SEW MY NAME

I have been quite tied up these days and did little sewing and beading. Just a little update for my second son’s quilt in progress. I have finished with the piecing of the top layer and hoping to do the quilting this weekend. I am using the quick-piecing method so please don’t think I laboriously join small pieces of colorful materials together. I just don’t have that much time. Housekeeping and cooking already take up a lot of my time. Sometimes I’m too tired that I end up surfing and reading blogs only. But whatever little time I have for my sewing and beading hobby gives me much satisfaction and nothing beats that joy when you get something nice done with your own two hands.

I simply love the vibrant colors and the scallops at the edge of the quilt which remind me of crayons. Until my next update, take care all of you.

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’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.

I am supposed to do the third quilt for my youngest son and complete main patterns for all 3 quilts before adding borders. But I may have to look for more materials to match well the earlier 2 pieces sewn. So I decided to plan for the borders for the first 2 quilts before going on to the last quilt. So the last quilt will be designed on the left-over materials of the first 2 quilts revolving around Overall Sam applique which I have just sewn.

I drew Overall Sam onto a drawing paper and when satisfied I cut the paper patterns to transfer to the materials mainly using scraps which I have collected over the years. It is simple and fun pattern to sew for young boys.

Sunbonnet Sue or Sunbonnet lady is also one of my favorite patterns which can also be sewn on projects for young girls as it is also another easy pattern to reproduce. I did this Sunbonnet Sue patchwork bag many years ago when my daughter was younger.

This is what I love about patchwork, able to use scraps to make other projects. The designing,the color-matching and co-ordinating is also the fun part.

Until next Monday for the quilts update. See you soon.

This is happy Liudmila with a patchwork table topper which I sent before Christmas and only arrived early this week. She did warn me that she may not get my present but I didn’t worry too much about it as I’m sure things couldn’t be as bad as she painted about the postal situation in Italy. Anyway at the same time I sent out another package to SewingMom in Texas who received hers in the first week of January. So it wasn’t a problem at my end. We both have given up about her receiving my little gift but it finally came after 2 months! And she called it a miracle.

Click here to go to Liudmila’s blog. She always has interesting posts to read and at times she is comical. She thinks I need to do engineering calculations to do the patchwork! Ain’t she funny?

Liudmila, it seems Christmas comes early this year for you. Anyway you are more beautiful than the patchwork.

This is my second quilt (in progress) for my son Zurikh. I love it as it is bright and cheerful and suitable for my fun-loving son. I have finished with the main pattern and will add sashing and borders before sewing it with backing and batting. Like my first quilt with BBC (WIP too), I will only do that after doing the third quilt for my youngest son so as to be able to use the materials effectively.

Last night I asked Zurikh what color border would he like for the quilt showing him my colorful collection. He said orange and I asked him why not green to which he replied that it didn’t really matter as he will use the quilt for sleeping only. I told him that I like to make a nice one so that he will think of me when going to sleep. He just gave me the ‘whatever look’ answer .

And I remembered reading a joke somewhere of this lady at check-out counters with very slow-moving queue to the point that she felt being ignored. She then lamented that if she wanted to be ignored she might as well stay at home and get ignored by her kids. Poor mom but I believe in most cases this is just a passing stage in bringing-up a teenager.

Just for a laugh and see if we can identify ourselves guilty of having said similar craps in times of exasperation.

Things My Mother Taught Me:

My mother taught me LOGIC.
“Because I said so, that’s why.”

My Mother taught me MEDICINE…
“If you don’t stop crossing your eyes, they’re going to freeze that way.” My Mother taught me TO THINK AHEAD…
“If you don’t pass your spelling test, you’ll never get a good job!”

My Mother taught me ESP…
“Put your sweater on; don’t you think that I know when you’re cold?”

My Mother taught me TO MEET A CHALLENGE…
“What were you thinking? Answer me when I talk to you…Don’t talk back to me!”

My Mother taught me HUMOR…
“When that lawn mower cuts off your toes, don’t come running to me.”

My Mother taught me how to BECOME AN ADULT…
“If you don’t eat your vegetables, you’ll never grow up.

My mother taught me ABOUT SEX…
“How do you think you got here?”

My mother taught me about GENETICS…
“You are just like your father!”

My mother taught me about my ROOTS…
“Do you think you were born in a barn?”

My mother taught me about the WISDOM of AGE…
“When you get to be my age, you will understand.”

My mother taught me about ANTICIPATION…
“Just wait until your father gets home.”

My mother taught me about RECEIVING…
“You are going to get it when we get home.”

And, my all-time favorite - JUSTICE
“One day you’ll have kids, and I hope they turn out just like YOU…then you’ll see what it’s like.”

My mother taught me TO APPRECIATE A JOB WELL DONE.
“If you’re going to kill each other, do it outside - I just finished cleaning!”

My mother taught me RELIGION.
“You better pray that will come out of the carpet.”

My mother taught me about TIME TRAVEL.
“If you don’t straighten up, I’m going to knock you into the middle of next week!”

My mother taught me FORESIGHT.
“Make sure you wear clean underwear, in case you’re in an accident.”

My mother taught me IRONY.
“Keep laughing and I’ll *give* you something to cry about.”

My mother taught me about the science of OSMOSIS.
“Shut your mouth and eat your supper!”

My mother taught me about CONTORTIONISM.
“Will you *look* at the dirt on the back of your neck!”

My mother taught me about STAMINA.
“You’ll sit there ’til all that spinach is gone.”

My mother taught me about WEATHER.
“It looks as if a tornado swept through your room.

My mother taught me how to solve PHYSICS PROBLEMS.
“If I yelled because I saw a meteor coming toward you; would you listen then?”

My mother taught me about HYPOCRISY.
“If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a million times - Don’t exaggerate!!!”

My mother taught me THE CIRCLE OF LIFE.
“I brought you into this world, and I can take you out.”

My mother taught me about BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION.
“Stop acting like your father!”

My mother taught me about ENVY.
“There are millions of less fortunate children in this world who don’t have wonderful parents like you do!”

If you are running out of time you may like to try to make these Christmas quilts over the weekend. This method of quick-piecing triangles, sometimes called ‘Johannah-gridded-triangle’ eliminates the use of templates or cutting of small, individual triangles. Here I use half-square and quarter square triangles. The small squares used in table runner is from 2 pieces of long strips of fabrics sewn together.

So I managed to complete 2 of the 3 handmade gifts I promised to make in my Pay it forward post for the first 3 to comment on that post.

The first PIF gift is a cheerful table topper measuring 32 in by 32 in. It makes a pretty center piece for a dining table.

The second PIF gift is a table runner measuring 41in by 22 in. I love the green checks with small red hearts on it. It gives the table runner the country look.

I hope the lovely bloggers who received them love it as much as I love piecing the two quilts.PS - Click here for quick-piecing instructions. .