Creative Space

I don't know what this is yet. I'm just making for the heck of it.  This is the first bit of machine sewing I've attempted in over six months, and it was simply time to stop procrastinating and start sewing - just anything, anything to break the drought. Sew first, think later.

So I'm playing with kimono off-cuts and foundation-piecing, much like I did for last year's muff. I'm not sure what it will become or who it will be for, but I do like a bit of mystery sewing - I think it's how I operate best. Otherwise I would have stayed stuck in the thinking, choosing, tracing, cutting, measuring, and still not have cracked the machine out. Now it's done and the drought is broken.

I'm getting this bit of sewing and blogging in because it's been an early start to the day. The boys got up at 4:30am - FOUR THIRTY!! And on our busiest day of the week. I stayed in bed until the babe called for me at 6am, but when the Beloved left for work I switched on the TV without guilt or reserve and shut myself in my new craft room. (Yes, my own room - so novel, so fun, I can barely get my head around it!). Soon we leave for the day, and I can just leave this sew-your-own-adventure project out for later.

Creative spaces now meeting over here - hope to see you there!

My creative space... from frog to prince?

I feel like a bit of a fraud joining in with kootoyoo's creative spaces today, as I've made a big, fat nothing in the last month.

Nonetheless, I can now reveal to you the finished Green Monstrosity, which I finished binding and then delivered to my sister during a visit to QLD last month.

And frankly, after all my concern, I think it's looking pretty darn good, in its home environment.

Once again, check out the glorious quilting work of Karen from Quilts on Bastings:

And here's the backdrop, the rather verdant feature wall that my sister wanted the quilt to blend with.

Still not 100% my cup of slime tea, but for the recipient it seems to work just fine.

And now, I'm going to cruise the webs and see what inspiration for a new project I can find. How about you?

My creative space...

We're taking our Slow Project very seriously over here at chez clutterpunk. I'm becoming quite the monotasking expert, almost to the point of stagnation. What, breathe and think at the same time? Dear me no, that would be multitasking!


OK, it hasn't been quite that bad. I have been pootling away on my quilts when time permits, and enjoying it all. The ugly hexes are almost hand-quilted. The green monstrosity has been beautifully machine-quilted by Karen and now requires binding (and banishing to my sister in Queensland, where it shall plague me no more with its greenness). A baby quilt 'commissioned' by a friend is ready for straight-line quilting. The chemo comforter now has a border and is ready for basting.

(Note to Self: think about naming quilts more tastefully.)

Meanwhile, I've been contemplating the Next Quilt:



The Liberty-obsessed Danielle of Itchin to get Stitchin sent me a huge bag of Liberty scraps to play with. (Thank you Danielle. You must have quite a stash!).

They are sitting in a large basket in the lounge room, and when my boys are sufficiently engaged in an activity I've been running my fingers through the silky scraps and dreaming of projects.

A lot of these scraps are tiny and thin but if used carefully they could make something beautiful. I'd love your suggestions! String quilt? Spiderweb quilt?  Liberty crazy quilt?!

Meanwhile, back to the reality of sharing my slow creative space with two little guys. Recently we've been bead sorting (and snorting, occasionally). It has kept them occupied for more minutes that I could have anticipated, and given me time to dream of Liberty.

Who else is sharing their creative space today? Check them all out at Kirsty's place...

My creative space...taking shape.

It feels like I've been doing a refresher in primary school geometry in my creative space recently. 

This week I've completed the piecing of these half-square-triangles for a small lap quilt on its way to a sick friend. 

So far, my short patchwork career has consisted of the scrappy, the imprecise and the mismatched. I like it like that. Nonetheless I'm really digging this classical approach to piecing, using a charm pack of French General Rural Jardin fabric and some hankie linen. Matching fabrics - gasp! I even toyed with a symmetrical design, but that was all a bit staid so I've come up with this asymmetrical suggestion-of-concentric-square thing.

Alongside the triangles-in-squares, my circles-in-hexagons are coming along:

I'm half-way through the hand quilting of my ugly hexagons and enjoying the process a whole lot more since I switched my thread from sashiko thread to Perle 8 cotton, which is gliding through the layers far more easily. Thanks go especially to Mary for the helpful suggestions on how to mark the design and reduce thread friction.

Tune in next week for rhomboids, isosceles triangles and dodecahedrons.

What's shaping up in your creative space?

My creative space... circling.

It has begun. The quilting of the ugly hexes.

I've opted for hand quilting, and decided on a simple design of intersecting circles. 

Simple in theory, anyway. I'm finding it slow going, but not really in that pleasant, lulling, meditative way I had hoped. It's taking a while to get a hang of lots of things: marking out my design; burying knots; holding an unwieldy quilt on my lap; working the needle through those layers.

And then there is the stitching itself. I started out quilting with thin cotton quilting thread and trying to do small, even stitches. After realising that I wasn't catching the backing with stitches smaller than, oh, about a metre, I decided to embrace the large stitch and go for more of a sashiko look. This looks much better to my eye, and doing a better job of actually quilting the layers together. 

But boy, am I finding it hard work. Physically hard. There is a large amount of friction going on. There must be something weird going on with my particular concoction of fabrics, batting (can't remember what sort) and sashiko thread. The three circles I've completed in sashiko-style took around half an hour each! 

Thoughts? Suggestions? Is this just part-and-parcel of doing something new?

Anyway, with all the effort being expended, I've decided I need to keep the energy levels up. This morning I made a rather large batch of cinnamon scrolls, using brioche dough from my no-knead artisan bread book.

Heavenly. What do you think - do I get one for every sashiko circle-of-pain I complete?

More creative spaces to be seen at Kirsty's place.

My creative space... random acts of patchwork

After my little whine last week about my lack of space for quilting, I did actually get around to basting my ugly hexagon quilt. And then I stopped. It seems that I only like to think about one step ahead, and I have not yet decided on the pattern, or the method, of quilting (let alone whether I will straighten the edges, give it a border, bin it in disgust or what have you). 

Meanwhile, having finished last week's little filler project, I had to find a new filler project to help me procrastinate. I opted for a bit of patchwork and quilting practice. I raided the scrap piles and decided to make a tea cosy, inspired by a design in this darling Japanese patchwork book, the design of which I approximated. Very approximately.

Perhaps it was my approximating... perhaps it was the design... but it's one HUGE cosy.  I'm afraid it won't keep my poor little tea pot very toasty at all:

It certainly holds far more potential as a husband-cosy....

After fitting it on various objects, both animate and inanimate, I've opted for the toaster-cosy. It fits perfectly. I'm not sure that my toaster really needs a thickly padded, quilted cover... I guess I'll think of it as an elaborate dust-cover instead.

In terms of quilting practice, it was excellent, because it reminded me of the importance of accurate cutting, accurate seam allowances, accurate basting, using the walking foot, accurate quilt design drawing and slow, careful stitching. None of which I did. That's why I've cheekily blurred those photographs!

I think I might be hand-quilting those hexagons....

 But first, I'm off to visit some creative spaces via the lovely kootoyoo.

My creative space...

Thank goodness for small, hand-held projects.

This one* is helping me to stem the tide of creative frustration as I am denied the space to get on with the 'real' projects - the quilts. The ones that require head space for design-tweaking, floor space for basting, table space for cutting, space in the day for machine-sewing, space away from practical demands, household routines, small children, outings, social gatherings. None of these spaces are available to me right now.

But this little blue hoop with lovely tactile hessian and wool thread are. So they are my creative space this week.

More spaces via kootoyoo.

*A lovely cushion kit from Annette Ericksson, the doyenne of stitching on hessian.

My creative space...where to from here?

It's been a little while since I've managed to join in with kootoyoo's creative spaces round-up. But I really, really wanted to get amongst it today, because I need your thoughts on my hexagon charm quilt.

I've pieced all the hexagons I'm going to piece, leaving me with a small cot-sized patchwork top. I either love it or hate it, but I'm not sure which it is yet!



Now I was thinking about backing the top without a border and leaving the edges tessellated. But as I've been looking at it (kind of in horror) I've realised that there is nowhere for the eye to rest. Because there is no dominant colour, no repeated pattern, no focal point to draw the eye, I've found my eyes bouncing around the quilt top. I like the effect, but I wonder if it might be better to add a plain border to tone it down a bit.

What do you think?

Can you see this with a border?
Do you think a border would tone down the quilt? Should it be toned down?
What about the edges, straight or as they are?
Do you find this quilt horrendous or fabulous? (I can't decide...)

Opinions much appreciated (although of course I will disregard them and do my own thing :))

More creative spaces at Kirsty's house.

My creative space... all good things come to an end.

My Scrap Management Quilt is finished.

I'm thrilled, because it can now embrace its function as the go-to snuggle quilt on the family couch. But I'm sad, because I really enjoyed each process of making it (apart from the basting). And I'm thrilled, because the Beloved thoroughly approves of this sort of quilty aesthetic and can see that there was method in my madness, as well as madness in my method. But I'm sad, because in my enthusiasm I seem to have stuffed the thread tension on my (newly serviced!) sewing machine beyond redemption and cannot therefore get on with any of the other machine quilting, apron-making and so forth that I'm itching to do. But mostly, I'm thrilled.

Here are some pictures (taken in the glamourous car park behind our unit!).
From a distance:

The front (I ditched the border idea and just made some brown binding to finish):

The back (red-striped ticking, shows the puckers up really well!):

A closer look:

A collage of my favourite little clashy places on the quilt:

Yes, this quilt is certainly 'differnt'. And yet just how I imagined it.

Thank you, creative spacers, for encouraging me along the way with this quilt over these last few months. It's the type of quilt that could've been designed, cut, pieced and finished in a weekend, but instead I've averaged an hour per week on it, because machine-sewing just isn't fitting easily into my world - time, space or technique-wise. Perhaps my sewing machine is telling me something? Oh well, nothing for it but to snuggle up under my new quilt and get on with those ugly hexagons!

Now go and drop by Kirsty's house and let her know how spunky she looks in her slashy vest before you join in with your creative space for the week...

My creative space... some actual quilting!

Things have been a bit insane around chez clutterpunk of late, with a toilet-training older child, a non-sleeping younger child, a few weeks in north Queensland, a malfunctioning sewing machine, pantry moths and a bit too much television - all amounting to a big, fat, craft-shaped hole in my universe.

So nothing speaks of a return to normality more than THIS picture:

The basting of my Scrap Management Quilt. I jumped to it on Monday evening, having heard that my sewing machine, replete with new walking foot, would be coming home on Tuesday.

Having heard on the blogvine that basting pins must be inserted at the terrifying interval of every two inches, I set about dutifully sandwiching my layers on the lounge room floor. Man, that was a tedious process! How do you regular quilty types not go insane? It got better as I moved outward, swapped my silly small pins for much larger ones, and... ahem... extended the 2" gaps to slightly larger ones. Like 2 feet. 

Anyway, the pain in my knees and thumbs and the boredom in my head was worth it, as on Tuesday, I was able to get to the quilting!

This was my first time using a walking foot, but in my enthusiasm to get this thing quilted I didn't do any practising on a test-piece. Thus, I adjusted and learnt as I went. My stitch lengths are very uneven - the machine seemed to want to slow down and do tight stitches in random places. Any thoughts? I had visions of lovely, evenly-spaced stitch lengths like Rita's... ha! In time, perhaps.

No matter... it is still looking just smashing and I can't wait to make some binding and finish it off so I can get snuggling under it, and of course show it off in next week's space!

I'm off for a cuppa-for-a-cause now, but will be back to see what's in your creative space this afternoon - thanks Kirsty for hosting.

My creative space... scrap management

I'm making a little progress on my 'scrap management quilt' and hoping to let it dominate my creative space today.

Over the last month I've gathered four paper bags' worth of rectangular scraps cut into four different widths. The scrap lengths are quite varied, depending largely on how much of the fabric I've had. Yesterday I started sewing the scraps together into strips (columns), ironing the seams flat and slinging them over my ladder. I'd like to finish that today. 

I'm not thinking about placement too hard. I figure that once all the columns are roughly the same size, I can lay them out together and start casting a critical eye over the balance of colours, textures and sizes.  I'm already sensing that I might need to add a few more pops of bright red to this quilt. But we'll see...

I'm really liking what I see so far - it's so fun looking at these very disparate scraps which have made it into my stash in lots of interesting ways. A jelly-bean for you if you can identify a fellow-creative-spacer's fabric design in there ...?

Looking forward to visiting some more of Kirsty's creative spaces a bit later today with my afternoon cuppa...

My creative space... all in pieces

Pieces, pieces are dominating every available (and unavailable) creative space at chez clutterpunk.

Pincushion pieces (about to be packed up to take to the Northern Craft Bonanza tonight):

Kaleidoscope pieces (slowly sashiko-ing my way around the circles):

Rectangular scrap pieces sitting in my newly pieced scrap-gatherer, which are being cut into varying widths and sorted into paper bags: 

(They are being amassed for what I am calling my 'scrap management quilt', which will hopefully look something like the quilt below, found in THIS book):

Let's not forget the yo-yos:

And these pieces, lying around waiting to become something pretty to be given away in a few weeks... maybe to you.

Really, don't you think it's high time I started putting the pieces together?

Please drop into Kirsty's place if you'd like to play along with My Creative Space this week.

My creative space... portable therapy

My creative space today needs to be portable, therapeutic and able to accomodate a distracted mind.

Today, I will be sitting for a few hours in hospital while my wee Charlie boy undergoes a small procedure to open his blocked tear ducts. It's very unclomplicated and very painless - we've been through it before for William - but it does require a general anaesthetic. Now I'm the type of (relaxed? overly casual?!) mama who applauds or rolls her eyes when her boys take a tumble, who says 'pick yourself up sweetie' when they fall, and who made inappropriate jokes with the anaesthetist about finally getting some peace when we went through this last time. But oh, there will be something so heart-stopping about holding my baby while he breathes in the gas and watching that little body go limp and be wheeled away for his "big adventure". I know he'll be fine, but there will be an appropriate lump in my throat all the same.

I have a variety of hand-sewing projects on the go, which are both portable and therapeutic but require some measure of concentration and accuracy, which I know I won't possess. Thankfully, a recent addition to my works-in-progress list has been my floral scrap yo-yo project.

So today, I'm grateful for

my large Clover yo-yo maker

the stack of Japanese craft books that arrived in yesterday's mail, just in time

my basket of wonderful floral scraps

 and craft that helps the time go by.

More spaces at Kirsty's house...

My creative space... apron therapy

Happy Thursday, Creative Spacers!

Well, between a lovely 'holidayette' with my family and then a very unlovely rotavirus chaser that hit the whole clan simultaneously, I haven't blogged or read emails since last Thursday. Thanks for all the shoe love - I bought those quirky shoes about 4 years ago at a small local shoe shop and for those interested I can just make out the brand as 'neo', if that means anything to anyone (I'm not a shoe afficionado). They're wonderfully comfortable, and I hope to keep them in good nick for years to come, in line with my ethical clothing pledge.

Anyway, let's move onto the craft. No shoes to see here this week... but there are aprons aplenty!

Poser! The dress is 100% polyester tartan - DElightful - bought for a tenner at my favourite shop Green Collective.

The first one above is a lovely soft apron with deep pockets made from a thrifted pillowcase and deocrated with lots of ric-rac. It's gone to its new owner, who is a hard-working home-based mama. Hopefully this will help brighten up some of the tough days.

The second one I made for another hard-working mama, who spends much of the day creating with her three little girls. I figured a cover-all pinnie would be the ticket, so I traced around my own favourite apron. The recipient is expecting her fourth bub later in the year so it's also a good choice for expanding bellies.

The part I love most about sewing for friends is adding my tag. I don't sell stuff, nor do I plan to, but when I started the blog my Beloved thought it would be fun for me to have my own label. It is! To all you other 'amateurs', I highly recommend it.

And one more apron for me - a peg-pocket apron.

OK, this is a total cheater. It's a pre-made garden apron, and I have sewn a fantastic vintage placemat over the top as a deep pocket. Both items were found for $1 at the local charity shop, where I often browse the bedding section for interesting bits and pieces to sew with. The best bit - both the apron and the placemat came in sets of four, so I have three more I can make. I plan to do a bit of embroidery on the empty space first, I think it needs some (I'm sure our hostess Kirsty will approve).  Then I think I'll give them away to, well, who knows?! Maybe YOU.

What's happening at your place? I will be over to visit this week, ohhhhh yes!

My creative space... embracing the green

Time for a quilting update in my creative space today. The greener-than-green quilt from a few weeks ago is regressing nicely. Yes, that's a seam-ripper... and yes, that's me sticking my feet up defiantly on the pile of green blocks, meaning that I will have to press them YET AGAIN but, given that I have to remeasure and re-sash them anyway, why not?

There are about half a dozen other quilting ideas sitting around in my head, and I'm just itching to begin one. I keep pulling out scraps and lengths of fabric, doodling on paper, browsing the web for ideas... but I have decided that I must. not. start. any other machine-sewn quilt until I have followed through on this one.

So I'm trying to embrace the green. Truth be told, I've always maintained that green is my favourite colour. How that can be true when I rarely wear it and don't surround myself with it, I don't know, but it is. Green is so... err... verdant, I guess!

A bonus from all the unpickery that's going on is that one little not-square-enough square was set free from quilting doom and transformed into a pocket on a new pinny I made for myself:

Rachel, you may recognise this fruity material as one of the thrifted tablecloths you so sweetly sent me last year! It's gorgeous, soft and already liberally spattered, like a good apron should be. And just green enough.

More spaces here.

My creative space...

Move along folks. Nothing to see here...

Only 14 hours until my Beloved is home after almost 2 weeks. So close to the end... and I've completely run out of steam. I think I peaked too early; all things domestic, child-rearing and creative have fallen in a heap.

Was this ever MY bedroom? I don't remember...

The WIP corner of the living room is out of control...

Yesterday's dishes - well actually, the day before's...

The only thing going strong in this house is the Life Support Machine (aka the Atomic)

Single parents,

Military wives,

Corporate widows...

I salute you.

Not much creativity or space at my house today, but I'd love to see yours. Drop over to Kirsty's house(s!) to play along with creative spaces today.