Adaliza

I’m back into patchwork and quilting again …

Sunflower Farm

If you go down to the woods

Sunflower Farm is now all pinned up and ready for quilting & binding.  I’ve chosen a soft pure white fleecy fabric for the backing this time.  I’m itching to experiment with some different quilting patterns – freemotion quilting in swirls I think!

If You Go Down to the Woods quilt is still being pieced together but I love the combination of twinkle stars & teddies and there will lots of white – my current ‘signature’ for all quilts at the moment!  Can’t wait to finish them.

Talking of which, I haven’t shown you my new gadgets yet …

Bias Binding gadgets

These are nifty little devices that take all the huffing & puffing out of making your own bias binding – and save loads of £’s if you usually buy it!  I bought them here and I now have 4, in a variety of widths.  The 3 smaller ones came in a pack and I bought the huge one separately.  I use them on ‘straight-of-grain’ strips too as I don’t always need the extra stretch of bias cut.

They’re really easy to use …

Cut strips the desired width

Each gadget has the width of fabric on the top and it’s much easier to feed in if the end is cut into a point.

Push the end into the gadget

You can see that it curls round on both sides as it goes in.  I used a pointy tool (below) to encourage the fabric right through to the other side.  It went through very quickly and wasn’t at all fiddly.

Helping hand – use a pointy tool

Out comes the binding

Then, as if by magic, as you pull the pointy end, the fabric is beautifully folded.  It just needs to be ironed as it comes out and I pull it under the iron – make sure you don’t scorch your ironing board cover though!

Once it appears the other side of your iron, just pull it through slowly.

I haven’t finished a quilt since I bought these but I used them to make interesting strips for some patchwork cushions that I made at the end of last year and which promptly waltzed off to new homes before I’d had a chance to photograph them!

Do pop over to Wendy’s HandmadeHarbour to see what everyone else is up to in the dim & chilly days of mid-winter.  Winchester was buzzing and busy this afternoon when I popped in to see how the first Retro Market of the year was going.  It’s a new venture, to have markets on the first Sunday of January & February, and it looked as though it was going really well.  I decided to wait until March before starting up again – a chance to replenish my stock and develop some new lines!

Have a good week.

Adaliza

PS :: I’ve just noticed that this is my 250th post!  What a lot of blogging in almost 2 years – my 2nd anniversary is on 20.1.13!