Reuse!

This is a necklace I made for my Mom. It's made out of a t-shirt. It's quite easy to make actually and I think it would be fun for kids too. I braided my pieces but i have another one that isn't braided and it looks really great too. You have to use a certain kind of fabric so that when you cut it into strips and pull on the strips, it curls nicely. It's the softer jersey type of fabric that works best.

By the way, I will probably only be posting previous projects, not new ones for a while. School is super busy and I also took my sewing machine in to get serviced so I won't have the opportunity to sew up anything new. Looking forward to a summer full of sewing though :)

Makeup pouch

I made this makeup bag/pencil case for my Aunt for her birthday. I LOVE the outside fabric so much! The colours are great and the shimmer just makes it amazing. I got the fabric at the Creativ Festival in Toronto last October. The Spring Creativ Festival is the weekend of April 15 which is right after I finish my last final exams of my undergrad!! Perfect timing :)

Table runner for Nanny

Front of the table runner. Traditional pinwheel design. 

Table runners are very fun to make. They use the exact same process as a full quilt yet are much smaller and therefore take less time to complete. I made my Nanny this table runner for Christmas. I think that the colours were perfect for her! She really liked it and it looked great on the table.

Back of the table runner. I decided to give the back a design so it could be reversible. 

I decided to free-motion quilt the table runner. I love the look of free motion and it was a small piece in comparison to an actual quilt so I figured it wouldn't be too difficult. It went well, until I ran out of the light pink thread I was using when I had a 3in x 3in area left to quilt. It was Christmas eve so I knew I wouldn't be able to buy any that day. My aunt ended up saving me. She had gotten me a wonderful box of Gutermann thread for Christmas and gave me the light pink thread early so I could finish quilting the table runner. It turned out perfectly!

Close up of one pinwheel. You can also see the background fabric had gold designs which made it much more interesting (and fancier) than plain white.

Sneak peek at a quilt for Mom and Dad

I am making a quilt for my parents. I chose a grey/green colour scheme and it looks really great so far. I have all the peices cut and partially sewn together. I am not sure when I will finish it as I am super busy with the last 6 weeks of school. 

It's going to be a huge quilt. They have a queen size bed but their mattress is really tall so I have to account for the overhang. It will need to be quilted on a longarm machine. I don't have one (yet, haha) so I have been looking for somewhere within a few hours driving distance that rents out the use of a long arm machine. I haven't been having too much luck yet but I am sure I will find something by the time it's time to quilt it.

Playing with clay

This past Christmas, I wanted to make a lot of the gifts I was going to give to people. I went to a pottery studio in Guelph and made a lot of different things. Here are some of the dishes I made. I hadn't done pottery since I was in elementary school and I forgot how much fun it is to get messy and play with mud!

This is my favourite bowl. I really like the curled edges and the blue highlighting on the curls.

This plate matches my favourite bowl. I gave it to my parents and now it is on display in my living room :)

 Pottery is pretty time consuming. You have to make the pieces out of wet clay. Then ALL of the water has to evaporate before it can go into the kiln for the first firing. After the first firing, the pieces are now at their bisque stage.

My boyfriend picked this one out for himself. It reminds me of honeycomb.

I like things to be instant so the long waiting process of all the dryings and firings made me really curious to see my pieces.  I also had to guess what sort of techniques I would prefer the finished look of. I didn't know what some of the patterns would end up looking like, nor did I know what colour some of the glazes would take on.

This was one of my favourites made by pressing lace into the wet clay.  I also really liked the flat but uneven look on the top. 

Next is the glazing stage. The glaze looks like really ugly paint at first. It's thick and pretty much all dull shades of gray. The final colours end up being sort of a surprise as the glaze takes on different colours depending on where it is in the kiln, how thick the coat was and whether it is in a raised or sunken in part of the design.  Sometimes I even mixed glazes for a more interesting look.

The design on this bowl is actually a rubber stamp that I repeated until I covered the whole area.

Sweet dreams

My boyfriend really loves the smell of lavender so I made him a little lavender pillow and gave it to him in his Christmas stocking. It's my own wonky take on a log cabin design. I used a variety of scraps for the log cabin and a linen-cotton blend for the boarder and back.

First post, first quilt

This is my first quilt I made back in November 2010. It was a gift for a baby boy. I am really happy with how it tured out. I wanted it to be simple but not too boring so there is actually a pattern with the squares (solids, horizontal halves, solids, vertical halves etc)

Pretty scraps

Front

  It was my first attempt at free motion quilting. I learned that I should have gotten my machine serviced before I attempted free motion but once I started, I was too eager to finish it.

Close up of quilting. 

 I used moda Whimsy and Kona solids in white for the front and I am not sure the name of the blue fabric on the back. I used a really funky striped fabric for the binding and I think it turned out great!

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