Relentlessly Gay

The thing with precut fabrics, like jelly rolls, is if you use them to make several smaller projects you end up with things that look kind of the same. Especially when you are a beginner sticking to straight lines! So here are more rainbows, made from the not-quite-half a panel left from another project. These are bound in black, and I'm sure you will agree with me that BLACK IS SO MUCH BETTER, oh yes it is :D

I liked these so much I posted them to my Facebook page. Purely to show off, you understand. Then one friend wanted to buy one. Then another friend wanted the other. Both claimed within an hour of posting, and I am no longer in possession of either runner!

Also on Facebook, a message from a cheeky friend.  At the time there was a story trending about a lady who had prettied up her yard with coloured lanterns, who received an anonymous letter outraged at her décor which was deemed 'relentlessly gay'. Gasp. In a 'Christian' neighbourhood- double gasp. Won't somebody please think of the children???  I do find this sort of extremist behaviour ridiculous- whatever ones personal beliefs you can't catch 'the gay' from jauntily coloured lanterns, and isn't the rainbow covenantal anyway? Pffft. Anyway, to come back to my runners, hmmm, these remind me of something, said the friend. And thus they became the 'relentlessly gay table runners'. Cue much hilarity as I was explaining to friend 2 that I would charge her less for the second runner because it wasn't as straight as the first, well you get the idea.

Anyway, I like rainbows and I shall be making lots more relentlessly gay stuff with pride (see what I did there? Didja? oh go away...) but probably not for a while as that was the end of my jelly roll and I have other fabric to use up.

Taxman, take note. Yes, I sold two runners. Mother and I are keeping notes of our expenditure, and if it ever looks like accounts may be in the plus side of the line, we'll let you know, OK? But given the price of the machine itself, not to mention the extortionate cost of materials and other sundries, I can assure you there would have to be an awful lot of gay tables out there before we made any sort of profit. Just sayin'.

Dreaming Of A Pink Christmas

So after the jelly roll race quilt that went a bit wrong, I decided to make something Christmassy. This was about April time, which is apparently when the Christmas fabric comes out for serious quilters. It's July now and lines are starting to sell out. I will never criticise Tesco selling baubles in August again. But y'know, Christmas in April is still wrong and whilst I was thinking 'Christmas tree' I wanted something not red, gold, santa and holly. I had bought myself some lush batik-y fabric in fat quarters and some plain black which made a nice contrast,  anyway, this was the result.

I didn't use a pre-existing pattern and I didn't have a fancy doodah that measures the right angle- I do now- so the whole thing was predrawn onto the back of a cereal packet and cobbled together with much swearing from me, and eyebrow raising from Mother. Oh my goodness, HOW many mistakes?? It is utterly riddled with them. Wonky seams, dodgy corners... well, even from the picture you can see them! Having said that I'm rather fond of it all the same... because it's all mine. I mean yes, I made it but also it's my idea, my design. So I don't care about the errors, and it will be used nearer the time. Not yet, because it's July and Christmas in July is still wrong, which is why Mother and I will be in full on gift production mode in a few weeks heehee!

Baby Baby

My friend is having a baby.

MY FRIEND IS HAVING A BABY!!!!!!!!!

Ok, J... if by any chance you are reading this, and I haven't given you your present yet, you need to click OFF this blog, and whatever you do, don't scroll down. Absolutely NO scrolling down. You hear?

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I mean it, no peeking now....

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Baby quilt!!!!

Yup. Actually the jelly roll race quilt was meant to be for baby but I was still at the 'oh no it's wrong I hate it' stage and I had the second half of the shibori jelly roll so I thought why not make a straight up rainbow quilt. So I did.

Speaking of this particular jelly roll, a warning. When buying from Amazon, or eBay or wherever, be careful that you aren't ordering from overseas. I didn't realise I was doing so until I received a docket through my door requesting I present myself to pay taxes and 'holding fees', meaning a £35 jelly roll ended up costing me £50. £35 for 40 or so strips of fabric is obscene anyway, and in America where quilting is much more popular precuts are a lot less as are lengths of fabric, but that's the price we are stuck with. Paying taxes on top of that... well it's enough to make you spit. Don't!!!

I don't care though. It's pretty, and it was bought for J's baby so y'know.

This is just over half the panel, and I didn't use all the leftover strips. I took out the browns, whites and the peach and used the rest. I cut the other half off for use elsewhere, but forgot to trim the other side properly, hence a rather large and conspicuous bulge. Facepalm!

This was the first quilt I quilted, in straight lines either side of each seam, with quite a firm wadding so and then re-backed with a soft fleece so it can be used as a play/sleep mat as well as a quilt- quilts aren't recommended for unsupervised sleep anyway as they can get very warm and tiny babies can't kick them off. 12 months plus, I think. Then I've bound it in a cream tie dye I had in my other fabric. I would have had a nice dark contrast, ie black, but Mother want all unnecessary on me and said 'Ooooh no, Beth, you can't have black for a BABY' so cream it was... and I guess it looks OK.  suspect black will be heavily used elsewhere!

We don't know whether J's baby will be pink or blue flavour yet, so HURRY UP OCTOBER so I can meet you please! Hope Mama likes the quilt.

Straight Lines

And this is the first thing 'wot I made on my very own'!

It looks cleverer than it is, and as you will see, was more or less an accident. It's a 'jelly roll race' quilt- and if you youtube search it you will find how-to videos but actually they are pretty simple as a rule, so naturally I had to make it more complicated.

In a jelly roll race quilt, you use a packet of precut strips of fabric called, amazingly, a jelly roll. These are 2.5in by.... oooh the length of cotton quilting weight fabric, selvedge to selvedge, what is that in inches? 44 inches I think. You sew the ends together to make one long strip, then sew them together to make a fatter strip, and so on and so on until hey presto, a quilt top. Quick, simple and practically impossible to go wrong. Har har.

I bought this jelly roll from Amazon, and it's called, I think, Shibori and is an import (which I will no doubt whinge about another time.) of lovely tie-dye fabrics in rainbow colours. Now, I wanted half the strips for something else, and given there were two of each colour, I divided the pack in half. Then I got thinking. A half size quilt would have half as many lovely diagonals between the colours, which wouldn't be very many, so I cut the strips in half, putting them into two piles, then put one pile on the top. Then sewed them together and proceeded as one would a jelly roll quilt.

I didn't quilt or bind this for ages, because these were new skills I was a bit too nervous to learn at that stage. But I still count this as the first thing I ever made. Almost the last, too, because when I ended up with this, I was a teeny bit gutted. The whole point of a jelly roll race quilt is that it is random, and mine wasn't random at all!! Then of course I realised that when I cut the strips in two, I should have then jumbled them up. I had, effectively, put them into a pattern- 20 colours followed by 20 colours in exactly the same order. I don't know if that would always make a pattern like this, but I intend to find out some time because really, y'know, it's grown on me. It looks awfully clever and deliberate, not to mention original, as opposed to the happy accident it in fact was. So now I need to do it again to find out!

Hullo!

New blog. Content will undoubtedly be moved elsewhere at some point but I'm on summer break from my degree and itching to write about SOMEthing, so quilting it is. :D


I'm Beth, and earlier this year at the grand old age of 37 1/2 I conquered a lifelong fear of sewing through my fingers and actually learned to use a sewing machine. Oh yes! So since then I have been merrily sewing away, making all kinds of mistakes but the fingers have not been sewn. I wish I could say 'no blood was spilled' but given I sliced two fingers with the rotary cutter last month, that would be a lie. Yes, I am a total klutz. What can I say.


I've probably made more mistakes than is necessary because I'm not one to sit there and sew sensibly on scrap material, practicing... nor am I one to use patterns and follow instructions, again like any normal person would do. No, I have to dive right in with my own ideas, make the most appalling messes, unpick, figure it all out, do it again etc. Hence errors galore- points that don't 'point', corners that don't meet, wonky binding, and straight lines that would have had my old home ec teacher throwing the board rubber at me. Mrs S, I haven't changed a bit. Sorry about that.


Internet tutorials are good, though. I like them, especially short ones. And fortunately my mother is actually very good at sewing, and has been on hand to help with anything that  matters too much when you get it wrong. Like altering clothes. Although there was one time when she shortened a skirt for me when I was a teenager... well if it wasn't for the fact that SHE had shortened it, I don't think I would have been allowed out. Did I say skirt? I mean BELT... hahahah...


Ok, sewing. Onwards.