Lucy's Cloche

Little Imp loves her hats.  Most grateful that this means there isn't a constant battle to get her wearing a hat for outside play.  But at times she almost borders on hat-fetish status and there are days when she will insist on wearing all day, inside or out and even to bed!
A while ago a friend gifted me a pattern for Lucy's Cloche from the Olabelhe blog, and yesterday I finally got around to making it.

It was surprisingly easy to put together.  The main problem was the sizing, I realise the fit is supposed to on the baggy size, but my initial attempt was almost large enough for my head rather than Little Imps!  A few fairly easy adjustments solved that though.  The other change I made to the pattern was to just use felt in the brim rather than interfacing.  Will have to see how that wears over time, but at the moment I think it works better - much softer feeling than a heavy inter-facing and felt doesn't crease like some inter-facings tend to.  I also used a plain fabric for the underside of the hat which works nicely to soften the overall look given how bold and bright the outer fabric is.

In the time it takes to clean the house...

How I will remember the Summer of 2012...

My feet are still giving me grief.  Moonboot on all my waking hours for the last 3 weeks while we swelter through heat wave after heatwave.  Euugh!

Trying to stay positive, I can come up with 2.5 good things that have come of this boot wearing.
1. My feet are beautifully soft and smooth - no hard, rough or dry skin here.  Husband says they are softer even than Little Imp's baby bottom!
2. I've hired a house cleaner.  This is the winning point.  She started today and I think she might be here to stay, even after the moon boot is no more.

Oh, and the half point of a good thing goes to Little Imp who has well and truly mastered the words 'shoe' and 'boot', and knows the difference between the two.

Look at what I did this morning in the time it took Cleaning Lady to clean the house.  Both productive ventures with good outcomes, but I know which I prefer!

If only I had the skills...

If only I had the computer skills of my graphic designer brother then composing this new look 'One Little Imp' blog site would not have eaten up most of my day.  You have no idea how many times I re-sized the header image to get it to fit the way I wanted with the text.  Still not 100% happy, but it is not going to be reloaded anymore so this is it.

The weeks drag on where I am stuck in a 'moonboot' on one leg and not supposed to weight bear too much through the other leg while my calcaneal stress fractures take their sweet time to heal.  My heels just aren't healing (ha!).  Very frustrating indeed.  As much as I enjoy crafting, there is only so much you can do before you run out of something you need, or just want the option of doing something a bit more energetic....

Strip Quilt with free-motion quilting

I finished this little quilt a while back, but kept accidentally deleting the photos I'd taken so its taken me a while to post about it.  The idea is from a Modern Quilting book I bought called Block Party - The Modern Quilting Bee by AH Carlton & K Lejnieks and it was so quick to put together.

My favourite part was the minimal measuring.  You just stitch together  pieces of different widths of fabrics into strips slightly longer than the length you want each block to be.

Then press and square them off along each long end.

And then sew on pieces of the background fabric to the long edges to make up each block, using one or 2 strips in each block.  Then arrange the blocks how you like & sew them all together.  Easy.

I tried my hand at free-motion quilting using a large meandering pattern all over the quilt and it turned out ok.  If you look closely you can see some mistakes, but none too noticeable and once I've washed it a few times I'm sure they will be even less so.  I didn't have the quilting gloves lots of bloggers say are useful in directing the fabric while quilting, but a pair of disposable surgical gloves with roughed finger pads did the trick for me.

Here's a close up of the quilting.

This quilting business is a little more addictive than I ever thought it would be....

Two more Little Birds

Two little birds from felt perching on some wonky strips of fun print fabrics. Another picture frame completed for Little Imp's Feature wall.

Basic 'how to'
To help with piecing the strips together given they were quite skinny I tried a trick of stitching them together with paper underneath to get the positioning right.  It seemed to help with lining them all up the way I wanted.

I drew the sewing lines on the paper and cut each strip slightly wider to give a seam allowance.  I wanted to keep the top pinked edge of each strip raw and visible, so just stitched each strip directly onto the next right sides up (rather than stitching wrong sides together and pressing out flat).  Once all the strips were sewn together I turned the whole lot over & tore off the paper.  Easy done.

Then two little birds were cut out of felt & ironed in place with some 'heat-and-bond' to stick them down.

Hot air balloons...and some more owls

Little Imp's feature wall gets busier.

I hung all of the frames I have finished so far yesterday afternoon and this morning I received the payoff when Little Imp stood up in her cot and saw the designs coming together on her wall.
'Wow' she exclaimed, with the enthusiasm only a 21-month-old can muster at that time of the morning!

The Hot Air Balloons frame is an embroidery I did years ago (1993 according to the date on the back).  I used a design from a library book, but no idea who to credit it to.  Anyhow, it fits perfectly in one of the frames I have for Little Imp's feature wall, so in it goes!

The balloons, clouds and landscape were embroidered onto calico that I had dyed blue and then I remember using mum's water colour paints to extend the scene onto the white cardboard frame.  A long time ago...

And some more owls....

Appleville

Another two frames completed for Little Imp's feature wall.

The main print fabrics used for both of these is from a Robert Kaufman collection by Suzie Ultman called Appleville. Cute apple faces and rows of houses.  My designs are inspired in part by some of the other fabric prints in this same collection.  3 apple picking girls in little felt dresses with apple picking pockets and 3 little houses under an apple tree surrounded by free motion flowers.