Apart from a recent jaunt down to the London Embroidery School for the rest of their Lace Series course, the number of in-person craft courses going on has been rather lamentable so I was very pleased to see that the weekend Lampshade Making course at Minerva Studios was still going ahead, albeit with some health and safety upgrades.
There is a new member of the family that I have yet to have the pleasure of introducing you all to yet… My new Bernina 790 Plus. (Complete with embroidery module because the thing wasn’t monstrously huge enough without it).
I love making these fabric boxes. It’s great having a project where you get a nice big square area to do some free motion quilting over and they’re a relatively simple pattern overall. This is the third of these boxes I’ve made – you can see my first and second attempts here and for this one I really wanted to focus on the free motion quilting for it.
My previous fabric box project was a fun one. The little green box is now sitting as a desk organiser for plenty of quilting clips, assorted needles, thread and all the other crafty things that it’s convenient to have at grabbing distance. One thing I wasn’t expecting thought was quite how many nice compliments I would get on it!
Over time, I have grown increasingly fond of my Bernina. I wasn’t quite sure what all the fuss about them was about when I first bought it and I did have a few false starts with blunted needles causing endless aggravation but apart from that it has been smooth sailing and beautiful stitching. As well as being a great machine, one of the fun things about it is the ridiculous number of specialist feet you can get for it as well.
Dressmakers often use a calico toile, or mock-up, as a way of checking the fit of a garment. An added bonus is it is a good way of practicing any tricky parts of the construction or identifying any problem areas because you’ve shredded your £20 a metre silk you’ve been cherishing for several years, awaiting the perfect project.
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.
A while ago, I blogged about my visit to the wonderful Britex Fabrics in San Francisco and their store-exclusive ‘souvenir’ fabric that I was at a bit of a loss what to do with.
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The last six months have been a bit of a rollercoaster ride, with two moves, a new job and all the general chaos and upheaval that comes along with that. It has been rather exhausting and the whole thing has seen me decoupled from a lot of my crafting equipment, my stash as well as all my usual routines.
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