Footstool Make Over - Or where I patchwork anything that stands still in our house!

Yep, that's right, stay still too long in this house and I will patchwork it!

I brought a second hand foot stool last year. It is lovely and big and comfortable. Great for resting legs on whilst watching movies and useful extra seating when lots of visitors arrive. I really liked it, the price of £15 helped with that too! Only trouble is I wasn't so keen on the twee Laura Ashley style fabric

Perfect for my Mum perhaps but us not so much, the fabric was loose too and irritatingly sloppy on the sides. I knew I would re-cover it, toyed with the idea of using some precious stashed Echino, the idea being I could gaze upon it and enjoy it daily, rather than it being hidden in the cupboard.

Then last week I made up my January bee blocks for Lucy in the Bee a Brit Stingy. Me being stingy managed to make my strip piece go a long way and got 5 feather units out of it by joining up all the cut offs and so on. Two were sent to Lucy and the other 3 got some rather special treatment.

I have wanted to make a feather quilt for ages, I loved Charlotte's and was a bit jealous when Lucy chose them for her month (I am next months queen) so I was chuffed to have some of my own but knew I couldn't face making a whole quilt of them. Then I stumbled across this amazing cushion by Amanda of A Crafty Fox

Isn't it just gorgeous! I would give my kidneys for a cushion like that, I just love everything about it. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and I really hope Amanda agrees because I just knew this was what I had to do to my footstool and those spare feathers.

So with a lot of careful cutting of very precious fabrics and some meticulous sewing - random can be so difficult and time consuming when you are trying to to waste even a fraction of special fabrics - I had a pieced top to fit the footstool. I then free motion quilted it in a wood grain effect (just like Amanda, eeek I am such a copy cat, but I loved it so much I couldn't help myself!) best seen from the back

Not great, but not hideous which is great considering it will be on display for all to see in the lounge. I then did a little pearle hand quilting around the feathers and wonky star I had added to help them stand out, sewed the corners up, stapled it to the footstool top and hey presto!

I have the worlds swankiest most amazingest footstool EVER!

I was really very brave and cut into some of my treasured Heather Ross along with text fabrics and hand printed fabric from friends. It was scary (I bet a lot of you know how that feels!) but I am so glad I did. Yes I might not have as much stashed as I did and yes I can't get any more BUT I see it every single day rather than occasionally stoking it and putting it away again.

I hope you like my makeover too, I'm off to see what else I can cover in patchwork....don't tell the husband ;-)

Last week in pictures

As promised here is the insane amount of sewing I got done last week!

Excuse the instagram photos (whoops, I forgot to mention, I fell for instagram! You can find me @lovestrawberrypatch)

From top to bottom there is:

1. Fractured Oakshott Finished
2. Christmas Table Runner Sample for Workshop finished
3. 2 patchwork chair pads for the girls made
4. EPP Rose Star Cushion made as sample in preparation for teaching epp class at LQS
5. Same cushion but used as a table mat/mini quilt
6. Liberty Mini Finished
7. Another rose star block made (that's 7 now)
8. Bruce the Buck phone case made
9. More + and x blocks made
10. Infinity scarf made from my Melody Miller I won from Kelly back in May (finally!)

I am embarrassed to say there was more but I just didn't take photos (these were bad enough, there are only so many naff pictures I want to clutter my blog with ;-)

This week seems to be heading the same way...I 'may' have just started a swoon quilt on a whim whilst Mary was here for a sewing day on Monday, ahem. Well I have finished a few wip's so I figured I was entitled to start another (technically two as I've been sewing up all of the hst cut offs to use at the same time).

I've just got the log burner fired up so I think a cuppa and a biscuit are in order before braving the Arctic conditions in the sewing room again!

Polishing a turd

When picking out block designs for my Aneela Sample quilt recently I knew it just had to have a dresden in it, I love dresdens!

Luckily for me the Shape Workshop for Quilters has a desden plate block, complete with template. I duly sent my book to work with my husband to photo copy/enlarge the template as required. The book calls for 100% enlargement of the template for the 12.5" unfinished block.

Whether due to my husbands photocopying error, he assured me that doing it at 100% just made it come out the same size as the original, or a printing error in the book (seems unlikely to me, sorry husband!) but my dresden plate was NOT the right size for a 12.5" block, more like a 6" block! So having used up most of my Walk in the Woods charms, and not having any of that line left, I made up a different block with the tiny scraps left and he copied me the template at 200%, thinking this would give me the size I needed.

I got going again, moving onto a new fabric line using up the very last of my large Little Apples scraps i'd been sent, piecing some together as they were too small. It wasn't until I had joined about half of the blades together I realised this dresden was going to be far too big.

Oh S**T!

With most of my large scraps gone I had to abandon the dresden and do a different more scrappy block for the quilt :-(

If anyone can advise me at what rate I should enlarge the template in the book to be able to make a 12.5" block i'd be very grateful. Our photocopier only gives options for 100%, 140% and 200%.
100% comes out exactly the same size as the original (i.e too small) and 200% is far too big, giving me more like a 18" block. Is it our photocopier or the book that is in error?

My two mis-sized dresdens reminded me of Aneela's bloom quilt, being a bit pee'd off with the whole dresden thing by now I decided to turn my 'crap' into something that perhaps would look like it was done on purpose and not just rejects! I couldn't waste my wonderful donated fabric after all!

So for the better part of this week whilst getting over my migraine (seriously, it has taken a week and I can still feel the lingering's of it!) I have been 'polishing my turds'!

 I decided I couldn't be arsed to make  it worked fine without the third dresden plate to make it like a mini bloom quilt and put it onto my brand spanky new Madrona Road Memoir fq and hand quilted the hell out of it.

I echo quilted around the large dresden with embroidery floss and large stitches. I quilted straight lines under every second line of text with some crochet cotton in black. I love this because it is a little more subtle than pearle cotton or embroidery floss but stands out more than hand quilting thread on the spool.

I then used my finer hand quilting thread to quilt between each dresden blade and around the smaller dresden, doing this in the ditch so it was invisible. I love how you can see the design on the back. This is the first thing I have hand quilted entirely, I am so glad it was a mini!

Now I just need to decide what to bind it with, any suggestions? I am thinking plain black or dark grey perhaps.