Stagnant...

I haven't had much of a chance to do any sort of craft work lately. Having 2 little ones is pretty full on, they rarely nap at the same time and when they do I take the opportunity to have lunch or take a shower rather than break out the sewing machine or paint brushes. Current projects that I'm in the middle of are:

• Nicola's baby quilt
• Emma's baby quilt
• painting Little Lady's table and chairs, and toybox
• make a cushion booster so Little Lady can sit at the dining table

Future projects include making washable, waterproof craft smocks or aprons for the Little Ones, making an Elmo b'day cake for Little Lady and another baby quilt for a good friend due in April.

So much to do still so this is a kick up my butt to find the time and DO something!!

Tutorial - Sewing a 3-Point Corner

I'm currently making another baby quilt for a friend and I didn't realise that I'd designed a crazy block that required a 3-point corner to join 3 of the pieces together until I started cutting material. Up until now I've been careful to make sure that all pieces can be sewn together by simply adding each individual piece to the growing block with straight sewing lines - much easier to sew. The 3-point corner isn't very difficult to sew but it can be a bit fiddly. Here's how I did it:

Here are the 3 pieces that need to share a corner.

I sew 2 pieces together first and press the seam - in this case towards the blue piece as the flower piece actually forms a corner of my crazy block.

Then I sew the third (pink) piece to the flower piece, starting at the outside edge sewing towards the blue piece, taking care to stop exactly when I reach the seam joining the first 2 pieces. I sew back for a few stitches then forward again to reinforce the seam. Note: this is NOT how most would sew this. Usually it's recommended to sew from the existing seam at the middle of the 3 point corner outwards in case the sides aren't exactly the same length but whenever I try to do this I wind up fighting with my machine and saying many bad words in the process. So this works for me.

When I open up the seams you can see the junction of the 3 pieces and the remaining seam still to be sewn.

This is the fiddly bit as you may need to tug the material a little to get the 2 sides of the last seam to line up and you will also need to fold the first piece out to make sure you don't catch it in the seam about to be sewn.

Here is the last seam lined up ready to be sewn.

Again I sew from the outside towards the central corner and reinforce the end of the stitching so the corner won't gape or come loose. I don't bother reinforcing the start of the seams as with the addition of more pieces to the growing block all these ends will be incorporated into new seams preventing them from unravelling. However, if you're starting the seam from the centre of the block then obviously reinforce your stitching before sewing towards the outside and no need to reinforce the end of the seam.

Press the seams to one side - in this crazy block the flower piece is a corner, the pink piece forms part of a side and the blue piece is a centre piece so all seams are folded towards it.

The finished product - a 3-point corner.

The Playmat Part 5 - Finished!!

Well it's been a very busy end to 2009 with little time for craft. I have a very good reason for downing tools - I had a baby! Now that things are settling into a bit of a routine I hope to start up again. Got some great ideas already and a few gifts to make this month. But to continue the playmat story....

All the hand sewing was done and it was time to finish off the mat with a border and a backing. Since the background to the mat was a neutral pale lemon I wanted to add some colour and after fumbling around organising and reorganising bordered cells in an excel file I came up with a triangle motif border in bright vibrant colours.

I sewed all the pieces together in colour order first for each side....

...then attached each bordered side to the mat...

...leaving the corner seams to last.

Using the same 6 colours I made a long strip of paralellograms attached to each other for the hoop covers and lined it with some thin wadding. I folded each strip in half lengthwise with right sides facing and inserted a skinny tie (made of the lemon material folded in on itself and hand sewed together - it was way to skinny to be able to use a sewing machine) at intervals along the strip. I then machine-sewed each strip to form a long skinny cylinder. Then came the fiddly part of trying to turn the cylinders inside out which turned out to be easy compared to pulling it over the half hoops as I had made the cover very snug. I hand sewed each end closed, incorporating a thicker, longer tie at each end - thankfully I was able to make these with the sewing machine so not as tedious to do.

The skinny ties are to hang toys from and the longer ties at each end of the hoop half is to attach it to the mat.

Each corner of the mat also got a longer tie which I sewed on in a box-cross pattern to secure it.

Next I cut a piece of thick wadding and some backing material made of polar fleece - both designed to provide warmth and comfort when the mat is on the floor. Each layer of the mat was sprayed with adhesive and carefully layered together - normally I would only spray one side of the material to form a temporary hold but since I wasn't going to quilt the mat, I needed a firmer more permanent hold to keep the layers together.

I used the same lemon material to create the binding and sewed it in place before trimming the mat edges, folding the binding over and hand sewing to finish it off.

Last things to add were some novelty buttons to cover the reinforced sewing on the ends of the longer ties on each corner of the mat and since I sewed through all layers of the mat, this also helps provide extra strength as the mat is stretched fairly taut when the hoops are tied on. Pictured here is the flower button - the other corners were a sun, a pig and a zebra button.

And after 3 months of scheming and sewing it's finally complete!!

Little Sir has already had a play and loves laying under all the hoops, taking random swipes at the toys tied on. I'm so pleased with how this has turned out, I just wish I had had the idea to do this with Little Lady when she was a baby. Ah well, there's still plenty of things I can make for her. Hmmm...speaking of which...

The Playmat Part 4

Next up were the butterflies. I sewed the big butterfly's wings together first with batting and cellophane inside - actually it's not regular wrapping cellophane as this didn't have a satisfying crackle when played with. I used a Glad oven roasting bag which is slightly thicker, will stand up to being washed and has a lovely snap when ruffled. The wings are three dimensional so they were sewn together then attached to the butterfly body on the playmat which had 4 layers of batting under it to make it really stand out.

The little butterflies were next sewn in place similar to how the flower leaves were. They have a single layer of batting under the wings but not the body...

...which I defined using a matching embroidery floss that contrasted nicely when sewn around the wings.

A little bit of back stitchng to sew the centre of the big butterfly's wings down and the edges are free for bubs to tug on...

...and this corner is complete too.

Next up was to sew all the worm's body segments in place and this went fairly fast. When I came to the blue fur I used a tiny blanket stitch as this is the only piece that doesn't have a folded edge so I couldn't use the ladder stitch and the fur covers the stitching anyway so it can't be seen.

My worm looked a bit naked once finished...

...so he wound up with antennas and feet and morphed into a caterpillar.

Last corner was the tree. The truck and branches were ironed in place with HEATnBOND...

...and then due to the nature of the material used which had such a loose weave that frayed very easily, I used a crossed back stitch with the wrong side of the stitch facing to secure the edges. This brown material has a lovely coarse feeling to it - great for a tree trunk.

And lastly, I secured the base of the felt leaves with a double cross stitch in a matching thread which leaves them free for ruffling tiny fingers through.

So all the hand sewing is finished....

...and now it's back to the sewing machine to add a border, backing piece and cover the half-hoops.

The Playmat Part 3

So to recap - I've got all the bits and pieces ready and have started sewing them in place.

The flower stems were ironed on with the HEATnBOND and then I hand sewed all the petals on using a ladder stitch (loveloveLOVE this stitch).

For embelishment, and coz I wanted a bit of texture, I then took some emdroidery floss and using a back stitch variation I added in the veins on the leaves and also a border around the stems and each leaf with a stem stitch.

For more detail on the leaf stitching see the pics below

Next the petals went on...

...stem stitch around each petal to give it definition and then the flower centres were sewn on - lots of pins, I like to know exactly where pieces will wind up...

...and stem stitch around the centres too.

Taa daa!!

I am so stoked with how this came out - love the vibrant colors and the soft puffiness of the petals. Bubs is going to love it too!

Lincoln's Quilt

Friends of ours had a beautiful little boy a few months back and after finding out first hand how useful all the playmats and throw rugs that I'd been given are, I decided to make a cot sized baby quilt that can double as a floor mat for little Lincoln to lay, play on and sleep under.

For inspiration I googled quilt blocks and saw examples of crazy blocks which I thought looked great. Knowing it was for a boy, I chose colours in blues and yellows with a very pale yellow for the internal borders to set off the vibrant coloured blocks. The large external border and backing were made from a gorgeous star and moon themed material which I thought tied in perfectly for a cot quilt.

I made cardboard templates for the crazy block pieces and since I only had limited material for some of the yellows I wanted to use, I traced each piece onto the materials making sure I had equal numbers of each shape in each material, and then cut them all out by hand rather than use a rotary cutter. It took a practice go for the first block before I worked out which order to sew them in and which side to iron the seams to. The first block had to be unpicked and resewn but once it was all sorted out I was able to sew the blocks in production-line style.

Since there were so many pieces that make up the blocks, the edges weren't exactly even so I ironed the blocks, stretching some slightly where needed, to all be at least the same minimum width and height and then trimmed the edges so they were all exactly the same size - it made piecing them together with the pale yellow borders so much easier. I laid all the blocks out and spent some time reorganising them like a jigsaw puzzle so that each block was oriented differently to the ones next to them and/or had different coloured same shaped pieces within the block.

I used the same material for the wide outer border and the backing piece and the quilt was sandwiched with cotton batting inside. Then came all the pinning. I know I could use a basting spray but I like to flip the quilt a number of times when pinning to make sure that I'm not incorporating any bumps and lumps and I lift and resmooth the front and back as needed. And before you say it, yes the basting spray isn't permanent so the material can be lifted and repositioned but I don't trust it to not pull at the batting. I also prefer to machine quilt by sewing in the ditch of the blocks rather than quilting the traditional way by randomly sewing swirls all over the quilt - I don't really like messy look of traditional quilting and tumble drying then puckers it further, detracting from what I really want to show off which is the blocks. As a mum being able to throw things into the washing machine and then tumble dry is almost an essential quality in anything baby related. I also used a hidden knot to keep things nice and tidy front and back. When I get some time to take the photos I'll post a tutorial on how to do the hidden knots.

The reverse side of sewing in the ditch - you can't tell where I started and ended sewing with the hidden knots.

And I completed the quilt by machining the binding onto the front and finishing it off on the back by hand with hidden stitches. Over all it measures about 90cm x 115cm and I'm really pleased with how it turned out. I had great fun making this quilt so will definately be making more with crazy blocks in the future.

The Playmat Part 2

Cutting out the tree parts was fairly straight forward. I used a heavy woven jacket material with brown and black threads through it for the trunk and branches of the tree, and felt in shades of green for the leaves. I still have to iron on some HEATnBOND to the tree trunk and little squares of it onto the leaves to applique them to the mat. Here are the parts:

The butterflies were cut out of colourful quilting material. The little ones will have a little batting in the wings to create a little dimension and the big blue butterfly will have cellophane in the wings with just the body and the centre of the wings attached to the mat so bubs can play with the crinkly wings.

Since taking this photo I've finished attaching the little butterfly bodies to the wings and have cut batting for all parts that need it. These will all be hand sewn onto the mat.

I've also cut all the pieces for the flowers which will have the petals stuffed with batting for texture. The leaves will also have some batting under them and I'll hand embroider the leaf veins on. The stems will simply be appliqued on so they've since been attached to HEATnBOND too, ready for positioning onto the mat.

Everything is almost done so assembly will soon begin.