Pink baby quilt

The pinky baby quilt is done, and is covering my lap as I type. The rain is pouring outside, dark and grey.

A quick rummage through my binding mini-drawer came up with some sweet bias check ready-made binding. I think I must have picked it up in a little shop in Trieste last summer, during a short trip for a conference. Pinky-pink, and a very simple construction of scraps and a piece of reclaimed creamy-white from a duvet cover. The (pinky!) back is from a duvet cover I had as a child, saved by my mother. How I love quilting memories and epochs together! This quilt also contains the first blocks Miss R pieced by hand, such as the one on the top right corner.

Life in pink, again

You can guess the scales from my blue fluffy slippers peeking out! So quite a small baby quilt, but perfect for small people to snuggle under on the sofa. If you want to learn to make this incredibly simple block, you can check out the Intro to patchwork tutorial I wrote for the short workshop I am running next weekend. The one-page tutorial is for hand piecing, with a short note on speed piecing by machine. (It’s a big file so takes some time to download. I must have set the photo resolution a bit high…) As the weather is totally frightful in Switzerland this weekend, it makes sense to just enjoy the great indoors!

Happy sewing, and finishing Friday projects!

Beware of the pink curse

The pinky quilt is now quilted, ready for demonstration purposes on the 25th May in Lausanne. Straight lines take rather longer than stippling, but I think this looks ‘achievable’ for beginners. Now all I need to do is attach binding, probably the stripey red/white that is already in this quilt.

Whether for little girls or for myself, I seem to have been making a lot of pink quilts lately. I never liked pink. Now, with my pinky-greeny bags of scraps billowing beyond all recognition, I have to admit that I have a pink problem. It is growing on me. Yesterday, I went shopping for a pair of short trousers to celebrate the impending arrival of Spring. This is what I ended up buying. The problem is spreading.

I am close to embracing my Inner Princess. Or am I just turning into a quilt (or, more worryingly, what looks like a pair of curtains)?

Do you find that colour schemes you would never have chosen take over your life?

Happy sewing! JJ

Mothers’ Day (in some places)

It was Mothers’ Day in Switzerland today, but we had more or less celebrated the earlier British one a few weeks ago. My wonderful mother is travelling in the UK today, so I poured out my mothering-sunday-ness on my lovely Mother-in-law instead. A quick cushion to match a large one I made for them about a year ago. It had been needing a friend and was looking lonely on their sofa. No time to quilt the front panel — so shall we say that this is good because it’s nice and squishy as a result, rather than just totally rushed and made in a hurry while the children were cycling in the park with Mr T?

I only had a totally too-small zip, so was a bit of a struggle to put the cushion insert in… In fact, the cheap cushions I had from the usual Swedish store were a bit too small, so I managed to force two in there. With a bit of intensive massage and pummeling, it just about passes, although it remains rather lumpy… Thanks to the wonderful Miss G at the last Patchwork in the Peaks retreat for showing me how to insert zips! I am hooked. Never mind if it really isn’t at all the right colour! We’ll call it “contrasting”, right? Mr T will deliver it later tonight, and catch the Hockey match on their telly — The Swiss players, amazingly, aren’t doing too bad in some world competition. Although I don’t understand much of the rules, watching hockey brings back fond memories of living in Vancouver for both of us.

I am no fan of television usually, to the extent that we don’t have one, but a link on another blog sent me last night to the Great British Sewing Bee on Youtube. I watched one episode much too late last night, when quilting the pink squares quilt was getting boring: totally addictive! I realise how technically easy sewing straight lines on quilts compared to making tailored clothes.

Time to take the kids to bed now. Happy sewing! JJ

Prototype almost finished

Thanks to copious amounts of small plastic blocks that keep little people amused, an improvised playdate with a neighbour for Miss R, and a kind and understanding Mr T, I have almost finished my prototype for my improvised Introduction to patchwork session in a few weeks’ time. It is cot-sized. Whatever that means. What it really means is that I have no real justification to keep it since my small people now sleep in bunk beds… But it is so sweet, maybe I’ll have to?

It probably needs dead simple quilting in straight lines so that people can see an easy way of finishing off a quilt. Even if it would be quicker to stipple it, that might seem ‘scary’ and complicated to someone who has never tried or doesn’t have a fancy machine? It would be nice if someone with basic sewing skills were able to start off quilting on the basis of my half-hour introduction. Who knows? Some of the fabric in here is from a ‘vintage sheet’ swap I did a few months back (when did good-old second hand become pretentious ‘vintage’?). I love how so many things that I make involve old recycled fabric having travelled around the world before setting into a project. This also has bits of my Grandfather’s pink shirt (with a red/white thin stripe) and small scraps one of my lovely graduate student once posted into my letterbox. A rather nicer surprise for a crafty academic than the exams in need of marking that usually inhabit my letterbox.

Happy sewing! JJ

Starting somewhere

On the 25th May, I will do a stand-up-and-teach event at a local fundraising Spring Fair in Lausanne, for half an hour or so. People don’t know what to expect, and I have no idea who will be there, if anyone! Skill levels unknown. I thought I might get people to make a simple four-patch by hand, and then assemble them all later into a baby quilt to be sold at the Christmas sale later in the year.

I test-ran this activity by my 6-year-old daughter who managed finely, although she did give up after having sewn one seam… I have made an Intro to patchwork pdf sheet. Can anyone tell me if this makes sense, and what else to include, or what to remove? I think I will pre-cut a pile of 2 1/2 inch squares and pass them round with needles and thread. A good way to use up scraps, if nothing else. Even if I end up sewing them all with my mum and daughter…

Now I think I will quick-piece a baby quilt to show off what happens after these blocks are made, what a quilt sandwich is, and what ‘quilting’ is, by hand or machine. I will also sew two strips together, and chop them up by rotary cutter, to show the folks that there is also a quicker way of doing this than sewing it all by hand. Quite enough for half-an-hour, don’t you think? Hopefully people will enjoy this, and then feel sufficiently rested to go back to buying jam / eating cakes / resisting brocante.

While I think nothing of regularly lecturing to 400 students in a huge amphitheatre, teaching patchwork is something new to me. I also realise, with extreme shame, that the above block is the first one I have ever made by hand, apart from English paper piecing. Ha! Teaching is all about staying one step ahead of your students, I say…

Happy sewing! JJ

Skirting the issue

“Finish it up Friday” it is and I have finally stiched the elastic on the skirt I made Miss R to celebrate the Spring. It swings and flings and looks very patchworky! It’s not quite a quilt, but it’s the closest I got to finishing anything this week.

It was started — and very nearly finished — last weekend during our fabulous quilting retreat in the French Alps. I had no pattern, but just got inspired by Miss E’s wonderful boxes of fabric. It certainly has the weight of Liberty, so perhaps it is, particularly those side panels? So I raided the lovely boxes of fabric happily, and started cutting A-shaped panels to fit onto the size of the scraps, with a vague plan in my mind. I definitely wanted pockets: every six-year-old needs pockets to fill with treasures! When it’s too small, I can still reclaim the fabric and turn it into a quilt, can’t I?

This is the state it was in last week, before I stiched the last seams and the elastic to the right size. It tones rather well with the quilt top I just finished with lovely Japanese fabric, picked up in Tokyo at the beginning of the year at the Quilt Festival. I wonder how I am going to quilt that? Anyone have any ideas or tips? The squares are quite rigid cotton, often almost textured, and the burgundy between is a linen / cotton mix, also Japanese. I do so love squares…

Here is another gratuitous photo of the patchworky skirt, in full swing:

I initially loved the effect of the burgundy binding in the middle, but actually it creates a rather rigid seam that sticks out at odd angles. Oh well, that is what happens when patterns are improvised.

And no, taking photos of children standing on tables is not safe, and particularly when small brothers leave the kitchen unexpectedly and want to climb up too. Ooops!

Still, once we have all climbed down safely, all we need is some nice hot weather, and a basket full of a lovely picnic to enjoy in the park, finally able to make the most of living in the city in the sun. As many quilting blogs are filled with wonderful photos of inspirational gardens at this time of year, bursting with lovely flowers, let me show you mine. It is pocket sized, and saves on watering…

Happy finishing up projects to you, as encouraged by the ever-inspiring Crazy Mom!   JJ

Sticky Jam, no more pram

The family pram has migrated to the cellar, to the hidden depths of the building where unwanted objects go to die. In the old buildings built with bomb-proof shelters for all, spaces were provided to store family essentials, in case the Apocalypse, or the Soviets, didn’t leave them time to shop. When the bombs fall over Switzerland, people all across the country will no doubt have orgies of wine and müesli, find their forgotten objects, old skis, broken cuckoo-clocks and ill-fitting clothes and wonder why on earth they kept them. Now, with changing fears and shifting threats, we use these to keep our unwanted junk. The pram has now gone there to rest: Mr A has decided he no longer needs an afternoon nap after school. Time is passing.

And the jam? I made some strawberry and rhubarb jam this afternoon after work, even if most of it initially ended spilling all over the floor when the doorbell rang…

To spin it out a bit more, I threw in some more rhubarb and then brown sugar, randomly, pragmatically. It gave it a lovely rich dark red colour. I let it boil and boil, but I have the sneaky feeling it won’t set and will have to be rebranded as “Strawberry Coulis”. This sounds fancy, and better than Well-it-would-be-jam-if-Mama-had-followed-a-proper-recipe. My lovely mother-in-law was probably out gardening in the Spring sun, because my SOS phone call to her at 5pm for her jam-making secrets just rang and rang. But then is it surprising that I cannot make proper jam when there is already a Jam Queen in the family, with her own bomb-proof cellar full of the stuff, in every taste and flavour imaginable, and often made from wild-picked fruit?

Before the jam set, we spread the still-liquid first batch over heart-shaped scones. We called it “Strawberry compote” at that point, rescued from the overflowing pan, but little Mr A wasn’t convinced. It looked distinctly dodgy to him, sloshy. He wasn’t convinced about the scones either. Clearly the wrong shape. Could I tell him it was because Mama couldn’t find the round biscuit-cutters? Miss R thought they were lovely. Always a tactful lass.

Have you made anything colourful and random today? JJ