Freedom continued...Finished placemats

Finally, here are the finished placemats made using the improvisational pieced skew-whiff squares I made a while ago now.

The squares were blanket stitched using my machine onto the green background fabric before assembling the mats.  I took the easier path by not using binding to edge the mats, instead stitching front back and batting together before turning right side out.

Detail of the 3 front squares and quilted lines in coordinating coloured thread.

Table mats always get dirty so quickly, so I figured I would make them double sided - the back just has a single square.  Twice the use before needing washing!

Decided single smaller mats for hot plates would be more useful than a table runner.  I used two layers of batting to make them a bit more heat resistant.  Again double sided - one with a big block and the other with a single small block.

More Elephants

Keeping with the elephant theme after making many a George the Elephant Kings / Queens (!) I crafted an applique elephant baby top for a friend who is awaiting her little boy's arrival.  I bought a large piece of elephant print stretch material on sale last year with the idea it could become a summer sleeping bag for a little one, or a great stretchy swaddle.  I loved stretchy swaddles when wrapping up Little Imp - so much harder for her to escape from her mummified state in stretch fabric!

After making the elephant softie for my friend I decided an elephant swaddle and matching applique top would make a perfect gift bundle.

Swaddle material in the background & copied elephant ready to applique

Basic 'How To'
I used fabric pens to copy the elephant design onto plain cotton fabric which I then roughly cut out & framed with strips of matching printed fabric scraps.  After using 'Heat & Bond' to iron the whole piece to the top I used a smallish sized blanket stitch around the outside edge to fix the fabric to the top & stop the edges fraying with wear and tear.  A straight stitch on the plain fabric to frame the elephant finished it off.

And then I made another one, and another.... The more girly ones also had a free motion embroidered flower embellishment added for fun.

I labeled these tops using the alphabet embroidery card on my sewing machine to stitch 'OneLittleImp' on felt,  & then sewed this label on the back neck line. Much neater than the handwritten labels I've made in the past.

Carding

Too hot to do anything much last week I gathered my paper supplies and decided to be on the forefoot for card giving celebrations like engagements & babies that are likely this year.

Definitely not the best pictures, but I wasn't opening blinds to let in more light given the sweltering heat outside!

Freedom

I enjoyed making my first quilt (Little Imp's Eye spy quilt), especially the playing with colour combinations and patterns.  Having done a bit more reading on quilt making since then I understand a bit more of the theory behind what I was just doing by feel when I made that quilt - not just playing with colours to get something that is enjoyable to look at, but also factors such as arranging shades of lights and darks & patterns of big and small to keep the visual interest.  The part I didn't enjoy quite so much was the precision cutting of the fabrics and thinking this was essential in quilting I wasn't convinced I would try making another quilt in any hurry.

That was until I came across the idea of improvisational piecing quilting on a blog - Handmade by Alissa.  The idea essentially being to piece together fabrics in more of a haphazard way rather than measuring and cutting with precision.  I like.  The idea of piecing together loads of little bits of skew-whiff fabrics in this way to make up a quilt sounds like fun!

With doctor's instructions to keep off my feet as much as possible for the next few months with the confirmation of stress fractures (the MRI report came back with 'bone oedema' as a result of the fractures, I never knew until now that bones could become oedematous!), and a husband home all of last week to help care for Little Imp, I have managed to spend some quality time in the Room of  Requirement (aka my craft room).  Finally I have had a chance to play around with ideas and techniques, including some improvisational piecing.  I am loving this 'watch-and-see-what-you-can-create' process; cutting little pieces of fabrics and adding them to each other as I go with only a sense of what I am headed for as the end product.

Here are some of my initial have-a-go skew whiff blocks using some pre-joined fabric strips (that were precision cut) I was very kindly given.  They haven't turned out too skew as not every edge was cut free hand, so there is more experimenting to be done.  I do like the outcome of cutting one of the 4x3 square blocks into quarters though and I've been planning to use these to make a table runner & matching mats. 

The Softie Elephant King

It was a little busy in the lead up to heading to Tasmania last year, but I did get some time in the evenings to have a go making another critter from the Softies book I was given a while back.  'George the Elephant King' was my pick.  I do like making things on a small scale, so I decided not to enlarge the pattern, essentially making George half the recommended size (about 20cm high).

This was my favourite Softie in the book and I was more than happy with how the elephants turned out.  However, regardless of whether my elephants were made with green swirls & spots, or out-and-out floral fabric, it seems that I  instead created Georgina the Elephant Queen...
...or could that be George the Elephant King Queen (!)

I've made a whole herd now, if 7 elephants constitute a herd that is.  Some even with bells in their belly for jingle shaking kiddie fun.  Birthday gifts for little ones in 2012 me thinks.

The Overland Track, Tasmania

Christmas is not my only excuse for not posting recently, we have been away hiking the Overland Track in Tassie.  6 nights and 7 days of hiking the Cradle Mountain to Lake St Clair region, camping in gorgeous locations each evening and wondering at incredible and ever changing scenery each day.  Plenty of wildlife - wombats, pademelons, wallabies, echidna, a HUGE possum attempting to enter our tent and not just one but about 6 platypus!

Amazing weather (aside from rain on the last night, which we paid for by having set up camp in what turned out to be a very large puddle by morning).  Yummy home made gourmet dehydrated dinners and our favourite end-of-day snack: popcorn with plenty of salt cooked on the trangia.

The only downside to the whole trip was getting back to Perth to have the awful pain I had been experiencing in my feet on the last day of walking being diagnosed as stress fractures of my heel bones.  At least I've felt justified in how much I'd been hobbling since finishing the hike, not even able to limp given it is both heels!  'Keep off your feet as much as possible' is what I am meant to be doing.  Ha!  Washing all the stinky hiking gear, hosting of Christmas gatherings, a 20 month old who is increasingly mobile and an ingrained need to always be doing something.  It hasn't been easy, but still worth it!

'Toot Toot'

Another up-cycle project, this time with a couple of magnetic pull along wooden toy trains I picked up at a baby market.
Each train carriage has grooves that must have once held something that you could slip in and out, but this wasn't part of the purchase so I decided to make my own.  This was the result.  A perfect stocking filler for the Little Imp!

Part of this project was playing around with my sewing machine and some free motion embroidery.  I had a go using this to attach the felt letters to the fabric backgrounds and although I have a way to go until I am happy to embroider something a bit more special, I was surprised that it wasn't as hard to do as I expected.

Although I have made these little fabric letter cards to fit into the train carriages, they would also be great for kids for lots of other things - attach magnets for sticking on the fridge, adapt as a memory game or shape recognition with different felt symbols....

Basic 'How To' 

Cut out cardboard, background fabric and felt letters

1. Measure and cut pieces of firm cardboard (e.g. from a box) to the size you want
2. Measure and cut your background fabric  (here from blue & orange spotted patterns) - it needs to be double the length of the card with approx 1-2cm seam allowance all around 
3. Cut out letters (or shapes/ symbols) from felt to fit the card
4. Sew the felt letter onto the bottom half of the background fabric, positioning it to allow for bottom and side seams in the next step. This is where I played around with free motion embroidery, but you could  do this with a standard machine stitch or by hand)
5. Fold each piece of background fabric in half, wrong sides together.  Using the cut cardboard pieces as a guide, mark the position for the side seams leaving a few extra millimeters on each side.  Then machine straight stitch up each side along these marks.  
6. Trim side seams and turn right side out
7. Slip cardboard piece into fabric pocket that you have created
8. Slip stitch the bottom seam closed

Pieces from left to right demonstrating steps 4 - 8