A bag full of leather scraps

small projects, tips & recommendations17 Comments

In my town, straight down the road from our house, there’s a small shoemaker’s shop still in business. It has a charmingly decorated store front with huge Monstera plants and a bit of the shoemaker’s equipment on display.

It’s just like a time capsule – a man still making a living from creating custom shoes by hand. I know, I might be romanticising this a fair bit but I like to think of it that way.

A Bag Full of Leather Scraps | veni vidi vicky Quilts

Last week he put a sign out: ‘leather scrap and tool sale tomorrow. We’re moving shop.’ I’m sad to see the shop leave our street, but leather scraps? I’m taking them all!
Even better, it turned out to be a ‘fill your bag for 3€’ arrangement. Must have been my lucky day! At this point you might or might not wonder why this got me so excited? 1. I love leather, and I love it even more combined with fabric 2. It’s really difficult to source some unless you want to buy it by the bulk or spend a small fortune on a few bits.

A Bag Full of Leather Scraps | veni vidi vicky Quilts

I filled up a bag, but left a little room. The restraint! so proud of myself! I tried to pick pieces that are fairly thin. My little Pfaff Passport is a powerhouse, but I don’t think it would manage with some of the thick, thick sheets of leather they use in their shoes.

When I posted my haul on Instagram a couple of friends were interested to see what I would make with all these scraps. I actually put the first piece to use last week when I sewed myself a clutch to carry to a wedding that weekend. Everything went smoothly, almost as if the leather was just a really thick piece of canvas.

A Bag Full of Leather Scraps | veni vidi vicky Quilts

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I went into sewing this with little to no experience with sewing leather. So I can only encourage you to just try. And maybe ask your local shoemaker for a good deal on a bag of leather scraps? ;-)

vicky_lang

This post is linked up with Sunday Stash at Molli Sparkles.

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‘Milly Melon’ baby quilt

baby quilt42 Comments

Milly Melon baby quilt | veni vidi vickyWatermelons are the epitome of summer for me. Summer is all about refreshments and that fruit is basically a drink!

When friends of ours welcomed their baby girl Emily in the middle of summer that’s where my thoughts went – making a watermelon themed quilt for her seemed perfect.

Milly Melon baby quilt | veni vidi vicky

You might remember the set of fruity coasters I designed last summer? I took the watermelon drunkard’s path template from the coaster pattern and sized it up a good bit. The sewn up and trimmed  drunkard’s path  blocks now finished at 7 1/2” square. Like with the coasters I decided to include quarter slices of a melon (1 drunkard’s path), ‘half melons’ (2 drunkard’s paths combined) and three quarter slices (3 drunkard’s paths combined).

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The different melon shapes are wildly scattered across the aqua hued background. I wanted to capture the sweet and fun feeling of a summer. Like eating slices watermelons by the pool.

Milly Melon baby quilt | veni vidi vicky

Milly Melon baby quilt | veni vidi vickyThe backing I once again pulled from my stash. I sometimes buy sale fabric by the yardage with the intention of some day using it as a backing, without having a specific project in mind. I thought the colour fit nicely with the reds I had already used. In general for light coloured quilt tops I prefer darker backings.I had already cut a square from the fabric, so I had to add a patch to square it up. An additional strip was needed to make it big enough.

Milly Melon baby quilt | veni vidi vicky

Do you notice that the backing looks almost like a folded over sheet of paper? To stay with the theme I used the College Ruled stripe fabric from Heather Givans’ Paper Obsessed collection. The stripes are printed on the bias, and thus make for an awesome fake bias binding look.

pattern: my own | finished size: 39 x 46” | batting: warm & natural | quilting: straight line and echo quilting around the drunkard’s paths | backing: forgot to check, can you identify it?

Milly Melon baby quilt | veni vidi vicky

I think Lupa wanted to add the Milly Melon quilt to her collection of puppy blankets. No such luck! Since finishing and photographing I have gifted it to Emily and her parents. They appreciated the handwork and thought I put into it very much, I love when that’s the case.

Happy quilting!

vicky_lang

This post is linked to Let's Bee Social at Sew Fresh Quilts, Needle and Thread Thursday at my Quilt Infatuation, TGIFF this week at Georgia Girl Quilts and Finish It up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts

 

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Caturday pillow

quilted pillow, small projects15 Comments

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI’ve been on a paper piecing kick this summer!

Phases like this usually  set in after I’ve finished a couple of traditionally pieced quilts. In true fashion I made some baby quilts in spring and since felt drawn to smaller projects that include more precise designs. I’d never have the patience to make a bigger quilt with the paper piecing technique, but there are so many great blocks out there that translate well into a pillow cover or other small projects.

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I’m in love with the Kitten Around  block by Michael Ann Made. I had this idea of a pillow top with 4 cat blocks set inside a colourful frame, so I went ahead and purchased the pattern. To mix my layout up a bit I mirrored one cat template before printing the copies out. This way one of the kittens ins facing the other way. Sneaky thing!

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For the colour palette I started out with a fabric I was set on using on the backside of the pillow –  it’s from the Collage collection by Carrie Bloomston. I pulled coordinating prints and basics from my stash and ended up with a colour story pretty unusual for my taste. But since I had already decided to turn this project into a birthday gift for a good friend, it fit perfectly. She loves cats and I knew the palette would please her eye. Win!

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Prior to sewing the 4 cat blocks I added strips of fabrics to two sides of each of the block. This formed a kind of log cabin finish framing the central blocks.

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The finished pillow cover measures 16×16” (so fits a standard small pillow size 40x40cm, as we have them available in Germany). I used my zipper technique for fully quilted pillows again, since I quilted both the front and back side of the cover. The bonus using this method is that there’s no ‘backside’. Instead the pillow is equally usable from both sides.

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I finished this work in progress in time to enter it into the ‘Modern Makers Retreat Cushion Palooza’. If you check their hashtag #mmrcushionpalooza on Instagram, you will find a wonderfully inspiring collection of all sort of handmade pillows.

vicky_lang

This post is linked up with Let's Bee Social at Sew Fresh Quilts,
Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation and 
Thank God It's Finished Friday this week at Celtic Thistle Stitches,
Modern Patch Monday at Modern Cologne Quilters, Fabric Tuesday
at Quilt Story and Sew Cute Tuesday at Young Texan Mama.

<a href=”http://www.bloglovin.com/blog/18255745/?claim=u8wmcshma8m”>Follow my blog with Bloglovin</a>

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‘Glass Half Full’ quilt

big quilts43 Comments

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThe shift from blogging to instagram has been a topic discussed online for the past two years or so.

I only started this blog two summers ago and had all the intentions to keep blogging, although I’ve been on instagram longer than this blog exists. I still make a point to stage a photoshoot for all my bigger finished pieces, but I rarely write up entries any more. All the action does seem to go down on Instagram, it’s just so more convinient. And so I happen to have my hard drive full of pictures for potential blog posts.

This bigger quilt I photographed back in May, so I must have finished it around April or so. I had the top completed for almost a year, but I was so scared to put a quilt of that size under my tiny machine for quilting. When I finally pulled the plug, quilting actually went rather smoothly. Keeping the straight line quilting to a simple crosshedge pattern certainly helped that.

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My idea was to keep the quilt itself monochromatic, so it would blend easily into a room that was already busy and colourfully decorated (as our living areas happen to be). All fabrics used are a shade of teal/aqua/turquiose broken up into equal parts of high and lower value.This was my first time sewing drunkard’s path blocks or curves for that matter. By the amount of blocks I made it’s pretty easy to guess that I enjoyed it ;-)

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The original thought behind the pattern was a half moon, but as I progressed it didn’t have so much of a moonshine-y feel to it. Rather the colours along with the curves and edges reminded me of seaglass. This eventually evolved into the name of ‘Glass Half Full’ because a little portion of optimism can never hurt, right?

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The finished quilt measures 58 x 82” after washing. Fabrics I used range from Joel Dewberry, Cotton + Steel to Lotta Jansdotter and Katy Jones’ Priory Square. The backing is from IKEA. By using the full width including the broad selvedge I avoided piecing the backing (which is one of my least favourite tasks in quilting). For batting I used Warm + White.

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And when it came to bind this quilt (which in turn is my favourite part) I felt the whole thing was in bad need of a pop of colour. I think my eyes must have been saturated by teal at that point. I had enough Kona Cactus left from another project and to my own suprise it works great as a contrast binding.

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I’m entering the ‘Glass Half Full’ Quilt into the Large Quilt section of this season’s Blogger’s Quilt Festival which runs from September 19-30th on Amy’s Creative Side. You can vote on your favourites in each category starting Saturday.

Have a good week and cheers to all of you still reading and following blogs!!

vicky_lang

This post is linked up with Let's Bee Social at Sew Fresh Quilts,
Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation,
Modern Patch Monday at Modern Cologne Quilters and
Thank God It's Finished Friday this week at Celtic Thistle Stitches.

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