SEW MY NAME

Just a quick update on my eldest son’s quilt which I have finally finished thanks to the motivation of being a member in the Blogger craft club.
The part I enjoy most is the piecing of the patchwork and watching as it slowly gets bigger and bigger when more pieces are joined together. Then comes the tedious part, which is the quilting of the patchwork. I do not hand quilt my patchwork projects as I am a very impatient person. Instead I do machine quilting on my general sewing machine , usually sewing on the ditches of the seams. And boy, it is not easy doing a quilt due to the narrow space of my machine.

I wish I can buy one of those quilting machines (see picture below) but they don’t sell it here. Patchwork and quilting is not popular in Malaysia and Singapore so there is no market for it. If I can get this wonderful machine, patchwork and quilting will be much more fun. Probably the nearest I can get is to have it shipped from Australia which I’m sure will cost me a bomb.

Talk to you again soon. Now I have to finish the next quilt for my second son before starting a new one for the small one.

I have just came from visiting Katrina, one of the Blogger Craft Club members and a very active one. I can see she’s making great preparation for the arrival of her new bundle of joy with lovely pink fabrics. Do drop by at this sewing momma blog and take a peek.

In our Eastern tradition, sewing is a taboo when we are pregnant. But stubborn me has never conformed to that tradition as I have always enjoyed sewing. But now with changing times many traditions are lost which might as well as most represented unfounded fears of our elders. Some of the customs which are now losing popularity are- not able to bathe for 40 days, cannot go out for 40 days and many more restrictions for pregnant women or new moms.

I did not finished my sons’ quilts as I have been out of the house most of days. Usually I visit my sick and aged parents twice a week. And when at home it’s back to cooking, cleaning and washing. I couldn’t find a good stretch of uninterrupted time for finishing my quilts. Doing big projects is no fun if you can only afford to squeeze little time in between the chores.

I have sewn 3 simple nappy stackers from my stash of fabrics. I am trying hard not to go to the fabric store and instead try to sew projects from my years of fabric collection. And my sister-in-law has just given birth to a baby boy so the blue nappy stacker is for her baby.

My niece is giving birth to a baby girl soon and I can give either the green or the peach one as I have sewn 2 more and could not make up my mind which one to give.

I love giving nappy stacker as a gift as it is a very handy and useful to store diapers neatly. It is also easy to sew and does not require much of my time so I can easily squeeze making them in between my busy schedule.

I’m hoping to finish the quilt for my eldest son this weekend so until next Monday’s update of Blogger Craft Club, I wish you all happy sewing and crafting.

Simple and cute tote bag. Happy sewing and have a great weekend.

I’m making slow progress with my quilt but still progressing, slow and steady! I didn’t do much sewing this week except putting the borders. At this point I have sandwiched the batting in between the quilt top and the backing. I will machine quilt it and bind the whole quilt and soon it will be ready.

On Sunday night I went to Ikea to get new computer tables and Ikea happens to be on sale now. I bought plain flat sheet 100% cotton made in Ethiopia for US$ 2 only for a finished size of 150cm by 250cm. It’s just perfect for the backing of my son’s quilt. It’s really a steal and I’m so happy with my purchase. After washing, it shrunk a little by about an inch length and widthwise but the material doesn’t wrinkled so much which is common of the cheap materials.

I have also prepared the bias binding for the quilt . The binding is using the short-cut method of making bias strip. I love shortcuts and easily make this bias strip to bind the quilt in a breeze. For this single quilt, I cut 21 in by 21 in of material and get 7.5 meters of bias strip with 1.5 in width, more than enough to bind the whole quilt. If you are not familiar with making continuous bias strip click at my instructions.

To the BCC members - Happy sewing and crafting.