Here's one I made started earlier

It's quite astounding how time can pass by and you don't notice that something was missing until you accidentally find it.

After buying a new (larger) floor rug on Saturday, I realised that I was going to have to move the living area furniture slightly. Can you picture me huffing and puffing and pushing and shoving trying to move heavy couches (torture)?

Unfortunately, once the first piece of furniture was moved, I was horrified at how dirty the floor was underneath.... which meant that each and every single piece of furniture had to be moved so I could sweep and mop underneath (insert much more huffing and puffing and lots of forehead slapping).

Anyway, once I cleared the various baskets of junk from the top of my blanket box, I thought I'd open the lid and see what was inside.

One very old unfinished lap quilt....

I couldn't quite remember when I actually started this one, but it was way back before I even started to blog (or knew anything about quilting).

As you can tell by looking at it, none of these fabrics are quilting fabrics. There's cotton drill, vintage sheeting, cotton voile, curtain fabric with blockout backing etc...

The colour in the red drill bled into the other fabrics in the wash, and there's uneven shrinkage all over the place.

Just did a search through the archives and found this image of the blocks lying on top of my kitchen bench from September 2007. I took a photo at the time so that I could remember the placement, before sewing them together.

Now that it's getting close to five years old, I'm thinking that it might be high time to add some binding and finish it off.

But, what colour and what pattern? Plain, spots, stripes?

Banishing the UFO pile - Specimen One

I've seen quite a few crafty peeps confessing their *UFO sins in the past few days, and considering there was another day of hibernation from the heat on the cards yesterday, I thought I should join in.


But, I didn't want to just join in and show you what was unfinished, I wanted to take the opportunity to finish them!

I'm hereby introducing you to specimen one - a dodgy bag for my mum.

I think I started making this bag in about 2006. It was while I was still working full time, and trying to work out how things were constructed. I wasn't using any reference materials or patterns at all.

I made the outer shell from a skirt that I'd picked up at the oppy, and the lining is some fabric from the Spotty remnant bin.

At this point, I had zero clue about straight grain/bias grain, or fabrics that had some stretch, or how to join a bag outer shell and an inner lining together. So when I found it still lying in the UFO pile, it was a bag outer which was sort of cut on the bias, and an inner lining using a cotton fabric with a slight stretch, and I'd already attached a magnetic snap to the lining, after sewing a piece of vinyl to the back to add some strength. Can you tell that I was just making it up as I went along?

Notice that I didn't even bother changing the thread colour either!

When I found it yesterday, I could have just chosen to throw it in the bin, but I think it's a perfect lesson to illustrate that anyone can learn to sew, and with lots of practice and perserverance, you can only get better and better!

So after sewing together my mismatched outer shell and lining, and making a new adjustable strap with some lovely antique brass hardware, I can now pass along the dodgy *OFMM bag when I go to Colac tomorrow.

The best thing is that my mum won't take any notice of the dodgy bits, she'll love it anyway!

*Un-Finished Object.... thankfully not Unidentified Flying Object
*OFMM - Only for my mum