Bungle Jungle .. A new quilt

A new quilt!

A baby cousin for Little Imp is on the way, so there is a need for a quilt to be made.

I bought a Layer Cake, Moda Bungle Jungle, a little while back when my brother was in the US & I didn’t have to pay postage and now I get to slice and sew. Very exciting. (In case you don't know a 'layer cake' is a selection of forty 10 inch fabric squares from a single fabric collection)

Hours were spent considering different patterns until I came back to a floating block design. The tricky part with the Bungle Jungle fabric was still wanting to include some sort of Game of Same option and also keep the animals in the animal prints relatively whole so they can be recognizable, kind of like an ‘eye spy’ quilt.

The initial pattern plan is this…no doubt it will change a bit as I go, but a bit of a mud map to go by.

I divided the fabrics into four different sets of colours

aqua and navy

green with navy highlights

yellow and red

 And grey and red.

There are also squares of animal prints in each of the different colours that look something like this:

I didn't take any pics of these animal prints before I started fussy cutting these out to make what will become a bit of a matching game. Not quite the game of 'exactly the same' but a game of 'kind of the same'! Matching the same animals but with different background colours ... the downside of only having a 10inch square of each piece of fabric. You can see some of the pairs I began cutting out to start with here.

Still not sure how I am going to use the large animal print square in the quilt...time will tell....

Nappy bag for cloth nappies, or wet bag

Hello! I'm back. Yay for me (because that means I've found time to craft again). Sure noticed a need for the creative outlet and a few weekends ago I made it back into the 'Button Room', my craft haven. It was a bit of a mess as I'd just kind of left it post Christmas creativity so there were bits everywhere. And dusty too - not good. A big spring clean & I was back in action though.

I made a kind of water / smell resistant nappy bag for Little Imp not long after she started day care. Daycare was happy to use our cloth nappies, but were sending each wet one home in a plastic nappy bag! - not really in line with the eco/cloth nappy ethos. The one feature I didn't include though at that time was a separate pocket for dry/clean nappies. So this is version 2 of my nappy or wet bag, with space for clean nappies included. A girlfriend has just had a little boy & plans to use cloth, so hopefully sh will find this useful! I now also use Little Imp's bag for swimming clothes - it will leak eventually, but still holds up pretty well.

How To:

Materials - 

• Block out fabric (purple), 
• Large tooth jacket type plastic zipper - the length of the long edge of the bag (mine is longer as this is what I had)
• Plastic (I bought a $2 plastic table cloth from a Reject Store & cut that up, you could also use shower curtaining)
• Velcro (hook & loop, about 5cm)
• Cotton fabric for whatever you design on the front of the bag & a coordinating strip for the back

For the main bag cut 2 pieces (12 x16) inches from the blockout fabric (I'll refer to these as A & B)

and

2 pieces (13 x 17) inches (roughly) from the plastic

For the back 'dry' pocket (Piece C) cut 1 piece of the block out fabric (10 x 16) inches.

From the cotton fabric cut a strip about (2.5 x 17) inches.

To create the 'Dry' Pocket:

Position and pin the hook piece of velcro onto the wrong side of piece C, approximately 1.5 inches from the top and positioned so that it is in the centre.
Lay Piece C on top of Piece B as shown in the picture above, aligning the bottom corners and then marking where the loop velcro needs to be attached to Piece B. Pin the velcro in place.
You might also want to lightly mark the fabric using a ruler so that the velcro is nice & parallel to the edges.
Sew the velcro in place on both Piece B & C.

Next take the cotton fabric strip & press over approx 1/4 inch along both long ends.

 

Lay the cotton strip right side down. Using the crease along one of the long edges of the cotton, take Piece C, right side down, and butt the top edge (the edge with the velcro) into the crease.

You then need to make another 1/4 inch fold, this time with both the cotton and block out fabric so that the raw edge of the cotton is hidden in the seam.


The picture below shows me sewing this seam.








 And then the finished seam. I actually decided to sew another row of stitching along this seam to reinforce it (not shown).

Flip Piece C back over so it is right side up. The next step is to sew the cotton strip down, thereby hiding the stitching for the velcro). Re press the folded edge of the cotton and then flip it over to hide the velcro stitches & stitch in place.

Decorating the Front of the Bag:

Use Heat and Bond or any similar product to trace out the design you want, iron and cut out the fabric pieces and then arrange them on the front of the bag until you are happy. Iron them in place (cool iron - don't warp the block out fabric).

Then use coloured cottons to stitch the edges down (terrible photo this one, but I used small, close together zig zag edging). Now is the time to iron out any creases or add facial features etc. if you are using a fabric pen that needs ironing to set the ink (you will understand why I say this if you keep reading...)

 If you want to add a label or anything else to embellish the back, now is the time to do that too.

Adding the 'waterproof' layer'

Spread out the plastic pieces and then pin one to the wrong side of Piece A and stitch in place around all four edges - keeping close to the edge. For the back of the bag use the velcro to attache Piece B and C together and align edges and bottom corners before positioning onto the plastic, pinning and stitching all 3 layers together.

Then trim away any excess plastic.

 The back layers stitched together before trimming away excess plastic:

 Next attach the zipper to the top edge of Piece A & then Piece B. I double stitched each zipper seam to help hold the zipper in place.

Then, with the zipper open part way fold in half along the zipper, right sides together, align edges and pin. Then sew around the 3 sides, using a larger 1/2 inch seam so that you stay inside your previous seam lines. Depending on the size of your zip, you might find hand stitching the top edges easier than clunking away around the zip on your machine. (Becuase my zip was too long I also needed to cut the excess off at one end and hand stitch to secure)

Then clip edges, turn bag right side out (this is why you left the zip partly un-zipped) & you are done...unless you are then a TOTAL IDIOT like I was, and decide to set the fabric penned giraffe face using a HOT IRON. IDIOT!!!

You can guess what happened I'm sure. Table cloth melted inside the bag... stuck to itself...couldn't be pried apart...DISASTER (and a few muttered cusses/swearwords too).   Please learn from my mistake!!
I ended up having to cut out a large circle from both pieces of plastic & then managed to reline the bag without unpicking more than the second line of stitching along the zipper. Disaster averted. But pride hurt!

The Finished Product:

A basket full of felt fruit

I sure hope Little Imp enjoys her basket full of fruit for Christmas!

I ended up making 2 baskets that fit inside each other so Little Imp can mix and match, shop and sort to her heart's content.  One day I might get around to posting the instructions for the baskets, but for now here is a picture instead.

Here are links to all the felt fruit and veg I have made so far:

Felt apple
Felt strawberry
Felt carrot
Felt lemon
Felt lemon halves
Felt tomato
Felt cucumber
Felt beans and bean pod
Felt banana
Felt pear

Christmas Tree Skirt

I started working on this at the beginning of the year, stopping and starting sewing in between all the other projects I've been up to and finally finished it a few months ago.

The idea came from this mod mosaic floor pillow tutorial by Elizabeth Hartman. I wanted a sort of stained glass window feel and this idea really lent itself to that.

I must admit it was a whole lot trickier than I thought, mostly I think because of trying to be a bit to stingy with the fabric scraps in each wedge and then finding that all 6 wedges didn't quite match up at the end.

I used the mod mosaic pattern idea to make up 6 wedge shapes that then joined together to form a circle.  I measured and cut a wedge template out of butchers paper to use as a rough guide to lay out each wedge.

 Then I gradually attached dark green strips around each patterned piece of fabric, cut to form straight edges and then attached the next piece of fabric or green strip and so on...  This is where, if I ever made this pattern again, I would have not been worried about probably having to cut away fabric at the end and made each wedge bigger than the template.  Much easier to cut fabric away at the end than be a few inches too short & then have to unpick and recut and restitch....believe me!

Once each of the wedges was done I attached them each together with long green strip but left an opening between 2 of the wedges as this would eventually be the opening to fit around the Christmas tree.

I ended up deciding not to do any fancy quilting for the Tree Skirt.  I found a cheap green queen sized bed skirt /valance at an op shop and used this as the underside fabric.  For the middle layer I decided to use a thickish felt.
The picture below shows the wedges connected together and then the whole circle placed on thick felt with the gold binding placed around the edge before anything being measured/cut out.

I finished the skirt like a standard quilting sandwich, pinning the 3 layers (green sheet fabric, felt and top layer) together and then quilting - straight lines along each edge of the 'spokes' or edges of the wedges and some more straight line borders around some of the feature fabric pieces within each wedge.
Then I measured and cut out the circle in the centre and measured and trimmed the outer edge before sewing on the binding.  Ta da!

Pa Rum Pum Pum Pum...

Armchair Recover and Applique

I've up cycled another armchair.  This time it was for my parents, so I thought I'd better not embellish it quite as much as I did for the armchair recover and applique I finished for Little Imp a while ago!

The original chair is a covered Ikea model that was faded and stained. The 'upcycling' involved making a removable cover that fits reasonably snugly over the chair, recovering the box-ish shaped cushion, and then ...because I couldn't help myself...adding on a few bits of applique.

Felt Pear

Tutorial

Instructions for one brownish coloured pear - but you could choose any 'pear-y' colour of your choice.

Materials - light tan felt (about 15cm square), brown felt scraps, dark green felt (small piece) needle, thread, stuffing, sewing machine (optional)

Pear leaf
Using a sewing machine free motion embroider a rough leaf shape outline onto green felt   Cut out the leaf leaving a small border outside the stitches.  Alternatively you could cut out the shape & then hand stitch the detail on later. 

Pear stem and 'calyx'
From brown felt cut a 1cm x 1cm square & then snip away at this to get a rough 6-point star shape - this will become the little brown bit you find on the base of a pear.

From brown felt cut a rough 5cm x 2cm rectangle for the stem.

To make the stem with the leaf attached, place the leaf onto the brown rectangle as pictured above.  Then roll the rectangle up lengthwise from right to left (towards the leaf), catching the stem of the leaf in the roll of brown felt.  Stitch & wrap matching dark brown thread around & around to form the stem & hold it in shape with the leaf firmly attached.

Pear 'body' - From tan felt cut 3 pieces of the pear template shape.

Stitch 2 of these pieces together down one side from one point to the other.

Then add the 3rd piece and stitch in place down one side.  Then stitch the final seam  to create a 3-piece pear shape', leaving a 2-3cm opening at the base of the pear (the fat end) and a smaller 1cm opening at the top end (narrow end).

2-3 cm opening in stitching at fatter end (right) and 1cm opening at  narrow end (left)

Turn pear right side out through the larger hole at the base and fill with stuffing via this same hole.  Push the stuffing up so it fills in the narrow top end also, then stitch up the base hole.

Attach the calyx (small brown star shape) to the base of the pear with matching dark brown thread

Left - stuffing hole in base stitched closed.  Right - Calyx added and stitched in place

Now turn your attention to the small hole you left at the top of the pear. Poke a finger down into the hole to create a bit of a gap in the stuffing & then poke the stem part way into the hole. Hand stitch hole closed and also stitch through the stem a few times to secure it in place. 

For this next step, use the longest needle you have as you need to stitch with a double thread from the top of the pear all the way through to the bottom.  If your needle isn't long enough then squish the pear down to get the needle through.  Pull the thread tight enough to create slight indents at the top and bottom of the pear and stitch in place to secure.  This step gives the pear a bit more of an 'pear-y' shape by bringing the top and the bottom points in towards each other.

I think this might be my new favourite felt fruit...