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Dewsbury Makes Linky Party!

Published by Thimberlina

On the 6th February the Yorkshire Spoolette’s gathered in Dewsbury for their 2nd meet up. We had a great day and came away with bags full to brimming with scrumptious fabric.

Once the shops closed we hit Weatherspoon and it was then that I set a challenge for everyone to make something in the next month with something bought on the day.

So here we are! A linky party of all the gorgeous garments made, and Amanda’s dishcloth!

If you didn’t join us but have made something with fabric bought from Dewsbury please add your link. Links can be from blog posts, instagram or just photos. It’s easy to do, so link away!!

The link will be open until 7th April – another month to get sewing and share with us your fab makes!

If anyone knows why you can’t view the pictures without clicking the link please let me know as it’s driving me crazy trying to fix it!!

I Made A Vlog

Published by Thimberlina

About a month ago I’d not even heard of vlogging, and now egged on by some of my lovely readers I made one today!

I’ve uploaded it to You Tube, so if you want to see what I’ve been up to today click HERE . Hope you can understand the Yorkshire accent!

An honest opinion would be appreciated, but I’ve realised already that I won’t be giving up my day job!

Hope you’ve all had a lovely week! I have! It’s writing my Sunday Sevens and reflecting on my week that make me realise how lucky I am having an extra 2 hours in the day to everyone else – I must do cos I don’t see how else I could fit everything in!

Natalie from Threads and Bobbins thought up the Sunday Sevens over 18 months ago as a way of posting snippets of your week that maybe wouldn’t warrant a blog post all on their own. You don’t have to sign your life away to join in – just jump in and out as you please – or go for the long haul like me. It’s my Sunday Sevens Anniversary this weekend and I’ve not missed a week!

1 I started my week with good intentions of running 3 time. Monday went well but then I started with the sorest throat you can imagine and it’s lingered all week. Hopefully I’ll be able to get out more next week.

2 Took mum to stretch her legs around our local garden centre and bought some cherry scones for after tea.

3 I decided I needed a Brooklyn hoodie for work – I had 2 old jackets that had broken zips and managed to fit all the pieces on. It worked really well – post to follow!

4 The first snowy day we had this week – we had 2 but the 2nd one was much worse. Luckily I was off on the really bad day, I felt pretty rotten with my poorly throat and stayed in bed to lunchtime.

5 Slaithwaite in Huddersfield – pronounce sla-wit by Yorkshire folk! Maybe I should do a Vlog for my Sunday sevens!

6 Major sorting out of stash has started this week. 43 metres later and I’ve not even touched any of the 4 boxes of organised fabric or anything on my shelves. I think I might even be really ruthless and see if one of the local high schools who teach textiles would like some of my stash. With the best will in the world there’s no way I’m going to sew my way through this lot. Out of what I sorted so far most i would keep as its what I’ve bought and not used in the last year.

7 I think it’s 3 or 4 years since I’ve not had to work on Mothers Day so today we went to the golf club – they do a fab sunday lunch – 3 courses and coffee for only £12.50!!

8 And the lovely lady who works there brought me a double helping of my favourite pudding with a red ribbon round it!

The feature photo this week is a little vintage camper that I’ve embroidered for my lovely Mum……Happy Mothers Day Mum! xxx

And just before you go – even tho it’s already had it’s own post but I’m so pleased with it I just need to show you again! My 2 blocks for the Time for Teal quilt in aid of Ovarian Cancer.

Time For Teal

Published by Thimberlina

Kate who blogs at Tall Tales from Chiconia is co-ordinating the making of a quilt to raise money for Ovarian Cancer Australia. There’s information on her blog if you’d like to read more and maybe contribute a block too – she needs 36 blocks altogether! The theme for the block is “Time for Teal” – so we’re making teal coloured blocks around the afternoon tea theme. Kate also making a Teal Ribbon block which is the symbol to raise awareness of ovarian cancer.

Kate organises a F2F block swap where basically each of the 12 members make 3 12″ blocks per month for a person who’s month it is. I’m really not explaining this very well, but Pat was one of the ladies, and she sadly lost the fight with ovarian cancer which has lead to the Time For Teal quilt being created. You really need to head to Kate’s blog who explains it all much better than me.

Initially for me the first thing I had to do was go shopping. Being a very newbie quilter (Hey, that’s the first time I’ve called myself that!!) I don’t have a stash of quilting cottons. So far I’ve only got the fat quarters I’ve bought for my Splendid Sampler.

Luckily there’s Dolly’s Craft Corner only 5 minutes away and I had time to call in yesterday once the snow had melted.

I bought a jelly roll with 20 strips of fabric for £12 and a spotty fat quarter. Oh and 2m of some cream cotton poplin. I was really excited to get started but had to get H to his physic appointment then take the MIL out for tea.

Eventually at 7:30pm I made a start. Armed with my iPad and followed the instructions for the Dresden Plate on Craftsy Class – Blocks of the Month 2012. It’s a free class where Amy Gibson shows you how to make 12 different blocks. It’s worth a look if you’re thinking of having a go at quilting. I was enthralled and watched it from start to finish about a month ago. It set me in good stead for when I throw myself into the deep end with the Splendid Sampler.

I don’t haver the fancy ruling for cutting out the pieces but she includes a template to make your own out of cardboard.

I did this for the first time – continuous chain piecing I think it’s called!

The little pointy pieces were really simple to make:

Here they are laid out ready for stitching:

And all stitched and pressed….

I pinned each dresden in place and attached with plate using machine appliqué.

I used this stitch (for my future reference!)

And it gave a really neat finish I stitched the centre circle with the same stitch.

I only said I’d make one but had also of ideas going round in my head so this morning I put pen to paper and designed my first very own block! I made a cup shape and cut out 4 then jiggled them about on the fabric.

Then I had to do some maths.Those funny shapes in the middle are tea cups in case you’re wondering! After making the Splendid Sampler blocks I’ve learnt why these 1/2 inches are everywhere w hen cutting out pieces so this was really easy to work out. ( I couldn’t have done this a month ago!).

I used the same appliqué method to attach the tea cups and then just added the border to the edge.

I think this is my favourite of the 2.

I’m going to post them off to Australia on Monday. You never know I might just get chance to make another one. I hope so!

And don’t forget, you can make one too if you’d like!

Extra

Published by Thimberlina

I think if I didn’t offer an explanation for this one, only my mum would guess the connection for this week’s photo challenge.

On Wednesday I worked a 12/12 shift, so should have finished at midnight. Unfortunately due to the nature of my work we don’t alway finish on time and last night was one of those times. I left work 1 1/2 hours after my planned finish time. So a very tired Thimbers climbed into her car after working an “extra” 90 minutes on top of her 12 hours. On a positive note the extra dosh earnt will be spent on an extra glass of Mateus Rosé in Portugal!

Linking in again with the 52 Week Photo Challenge from:

A quick way to make a thread looper

Published by Thimberlina

I’ve made thread loopers in the traditional way by hand. But usually when I get to the stage of making the looper it means I’ve nearly finished whatever I’m making and I want a quicker way to do it. That’s when the machine stitched looper comes in. I also find it stronger than the more conventional way.

Here’s a hand stitched one I made when I attended the GBSB Sewing With Silk class. This was the first hand stitched one I’d ever done and wasn’t too neat and also a bit too big.

My next attempt was much neater, but just as time consuming:

When I made my recent colour blocked dress I went back to my favourite ~~lazy~~ way and used the machine and had it done in about 2 minutes!

Here’s how…..

Take a long length of matching (or contrasting!) thread and fold it in half, then twice more so you will have 8 strands of thread:

Set your machine to the widest zig zag stitch. The stitch length doesn’t matter as you’ll be pulling the threads through not the feed dogs.

The idea is to stitch over the strands of thread with a zig zag which binds them all together.

The thread needs to be held taught and fed through evenly.

So you can start near the end of the thread without fear of catching your fingers take a length of thread about 6-8 inches and loop it through one end:

Position the thread under the presser foot. The thread you can see below is the 2 strands that I looped through. The 8 threads just peak out from the presser foot – too close to hold with your fingers!

Keep the threads taught – pulling from the back and front.

Off you go……..Stitch away! If feels strange that the needle is disappearing into nothing, but just feed the threads steadily through until you run out of thread.

I’ve used 2 contrasting colours so you can see the different effects where I fed it through faster or slower.

You should find a piece that’s good enough to use. If your stitches are a bit sparse and you’ve run it through to fast, don’t worry – you can run it through again and stitch over it.

Voila!

I find these super easy to make but they can be tricky to attach to your garment depending what you’re using it for and on the type of fabric.

For my recent denim dress I stitched it to the bias binding I was using to finish the neckline. As I don’t like anything coming unstitched I got carried away and went over it quite a few times!

Then I stitched the bias trim in place.

It doesn’t look too neat on the inside on the outside it is!

Another way to attach it would be to use a needle with a large eye and thread it through. This might prove to be too thick with some fabric, in which case you could experiment with using less threads.

Other uses for these quick little thread loopers are belt loops and also if you add a press stud they’d make good bra strap stays.

Hope you find this mini tutorial useful and if you know of any other uses for them please tell!!

Vogue 8805

Published by Thimberlina

“Why oh why did I leave it so long!!??”

We’ve all said it.

More than once.

But we never learn.

It’s not that often is it that we unearth a UFO, finish it and aren’t please. I mean, if it was that bad in the first place it would’ve ended up in the bin not chucked in the corner.

So a while ago I borrowed V8805 of my real life sewing buddy Jeanie.

Jeanie’s the one who got me going again, so to speak. She’s made umpteen versions of these. For my first I used up some left over denim. The dark blue was from my GBSB capri pants and the raspberry was from my Mexican dress and also a peg bag. You might even recognise pinky red denim from other blogs – I’ve seen Jeans on The Prolific Project Starters blog and also a cute little dress only a couple of weeks ago on Making and Markings blog. (I’ve just looked and Minerva still have it in stock). In fact it was Camilla’s recent post that reminded me I had this UFO buried somewhere in my sewing room.

And it was the Monthly Stitch that gave me the much needed kick up the butt to finish this easy peasy make.

There wasn’t even much to do. I’d only abandoned it because the neck was too tight and I thought the shoulder seams were in the wrong place.

I marked with a biro how low I wanted the neckline to be then used my dressmakers curve to draw a new neckline.

I also took 1/2 inch off the side but didn’t lower the back. You can just make out the pencil line above.

I only cut half to start off with then used the cut out piece as a template to cut the other side.

I didn’t bother pinning or drawing, just held it in place. (I like living dangerously!) Once i’d stopped the neck from choking me the shoulder seams fixed themselves! It was like magic!

It looked fairly even. I realised straight away I’d chopped off my stay stitching so stitched another row to prevent stretching out.

I finished up the neckline with some bias tape, a loop and a cute red button I found in the button box.

This loop was stitched on the machine and took less than a minute. If anyone’s interested I might do a quick tutorial.

The hem on the arms and hem were straight stitched in red, and hey presto it was finished.

Just to mention before I show you the finished article. I need to show you my clappered seams. The clapper makes such a different to the finish, especially with thick fabric like denim.

Below is the seam pressed.

Then I pressed it again just the same but flattened it with the clapper:

It’s probably the one thing in my sewing room (after my sewing machine) that I really couldn’t live without.

As soon as my frock was finished I wore my dress to have a wander round the local garden centre with my mum. Unfortunately we bumped into someone we knew so couldn’t have a photoshoot as we had planned!

Instead dad took some when we got home.

I didn’t have enough fabric to do the upper part both in red. I’m glad I didn’t know as it detracts the eye from maybe needing a sway back adjustment.

I love dresses but don’t make too many everyday one as I never know what to wear on my feet! In summer I’m ok when I’ve got a bit of colour on my legs but they need covering up in winter!

With the increased width in the neck opening I don’t need the button closure but it adds a bit of interest.

All in all I’m chuffed to bits with my new frock! I think it’ll be just the job for when I go to Portugal with the golfing ladies at the end of April.

So thank you to The Monthly Stitch for prompting me to finish this frock.

#SundaySevens 52

Published by Thimberlina

A little late but we won’t dwell on that! After all, there’s no rules in Natalie’s Sunday Sevens! Head over to Threads & Bobbins if you want to read more about it, and join in too!

As usual I didn’t think I’d done much stuff this week. I’d worked an extra 2 shifts (to pay towards my girlie golfing trip!) so there wasn’t much time left for fun and craftiness. But I still couldn’t narrow it down to 7 photos!

1 One of the ladies from the golf club has given me a selection of hand crocheted doilies. How gorgeous are they. There’s 9 altogether in different sizes.

2 We had sunshine on the golf course!

3 And pizza at Pizza hut! I just love their stuffed crust. We don’t go very often as I think it’s a bit over priced, but soooo nice.

4 I’ve cracked on with my UFO. Just this neckline to finish, which will hopefully happen today.

5 Learning to embroider at the roadside thanks to Craftsy!

6 Friday we had a special night out. It was touch and go till the last minute whether or not mum would be up for it but she was. Those sticks and her cheeky smiley face meant we didn’t have to queue anywhere!

7 Where were we??? We went to the XFactor Live Tour at Leeds Arena. Maybe not your cup of tea but it was ours! We had a great time and was on the 2nd row from the front! All the acts were amazing, and I was surprised that Reggie & Bollie sounded better in real life than on telly.

8 Saturday was my no smoking anniversary…..

Next year it will be a year since I started joining in the Sunday Sevens! I love it and haven’t missed a week. The best bit (other than sharing it with you guys) is looking back and reminiscing. It’s like the diary, but then I suppose that’s what a blog is for!

Until next time….x

Tension

Published by Thimberlina

Today I joined in a fun team comp at the golf club. It might be a fun comp but we still wanted to win!!

There was quite a few tense moments wondering if the putts would drop.

Did it……………

No!

Then in the clubhouse the tension mounted as we waited for Lady Captain to announce the winning team. We came joint first, but ended up 2nd on a count back (golf speak. If the putt would have dropped we’d have won!!

Linking in again with the 52 Week Photo Challenge from:

Nanacathydotcom

Rainbow Junkie

The Aran Artisan

Wild Daffodil

The Splendid Sampler

Published by Thimberlina

I first heard about The Splendid Sampler on Poppy in Stitches blog earlier in the month. One of the big things I want to do in 2016 is make a quilt so I headed straight over to find out more.

Then Margaret from Crafty Creek made a block too, and they started popping up all over Instagram.

Basically, two 6 inch blocks are released each week and eventually you’ll end up with 100 squares all ready to be sewn into a quilt! Seemed simple enough.

I needed to go shopping. I’m not a quilter and although I have a moderate stash it’s nearly all dressmaking fabric.

For my initial shopping spree just to get me going I bought 4 half metre pieces.

Armed with 3 of the fabric pieces, the instructions and my new big quilting ruler I was all set.

I soon discovered the pale spotty fabric was a bit flimsy.

So changed the spotty fabric for the 4th fabric I’d bought…

Yup, much better. It was soon sewn up in no time….

And I’m in love!! How cool is that!!?? The hand stitched appliqué was a little tedious and I could be tempted to use another method next time but nevertheless this time consuming 6 inch square did not deter me from making block number 2.

What did deter me though was lack of fabric. I had to go shopping again as 6 different fabrics were needed for the next block. A smaller quilting ruler was also needed as the large one nearly wafted the tiny squares straight off the table! And starch. I needed starch! The maker of block 2 said so. I looked everywhere. Supermarkets big and small. Corner shop. I eventually found some in my mums utility room. I should’ve looked there first!

So here’s my expanding fabric stash of quilting cottons….