Quilted Pencil Case Rollin Rollin - Work In Progress

The end of the school year is coming. In the class of my niece the parents decided to give quilted pencil cases as presents to the teachers and they asked me to make them. I started to collect together fabrics in a way that they, while not looking all the same, belong to the same family. These rose covered fabrics were purchased back in Italy and they look beautiful together.

 

 As today is a Work In Progress Wednesday, I will step back in time for a bit and show you this afternoon’s WIP pencil cases! Here the cases are already finished up and I just have to make the room for the pencils. 

     

 
Waiting to fill up:

 I loaded the pencils, so if I roll up the case I can decide where to sew the button to close it up:

 They are finished!

I posted them this evening and I hope that not only will they get to there in time but the teachers will like them as well!

More Work In Progress are here:
http://www.freshlypieced.com/2014/06/wip-wednesday-progress-sort-of.html
and
http://estheraliu.blogspot.hu/2014/06/wow-prioritizing-wips.html
and
http://sewfreshquilts.blogspot.hu/2014/06/lets-bee-social-24.html

And here is a special, really lovely post from my Quiltsy team on Etsy about 2 team quilts. I've also sent two 4 patch blocks to Patricia and after this long travel I could find one of them on the 2nd quilt! :) Thank you so much for your beautiful work!
http://teamquiltsy.blogspot.hu/2014/06/wips-on-wednesday.html

Fabric Coasters - Work In Progress

 

(First thing first: I am afraid that blogspot has a problem with the greens, because I have no idea how my lovely pastel greens became these wild wild greens on these photos. Sorry!)

These Shabby Chic coasters are almost finished, I've already sewed the green binding for it. The binding that is folded back is being held by the pins while I sew it down with my sewing machine on the front side "in the ditch".

Previously I always did the last sewing on the back by hand, but with lot of practice I finally learned how to do it with my sewing machine. I really loved to sew these last closing stitches with my hands in a comfortable armchair in front of the television, but I do have to admit that this way is a lot faster and thanks to all the practice by now it looks just as good.

More Work In Progress are here:
http://www.freshlypieced.com/2014/05/wip-wednesday-sewing-for-me.html
and
http://teamquiltsy.blogspot.hu/2014/05/wips-on-wednesday_28.html
and
http://estheraliu.blogspot.hu/2014/05/wow-polka-dot-points.html
and
http://www.sewmuchado.com/2014/05/we-did-it-wednesday-206.html

Quilting and Beads

 

I’ve been thinking about it for weeks before (or instead of) falling to sleep, I even saw its color in front of me. Then newer colors as well that could also make it work. Finally last week I bought the new pintuck foot for my Elna 7300 and began to actualize.

Even though the foot didn’t work out (or I am clumsy), I still didn’t give up and kept trying until I achieved the result that I wanted to.

And here comes my favorite part where I already embroider the beads. :)

More Work In Progress are here:
http://www.freshlypieced.com/2013/02/wip-wednesday-another-busy-week.html
and
http://teamquiltsy.blogspot.com
and
http://www.sew-much-ado.com/2013/02/we-did-it-wednesday_26.html 
and My Creative Space
http://blogs.kidspot.com.au/villagevoices/my-creative-space-outdoor-dining-circa-1973

Autumn, Autumn

It seems Autumn is getting closer, soon I’ll be switching up my blog’s clothes as well, as I’ve already arranged the first page of my shop into its colors. All my current quilts are fit to Autumn in their colors as well.

This is the table runner I’m working on right now. You can see the backside, but if I do things right and finish by tomorrow then I will take a picture of the top as well. In the meanwhile I’d like to highlight the quilting that I designed. :)

I cut out the pieces of the matching mug-rugs today and I would like to sew those tomorrow as well.

Busy Wednesday.

Four Seasons Trees – Finished!

I’ve finished this huge wall hanging, Four Seasons Trees! I am so happy now!
There is a picture of it in our terrace:


And there is another photo taken after the Four Seasons Trees was hung on the wall made by the owner who is also very happy. ☺


Older posts about the process of creation:

http://patchworkmill.blogspot.com/search/label/wall hanging

Now I’m working on quite small projects which I’m able to quilt without the need of my lovely husband holding them next to the sewing machine (the book expansion was not enough when I had to do the final large quilting). ☺

Four Seasons Trees – Work in Progress 3.

The following picture shows a great comeback to all who told me that I collected too many home decorating and gardening books in the past years. It really shows now that they can be quite useful in numerous situation! I expanded the sewing surface with them (and the ironing board), making it easier to move the larger sized “trees” during quilting.

This wall hanging was pinned with straight quilting pins, as even though my curved safety pins are less dangerous they leave too big holes afterwards. I was afraid that they would leave their marks on the light area around the trees. As a result I stung myself quite a few times during work. Nothing is perfect.

I was planning flowers and fruits under the trees but as I’ve done very little free motion quilting so far, I was afraid to just “draw” with my hands all loose. Instead I used a very thin paper to draw the pattern for myself that I could use later for the free motion quilting. Of course it was not easy to rip off all the small pieces of paper afterwards (I had to use a brow clip also ☺), but looking at the result I believe it was worth the trouble.

Four Seasons Trees

Oh my! Winter almost got left out!


The whole wall hanging will be done in the following days, and I’ll show it to you guys!

But I’m doing some other things in the meantime as well: a very kind Etsy costumer liked my Vintage Rose camera case, but she has a camera that is a bit larger, so I’m sewing one for her with the right measures.


I had this fabric with the roses and stripes for a very long time. I bought them together with the fabric of my “Florence” camera case, in the textile factory of Kispest. In those times the Hungarian textile industry was still up and running. Pure nostalgia.

Work In Progress 2.

Well… I’ve taken a bit longer break then I originally thought so, but since then our son graduated (with excellent grades), we had Christmas of course, I sewed some presents and – as probably every other family in the world – we had guests or went to someone else’s place to be guests – during the whole holiday.

But now I’m back again and I’d like to start with the answer to the question I asked before (so none of you will start to worry that I forget it). Snowflake wrote me the solution (four seasons) in email during the holidays, as she couldn’t log in to leave a comment. I’d like to congratulate her hereby! And thank you.

Well, lets start:

I’ve been thinking about how beautiful a large wall hanging (with four trees representing the four seasons) would look in our finished bedroom for a long time. The four seasons theme has been always close to me: I already have (an unembroided) pattern with the four seasons and an almost finished wall hanging collection as well (it’s a shame but Spring is still not ready as I’m still looking for the right frame). I already wrote about them twice (My “Grandmother’s Flower Garden” Quilt, and Winter Officially Started).

Even though the house-building project has been going really well, our bedroom is still not ready. But. My relative – I wrote about before – has dreamed that they have a huge wall hanging above their bed: four trees and four seasons. Strange things happen in life, right?

So right now I am sewing trees, cutting and ironing leaves and berries. I am sewing them on a paper template in English paper piecework style (folding their edges), then I attach them on the base with the help of some glue. (The folded edged application is no mistake: I work a bit more now for the far future, but I’ll be writing a separate post about that later.)

I sew the fixed pieces on the base with my sewing machine. I was really nervous as this is a brand new technique for me: I programmed a series of stitches into my machine, resulting in the feel and look of sewing all that trees, leaves and berries with my hand.

The berries have to be rotated all the while, which is quite hard, but I am really good with the leaves now. There was a moment when I even felt like someone was leading the fabric in the machine, the leaves were almost sliding under the sewing needle on their own.

I’m already finished with Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, so I’m currently working on the four pictures into one large one, while framing it as well.

When I told my husband how strange it was that I was asked to make a huge wall hanging that I’ve been wanting to make above our own bed, I found out two things: 1. I’ve been fantasizing about this plan so deep inside, that I didn’t even tell him about it. 2. He is not sure that he wants to see the four seasons flow through our home. He liked the four seasons wall hanging collection (almost done) that I designed to the living room before, but he thinks that I should work another one of my many future plans for the other parts of our house. Well… this is where I am right now.

Work In Progress 1.

I am working on a really big wall hanging, it is for one of my distant relative. To be exact: I make it for the cousin of the husband of the sister of my dad.
Here are the fabrics that I’m using. They are sorted into four groups for a reason. ☺




I wonder if you guys can figure out what the wall hanging is about, just by looking at these... ☺

Creative Work in Summer – With Relatives

My nieces were spending some time with us in the summer, and while we visited the Zoo, the Hungarian Natural History Museum and went to see some movies, we also took some time for creative work.

The girls draw a lot and painted T-shirts as well. They could wear those T-shirts on the last day that they spent with us. They were both thorough: they planed the paintings, by drawing them on paper first, and only painting afterwards, using textile dyes so they could wear their creation later.

Zsóka was the first to paint, her T-shirt was going really well up until one drop of orange dye created a small orange dot on the edge of the picture. She didn’t start to worry, instead she had a nice idea, painting small orange dots all around the T-shirt, creating a neat background for her butterfly. Smart, huh?!

Maja liked the idea of dots so much, that she created fully consciously a similar background for her T-shirt, by placing small green dots all around the princess and the prince.


Zsóka got into a large project one afternoon: she tried the fabric weaving. She was very skillful, as you may see on this picture as well she was doing everything on her own after I showed her how to do it.


In the night I sewed with the “button for the coat”: I finished the small handbag, that had Zsóka’s creation as its main attraction. This bag was with us all the time afterwards, it was perfect to carry some tissue papers and – just in case – some cookies.

The Handbag was on the Heroes’ Square (in Budapest, Hungary):

and in the Hungarian Natural History Museum, where we visited an exhibition about insects (the girls found it very interesting).

We gave several board games a try.

The bee looked very real, only it was a bit bigger than the usual. ☺ At least this way we could have a closer look and thoroughly examine it.

We spent the last day in the Tropicarium, here the girls were wearing the T-shirts that they made.

The quality of these pictures are not that great, which is because we had to turn the flash off (to not disturb the animals there).

We spent one evening at Granny, where we had a delicious meal. The shoes had some time to rest as well. The smaller is Zsóka’s, the bigger is my sons.

Where Is Our Spring?

In the last couple of weeks my desire for spring grew on, I was happy for every sunshine, every snowdrop growing out of the ground. And what happens? Yeah, the answers are on the pictures: in the last few days it snowed as much as it did whole winter. Sadly I couldn’t take a picture of the snowdrops in time and now they are fully covered in snow.

Both of these pictures were made by my husband. This small forest-side street is ours, and is now looking really fabulous.

While waiting for spring I have sewed as well of course. Among a few smaller things, I have started this tablecloth. You can’t see much of it now, but I’ll keep taking pictures as I am going on. As you see I definitely need a larger table to work on it.

Don’t bother searching for my new work on the sidebar, where I collected my plans, since it was just a sudden idea. As I have said before I know that I am a hopeless case.

Late nights (the Progress Chart on the sidebar is working on very well) I am sewing supplementary blocks for my “Grandmother’s Flower Garden” Quilt.

After all I’ll have snowdrops here in my post, but this is not my picture. I have discovered it in Wikipedia. It is taken in March 2005 in a garden under the Beskydy mountains in Czechia by Caroig (David Paloch).

Show and Tell Friday 3.

My husband’s old desire was to sail, and when we were living in Naples we fortunately had the chance for that. He and my son entered a sailing course in a small closed down gulf. Even though the Hungarians are not really born on sea people (like the Dutch for example), they tried to learn as much as possible. The instructors even taught them how to deal with capsizing and helping people out of the water.

To tell you the truth, it happened a day before it was planned, since as my gallant Hungarian men were trying to help two ladies swimming beside their already capsized sailboat, they joined them shortly after in the water as they have capsized as well. So the instructors had the chance to teach two teams right away how to set the dinghy back while crawling back in (and all this in a life jacket, it’s not easy at all).

After they had their exams, we spent a lot of time on water, they took me out to sail too, we all liked it a lot. Of course it wasn’t a large sail cruiser, this was a small dinghy, designed for 2–3 person. One day I was going with only my husband, with the aid of the wonderful wind we sailed deep into the gulf, fast as light. But when we turned back to head for the coast, the wind suddenly died out. And there we were the two of us, pretty far from the coast, with two oars. And since we had an engagement for the afternoon we had no choice but row as long as we had breaths. I’ve never rowed so much in my life. And the following muscle strain was, uhh, better not to even mention. But it was still an amazing afternoon, the sunshine, the wind, the speed, the smell of water, our laughs, it’s a really pleasant memory.

With all the equipments this sailboat looks really cute, right? I bought it with my son for my husband. The embroidery that is under that was meant to be a present for my husband as well, but in the daytime I didn’t have chance to embroider since I had to wait for him to sleep before working on it. I often spent hours in the night embroidering, which made me really drowsy at daytime. Finally I decided that it wouldn’t work longer in this way and gave it to him as a Christmas present. Even though it wasn’t finished yet, he liked it a lot. There is only a few contour stitch back, and then it’s ready to be framed. I would like to put it in a blue wooden frame, and finally it will get next to the sailboat on the shelves.

I imagine this is what a teeny-weeny sailor would see, if he would climb up to the top of the mast. ☺

My boys also joined boat races, and those were always very exciting. Of course they didn’t really have a lot of chance against the Dutch, British, American and Italian teams, but on this picture they are just then on the second place! (I know it’s hard to see, so just believe me!) ☺