Studio update – new spool racks

My sister is my blog’s biggest fan and has been giving me a hard time for not posting anything since June. She is right of course. So this one if for you, Frédérique !

If you have been following this blog for a while, you know that I do all my work in my converted attic. An attic has obvious challenges in terms of storage, mainly due to the lack of straight walls. Over the last couple of years, I have accumulated a large number of big thread spools that I stored in plastic containers. And because they were stored away, I never knew what colours I had and ended up buying duplicates again and again.

So when my father-in-law, woodworker extraordinaire, asked me if I needed anything for the house, I suggested racks to display these thread spools along the so far unused sloped walls of the attic. We set about designing the racks, working out the angles involved, etc. and a few weeks later, here is the result in white oak (to match the rest of the furniture) :

 

And with the spools :

 

It is such a simple and elegant solution for this unused space ! Why didn’t I think of it earlier ? Thank you Ivor !

~ Catherine

School Memento

This week, my lovely neighbour Tara asked me to make a pillow cover for her son’s primary school graduation using his school uniform to keep as a souvenir. What a lovely idea ! So here is what I made out of 2 pairs of trousers, a shirt, a jumper, a tracksuit top and a tie :

I just about managed to iron out the trousers creases…

I made this pillow over 2 nights and what took the longest was to figure out the design of the pillow. Once that was done, cutting the fabric was easy. The only challenging part was working with different types of textures – tracksuit material, knit from the jumper, slippery shirt fabric and trouser fabric. I ended up cutting a thin strip of shirt material to put over the knit material to avoid the fabric stretching under the foot of the sewing machine and it worked really well. The final size was 50cm x 50 cm or 20-in x 20in.

If anyone is interested in such a memento for their kids, I would love to make some more. Do email me and we’ll talk ! Lucie has already ordered one for when she graduates from the same school in … 5 years.

~ Catherine

My very own ad !

Check out the first ever TV ad by Etsy, customised for my own shop !

 

 

If you have an Etsy shop, find out how to create your own version in 5 minutes !

~ Catherine

Colour inspiration

Recently, what started as some play between grey and other colours evolved into a series of cute baby quilts :

Or if you want to see the full thing :

 I really love grey as a colour to mix with another one. I started with light blue but as soon as I finished this first one, I had to make 4 more… Of course Daisy had to help…

All the finished tops ended up hanging from the wire I have on the ceiling.

Then they were all basted together and ended up under the quilting machine and its brand new walking foot – Thank you John for the great service as usual.

The last step was to prepare the binding and to finish the quilts.

And here was the finished product :

Thankfully we got 10 minutes of uninterrupted sunshine, which let me take all my pictures for my shop in one go.

Which one is my favourite you may ask ? I am not into green or purple usually but here with grey, they really pop !

~ Catherine

Slightly out of season

We are big fans of Dr Seuss in our house and a while back, I bought some Dr Seuss panels of the Grinch who stole Christmas on sale. I have been thinking about how to use them in a child quilt in an original design. Here is my first attempt :

The blocks contain each of the panels, lightly off-centered (2 inches on one side and 4 inches on the other). It does look a little too plain for  Dr Seuss quilt so I will play around with some sashing in between these blocks, using the stripey red and white or the red spots on white fabrics of the same collection. More soon…

And yes, I admit it, I started another quilt top without finishing the other 9 UFOs !

~ Catherine

Bad stitches

I was happily quilting the third quilt in the Hearts on grey series when I ran out of filled bobbins. I dismantled everything to fill up a couple more, enough to finish this quilt. In doing so, I folded the quilt, exposing the back and horror ! This is what I saw :

And it wasn’t just for a few centimetres, it was on about half the quilt ! Morale of the story : When quilting, check the back of your sandwich every few minutes to spot issues like that before you have to undo stippling on half a quilt… And even Daisy seems to say : I told you so !

~ Catherine

Finish #3 – Blue Snowballs

The quilt top was finished over 2 years ago but I finally finished the quilt this week !

and here is the back :

I love the combination of blue and cream in this quilt ! Available on my Etsy shop shortly.

~ Catherine

Finish #2 – Pink Heart Quilt

Here is a pink variant of the Heart Quilt :

And of course, Daisy is never too far away !

One more colour variation on progress – red on grey !

~ Catherine

Missed the boat… Finish #1

I had been planning on having this quilt ready in my shop on time for Valentine’s day but hey, I am only 2 weeks out….

This a lovely child quilt or lap quilt. I tried taking shots of the process along the way but my little furry friend photobombed each shot…

It started with strips of orange fabrics.

Then the strips are cut into bars of squares and are assembled.

Onto the basting step, with Daisy doing a thorough inspection.

And a final smooooothing of the top.

I quilted this piece using some Sulky variegated thread (orange / yellow) and I love the results. The variegated thread adds a bit more interest. And the horizontal lines are growing on me too.

I love this little quilt. It is the first of a series, there is a pink one and a red one coming soon after it.

~ Catherine

Quilting inspiration

The weather these last few weeks has been horrendous – storm after storm, floods, high winds…. Here is what it looked like :

or like that :

Aren’t these wind patterns beautiful ? Wouldn’t they make beautiful quilting lines ?

Check this link for a live animation ! Very hypnotic !

~ Catherine