Archive for the 'Vintage' Category

February check-in – Fabriholics Anonymous

Published on 24/02/2014 by Mary in fabric, Fabricholics Anonymous, thrifting and Vintage. 10 Comments

Time for a review of February’s fabric acquisitions…

A whole lot of vintage sheets:

Fortunately these are allowed as without them my Etsy shop would close and I would have no money to spend on ~~fabric~~ holidays.

Some from the charity shop and some from the car boot:

All quite lovely and being chopped up for sale:

I had a little bit of a mishap and bought this:

It was from the car boot and it wasn’t until I got home that I realised it is not actually a vintage sheet but a gorgeous 33″ (selvedge to selvedge) x 120″ piece of brushed cotton/flannel. It will be brilliant for pyjama bottoms or quilt back and for 50p (US$0.83) you can understand why it was an easy mistake to make!

I have also acquired some quilting fabrics by the way of swaps. These were from Pennydog, I sent her Kaffe Fassett woven stripes in return:

And this bundle was from Lily’s Quilts in return for some emergency Kona White.

So another great month if you don’t count the mishap! I’ve not been craving fabric, but I have ordered 2 metres of Botanics Widescreen for a quilt back, that too was allowed to make the quilt for my brothers wedding gift. I’m pretty sure I’ve spent hardly any time browsing fabric shops online and have just deleted any fabric emails, newletters before reading about special offers etc, it’s given me more time to sew, more about that another day!

Linking up with:

UK and Ireland Vintage Sheet FQ Swap Round 2

Published on 04/01/2014 by tobit in charity shopping, swap, thrifting and Vintage. 2 Comments

It’s official; I’ve finally got my act together to organise another vintage sheet fat quarter swap. I’ve updated the flickr group, you can find all the details here.

I’d be grateful if you’d tell your friends/blog readers, IG friends, generally spread the word, the more participants we have the more lovely vintage sheets you’ll be able to get your hands on.

If you want to pop a lovely swap button on your blog;

The following code will insert a 200×200 px button:

<div align="center">
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/groups/2063494@N25/"> 
<img style="border: none;" alt="FQ SWAP" src="http://goo.gl/OK7nwU" /> 
</a></div>

I look forward to seeing what sheets you want to share.

A Lovely Year of Finishes – December

Published on 31/12/2013 by Mary in A Lovely Year of Finishes, Upcycled and Vintage. 9 Comments

At the beginning of December I stated my goal for the month, to get my vintage sheet scrappy trip around the world quilt finished.

Despite the thought that it might be a simple task to fit in between the seemingly endless end of term events it was a right royal pain. I managed to find time but the quilting was not easy.

I opted for straight line quilting which is pretty much the norm for me, but for some reason it didn’t go smoothly.

As the fabrics are a polyester and cotton mix I used Gutermann polyester thread and quilted diagonally. I found that after a large number of diagonal rows the fabric was puckering slightly on the top, but by this point there was no way I was going to unpick any of it. The quilt has always been destined to stay with me, as a sort of a record of all the vintage sheets that I have found, swapped or been gifted so as long as I can live with it’s imperfections that’s fine.

Handstitching the binding was a happy task, there is definitely something therapeutic in it for me.

So it’s been finished for a week or so and I’ve been waiting for time and sunshine to coincide for a photo-shoot and it was looking less and less like happening, so on Saturday Tobit took some photo’s of it on the kitchen floor:

And then on Sunday I woke to sunshine and blue sky so just before lunch we headed to the park for a photo-shoot:

Much nicer photo’s than on the kitchen floor!

I love the sheet I pulled from my stash for the backing:

A common stripy sheet for the binding:

So there it is, a quilt that was started in April (I think) and finished in December, it’s been a long time since a quilt took me that long to make!

To celebrate the quilt finish and the end of the year/beginning of a new one I’m having a big sale in my etsy shop, so if you feel inspired to sew with vintage sheets head on over and grab yourself a bargain, stocks are limited so don’t hesitate too long.

Quilt stats:
Pattern – Scrappy Trip Around the World
Fabrics – Vintage sheets from stash
Binding – Stripy vintage sheet
Backing – Vintage sheet
Wadding – Super-Soft 70/30 Eco-Blend by Sew Simple
Quilting – Straight line by me on my Janome Horizon
Size – Approx 70″ x 58″

Linking up with:

Sew Mama Sew Giveaway Day

Published on 09/12/2013 by Mary in giveaway and Vintage. 5 Comments

Hello and welcome to my Sew Mama Sew Giveaway. If you’ve been here before you may know that I have a ~~soft spot~~ obsession for vintage sheets, my latest project which is awaiting quilting is this:

Yes it’s a Scrappy Trip Around the World in vintage sheets using fabrics from stash, in fact many were from my scraps bin.

I’ve very recently (i.e. last week) added fat quarter bundles of vintage sheets to my Etsy shop and thought it would be fun to give away some away to a lucky reader.

All you have to do is fill out the rafflecopter form below, you can simply enter once by answering the question or you can choose to increase your chances by completing the other options. The winner will receive 10 vintage sheet fat quarters in the colours of their choice (e.g. pink, blue or a mix).

I’ll be running another round of the Vintage Sheet Fat Quarter swap in the new year for the UK and Ireland, if you’re interested please join the Flickr group.

Last but not least I’m offering you 20% off all items in my etsy shop this week, so if you’ve been eyeing up charm packs or the new bundles of FQ’s now is the time to buy. Use code: SMS13 when you check out.

Good luck and have fun entering the other giveaways.

I’ve closed the comments on this because people were leaving them here rather than on the rafflecopter widget. If you want to enter please click the rafflecopter link.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

A Lovely Year of Finishes – November

Published on 29/11/2013 by Mary in A Lovely Year of Finishes, Quilts, Scraps, thrifting and Vintage. 6 Comments

My plan this month was to turn this:

into a quilt top. Not as straight forward as I thought it might be. After cleaning the kitchen floor and laying out blocks I struggle to decide on a layout. Many of my blocks had pink running through the centre of the block which made me want to leave out all the other blocks.

I ended up making a couple more blocks so that they all had pink through the middle:

I like it more now I have a photo of it to look at, I guess it needs basting and quilting next!

If you want to make your own, I now have vintage sheet FQ bundles listed in my shop, if you can’t see the colours you want just let me know and I can make a custom bundle for you.

Linking up with:

Lola the Owl and a Gingercake giveaway

Published on 24/11/2013 by Mary in Bags, Girls, giveaway, Upcycled and Vintage. 27 Comments

**before you get your hopes up I’m not giving away a baked Gingercake**

A month or so ago a lovely email popped into my inbox from Virginia of Gingercake, it was a request to take part in her Handmade Gift Series. I was delighted and flattered as I’ve been a fan of Gingercake patterns since I came across them a few years ago.

I’ve used the Love Your Lunchbox pattern:

It’s been used every school day for 2 and half years and it’s still going strong.

I’ve made 20 or so of the Mini Crayon Art Folio (found as a bonus in the Crayon Art Folio pattern):

You may well have seen one or more of the many journal covers I’ve made using the Notebook Slip Cover pattern as a starting point:

So I was given the opportunity to choose another pattern to try out and chose Lola the Owl.

Now Virginia initially made this pattern up as a cushion but what I was really taken with was the pattern variation of making an owl bag.

I had a browse through my fabric stash and none of the fabrics really grabbed my attention, so I then had a think about what I had in my vintage/thrifted stash and found the perfect fabrics.

As expected the pattern was easy to follow (once I’d found my felt stash anyway!). I decided to omit the closure option of velcro or a magnetic snap.

The one change I did make to the pattern was to make the strap adjustable with the use of buttons and buttonholes:

So it can grow with your child (or be borrowed by you if you fancy!).

What I really needed was a child to model the bag for me, neither of the girls could find time in their busy schedules to help out (truth be told we had just got back from the library and books were far more exciting!). So a small boy in an owl hat was enlisted and pulled some especially cute faces:

Virginia has kindly given you the chance to win a copy of the pattern so you can make your very own Lola bag or pillow just in time for giving as a gift, simply enter using the Rafflecoptor form below.

AND as an added bonus you can use the code: GINGERCAKE to take 15% any orders placed in my Etsy shop through until Saturday 30 November, so you can stock up on vintage sheet fabrics to use for your holiday crafting. Grab yourself some vintage sheet fat quarters which are new to the shop:

Or treat yourself to a charm pack of 21 different prints (42 charms total), all sourced in the UK:

Thanks to Virginia for inviting me to be part of this series, check out her blog for links to others taking part and for more chances to win.

Disclaimer: I was given the PDF pattern for the purposes of this series; all views are my own.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Goal for November

Published on 05/11/2013 by Mary in A Lovely Year of Finishes, Patchwork, projects, Quilts, Upcycled and Vintage. 11 Comments

Choosing a project for this month has been tough, there are a couple of things that I have to get done anyway so I felt I wanted to choose something else that would feel like a big achievement.

So what have we here?

Yes a pile of vintage sheet scrappy trips blocks, approx 40 of them, started back in April, I wanted to make a quilt using every one of the fabrics in my vintage sheet stash! I have left some out as they didn’t quite work; too low volume (hey maybe that’s next a LV vintage sheet quilt), but I have included some odd ones, they really stand out but I guess this is a quilt for me so I don’t mind!

I don’t really want to make more blocks so I’ll lay these out and hope that I can come up with a layout I’m happy with, then I will get stitching!

So my goal for the month is to have this pieced in to a quilt top, anything more will be a bonus, I can just imagine that it might take a long time to choose a backing for this!

Made in September

Published on 01/10/2013 by Mary in Patchwork, Siblings Together and Vintage. 10 Comments

Another month flew by and I’ve struggled to find photo’s in my flickr stream to evidence much sewing:

In fact this might look more impressive than it is, the 2 cushion fronts were made more than a year ago but were completed in September. But there was a bee block, the last And Sew On BOM, a trial vintage sheet string block and some pattern testing.

I also joined in the Broken Herringbone QAL , I love these blocks and had to have a go at making them:

I’ve now got 11 so plan to make one more and turn it in to a quilt top.

Linking up as usual with Lynne and looking forward to seeing what others have been making.

Sunday Stash

Published on 29/09/2013 by Mary in charity shopping, fabric, Men, Sunday Stash, thrifting and Vintage. 5 Comments

It’s been a good week for fabric stashing so I thought I’d share it with you. Tracey at Quilt Me Happy has decided to shut up her online shop and as a result is having a BIG sale. I took advantage of this and bought half metre cuts of a number of Curious Nature fabrics:

There is a FQ in there too that Tracey unearthed and a whole metre of the print on the left. I’m now planning a quilt for my eldest brother. He is quietly very amazing and has helped us out no end with the building work this year. This is one way I can say thank you and I know he’s not adverse to lying on the sofa with a book and a blanket so a quilt can’t be bad. I’ll keep you posted on progress.

I bought Kona solids to co-ordinate even though I’m not sure of the plan yet, there are a great range of Kona’s on sale from as little as £3.50 per half metre so worth checking out if you need to stock up. Tracey helpfully pulled the colours for me as colour matching on a screen is never easy:

top – bottom: mid grey, ash ivory, olive, dusty blue

So they were the bargain stash additions this week, well that is until we come to the additions to my vintage sheet collection:

An early morning trip to the car boot sale last Sunday got me these:

pinks

And then popping into the charity shop on the way to school one afternoon I found these:

I am now struggling to fit all these into my vintage sheet cupboard so will really have to sort out FQ bundles for my Etsy shop.

Linking up for the first time with Sunday Stash which is not at Fiona’s this week but with Alyce.

Using up scraps

Published on 27/09/2013 by Mary in Paper piecing, Scraps, thrifting, Upcycled and Vintage. 8 Comments

I can’t yet share the ‘thing’ I’ve spent most of my time on this week but here’s a little something I did last night while I had a pile of vintage sheet scraps pulled out:

It’s a paper pieced string block (tutorial here), I’ve had a desire to make a string quilt for a long time and yesterday was the time to play. It was simple, in fact the most complex thing was finding paper big enough (plans from the architect came in handy) as I wanted to make it 11″. So it works, now I just need to decide on my next move, random blocks, planned block. One thing is for sure I have plenty of strings left over from cutting vintage sheet charms that I can use!

Linking up with: