Little gifts

My New Zealand friend asked if I could make her a new bag for her to house plastic carrier bags.
Made it this afternoon using some Amy Butler fabric.  It's fully lined with a proper casing so it should be sturdy.  Based it on the Pink Penguin Drawstring bag tutorial.

Yesterday I made 2 x 10.5" square QAYG string blocks for Jan in Australia.
See her blog Sew Many quilts too little time
to find out what marvellous work she does making countless charity quilts, many of them from donated QAYG blocks.  She uses 2 sizes of blocks: 10.5" and 12.5".  I hope to make a few more in the next couple of weeks. Trying to use "man coloured strings" as I know she is always looking for blocks suitable for men's quilts.

Off to cut some small scraps up into 2.5" and 1.5" squares for my stash.

A little gift for a blog friend

I love how quilting brings together people from different parts of the world.
Over the past few years I have followed many quilting blogs and feel attached to many quilters whom I know I will very probably not meet in person.  We do, however, have "conversations" via email and their blogs so, in a weird way, I feel I "know" them, am interested in their projects and what is going on in their worlds.

So, as a little "Thank you" to a lady whose work and zany humour I very much admire, I sent a little gift:

and the other side.................

 

I added a little hand stitching and pretty buttons for embellishment.

 

Inside I popped a few of my 3" 9 patches.

Last quilting in NZ

Yesterday was my last Patchwork meeting in NZ for 2017.
I had a very productive day, using scraps to make 2 more drawstring bags for Jennie's stall:

Front

And back

Front

 

And back

 

I also made 3 more 10.5" QAYG String blocks for Jan at Sew many quilts too little time blog.

That makes a total of 9 blocks which I will mail to her when I go into town on Tuesday.

It's cheaper for me to send blocks to Jan in Australia from here in NZ than from the UK ( postage charge is quite prohibitive now).

Here they are, all 9 of them:

 

 

Hope Jan likes them.  I know she is busy using up QAYG blocks that have been gifted to her so perhaps these will mix in nicely with ones she is sewing up at present.

 

 

Drawstring bag

Yesterday was my last Motueka Quilting Connection meeting before we go back to the UK. 
I used the morning to make a little Drawstring bag, using 2.5" squares kindly gifted to me by my lovely Blog-land friend Jo ( her blog is butter z).

The pattern is from Pink Penguin blog, a Tutorial for a Reversible drawstring bag.
All the materials came from my rapidly diminishing NZ stash.

And the other side:

 

I am gifting this to my Patchwork friend Jennie for her stall which sends money to the Gambia which supports a school over there.

 

Pink Penguin bag

A couple of years ago my quilting friend Sarah introduced our Patchwork Group to a lovely reversible drawstring bag. It measures 8.5" tall by 7.5" wide and is really useful for carrying sewing threads, needle cases, scissors etc to class.  Sarah has made each member of our group one of these bags as birthday gifts. It's quite amusing to look  around the room at our Patchwork meetings and see everyone's pretty bag being used. Because they are made from scraps each one is different.

I have made several - including one each for my husband and me to keep our various battery chargers safe in one place. So handy when we are packing for travelling, just pick up the bag of battery chargers and pop into the luggage.  No more hunting around the house for chargers!

With this in mind I decided to make one for my good friend Judy.  It's her birthday next week and as she is forever dashing around the country looking after various members of the family I thought a Battery charger bag might be useful. 
You can find the excellent Tutorial on Pink Penguin"s blog: Click on the Tutorials button and then on Reversible Drawstring bag.

Everything came from stash, the buttons from my button box.  I was very pleased to find the pair of small yellow flower buttons which I sewed on the ends of the drawstrings.  The lining is made from one of the FQs in a pack which was a gift from another Patchwork friend Ruth. Funnily enough a few days previously I cut some patches from another FQ in this pack, for another commission Baby Boy quilt I am currently working on.

Here's the bag:

Front

Back

I used 32 x 2.5" squares from my scrap stash and next day added another 12 back into stash.
On Thursday I was gifted a bag of scraps, mostly strips which went immediately into my Scrap Strips Stash bags and other odd shaped scraps were cut into various sizes of squares and strips and the small odd shaped leftovers went into my Crumb blocks stash.  Nothing ever goes to waste here!!

A little "Thank you" gift

I am going to my best friend Barbara's tomorrow for a few days whilst DH is away on a course.
As I am going by train I have to travel light - three trains there and two trains and a tube on the way back.

So, as a little "Thank you" gift I have made Barbara a drawstring bag for her battery chargers.
DH and I have found these bags so useful.  We know instantly which are our chargers and when we go away just toss the bag into the luggage and off we go.

As always, made from stash, using some of the pretty blue ribbon I brought back from NZ that I bought cheaply in Spotlight.

 

I used the same fabrics on the back but rearranged in a different order.

 

As before I used Amy's excellent tutorial on her Pink Penguin Blog.

Keeping track of battery chargers

Like every household we have several battery chargers, looking similar but not exactly the same.  This can be irritating if my husband and I grab the wrong charger. Keeping track of 'His' and 'Hers' chargers is a nuisance so  at the weekend I decided to make 2 drawstring bags using Pink Penguin's excellent tutorial.

The tutorial is straightforward to follow, especially as she has lots of photographs showing each stage very clearly.  I made them in different colourways, a more girly one with pinks for me and a more masculine one ( black, green and blue) for my husband.

So now we should have no problem keeping our battery chargers safely. I think the bags will also be very useful when we go away as it should speed up the packing   Instead of hunting in drawers for various chargers, they will be together in their little bags ready to go!

 

 

They didn't take long to make especially as I used already cut 2.5" squares from my stash. I keep all my smaller pieces of fabric together so it only took a moment to find suitable fabric for the linings and casings. After I had cut the lining and casing pieces I had some scraps left over and I straightaway cut a few 2.5", 3" and 1.5" squares for my stash.

 

I keep pieces of ribbon too and I was able to find suitable lengths in my Ribbon Box and, of course buttons from my large Button stash!

 

Nothing is wasted in this house!  Bagged squares are much easier to store than irregular sized scraps which end up creased up and neglected.  I thoroughly recommend cutting up your scraps at the end of each project.  That way it's not a daunting task and your cut squares stash keeps growing.

Thrilled with my FIRST EVER Drawstring bag

My last post featured the patchwork Book bag I had made for little Rosie.

This post features my FIRST EVER Drawstring Bag!  Can't tell you how pleased I am with myself. 

I was determined to use only 2.5" squares from my stash and had originally decided on a blue, green, orange  and yellow colourway.  But when I set them out on my "Design Floor" (aka the carpet in my sewing room!) the arrangement didn't thrill me.

 

It looked dull and boring and very "un-zingy".  So I left it, did something else and went back the next day when I decided to only keep the green squares and use pink and purple for the rest of the patchwork.  Much better!

 

After that I added another row across and jiggled around with the placement a bit.

I have never made a proper Drawstring bag before and my friend Sarah suggested I follow an excellent tutorial on the Pink Penguin blog.  It's actually for a Reversible Bag but I just used a piece of purple Moda marble fabric for the lining.

Then, as Sarah told me, I carefully followed the blog's instructions. 
I have a real problem with Spatial  Awareness so I couldn't see in my head how the instructions for joining the casing to the front of the bag and then to the lining would work out.  But they did!  I threaded 2 lengths of cord through the casing as instructed and - hey presto! - I had a bright, colourful Drawstring bag that worked!

The Back:

The Front:

 

 

And the drawn-up bag:

It measures 12" x 14" which I think should be the right size for a small pair of trainers, T shirt and shorts.

I have just popped round to Rosie's Granny's house with the two finished bags and she was equally delighted.  Hope Rosie likes them too.

Isn't it a great feeling when you try something new and it works out well?

Just realised that I used 154 x 2.5" squares from my Stash and I didn't have to cut one specially for these projects.  Proves that a few moments spent cutting scraps into squares when you finish a project does pay dividends.  Now I need to cut more squares, especially pink, purple and green as I am virtually out of those colours.