I'm Making a Christmas Quilt!

Last autumn I bought some lovely festive fabric to make a quilt for my sister. She loves Christmas and all things cosy, so I thought a Christmas-themed quilt for her sofa would be a nice gift.

 

I washed the fabric, ironed it, cut it into squares, planned my layout and started sewing.

I'd initially intended to blog about the project as I went along but I decided that I'd rather keep it a secret to make it a special surprise... so I just posted a photo of all the leftover scraps instead (what a tease!)

Here are a couple of terrible photos of the planned layout:

It took a while to get a good balance of all the prints, but I got there in the end!

Hand stitching these squares together turned out to be the perfect project for me last winter. After lots of work deadlines, it was great to put my feet up and relax with some simple, repetetive stitching. I spent many happy hours sewing while watching cheesy made-for-TV Christmas movies - the perfect accompaniment to a festive sewing project.

Of course, hand stitching a quilt takes a lot of time and I (sadly) couldn't spend all my time sitting on the sofa sewing... so I pushed my deadline back to Christmas 2015. I neglected the project a bit for a few months, then picked it back up this summer. Here's how it was looking when I had about six rows totally stitched with six more still to add:

These are dreadful photos, but you can hopefully get a good idea of how the quilt is looking. I just have two more rows of squares to add now, then I can start the actual quilting.

But why am I blogging about this quilt if it's A) a secret and B) not yet finished?

Well, unfortunately it's not a secret any more! I totally forgot to put the quilt out of sight when my sister came to visit last week and while we were chatting in my office she said "oooh... what's that?" and picked it up and lo, the quilty cat was out of the proverbial bag. Oops.

Luckily she likes it! (Phew!) She might not have had the fun surprise of opening a big squishy mystery parcel on Christmas day, but now she can have it to look forward to and I've got a fixed deadline to make sure I get it finished for this Christmas.

Plus: one great thing about it no longer being a secret quilt? I can blog about it! Hurrah! Expect to see lots of quilty progress pics popping up over the coming weeks :)

Messy Making

This week I've been busy behind the scenes - working on some secret projects with a looming deadline.

Since I can't show you what I'm working on, I thought I'd share some snaps of the creative chaos happening in my studio right now...carefully cropped to hide the projects themselves, of course!

Top of this morning's To Do list = tidying up a bit so I've got space to do some more making :)

Lots of Secret Sewing = Lots of Scraps

I've got quite a few projects on the go at the moment (about a dozen!) for various books & magazines. It's great to be busy but eek, there's so much to do!

Each project starts with a brief (sometimes very specific, sometimes quite open), then I do some brainstorming and sketching and submit some design proposals... then if they get approved I start making.

There's templates to design (and problems to solve to get things looking just right, and maybe changes to make if they don't work out), supplies to source and buy, pieces to cut out and, of course, lots of things to sew.

I make notes as I'm working, take step by step photos (if they're asked for) and take photos of my threads and/or leftover scraps and write slightly teasing blog posts (like this one) about "secret projects."

Then the notes get typed up, turned into a tutorial and proofread. I edit the photos and number them to match their steps. All the template pieces get drawn out neatly in pencil, carefully drawn over with ink, labelled and scanned.

Finlly, the finished project(s) get packed up safely and posted and the digital files get emailed.

And then I keep the projects a secret for months (or in the case of some books I've contributed to, years) until I can do a "yay! I just had a project published in X" post here on my blog :)

Until then, please enjoy the snaps of the colourful scraps I've created this week. As you can see, there's been lots of making going on!
 

Black & White & Pastels

I hope you all had a lovely Christmas (if that's something you celebrate!).

After a couple of "proper" days off I'm slowly getting back into doing some work. I have a looming deadline, so over the next few days I'll be doing the sewing for that while watching some festive telly and working my way through the black & white section of my DVD collection...

I can't show you what I'm working on, but here are some of the threads I'm using: lots of pretty pastels!

Photos from This Week

This has been a bit of a weird, sad week as my grandmother died on Monday. She was 96, and much loved.

In between spending time with family, this week I have been testing out felt & thread combinations for a secret project...

... shopping for more threads...

... buying some new pinking shears (they look rather different to the black vintage pair that used to belong to my grandmother, don't they?)...

... sorting out some in-progress knitting projects...

... and sitting on the sofa doing some sewing with the blue felt, threads & ribbons I blogged about yesterday.

I've also been writing some stuff for a deadline & drinking lots of tea but I don't have a photo of that! :)

Catching Up

I'm slowly catching up on some work - gradually replying to emails from the past week, sending out all my shop orders, and writing some blog posts with "help" from this little lady!

I'm also working on a whole bunch of tutorials (for a couple of projects I, alas, can't talk about yet). I find it helpful when I'm working on lots of tutorials at once to make a chart instead of writing lots of to do lists. It works pretty well even if the tutorials are all for very different things as they all involve the same basic steps to get from idea to finished tutorial. Ticking each small task off as I work through them I can see the progress I'm making and can see at a glance what tasks still need doing. 

This is my current chart. Lots done, but quite a bit still to do! 

I made a gigantic "to do chart" when I was working on my new book and it really helped keep me organised during a very hectic time.

For each design I worked on I needed to sketch it, design the templates, (maybe) sew a prototype, write notes on how to make it, sew it, take step by step photos, edit the photos, resize and label the photos, take final reference photos of the finished piece, type up my notes, draft the tutorial, proofread it, make final changes, draw the templates out neatly, make copies of the templates, pack up the project, and then post the project & templates and email the tutorial & accompanying photos. 

Multiply that by all the different projects that make up a book and, well, you can see why the chart was so useful! :)

Designing, Sewing, Writing, Photographing, Knitting, Packing, Posting, Tidying, Planning...

... these are a few of the things I've been doing so far this week! All the while enjoying the sunny weather and the company of this furry fella who has spent about 90% of the time asleep next to me on the sofa or snoozing at my feet.

I've been making something brightly coloured...

... and something autumnal...

... unfortunately I can't show you the finished designs for ages (sorry) but the colours themselves are rather yummy, aren't they?

I've also finished knitting a swatch for a possible new project but I've not yet had the time to actually measure it to see if the yarn is right for what I want to knit.

And I've been sorting out lots of orders of things people have been buying in my summer sale. The sale continues until midnight 7th June, so you've got a few days left to grab a bargain....enter the code MEGASALE during the checkout process to get 40% off any order from my main shop or my Etsy shop.

Remember, the code will even work on things in my clearance sale section so there are some great bargains to be had, including this felt camera brooch (the last one in stock), marked down to £7.50 - so it's just £4.50 if you use the discount code...

... and this set of 4 rosettes for tea lovers, currently just £15 for the set, they're reduced to £9 if you use the discount code, so that's just £2.25 for each brooch! Woohoo! :)

You can find my clearance sale section HERE. 

Keeping Secrets

Oh my goodness, you guys, I have been making soooo many fun things over the past few weeks!

But because I'm designing & making things for projects run by other people (rather than designs for my shops or projects for my blog where I am, obviously, the boss) I can't tell you anything about them. So you keep on getting teasing snaps of supplies for secret projects and slightly cryptic posts about me being busy or having a deadline looming, etc.

It's great having lots of work on but it can be quite frustrating to be busy crafting but not being able to share all that craftiness here on my blog. I guess as a blogger I've grown used to having a super short gap between "making" and "sharing"... and it's hard to adjust to having to keep things secret!

Sometimes the delay between making and sharing isn't too long... for example, back in November I blogged about some works in progress and included a snap of these colourful supplies...

... and then in December you got to see the Christmas stocking I made with them for CraftTuts:

And November and December I blogged about doing a bit of research...

... and choosing threads...

... and in January I revealed the wren embroidery pattern I'd been working on for &Stitches. 

But sometimes the wait is a lot longer!

These scraps I blogged about in the summer of 2010...

... were leftovers from these projects I made for Stash Happy Felt, which came out in the autumn of 2011. 

And these scraps from March 2011...

... were leftover from this mobile I made for Heart-Felt Holidays which came out a year later in March 2012.

I can hardly wait to show you what I made with these threads way back in the summer of 2011! (Yes, you read that right: 2011!)

For the moment though, please believe me when I say I'd tell you all if I could... and I promise that there is lots of crafty goodness being worked on behind the scenes that you'll get to see at some point whenever I'm allowed to spill all the beans :)

More Threads, More Scraps

I'm still working on a whole bunch of projects behind the scenes that I just can't show you yet... so here are yet more photos of felt scraps and sewing threads. I love the oranges and turquoise together, so pretty.

In other news, I had a very stressful afternoon over the weekend when I turned on the computer and... well, it just didn't turn on. Ugh. I eventually managed to get it started a few hours later (phew!) and backed up all my most recent files but, eek, that was NOT a fun few hours... especially as I am currently on a deadline! These things always seem to happen when you're already super busy and a bit stressed out, don't they?

Also, I can hardly believe it's going to be February later this week. This month has just zipped by!

You've got a few more days to enjoy the mega low prices in my January sale and it's also your last chance to grab a bargain ad space on my blog, as the 50% discount code will expire at the end of the month. If you're interested in buying an ad, click here for all the info.

More Threads

I continue to be working on some bits and bobs I can't blog about yet... so, yet again, here are some snaps of some of the threads I've been using. The threads are from several different projects but actually I think they look rather nice together!

Reels of sewing thread...

Bobbins of Embroidery thread...

... and some leftover bits of thread, post-stitching:

(Note to self: Laura, please remember to come back to look at these photos and design something using this colour palette, it is awesome).

Sketches

I love working on my own projects, but it's always nice to be asked to submit tutorial ideas to be included books and magazines.

It's flattering to be asked, fun to work on the ideas, and awesome if the projects go ahead and I a) get paid to do something I enjoy (yay!) and b) get the thrill of seeing my work included a book, etc, and showing it to my mum (double yay!)

It can be a bit scary too though- especially the moment when you click "send" and email an editor a page of rough sketches (eek!)...

... plus it makes me rather a dull blogger cos you guys have to look at photos of pencils instead of actual crafty things. You forgive me though, right? :)