Hello my crafty bloggy friends. How are you?

I have been spending lots of time at my sewing machine. After my last post, I quickly finished the rag quilt that I had in the pipeline. This used a huge chunk of my stash of old denim jeans.

I managed to get all the sewing done in one afternoon. It helped that I had some 505 temporary basting spray because sewing the squares together was a heavy job. Three layers per square (denim and two flannelette) times two equals a tough job with the walking foot on the machine. I made sure to switch to a heavier duty needle and a longer stitch.

As I wanted the denim side to be the “right side” all my seam allowances ended up on that side. I turned every alternate square a quarter turn, so that the deer print on the back looked more interesting. And then I spent ages clipping the seam allowances every half an inch, most of which I got done in the evening. There was just a bit left to do next morning, and then I tossed it into the washer and dryer to fluff up the snipped bits.

I almost forgot to say that my seam allowances were 3/4″. I decided that it would be better to lose a bit of size overall and to have a fuller fringe effect. I love the result!

The next thing I played with was a picture created with scrap fabric. When I was on my retreat at the beginning of October I made a very rough sketch of the view from my bedroom window. I attempted to recreate it by using cotton strips, raw edge applique and free-motion quilting.

I started with the sky, which is actually my favourite part. It even has some tulle stitched over the top for a bit of a misty texture. The mountains were next, then the fields of trees, fruit and vegetables. This is appliqued onto canvas and would make a good journal cover!

Talking of journals, I made another cover today with, once again, the raw edge applique technique and some sugar skull fabric. The colours I picked out for the outside were inspired by the skull cotton.

That took me about three hours! I think with this sort of modern print and clear colours, it would be more appropriate to use regular white paper rather than tea-dyed for this journal. I shall have to think about how to decorate the pages though.

I’ll be working the next four days so that will seriously limit playtime in my sewing room, but I hope I will be back soon with more fun stuff to show you.