More cards, but a little bit of a different theme today – Somerset patchwork! Ribbons are wonderful, versatile things. You can wrap presents and decorate with them, embroider them to make particularly lovely looking flowers and cut them up and fold them over to may all sorts of fanciful shapes.
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As it seems everything else in life has had to go online, I supposed it was only an inevitability until things like craft shows and festivals started finding ways to transport themselves to the digital domain. This is exactly what the Festival of Quilts was experimenting with, with their ‘Beyond the Festival of Quilts’ event, which caught my eye for the digital masterclasses on offer.
After the frustrating mess that was my last zipper bag, I decided the best thing to do was to confront my fears head on and just repeat the pattern again, trying out some different batiks along the way. After all, I had found my zipper foot, and completely understood all the demands of the pattern right?
I was getting a little bored of making coasters but was enjoying being strict with myself and sticking to small manageable projects. Still, fabric coasters aren’t exactly the most useful things and, although I think I still have a bit to learn about getting neat bindings on, it was time to try something new. Today’s inspiration came from a tutorial over at The Sewing Chick for an incredibly cute zipper bag.
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For my previous coasters, I’d stuck to following some great online tutorials. To me though, patchwork seems like one of those skills where it’s far better if you understand the concepts behind constructing a block and can mentally deconstruct patterns, much like making temari, rather than just learning to follow a pattern blindly.
Next skill in the list to learn, bindings. I was somewhat encouraged by my success with my first two attempts at coasters and also wanted to try some patterns a little more reminiscent of a quilt block. The added advantage of this also being that I got to play with more colours all at the same time.
As someone who really loves lurid colours, it probably comes as no surprise that, when it comes to fabrics, I really, really love batiks. There’s enough variety of prints, patterns and colours that I could probably be entertained forever. The ‘mottled’ effect you get from the resist dyeing process also means that one piece of fabric has a huge amount of variation within it, which for me all adds to the creative fun.
With the new Bernina safely resident in my apartment, rotary cutters, mats and some fabric that let’s just say I grabbed with convenience as my primary concern, I was ready to have a go at my first simple sewing projects. The plan: to do things small enough and not so labour intensive that it wouldn’t be heart breaking if I had to throw them away.
astitchornine 