TropicalSoup

Most fabulous ad!

I saw this via WhipUp, and it had me at *jumpers*. This is my kind of ad - I may or may not have had to cover my mouth to stop me from waking everyone else up with my chortling!

 

Easy Half Square Triangles en masse {a tutorial}

I've had a hankering to make a HST (half square trieangle) quilt for a while now...partly because there are so many gorgeous quilts around that inspire me, and partly because I think it's a good thing to remind myself of the importance of accurate piecing every now and again, and HSTs keep you honest!

The other night, I grabbed 2 charm packs, and started cutting. And it occurred to me that someone might appreciate if I shared the method I use to make HSTs en masse. I first saw this method at a quilt retreat in Wellington, NZ (way back at the turn of the century, haha) and though I've racked my brain I can't be sure who it was that showed me. I just know I was amazed then, and am still pretty tickled - it's a shortcut that seems somehow like a magic trick. But with fabric!

Using 5" charm squares, 2 charm squares will yield 4 3" HST blocks (or 3 1/4" if you're very careful). I used 2 charm packs (Sandy Gervais' Giddy) and now have a grand total of 168 blocks. So, lets get started:

Step 1: take 2 fabric squares, right sides together. (I've offset them here so you can see them, though of course, you'll want to line the edges up)

Step 2: sew around all 4 sides of the fabric - I have marked the stitching lines in fabric pen here just to make it more obvious: you just start at one corner, and stitch 1/4" away from the edge all the way around, pivoting the fabric at each corner with your needle down.This creates a fabric parcel, that is sealed on all sides.

At this point I like to add a little spray starch and press the sewn fabric parcels well - the addition of starch now makes for much easier cutting and sizing up later!

Step 3: Take a fabric parcel, and line your ruler up with the diagonal corners. (It's helpful here to also line up your stitching line or the edge of the fabric with some of the markers on the ruler) Cut the fabric right through, corner to corner.

Step 4: Now line the ruler up corner to corner on the opposing diagonal (sometimes moving yourself or rotating the block make this easier. 20 cuts in I remembered I had a rotating cutting mat. Duh!) Cut through.

Step 5: ta da! You're done - all you need to do now is press them open, and trim them up if need be. Voila!!! How easy is that?!?

 

Confession: I spent 2 hours last night trimming these little blocks and I got through just over half. Trimming is one of my least fabourite things - but necessary here. It drives me a little batty. And Law and Order may or may not have required more of my attention during this period!

 

Chop chop

As I was sitting at the sewing machine tonight, I realised that I didn't take any of the photos I'd intended today to share with you. Bugger. In fact, I hadn't gotten beyond making a mental pile of the projects I wanted to snap. So here's a little something to tide you over...a whole bundle of HSTs (half square triangles for the uninitiated) which are going to (hopefully!) work their way into a cute, quick wee quilt for a special wee person. Back tomorrow with some fun things I've just finished, and possibly even a super quick tutorial on the most fabulous HST shortcut!

(the fabric is Giddy by Sandy Gervais for Moda)

Eight

 

Today was Atticus's birthday. Our firstborn would have been eight. Eight. That just blows my mind.

We set free some helium balloons in Addy's honour. Well, I'd picked up 8 with the intention of letting them all go, but Cole and Immy informed me that Addy - being the ever-generous and loving elder brother - would have been happier if they could each keep a balloon, so we took that route instead - I could hardly refuse what the munchkins were so adamant was the birthday boy's wishes, now could I?

 

 

Cole and Immy decided to write their wish on a balloon each, which was pretty gorgeous.

 

Immy drew a picture of her and Atticus playing together in the clouds, and Cole's balloon was a veritable ode to cool modes of transport - speedboats and racing cars and jet planes and rockets and all things that his big brother would have liked. There were plenty of hearts on both, as well as their names, so Atticus could easily tell who each balloon was from.

 

Singing happy birthday to Addy again was bittersweet, watching my younger 2 make a wish and send a message to their big brother as they let go of their balloon was very special, and having Cole spontaceously yell out *I love you so much baby Atticus that my heart will burst, and I hope you have a happy birthday and have fun playing with Nana Mary* just about did me in. There were tears, but there was also joy. And affirmation. And much watching of balloons in the big blue Australian sky until even the tiny dots disappeared.

 

Happy birthday my dear sweet Addy. Mama loves you. And she's not the only one.

I tried...

 

We attended a sweet little neighbour's 3rd birthday party today, and after a bit of to-ing and fro-ing on what to make her, D elicited a promise from me to get her something from the stores, since we don't know the family well yet and D - bless him - is big on me making things for people who appreciate handmade, and not for people we don't really know or those for whom handmade holds no special value. It's a sensible plan, but really hard for me to do. These are the wee gifties that Cole and Immy took next door - it doesn't count if the handmade stuff is outside the wrapping, right? Plus, it also acts as part of the giftwrap!

(and as it was, I'm so glad I did include the wee headband and clips - turns out the mum is very crafty with paper, so we got a whole conversation going from the hair doodads. Yay!)

You spin me right round, baby

 

Confession #1: I keep putting off writing this post because I want to talk a little about the process of how I got to this design, and I knew it would lengthy knowing me and my tendency towards verbiage, nevermind my proclivity for runon sentences, ha!

Confession #2: I have a terrible affinity for 80s pop, hence the working title of this quilt (and this post!) Apologies to those of you who end up with the tragically hip Dead or Alive's ditty rotating in their noggin for the rest of the day!

 

 

So, I had this plan (famous last words!) to come up with a quilt design to use up some jelly rolls, but I wanted to do something a little different. I wanted something quick and easy and effective, using strips. I considered doing a 1600/ jelly roll race -type quilt (I had no idea these quilts had a name back when I made some little snuggly quilts this way for the kids way back in 2008..pre blog. And pre precuts, ha. Note to self - photograph those, too!) but I wanted something more, so then I considered maybe doing a 1600 quilt but adding a thin line of solid to the 1 long line of strips so that it would end up alternating rows of jelly roll and thin solid. But that still seemed more lineal than I was aiming for. So I started thinking about manipulating it into a shape - maybe squares or rectanlges...and then I thought maybe I should marry that idea with the thin solid strip idea with the 1600 idea...and this is where I went with it!

 

And...I'm not sure. I really like the concept of the block, but I'm just not sure about colour execution here. The jelly roll I used is Ann Kelle's Remix which is full of gorgeous patterns and beautiful happy colours. I seriously considered using something like Kona Charcoal as the solid to give it a bit more grounding but I wanted to stretch myself by using a colour. I'm wondering if it is just way too busy? Maybe quilting it will tame it a little, I don't know. And I am planning to sash the blocks with the same width green tea, or possibly a smidge wider, so that might help calm things a little. What do you think?

I only had enough of the Kona Green Tea to make 4 blocks (more just arrived on my doorstep yesterday!) so I am trying to decide how I feel about it and whether I want to make more! I really like the pattern idea though so either way i think I'll be trying it again in a different colourway with a different jellyroll, and maybe I can even rummage up a tutorial, once we get a combination that doesn't make your eyes smart!

Paint Box Quilt A

Hooray - half my Paintbox *quilt* is done, almost. I call this one Paintbox A at the moment (because I can be creative like that!) and whilst it's still in need of binding, I've been very pleased to get it out from under the machine...concentric circles is not a particularly tricky design to execute, but it did end up with an awful lot of quilt wrangling and manipulation. Sometimes I do long for a bigger harp than my 440QE offers, but it does the job...

I traced a circle in 3 spots on the quilt (using the lid of the starch spray can), offset against each other in a way that I hoped would give a sense of movement to the end result, and then set the guide to my walking foot to just shy of 1" and basically follwed the lines with concentric rings. When I got to a particular spot (completely arbitrary on my part) I started on the next ring, working out to within 1" of the earlier ring, and so on. Then I filled in the areas between rings to echo the pattern. Et voila!

 

Whist the fronts of both Paintbox quilts are mirror images of each other, I've pieced the backs completely differently. Looking at this one, I wish now I'd set the pieced block further to the left so it's clear that it was deliberately set offcentre (it sort of looks just like I can't line things up, ha!) but otherwise I'm very happy - the pieced block is just little snippets left over from the Kona colours used on the front, set in Kona white, with Kona mid grey and Kona tarragon (love this colour!) making up the rest.

 

And I couldn't resist this one - my super awesome wee helper, who was so happy to let me snap away. And when his arms got a bit tired, we swapped jobs - the pic of the back of the quilt is all his work! This is when Coley called out to me: Mama, take a photo of your quilt with just my eyebrows showing! Erm okay - Charlie chaplin in quilt form!

(and please forgive the hideous dust speck - the camera's going in for a proper cleaning this week!!!)

Imagination

 

I went wild and crazy a few days ago and handed over my stash of regular balloons, modelling balloons and the balloon pumps into the care of the munchkins. Until then it had lived in the craft cupboard, and whomever wanted a balloon would just check with me first, and usually (since it was on a higher shelf) I'd be the one fetching the balloon and having the confab about which colour and style etc.

Not suprisingly, we've had a higher than normal amount of balloon made and modelled and requests for them to be tied off since the box was handed over. There have been some great things appear - here Immy is holding a penguin wearing a life jacket. Obviously. (Unfortunately small disasters of the popping kind befell the parrot-in-a-swing-wearing-gumboots and the swan-run over-by-a-truck before I could capture them on film!)

Oh, and the pipe cleaners? Those are Immy's ant antennae (made by Cole). The 2 of them spent a good part of the day yesterday impersonating those industrious little beasts...including a trip to the supermarket. Unfortunately it turns out the antennae do not automatically confer ant-like abilities - Cole was unable to lift a single car or fridge, despite his best efforts!

The ad that D and I still quote to each other...

...several years after first seeing it, it still makes me chuckle.

 

I have all manner of crafty things to share, but need to get myself organised and the camera out at a time other than when all I have is harsh middle-of-the-day sunlight...

Extending the life of baby hangers

 

Catchy title, non?

 

 

I have these gorgeous wooden baby hangers that I acquired way back before Atticus was born and that have been used for BahaCoca prop shoots as well as holding up Cole and Immy's clothing for the last 5-and-then-some years. Recently I've started noticing that with the kids (and their clothes) getting bigger, the hangers aren't quite so useful as the clothes slip off (wider necklines for dresses and jackets and things means a tougher job to *balance* them on the hanger! Add to that the smallish child's approach to removing clothing from said hangers (I believe yank and fling is the technical term) and these hangers spend an awful lot of time empty, with their intended inhabitants crumpled below them.

 

Anyway, that small novella is all to say that I figured out a way to extend the life of these sweet wee hangers somewhat, thanks to a couple of pegs and my handy dandy glue gun. Hot gluing a peg to either *shoulder* of the hanger turns them into pants/skirt hangers that fit just perfectly for these kindergarten sized clothes. And they are ideal for Cole and Immy's school uniform bottoms, even negating the need for ironing {yay!} (you would have been treated to a mass array of maroon shorts and skorts in the pics, but it was the weekend and they were all in the wash, ha!)

This is seriously simple. I contemplated doing a tutorial but resisted since blowing your nose is probably trickier than this little project! Of course, you can get a little silly aesthetically-oriented like me, and modpodge a little scrapbook paper onto the pegs, or paint them (I just did the face of the pegs since I'm a rebel like that. Nail polish rides again!) You could also do this for any plastic baby hangers, and use plastic pegs - there are some really cute ones around! And oh boy, it's so nice to see clothing actually still attached to the hanger when I open their wardrobe!