Selling craft

Welcome to Saturday Bring & Share, a virtual sewing day. Bring along your project and share in the latest news and views from the worldwide quilty community. You are very welcome to share links to your latest project or any of the quilty conversations that have caught your interest through the the past week. Just leave your thoughts and links in the comments box at the end of this page. Oh! And don’t forget to use the subscribe box to ensure you receive email notifications whenever I publish a blog post. Thank you!

I’ve managed a better balance between sewing machine and lap top this week. The lap top has mainly been used to add fresh items to my ETSY shop. Writing product information takes a surprisingly long time – and editing the product photos takes even longer! For the first time I’ve added some fabrics to my shop items. I’m in de-clutter mode at the moment – I think it is the changing season that has brought this about as Summer clothing and outdoor furniture is put away and Winter garments and occupations begin to take over. So even the sewing room has had a little declutter. It’s been good to finally give up some fabrics that I’d bought for projects I no longer have the time or motivation to pursue.

It’s been satisfying to do some sewing. I’m in the early stages of preparing a new workshop, ‘Using Up Scraps’. One of the techniques I’m planning to teach is crazy patchwork. Up till now I’ve only ever created crazy patchwork by using a stitch and flip method on a foundation fabric. Earlier in the Summer I was inspired by a friend to purchase a roll of stiffening material called In-R-Form by Bosal (although most sewists in the UK seem to be calling it by the manufacturers name rather than by the mouthful ‘In-R-Form’!). My friend bought her Bosal from Empress Mills and told me about the website’s link to a bag making You Tube video. I had to smile when I got home, found the website and clicked on the link only to find Jenny Doan of Missouri Star Quilt Company with Vanessa aka ‘Crafty Gemini’ making a tote bag using a Jelly Roll and Bosal. What a fun pairing those ladies are! Anyway that got me thinking to try making a basket using Bosal decorated with crazy patchwork.

I cut a piece of Bosal, 9″ x 12″, and covered one side with crazy patchwork. It was very easy to stitch through the Bosal and it has created a firm but flexible basket. Unfortunately I made a bit of a boo-boo in choosing to make the basket fairly small. Once I’d made the lining I realised the side seams were less than four inches long. Of course I need to leave an opening in one of the seams to be able to turn the bag the right way out once the lining is stitched to the outer. But I think that opening needs to be at least three inches long in order to squish the flexible but bulky Bosal through the gap. Hum! I will have another go at making a basket but this time increase the size by a few inches…

We have been blessed with a few days of Summer in Autumn, clear blue skies and warm sunshine. On Thursday I was able to join friends at our  monthly sewing day out in the beautiful Candover Valley, Hampshire. We meet in a village hall/come cricket pavilion next to the Victorian Church of St Peter. What a wonderful setting – so peaceful (well! apart from our chatter and the whir of sewing machines!). We took our lunches out onto the patio overlooking the cricket ground, basking in the sunshine, listening to the birds and just enjoying the treat of a warm day so late in September.

Before lunch I worked on my contribution to Roundabout Quilters’ raffle quilt. We will each make a house or tree block (final size 12″ square) which in the New Year will all be joined quilt-as-you-go style ready for the publicity shots for our group exhibition next September. I have pinned my block into it’s quilt sandwich and intend to add the quilting stitches this weekend.

After that lovely sunny lunch I went back into the hall and worked on another project. I made more half square triangles using some of my stash of Civil War reproduction fabrics. The rich, earthy colours of these fabrics are well suited to the rapid shift from bright Summer to golden Autumn that is taking place all around us. I’d like to arrange these HSTs into blocks and stitch them together over the weekend.

As usual there have been a whole host of interesting and inspiring blog posts to read over the past week or so. Here are just a few of the ones I have enjoyed and hope you will too:

Shannon has written an encouraging blog post to get us over our fears of modifying and creating quilt patterns. She included a link to a quilting calculator app by Robert Kaufman. How handy is that? 🙂

Christa Watson has taken her quilt design process back a stage and has been designing fabrics. In this post she has lots of photos to show how a fabric design sketched on a piece of paper evolves into a real bolt of fabric. Fascinating!

I’m always on the look out for sewing room makeovers and Irene has posted the latest changes she has made to her sewing space – re-purposing IKEA units and other furniture from around her home. Ingenious and practical!

Now put your feet up and hug a cup of something warm while you read and feast your eyes on Christa’s lovely post about her recent teaching trip to Tasmania and Adelaide, Australia. She took her family and they look to have a lot of fun.

Linking with Myra for Finished or Not Friday.

Have a great weekend. Happy stitching.

Allison