Showing posts with label fabric cover. Show all posts

Saturday, January 27, 2024

Project Quilting 15.2 - Sky Colour, Challenge 2

Hi and welcome to my second challenge of Project Quilting (PQ), Season 15. The theme this week is sky colour - "take inspiration from the colours of the sky, but exclude or use less than 10% of the usual blue" (cerulean). Thanks Trish for this great prompt and Kim for hosting!

A landscape and sky for my agenda cover

For the last few years, one of the first projects that I've made in January is a new agenda cover. They've had many interesting, colourful fabrics that are usually hand-dyed. This year I combined my agenda cover with the PQ Sky Colour challenge.

Front of the agenda cover - landscape with the setting sun

Agenda cover - back

This is the second agenda cover that I've made this week. My niece was in town from Copenhagen and I made her one. I'll be posting about that one on Free Motion Mavericks next week.

I started by creating my landscape over a piece of thin cotton/polyester fabric as a base. I went to my scrap box of batiks and picked out anything that might look good. It didn't take me long to figure out what I wanted and then pin everything down.

Thread used to FMQ the landscape

I let the landscape sit overnight and in the morning, I made minor changes to some of the areas, especially the setting sun. I put a batting under the piece and started free motion quilting (FMQ). Nothing fancy, just following the landscape to give it texture and to stabilize it. I didn't use any fusible webbing and I did get a couple of minor puckers, but nothing serious 😊

A closer look at the finished FMQ piece

Time to trim the landscape and make an agenda cover

Once it was all FMQ and the pictures above were taken, I started putting the agenda cover together. Because I had just made one for my niece, I didn't even look at the instructions and just went for it. I'm thrilled to say that I only made one minor mistake which was easily fixed.

I used a fun and colourful batik to make the side panels, and a dark blue ocean fabric to make the backing. I also remembered to affix my small fabric name tag to the front.

The side panels of the agenda cover

Here is what the landscape looks like. The purple at the top looks more like navy blue, but it really is dark purple.

Agenda cover made with a landscape and
wonderful sky colours

What I learned

I did add a thin strip of cerulean blue (I love that word and I'm working on learning to spell it!) at the beginning of the sky. I wanted a clear separation between the sky from the landscape. I'm quite sure that this is less than 10%.
I love colourful skies and I'm quite happy with my sunset.
It was fun to work with batik fabrics - it had been a while.
The FMQ went well and when the fabric moved and created an open space I just added more fabric on top! That's why I love art quilts - they are so flexible!
I also didn't like one of the areas of the sky that I had FMQ - so I did the same thing and added a strip of fabric to cover it up 😊
I made this agenda cover slightly larger than it should have been. This worked out perfectly since it's quite thick. This avoided the problem that I had making my niece's agenda cover.
As usual, I managed to forget about Project Quilting until Wednesday, when I read Sandra's post that she added to my linking party. Who needs a week when a couple of days will do? I now have a reminder on my phone for the Sunday that the next PQ challenge starts...and not just when it's due.
Are you wondering why I actually have an agenda? So am I...but I do love to write notes about the smaller projects that I'm working on, instead of in a sketchbook that I may or may not find....yes, I admit it - I have a huge information management problem. 😁

Thursday, October 12, 2023

A Journal and More Notepad Cases

Welcome to week 451 of Free Motion Mavericks. There hasn't been any FMQ here but I have been busy making journals, refillable notepad cases and cards.

Fabric journal with long and link stitches

My brother and sister-in-law are here from Denmark and I made them some birthday gifts. For my brother's 60th birthday party, I made him a plaid fabric journal. Here it is!

Fabric journal with long and link stitches

I'm so happy when I can add fabric to a journal.😊

At my local quilt shop, I found this perfect plaid fat quarter for the journal covers. The cover fabric is cut and a layer of Heat & Bond iron-on adhesive is added to the back. From there, I ironed-on a sheet of thin paper, in this case grid paper, to the other side of the adhesive. This allows me to glue the fabric to the book board without the glue going through the fabric.

Fabric cover with iron-on adhesive and grid paper

Once the cover was made, I then stitched the cover to the first signature pages. Then each signature (package of pages) is stitched to the next, until it's time to stitch everything to the back cover. It's a long enough process and it's important to keep the tension even. The stitches include:

beginning with a row of kettle stitches that keeps everything together,
then a row of link stitches,
the long stitches,
a row of link stitches,
one more row of long stitches,
and finally the last row of kettle stitches.

Rows of kettle stitches, link stitches and long stitches

This is the inside of the journal. I added a little sticky to indicate the front of the journal.

The inside of the journal

More Refillable Notepad Cases

Since my niece's and sister-in-law's birthdays are also coming up, I decided to make them each a notepad case. I also made one for my brother since that's probably more useful than a journal 😁 Here is the production line. I cut out all of the paper and paper fabric needed for the three cases. I kept all of the measurements and notes in my own journal at the right. This time, I also learned from my past experience and added my labels by sewing machine before putting everything together!

Paper and paper fabric ready for the making of the cases

Refillable notepad case with pen

The inside

This is my niece's notepad case. It only had one refillable notepad but came with a pen. I added a pen holder to the case. Isn't it sweet?

This case is for my sister-in-law. It included two pads. Since the theme of the paper is cocktails, I found a fun bubbly paper for the inside.

Another refillable notepad case

A bubbly inside!

The third notepad case is for my brother. I used different paper for the front and back. I also used these papers for the insides of the case.

Third notepad case

Front of the case

A different paper for the back

What I learned

I always love adding fabric to a journal. In this case, I didn't pre-wash my fat quarter, but I will wash the left over fabric so that everything that I quilt with is pre-washed.
It was interesting working with so many different stitches on the journal. Ali Manning's instructions were excellent so that it wasn't as difficult as it could have been.
The next time though, I will watch the tension of my long stitches more carefully.
Using a production line style for making the refillable notepad cases worked out very well.
I'm glad that I remembered to stitch my labels by machine, before gluing them onto the case. They are attached to the sleeve, so are not visible unless you take the notepad out of its case.
For these cases, I solved my gluing problems by using a heavier card stock on the inside. No wrinkles there. However Frédérique had an excellent idea to sketch over the paper or to glue flowers or other designs to hide the wrinkles. Thanks!
You may be wondering what's happened to the quilting of the t-shirt quilt. My nephew, who is going to Denmark for Christmas, has agreed to bring it with him. Otherwise I only had one week to quilt it - which was not going to happen! I'm re-defining my October OMG to have the quilt sandwiched by the end of the month.

Free Motion Mavericks

Gail of Quilting Gail, made a beautiful Caroline Star using the Accuquilt die and the Island Batik “Autumn Wings” collection. It was for the Falling for Accuquilt Blog Hop. What a complex but lovely quilt! Gail quilted in-the-ditch. The quilt really didn't need anything more.