Pretty Fairies!

I've been playing around a little with my fairy fabric that I bought when I was in Sweden. I want to make a shadow quilt, inspired by one my mother had started on when I was there. It was just to adorable pass up on making one of my own when I found the fabric in a friends quilt store! Right now I'm trying to decide weather or not to keep a little pink around the edges of the fairy panels or not?

I'm having trouble deciding but it's leaning towards bringing out the seam ripper and removing the thin pink border... What do you think? I'm thinking the shadow effect will look nicer without it?

I think I'll leave the decision for now and ponder it for a bit as it's much to late to make any major decisions and after hearing the thunder and seeing the huge lightning storm that's brewing over the Mediterranean as I write - I think it's time to pull the plug on my beloved machine to protect it, go to bed under one of my beloved quilts, turn on a good movie and try to fall asleep despite my major fear of lightning storms.

While on the topic of my machine, it seems to have sort of "self healed" for most part, it still makes some bad noises from time to time but in between those sessions it works perfectly. Very weird but makes me a very happy camper! Now I just hope it will hang in there until the Janome guy can give it some much needed TLC this summer ^^

My fantastic student!

My friends daughter is being home schooled and I'm her sewing teacher. She'd never touched a sewing machine when we started this fall and I just had to brag a little about her because she's such a fantastic student! We have so much fun during our lessons and she's quick to learn and to my big delight equally picky about stuff as as I am.

Our latest assignment was embroidery (her initials) and then preferably incorporating the embroidery in something sewn. So we made a fabric case for her pencils and pens for school. We wanted to shine a little so she made it sort of triangular with lining, zipper and everything, really impressive work!

Embroidering for her first time ever, cross stitches in the shape of her initials, her stitches are so neat!

Since she's attending my "classes", we're cutting the fabric when possible, not clipping with scissors =) Also, since she like me is a night owl, this particular class was taking place about two at night, hence the dark pictures.

Adding the embroidery to the front of the case, I just love how she choose a green text on the grey main fabric and coordinated the lining fabric with the embroidery.

And the result, one super luxurious pencil case!

 
She's just the best student!  Next up in our classes are knitting and soft toy from stretch fabric, we'll be making a sock monkey, stay tuned =)

My poor baby! My Horizon!

So what is it with me and killing sewing machines? :(

 
3 months into having my beautiful, fantastic Janome Horizon it goes and breaks on me! I was going to sew with some invisible thread, I thread the machine, tested it on a test quilt sandwich - no problems with anything, move over to the real quilt, sew 10-11 stitches and then a loud "bang" and the thread digs in. I cut loose the quilt and there I have the reason, the bobbin case holder (the plastic thing you can remove when you clean) has hopped out of place (which should really be impossible). 

I quickly unscrew the screws holding the metal plate over it and it pops up like a jack in a box from the pressure from the case. And no, the needle hadn't broken, it hadn't bent or anything, the darn thing popped out on it's own! Andreas just says he'd been waiting for something to break considering how it sounded since I got it - I thought it sounded normal if a bit louder then I thought it would?

Anyhow, now the case won't lie still (something must have gotten bent in the pop), it makes bad noises from time to time and I can only sew very, very slowly and for short amounts of time, then I have to restart. :( Which really sucks and sewing slowly and FMQ doesn't really match.

Anyhow as no one on Malta can fix these types of machines I'm hoping that someone out there reading this will have experienced the same thing and can give me a tip on what I dare to do myself adjustment wise to get the case to stay in place so I can sew somewhat for real again until the wonderful person on Janome Sweden who will be helping me with servicing on his vacations in Malta (seriously, how sweet isn't that?) can come and rescue me?


*big blue puppy eyes* Any and all help is SO appreciated! <3


"You can quilt that out"
On a happier notice, I've been listening to this hilarious quilting music video called "You can quilt that out"  that I just had to share with you all, makes everything seem a little better thinking about all these poor long arm quilters has to go through ^^

Finally! A Finish! Poppy Log Cabin Table Topper

Remember this post: I said I wasn't going to play around ?

Well it's finally finished! Since I didn't have any orange thread at the time it remained unbound, and for some reason I'd decided to sew the binding down by hand (maybe because it's a table topper and will be closely looked at?) so once I got the thread I didn't really do the binding anytime soon XD But as of yesterday it's finished!

It's quilted on my old machine (the one that constantly changed thread tension on it's own and skipped stitches) with a walking foot so I'm really quite happy with it. =) The more I look at it the more I love this little quilt and the fabric in  it, it's really bright and happy and I LOVE poppies so it's right up my alley really.

The pattern comes from: http://miasquiltbod.se/ if you want to make your own, it's really quick to make and much fun!

Kitty update: Apparently she doesn't have any stones or any atypic cells in the urine and it appears to be "just" a really nasty infection. So she's on antibiotics, painkillers and some kind of cramp solver to relax the urine bladder so hopefully this will take care of it.

Many WIPs but not much work done

I have a big number of Works In Progress right now but work and Diana being sick has left me with very little time for crafts lately. Diana has some kind of infection in her bladder and it's most likely reached her kidneys and we're going in to do a urin sample directly from the bladder today to see what we're dealing with here. Hopefully nothing a big dose of antibiotics can't handle.

However, yesterday I actually got some sewing done which resulted in this pretty pile on my table.

Sunkissed by Sweetwater is such a fantastic line! I'm loving working with this fabric so much that I don't really want to finish this project =)

Silver on Silver

For the first time ever I tried out my silver colored lambskin. I've seen others use it online and it always looks so pretty but I haven't really been able to make myself use it until now as silver on silver always looks so boring in person to me. But after this first attempt I'm a lot more confident, it actually looks quite good! I have no idea what the braid is called, it's just something I played up while trying to learn a completely different braid *lol* If it has an official name and you know it, I'd be really happy if anyone enlightened me =)

Again, the skinn of the bracelet looks a little bumpy because it's never been worn, it'll get all nice and even with use =) I have to show you later how great the silver bracelet looks when mixed with others. You see, I nearly never wear just one bracelet, I almost always wear at least 3 or more on the same arm, looks great I think!

Black Jenny braid bracelet

I had some leftover braid from making my Three Tier Bracelet so I decided to utilize it by making a somewhat thicker but still simple bracelet of it. It's a Jenny braid with two skin inlays. Made with black lambskin and it has a reindeer antler button.

I'm currently teaching myself some new braiding techniques so hopefully I'll be able to share some brand new stuff with you all soon =)