My first village quilt

I knew that I wouldn’t be making quite so many charity quilts this year (after all one a month is quite a lot!) but I didn’t think it would take until now for me to finish my first charity quilt of the year. I guess that’s partly down to life, but also not having the defined structure that I had last year with the mystery block of the month.

Earlier in the year I decided to try and use as many scraps as I could for these charity quilts, and this cute ‘village’ pattern by Sherri from A Quilting Life looked like it could be just the thing, as I mentioned when I posted my quilt plans for this year.

And with my tin of scraps I’ve been diligently making little scrappy houses, thoroughly loving the process of matching fabrics together.

I’ve taken the tin of scraps to a few sewing and patchwork group sessions and my houses were starting to accumulate. Which got me to wondering how many houses make a small village.

There was one way to find out, and as I’m a visual person (no surprises there!) I laid them out on top of my last charity quilt to gauge my progress. Well it worked for me!

And it gave me the spur to complete the last five or so I needed to equal(ish) the size of my previous quilts.

It wasn’t long before my village assembled, and acquired additional borders.

While I still love the look and process for straight line quilting, I wanted to try something different for this quilt. Partly because I’m wondering how straight line quilting would work for my larger mystery block of the month quilt, both practically and design-wise, or if something with more curves would be better suited to the mostly log cabin quilt.

But anyway without knowing more about wavy quilting I didn’t feel informed enough to make that decision, so I’ve wavy quilted this village using one of the preset stitches on my machine.

And I quite like how the wavy quilting turned out.

I also love how the scrappy houses have come together to form the perfect little village and I know that this design was the right choice for my charity quilts for this year. Isn’t it cute?

You can see my other quilts I’ve made to donate to Project Linus - a charity whose mission is to provide love, a sense of security, warmth and comfort to children, who are sick, disabled, disadvantaged or distressed through the donation of new, homemade, washable quilts and blankets.

A crochet bag for crochet

When I started going to my ‘crochet in the pub’ group I wasn’t sure how it’d go, or if I’d go back and so I wanted to take something relatively easy to do so that I could enjoy the group rather than have my head stuck in a pattern.

And so I chose some granny squares with some wool that I’d bought as part of a kit but which I didn’t really get on with.

I didn’t really have much of an idea what I’d do with them to start with, but as the weeks went by and my granny square numbers increased a plan formed - I’d make them into a bag for crochet projects, as a crocheted bag seemed a preferable option to one of the ubiquitous tote bags I was currently using.

So that’s what I did. I reckoned I’d need eight squares to cover the bag. Recently I reached that marker and joined my squares together, which could only mean one thing.

…It was time to sew in the ends!

Sewing in ends isn’t my favourite crochet task - yes I’m still sewing in ends to a blanket which was my lockdown project - but remarkably I had them sewn in in a few days, so the bag assembly could start.

Laying my assembled blocks alongside the bag I realised I could do with a bit more length so crocheted three stripey rounds at the top. And then turning the tote bag inside out - I’d decided that I might as well enjoy the patterned inside (formerly outside) of the tote - I put them together and using a dark thread attached them along the sides. Now this isn’t my neatest sewing attempt, but that’s ok - it’s functional!

I still wasn’t happy with the top though, that was until I added a row of single crochet to the top in the cream - to me it gives it the perfect finish. I was much more careful sewing the cream edging to the top of the bag, and it worked out really well.

Now I have a crochet bag for crochet! But I do need to find myself a new project to take along this week…

New to my craft room in April

Once again this month I’ve had some essential spend after somehow breaking my automatic threader on my Bernina. I’m not quite sure how it happened, but I do remember thinking how well my sewing was going, and feeling slightly pleased with myself. Next thing I knew something had fallen off, oops. The machine still works and I can thread the needle manually, but I’ve come to rely on the automatic threader, which to start with I wasn’t sure I’d ever use.

So a new one was dutifully ordered from where I bought the machine. And while I was on their site I happened to notice their sale section, so I added another bargain grey for my collection for the background to my floral fancy.

In some long awaited but equally unexpected news, one of the outstanding items from a pre-Christmas order arrived - the pink D-rings below. The final item remains out of stock and so a refund was given for this. It’s taken a while, and I was happy to wait as it wasn’t something I had an urgent need for, but thought I’d use at some point. Though at the time I probably had a use in mind, but I’ve no idea what that is right now!

This month I also ordered the gorgeous variegated blue and green thread, which I’m planning to use on my mystery block of the month quilt when the time comes. I also needed to buy some wadding for that quilt, as without that I wouldn’t have a quilt, and so now I’m also the proud owner of a 15 metre roll of wadding. Well, it’s actually less than that as I needed some for my first charity quilt of the year - more on that soon.

The next bundle of green fat quarters, ribbon and a spent glow stick are from our recent trip to Wales for my youngest niece’s wedding; the ribbon and the glow stick are from the favour bags, and the material I picked up on our look around Ludlow, and thought they’d be perfect for the start of my green collection for leaves for my at some point in the future floral fancy.

At the end of the month I was at the Quilt & Stitch Village show in Uttoxeter, and I did make a few purchases there, including these scraps costing £1.50 at the Project Linus stand - and yes, that’s the charity I donate my charity quilts too if you thought it sounded familar.

I never expected to buy any fabric with onions or beetroots on, but that’s what I did - there was just something about them that grabbed me, and while i was there I also picked up a toning plain to save me the headache of finding one when I need it. I’m not sure how I’ll use them yet, but they do make me smile.

I also could walk past yet more newspaper like text on fabric, it could be said that my curiosity definitely was piqued (again).

The final addition to my craft room this month is a book, on an embroidery discipline that I wasn’t sure I wanted to tackle. But I’ve been one over by the sheer number of geometric patterns included in this book, and my love for hand sewing. I’m looking forward to reading more about the basic principles and seeing where this will take me.

So that’s another month in my craft room, check out my previous updates for earlier additions, and remember to let me know below what you’ve added to your craft supplies this month.