Our Creative Space...

The last time I am being driven to make goofy bags, like the tea pot bag and now, a beehive.
First some experimenting with size and type of construction.

Then, cutting hexagons with the accuquilt from hand dyed cotton.

Each hexagon is backed with interfacing all around, wrong sides together.

Cut open the interfacing, turn and iron on. This gives a wonderfully stable fabric to work with, no stretch anymore in any direction.
The hexagons can be sewn together now side by side with a zig zag stitch.

This is a wonderful embroidery sample with hand stitched bees. With the bag pinned together, I decided where the bees would be placed.

Here you can see the whole bag laid out with the bees pinned in place. In the background, the lining fabric, honey colored gingham with more bees!

The bees get appliqued with the darning foot.

And the excess fabric cut around them. Then the hexagons are all sewn together to form the beehive.

 End results can be seen here in our bagshop.

See more creative spaces at Our Creative Spaces.

Our Creative Space... Lazy Nine Patch

In the spirit of reducing my mountain of scraps, I've been doing some nine patches that may or may not become a bag. The nine patch is of course, pretty straitforward, but I'm not a quilter, so I googled to see if there was an easier way to do it. All the tutorials I saw envolved lots of pinning and ironing the seams in between. I like to be practical, or lazy, if you want, so I developed a way to do it with NO backstitching, NO pinning and NO ironing in between.

Lay your squares at the side of your sewing machine in the way you want it. I put the stitch length at 1.8. That makes tiny, tiny stitches, so that you won't need to backstitch. The numbers on the squares indicates the order of sewing them together.

Chainstitch squares 1-2, 3-4 and 5-6 together. DONT SEPARATE THE SQUARES.

Then, again chainstitch nrs 7,8 and 9 to squares 2,4 and 6. Again, DONT SEPARATE THE SQUARES.

Lay again your block on the table and fold row 1-2-7 on top of the middle row. Hold it at both sides and you will see that the tread between the squares acts like pins would do and the seams alternate and nestle almost on their own

Repeat with the other rows. If you had  the seams in the upper fabric going down in the previous row, coax them now gently up in this row.

This is the result.

And the back, Now iron!

As I said before, I am not a quilter, so maybe there are lots of folks doing it this way, but I haven't seen it explained so on line, so I wanted to share it with you. I use only reclaimed scraps,soft and slippery, but it took me less than two minutes to put the block together. If you use crisp quilting cotton I bet that you can do it in a minute!

See more creative spaces at Our Creative Spaces.

Our Creative Space...

This week we have been having alot of frustration with our sewing machine. It is not even 2 years old and costed a small fortune so that makes it even more frustrating.

I called the dealer and explained the problem, I didn't want it to sent it to him as it was just back from the service, with his help I fixed it (luckely I have years of machine repair experience from our old sewing machine).

Anyway we are still not happy with its performans and are thinking about changing it with another model, as the fun goes away when you are constantly breaking needles and fighting the machine in general. Anyone happy with a Bernina machine and could give us advice about which model would be good?

See more creative spaces at Our Creative Spaces.

Our Creative Space...

This week we have been making patchwork  for bags. The only way I will make patchwork is with scraps, other wise all that cutting and sewing again goes against my practical nature.
I use the 'glue on' method. After cutting the scraps I 'glue' them on iron on interface. Just place the patches in neat rows, iron lightly on the good side, flip and iron thoroughly on the back.

Then fold along the rows of patches and stitch with a 10mm seam allowance. Do first the short rows and then the long rows. By that second make sure that you flip all the seams of the short rows in the same direction.

Iron well, and voila, a one of a kind fabric, that cost nothing but the time to make it and has the proper body for bags. Here I've used 10 cm squares, so that I ended up with 8 cm squares. You can do it a bit bigger, but not much, or you will loose the patchwork effect after you have cut the pieces for your bag. Smaller is ok, if your scraps are smaller and your patience larger, you can make it at small as stamps.

We yet have to make a bag out of the patchwork fabric, we will show you soon.

And remember the little peek of a bag I showed you last week?
We finished it off and it sold right away, we are happy :)
Similar bags are in the planning.

See more creative spaces at Kootoyoo's.

Our Creative Space...

I'm afraid that you are a bit tired of seeing my infamous table cloth, but good news this is the very last post about it!

After cutting and sewing it round we needled the doilies on the bordor untill it fitted perfectly.

Mum sewed all the doilies to the cloth, so she finished my loooong project. I'm so glad that it is done after so many years.

Another project that we finished is the Candlewicking pillow.

This project was started by mum but I finished it. It is funny how we often finish each others projects when we get stuck, it sure works good as eventually we finish everything!

You can see more workspaces at Kootoyoo's blog!

Our Creative Space...

Mum purchased these doilies about 15-17 years ago in Amsterdam, together with many more vintage doilies. We haven't used any of them yet. But these blue ones have been waiting to be used for 10 years for my infamous table cloth.

I purchased the embroidery thread according to these doilies, so that everything would match nicely. And now finally the end is in sight, the tablecloth and doilies will be united and hopefully live happily ever after :) Hopefully next week, if not too much things come in between, you will see the finished result, after we have made it round and figured out how to fit the doilies on the border.

This picture is for those who think that sewing is not a sport. Here you see me finishing a tote, in a weird position.

But all is well, when it ends well. And this tote ended lovely, as you can see here.

You can see more workspaces at Kootoyoo's blog!

Our Creative Space...

 Mum has woven a small piece with ribbons, small but it took a few hours to accomplish.

After weaving it, a piece of interfacing has been ironed on it to keep everything in place and making it strong.

Then we sewed a border and backside of soft pink leather. Made holes and rivetted them for a corset closure, and finished the cuff.

It still needs to be photographed and listed, but it makes me wonder. How can people say expensive to handmade? I do understand 'above budget', but not expensive when they do not know how much work is involved, or I guess that is the problem, people should know how much work there is actually involved in handmade. I guess that showing creative process is the way to show people how much we (with we I mean creative people in general) put into a piece.

Mum found herself another frustrating job, she somehow likes to frustrate herself with boring projects :) She does like to do it, she only wonders how she get herself in to such things. This one has a funny story too, which she will share, next week. Oh and PJ's are a must with embroidery, no other outfit works better!

And finally my progress in my table cloth. Not as much as I hoped but almost three quarters are finished, so the end is in sight!

You can see more workspaces at Kootoyoo's blog!