Sunday 21 August 2011

Feeling proper cream crackered now

Last fair of the summer finally done and dusted! I was lucky enough to get a spot at the Burnham Market Craft Fair, a lovely place in Norfolk. Full of lovely people too it turns out. It was all exceptionally well organised and the weather was glorious all day with just some overcast threat of rain towards the end.

The Staff tweaking my stall at Burnham Market

The Magnificent Mum (just spotted rearranging quilts in the background) had done a great job of whipping up her crowd of friends into a crafting frenzy about the day, and they all popped down, said hello, and bought something.

And Big Sis (with the lovely red accents to the right) did a fine job of being The Helper Of Excellence and Most Fine Wrapper Of Products.

The hot product of the day was Kindle sleeves - oh and small purses, but a new addition of evening bags also did rather well, only the wintry colours left by the end. Note to self: put more summery colours in products for summer fairs!

Evening bags

Evening bags

Scored a couple of commissions and had some very interesting chats about boro cloth (more on that to come) and Gee's Bend and recycling fabric and so on. Brill. Here are some of the quilts Mum and I had readied for the stall - there was a lot of interest in them, but no sales, so perhaps not the right product for a fair.

Denim quilt

Denim quilt

So, thrilled to have done it but glad it's over! Looking forward to getting my online shop sorted in the next few weeks and then getting on with some art sewing. Not sure what direction I'm going to go in, but it's definitely time for experimentation again rather than product making. Excited doesn't go anywhere near expressing how I feel about the coming months :-)

Tuesday 16 August 2011

Crisis averted.

So, the boys are away and I woke at 6:30 this morning and thought I may as well get up and get cracking on the old sewing. Big plans to make a bunch of evening bags today you see. Anyhoo, after 2 hours of red hot machine action, suddenly it all went wrong. Massive thread jam that continued despite cleaning the innards = massive frustration and thought, "Mmmm haven't oiled it in a while." Couldn't find the machine oil could I? No. Hadn't put it anywhere sensible had I? No. Considered googling the problem (not the location of my oil, obv) but then picked up the phone to The Magnificent Mum.

She had the solution. Of course she did. I didn't realise that there was a secret button inside the bobbin area that lifted the entire top section of the machine off. I was presented with 1.5 years worth of fabric fluff and dust. Yuck. Then she suggested a squirt of WD40 "...as it's reasonably pure, darling..." and after some running of the machine with no thread all was good as new.

Note to self: Take better care of your tools Simmons. Oh, and send Mum flowers just for being brilliant.

Saturday 13 August 2011

A bit of time out with the fellas.

Have mostly been holidaying with my dudes in Devon for the last week. In the rain, mostly. But hell, it matters not as we had a lovely time. Hurrah for holidays in the rain!

Wet us

There was the odd cloud parting moment, and I (along with the rest of Devon) naturally bared all as quickly as possible. And now I have comedy sunburn stripes down the left hand side of both legs and a zorro mark across the middle of my tummy. I will never learn.

Where's Ollie?

Look how mental the beach got?! Loving the stripey colours of summer though - blue, red, yellow. Might use it as inspiration for my next denim quilt ;-)

In other news, a massive amount of making about to take place as the boys are leaving for the west country for 3 days, and I am to be left home alone. I'll miss them LOADS as we've been in each others pockets for 10 days but I'm also reaaally looking forward to time spent crafting. And not tidying up my craft. And eating girl food. And maybe having a sneaky lie in too.

Wednesday 3 August 2011

My distraction is finished!

Last week I could do nothing but sew bits of denim together despite there being quite a few more pressing things on my to do list. I've got it out of my system now though and here is the glory and splendour that is my third denim quilt:

Denim and scraps quilt

Denim and scraps quilt

I really don't mean to sound boasty and ego driven when I say that, but I just love how this one has turned out. I'm really enjoying how the scraps of fabric work together with the denim and the lovely Japanese cotton for the binding helps to soften the look of something that is quite functional. (Incidentally, might I suggest that hand sewing binding in the park, in the middle of a heatwave is not to be recommended. I've ended up with most ridiculous comedy suntan across my legs and arms!)

Denim and scraps quilt binding detail

Denim and scraps quilt binding detail

So, this one has turned out completely different to the two that preceeded it and I've no doubt the next one will be different again. I really like this freeform way of making quilts, using the mighty Gee's Bend quilts as a starting principle; using up what you've got, every scrap (pockets and all), and piecing as you go along.

Anyhow, here are the other two quilts that started this obsession:

Denim quilt

Quilt No.1 - Denim

And here are lovely things to look at over at Our Creative Spaces.