voila, a tote with new handles!