#notgoingtofqr

20/07/2014 Mary 10 Comments

Yes I’ve been feeling a little bit sad that I’m not in London this weekend at Fat Quarterly Retreat, I’m enjoying seeing the photo’s appearing on Instagram though they make me miss it even more!

But we’ve been busy here with a preschool sports event, school fair and preschool graduation and fair. I’ve managed to squeeze in some sewing time and got my vintage sheet string quilt quilted:

I also squeezed in time on Friday to get the binding stitched on one side, the evenings are being spent hand stitching it on to the back:

I’ve also had inspiration for what to do with this:

A vintage blouse from Harrods made in Switzerland, gifted to me by a friend who is moving house, I’m keeping the inspiration under wraps for now but I’m pretty pleased with it.

And if that was enough I decided on the layout for a baby quilt yesterday morning:

Yes, this is the black and white version in case you were wondering!

We’ve nothing planned for today, the children still have a whole week left at school so I feel like we need to reserve our energy for that, I’m hoping therefore that I can make some progress on one or all three of the projects above!

Linking up with:

Goal for July

07/07/201407/07/2014 Mary 5 Comments

I’m cutting it fine this month entering my goal for A Lovely Year of Finishes. I’ve had lots to do, but most have been small projects for teacher and birthday gifts which have been quick to start and finish so no good as a goal.

The one project that I feel like I have hanging over me is this one:

I finished the quilt top as my goal for May. I left it in a pile and picked it up again a couple of weeks ago and basted it. I started quilting it but wasn’t happy with how it was looking so have just finished unpicking it!

Now it needs basting again and quilting (again). It’s bothering me so I’m going to try to get it done, I’m pretty sure I’ll feel a lot better when it is ticked off my list.

Linking up with:

ALYoF – May complete

28/05/2014 Mary 8 Comments

At the beginning of the month I set out a goal to make a vintage sheet quilt top. At that point I really wasn’t sure what I was going to do but after looking through my stash of vintage sheets it became obvious. I had a stack of strings:

And a huge bag full of more offcuts:

Oh and there was a whole drawer full too! So I decided that the most efficient and economical thing to do would be to make a string quilt.

So within a week I had blocks that looked like this:

Another week on and there were more (all blocks are paper pieced):

At which point I had to decide how big to make the top and how many more blocks I needed. I decided on a layout of 7 x 6 blocks (total 42).

An attempt to take a photo of the finished top in the garden, it was a bit blustery and there is a large stack of bricks preventing a smooth drop:

I’m not sure what the pirate was up to, maybe he was in awe of the beauty he saw! But anyway the top is finished which was my aim so I’m rather delighted. It was great to sew together, I randomly pulled strips, there was no planning of any of the blocks and minimal planning to the layout.

I’ve put some packs of strips for sale in my etsy shop so you can make your own, the listing suggests a minimum of 21 different prints in each pack but I think there must be 40 in this quilt top (I used approximately 1 1/2 packs to make this top).

So another goal complete and there appears to be no less fabric in my stack of vintage sheet offcuts! Now there is the small matter of basting, quilting and binding!

Linking up with:

Sew Mama Sew Giveaway Winner

18/05/2014 Mary 3 Comments

I hope you’ve had a fun week entering some great giveaways. It was fascinating to read your memories and thoughts on vintage sheets, sorry I’ve not got around to replying to you all I’ve been a little busy this week!

Before announcing the winner I thought I would share with you some of the sewing I’ve done this week, I’ve added to my vintage sheet blocks and they now look like this:

Now I need to make a decision as to how big I want the finished top and how many more blocks to make!

On to the winner, RNG picked:

Now I’ve had a problem with numbering the comments, so you can either take my word for it that number 33 is Janne or you can count for yourself!

So congratulations Janne, I’ll email you in a minute, I hope you enjoy sewing with your ‘new’ fabrics. If you’re disappointed that you didn’t win and still ‘need’ some strings head on over to my etsy shop now!

Vintage Sheet Strings – Sew Mama Sew Giveaway Day (now closed)

12/05/201425/05/2014 Mary 219 Comments

Giveaway now closed, winner announced here

Welcome to new and regular readers of my blog. Here I write about my sewing projects and fabric acquisitions, feel free to stay and browse.

Just over 2 years ago I opened my etsy shop selling vintage sheet fabrics from my rather large stash. I’ve sent fabric all over the world and I am continuously amazed and delighted at people’s enthusiasm/obsession for vintage sheets. I’ve used them in quilts, cushions, bags and bunting:

My goal for May for the #ALYoF is to make a vintage sheet quilt top and after a bit of indecision I opted for a string quilt. So it seemed like a great idea to enable one of you to join me in my current stitchy plan.

These are the blocks I’ve made so far:

You might be able to guess that there has been no planning, just string after string pulled from the pile, I think it’s looking pretty good so far. I’ve use Ashley’s tutorial and I’m using a 10.5″ paper rather than 7″.

So today I am giving away a pack of vintage sheet strips for you to make your own quilt blocks. The pack contains 450g (approx 16oz) of vintage sheets strips. Strips range in size from 1″ – 3″ wide and 5″ – 18″ long. In a sample pack there were 170 strips, however packs are made up by weight so the number of strips may differ. Each pack contains at least 20 different prints.

To enter:
Please leave a comment below telling me about your vintage sheet memories or why you’d love to win.

For additional entries:
Visit my etsy shop and add it to your favourites – leave an additional comment to say you’ve done that.
Tweet about the giveaway using the tweet button at the bottom of this post, then leave a comment with the tweet link.

That’s 3 possible entries.

Rules:
Giveaway open internationally.
Giveaway closes at 5pm PST on Friday 16 May.
Duplicate entries will be deleted.
Winner will be picked by True Random Number Generator and notified by email and by update to this post.
Please ensure that your email is linked to your profile or left in your comment so that you can be contacted if you win.

AND for all of you there is a discount code for 15% off everything in my etsy shop this week, use code SMS14 at checkout.

Thanks for visiting, now click on over to Sew Mama Sew and enter some more giveaways.

A goal for May – #ALYoF

03/05/2014 Mary 3 Comments

There’s been a bit of secret sewing going on this week but that’s finished so now I need to come up with a plan for the rest of the month. Now that the wedding quilt is finished I’m feeling a bit lost so need to focus and think about what’s next.

I could really do with promoting my etsy shop a bit more so with that in mind I’m setting myself a goal to stitch up a quilt top using fabrics from the shop. I have a few ideas in mind, I have a few blocks I’ve made in the past as testers that could become quilts:

A string block that I made as a test for my month in the Siblings Together bee. I made another with a solid through the middle and prefer that. I have a very large bag full of strings that would work well for this.

Back in March on our sewing retreat I made a few retro flower petals, actually that’s not true, I made the parts of some petals!

I also want to make another plus quilt! So whilst I’m undecided on which pattern I am setting myself the goal to have made a quilt top using vintage sheets by the end of May. I’m also cooking up a plan for Sew Mama Sew giveaway day which is just a over a week away.

Linking up with:

February check-in – Fabriholics Anonymous

24/02/2014 Mary 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

04/01/201404/01/2014 tobit 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

31/12/2013 Mary 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

09/12/201309/12/2013 Mary 7 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