Oops, a new quilt project

I shared this photo in my recent craft room update and said I’d fallen for the Colour Study quilt a long which is being hosted by Alison Glass - and I’m still smitten. I briefly tried to resist a new project, but sometimes the pull is just too strong.

I’m most definitely in, even though I wasn’t planning to start any more quilt projects. But I’ve done a deal with myself - and that’s to also have a push on completing the mystery block of the month quilt which has been languishing in my craft room for a good few months, while I silently sulked about not having enough of the most perfect background fabric!

But anyway, I’m over the silent sulking and will be using the fabric I’d planned to use all along on the back. The quilt sandwich is together, and it’s been basted so it’s ready for quilting - and I’ve even had a reset of my craft room to make as much space as I can around my machine.

But this post isn’t about that - and at the time of writing, while I’ve chosen fabrics for the quilt and the first few blocks, I’ve held off even cutting out those blocks, but I know it won’t be long before I start, so let’s take a look at what I’ll be up to.

The majority of the material I’m using for this quilt is from my stash. I am planning to use quite a few from the Gothic Garden fat quarter bundle I shared before, but it won’t be a halloween only fabric quilt. The guide suggesting puling a good range of colours from reds, yellows, oranges, blues, greens and purples to get started and I’ve done that. Though as part of that I’ve realised I don’t tend to go for reds or purples, which isn’t that much of a surprise to me really.

I’ve also decided to set my blocks against a dark background, and to use a selection of fabrics for that too. So with using patterns and a dark background my finished quilt will look quite different to the images I’ve shared - though there is a dark background option in the weekly instructions - and I hope I can pull it off.

I’ve even found an old notebook with enough space to help me work through the blocks, their colours and the substitutions I make. I last used the notebook back in 2015, when it had a travel planning purpose - now my evil plans are most definitely fabric themed!

I realised when I pulled these fabrics off the shelves that I very much like bright colours, and so along with the dark background I’m already calling this my ‘brights and dark’ quilt. I’ll be sharing updates as I go, though probably just once a month rather than each block - there’s twenty five of them which are released weekly, and the filler blocks, so that would be a lot of blog posts!

I’m excited to finally get started with the first few blocks - and to share how I get on, and hopefully next Spring I’ll have another quilt top complete.

An impromptu name badge

I’m not a big fan of name badges.

I know they're useful and all that but I’m still not a fan, and if I’m honest I’m less of a fan of those handwritten by someone else. Unless they have fabulous handwriting of course, but then again it’s still a name badge.

When it was mentioned that while volunteering on my knitting group’s stand at the Newark Wool Show that we should wear name badges provided I almost had a quick rethink about it all. Yes, that’s how much I don’t like wearing name badges.

But I reasoned that I couldn’t let the organisers down, as that would be even worse than wearing a name badge, and so I thought I’d make my own. But time was tight the show was that weekend, and in the week in the lead up to the show life got in the way, a lot.

I remembered that I had a wire brooch with my name on and I thought if I could find that I could use that, I found it and so an impromptu name badge I made.

Yes I know I could have just worn the wire brooch, but I wasn’t sure if it would show up on my clothes as much as it would against a dark background, and at the time I had no idea what I’d wear, plus I’m not much of a brooch person either!

I knew I didn’t have time for knitting or crocheting, or even sewing - so fabric and glue it was. This is what I started with:

• scraps of material, including selvedges

• the wire name brooch

• a lanyard (saved from a previous need to wear a name badge most likely at a work conference - but at least it was bright pink!)

• a cardboard tag from clothes purchase.

I quickly realised that my wire name brooch was wider than my backing card - the joys of a longer name - and so I cut my wadding wide enough to extend the width of the badge.

Next I stuck the fabric in place - on both sides, covering the central section with a plain navy fabric so the wire brooch would show up clearly. I’d planned to use the ‘hole’ on the clothes tag, but my fabric covered that and extended beyond the top of the tag, so I used my vintage ticket clipper to make a single hole, hoping that the lanyard would hold my creation.

I left it to dry and set overnight under a pile of heavy books, and hoped.

And it worked, and now it’s the best name badge on a lanyard I’ve ever had. I wore it at the show alongside the handwritten one, and I’ve got it ready for next time it’s needed, though as much as I like it, I hope it doesn’t get too many outings!

Making wire flowers and seed heads

A while back I saw a workshop advertised to make a bouquet of wire flowers, intrigued I looked into it further and finally decided to book myself on it as what’s the worst that could happen? I’d thought that they might make a good garden display, but I was wrong about that - they’re too delicate for that, but with thicker wire something similar would absolutely work for outside.

So last month I spent a morning with people I’d never met before making a vase of wire flowers. And yes, I’ll admit they can look like a jumble of wires, or a two dimensional pencil squiggle; but it was great fun and it’s really not too much of a challenge to look past the wire jumbles.

I was clearly quite prolific at my wire twiddling and twisting! Like many great ideas this was relatively simple and didn’t need much equipment. All that was needed was some wire (we used 22 gauge at the workshop) and something to wind it around.

The somethings to wind it around were of differing sizes and ranged from wooden dowels to ring sizers - and they were all effective, but I think there’s things we have around the house (and garden) that could be used - wooden spoons, cotton reels and even a garden dibber would all work equally well. The key thing I think is to have different sizes to provide variety for your squiggles!

I didn’t think I’d want to make my own wire flower with beads, but actually my green version below is one of my favourite shapes I made - and in case you’re wondering the double beads were stuck together, so I just went with it. This was the last flower type we made at the workshop, which following plenty of chat from everyone there ran over so it was quickly twisted into shape - but I’d definitely do more, though if I’m using thicker wire I’ll need bigger beads, but I’ll cross that bridge when the time comes (if it does).

The seed heads were also high on my list of favourites, a simple shape to replicate and one that would look great in a thicker wire for the garden.

And this one is simple too - just lengths of wire secured in the middle with the ends twiddled around to replicate the shapes we see in nature.

The whirly twisty fillers were incredibly satisfying to make - and I seem to have got a few of these, in many sizes!

There were more typical flower types too, but the ones above are the favourites amongst those I made, and would be the ones I’d look to make in a thicker wire for the garden - but that probably won’t be this year. It’s definitely one to remember though.