Archive for the 'Vintage' Category

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:

Quick shop update

Published on 20/08/2013 by Mary in charity shopping, fabric, thrifting, Upcycled and Vintage. 4 Comments

Just to let you know I’m taking a little break and any orders placed in my Etsy shop between 21st – 27th August will be dispatched as soon as possible on my return and definitely by 30th August. As a thank you for your patience use code HOL13 for 10% off orders up to 27th August. If you want a custom order send me a convo and I’ll create the listing and apply the discount when I’m back.

I’ve been having a sort out and here’s an instagram view of my freshly folded and organised vintage sheet stash for the shop:

Click on any of the photo’s to take you straight to the shop. Here are 2 new prints that you may well find in a charm pack, bunting kit or quilt kit:

If you’re in the UK enjoy the bank holiday weekend, I’m hoping for no rain – sunshine would be a bonus!

Are you staring at my stairs?

Published on 15/08/2013 by Mary in craft, creative, fabric, Patchwork, thrifting, Upcycled and Vintage. 21 Comments

A few weeks ago when we were beginning to settle in to the new bit of the house I decided that I had time and energy to execute a plan that had been swirling around in my head for a while.

Due to the slope from the back of the house to the garden the house extension has included a set of stairs from the ‘old’ dining room to the new kitchen/diner. Tobit had laid the bamboo flooring in both areas and used it on the stairs too but still the risers needed something doing to them.

Well yes we could have left them as they were but I had a plan which involved vintage sheets and some PVA glue and this was the result:

Impressive? I smile every time I look at them (ok that might be a slight cheesey exaggeration but you get the idea):

It was so easy to do, so here’s a quick lesson (it is really all you need)

Fabric
PVA glue
Water
Clean empty pot (for mixing glue)
Rotary cutter and board or scissors
Tape measure
Paint/glue brush

Ensure that the area to be decorated is clean and dry. My surface was new wood, if the stairs are painted I would suggest that you need to remove the paint (but I am no expert).
Measure the size of the area you want to cover and cut a piece of fabric that size.
Mix some glue with a little water in a pot, just enough water to make it easy to paint on but not too much water that it will run/drip everywhere.
Paint the glue over the area to be glued.
Apply fabric to the area and smooth out any creases, lumps of bumps.
Allow to dry. Once dry apply a coat or 2 of glue/water mix over the fabric area to seal and protect.

There you go – job done. I think the hardest part was choosing which fabrics from my vintage sheet stash I should use.

My eldest daughter did then ask if I was going to do the set of stairs that go up to bedrooms – I think the answer is no (for now!). I am however wondering about what other surfaces I could cover…

Thanks to Judith for her hints and tips after I’d read this post and to Karen for her inspiring stairs that I first saw a few years ago and have stayed in my mind ever since!

If you have any questions please leave a comment below or if you decide to apply the same treatment to your stairs please let me know I’d love to see. And if you want some vintage sheet fabrics I can set up a custom listing in my etsy shop for you, just let me know measurements and the colours you would like.

So long ago it must be vintage

Published on 02/08/2013 by Mary in fabric, thrifting and Vintage. 3 Comments

It feels like a shockingly long time since I’ve posted about any of my vintage finds…I think the last one was March!

I have been searching and finding but I suppose that I’ve just not got round to sharing here. I have been sharing though because many of these have already gone out in charm packs, quilt and bunting kits as well as custom FQ bundles.

To celebrate eventually getting around to blogging about it I’m offering you 15% off all orders for the next week (valid through to next Friday 9th Aug) using code: VINTAGE15. If you want FQ’s then message me and I’ll set up a custom listing. Happy shopping!