Finished Dilly Bags

Hi and welcome back to the Dilly Bag Along hosted by the wonderful Angie at GnomeAngel - for the finished products!

Here are my two versions of the bag. The first is my bag featuring the gorgeous Australian fabric from Emma Jean Jansen's Terra Australis range which was my first attempt at fancy fussy cutting. I can't wait to do more of this style of fussy cutting in the future!

The second bag is my daughter's, who picked out most of the fabric. When I gave it to her this morning she said she didn't want it as it is not purple - her favourite colour. Anyway we got back on track and now she loves it and has already stuffed it full of toys! And how many toys can we fit in it....

Dilly bag-along

Hi and welcome to my stop on the Dilly Bag Along hosted by the wonderful Angie at GnomeAngel!

I am a fairly recent convert to hand sewing and the hexagon but I am totally addicted now! I think the thing I love is having something portable to take each day and force me outside to eat lunch and sew hexies in the sunshine (well that is the aim)!

Now onto the Dilly bag! I am actually making two versions, both fussy cut but completely different. The first is using some gorgeous Australian fabric from Emma Jean Jansen's Terra Australis range which is my first attempt at that lovely fancy fussy cutting where you start to make secondary patterns.

The second (well there had to be a second as I knew my 4 year old would totally covet the first bag and want one of her own) is done with some fun fussy cutting of animals, mostly picked out my little Miss.

I have used English Paper Piecing to join my hexagons together instead of free-form hand sewing like the pattern says. Now I am going to be completely honest - I have no idea what templastic is or where to buy it! Instead I used the plastic base out of one of my green environmentally friendly bags. It seemed to do the trick!

The other handy little shortcut I did was to glue down the top section on the inside of the bag. I am a big fan of using glue in sewing and I use liquid Elmer's Washable glue with a special fine tip. I put a fine line of glue under the inside seam, then heat set it down with my iron. This meant that when I stitched in the ditch on the outside of the bag, I knew I was going to catch the inside hem (without using any pins!) I also used glue for the ends of the ribbon.

 So I hope I have given you a few tips - It is such a fun bag to make and it really holds a lot of stuff. Come back on the 17th October to see my finished bags (I reckon I can even persuade my daughter to show you how many stuffed toys it holds.)

Check out some of the other stops on the blog hop and there are a few more stops to go before the final linky party back at Gnome Angel! I believe there are some awesome prizes!!

Wednesday 23 September: Sharon @ Simple Things

Friday 26 September: Sharon @ The Projects of My Life

Wednesday 1 October: Judith @ Just Jude

Friday 3 October: Progress link party here @ GnomeAngel.com

Wednesday 8 October: Kate @ Stitched with Love

Friday 10 October: Kathy @ iamacraftykat ----------------that's me!----------------

Monday 13 October: Barbara @ Sunflower Stitcheries

Wednesday 15 October: Rachel @ Little White Dove

Friday 17 October: End link party here @ GnomeAngel.com

September Gyspy Wife Blocks and Creativity

I love this months Puss in Boots block! and oops made an extra square in a square! It will just give me a few more options when I put it together.

I  listened to a fantastic webinar over at the Modern Quilt Guilds website from Anne at Playcrafts on the theme of "creativity" and her Quilt Design A Day (QDAD) group. I never really considered myself as "creative" - certainly crafty and productive but creativity was not something I thought of. So I decided to set myself a little challenge, there may have been a smack on mid-thirties birthday for me at the start of September and I thought it would be nice to start recording my something creative I did each day - whether it be designing, drawing, sewing etc. I also thought it would be awesome to see the evolution of projects I work on and it kinda shows how many things I work on at a time! Hopefully my failed #blockadayjuly blocks might reappear! So this is my Creative September - only missed one day even though I was in Melbourne for a few days!

 

Supertoting

A while back I made myself a supertote - perfect for hauling projects around and I even take it to work if I have paperwork to haul around! (might need a second ...)
I made it using my new favourite block "Fox and Goose" and used some awesome fabric from Jessica Wheelahan called "texttype". I think it is available from Material Obsession but I have her email if you are interested! It is is perfect mustard fabric and it is a little heavier than quilting cotton so it was perfect for my bag!

Well I also had a conference in Melbourne in September and decided to make a long weekend of it when two of my girlfriends also decided to tag along and make it a super long weekend! One of them lives in Perth so we don't often all get to catch up. Both my friends are quilters (or learning) so fabric shopping was certainly on the agenda. Therefore they both needed supertotes as well - how else where we going to carry fabric around??

And here were my fabric purchases... Amitie Textiles on the left and GJ's Fabric on the right. Supertotes did well :)

G + Y Wedding Quilt

I get very excited about making wedding quilts - there is just something special about making something celebrating such a beautiful event. My friend G from Melbourne recently got married so of course I had to make a wedding quilt. We had only met Y a few times as we live in different cities but I knew her favourite colour was green and I wanted to keep it masculine and minimalistic as I know G likes that style. After searching Polka Dot Tea for some perfectly yummy green and grey fabrics and playing around with a few designs - I decided that a simple plus quilt was the way to go. The green is a Michael Miller Cotton Couture in "Turf" - my new favourite colour!

I was really hoping to get a pic with a tram in the background but they ended up all too shady!

I used 4" squares and once I had laid out the quilt used this fantastic method from Poppyprint to sew it together.

It was really quick to sew together! I quilted it in a square random grid kinda way using a few different shades of grey and green aurifil thread across it diagonally.

The back is a light grey and a panel from Jeni Baker's Nordika range - it matched perfectly with the grey. I also embroidered a "G + Y"  into the panel but forgot to take a photo!

I was in Melbourne over the weekend so I got to hand deliver it to the recently wedded lovebirds!

Dilly Bag-a-long

Have you heard about the Fussy Cutters Club hosted by Gnome Angel - there is going to be a Dilly Bag-a-long using Judy Newman’s Dilly Bag pattern. 

As a recent convert to hexies I am going to be part of the blog hop so watch this space! I had my orange fabrics out the other night so I may have already started...

You can purchase the PDF of the pattern from Gnome Angel

Where did August go?

Wow, what a quick month! It was quite a productive one for me!

First if all, my Gypsy Wife blocks



I really cannot wait to put this together! Though the thought of cutting all those strips has me a bit scared!
I was super lucky to win last months gypsy wife QAL giveaway over at WIP Girl - a $25 Fat Quarter voucher. Very pleased to report this went on a bloc-loc HST ruler (plus then I had to fill the cart so I got a few backing fabrics)

I was originally down for November for Stash Bee but swapped with one of the other members. I have been thinking about this quilt for a while now - a bookshelf quilt for my little girl. She turned 4 the other day and is a massive book fan! You can see my tutorial over at the Stash Bee blog but here is my block!




Xx

Gypsy Wife QAL Progress

Well I have been plodding along with my Gypsy Wife each month. I am loving how much this quilt is making me think and challenging me.
Here are my July blocks



And my June blocks