Postage Stamp Quilt Plans

This week has been a rather disappointing week for me in regards to sewing – mainly because I haven’t had a chance to sit down at the machine for even 5 minutes. The reason for my sewing deficiency is a good one though – in the past couple of weeks my fiancee and I purchased our very first home AND decided to get married and go on a honeymoon before our settlement date in 3 months time. Suffice to say there has been a LOT of phone calls and running around trying on dresses and scouting venues and not a great deal of sewing or crafting.

But true to my word when I started this blog, I have to post once a week on a Wednesday regardless of how crazy the rest of my life is. So this week I thought I’d share with you the project that I’m using all those itty bitty 2 inch squares for from the swap we just finished.

Anyone who has participated in a quilt square swap before will know that you often end up with heaps of blue coloured squares. After this happened for my third successive swap, I decided I needed to do something with those blue square instead of just recirculating them in future swaps.

And so the Blue Day Postage Stamp Quilt was born! Since the postage stamp quilt swap started, I’ve been working on separating squares into sets of 100 unique blue squares, ironing said squares and sewing them together into pairs. The idea is that once I’ve got all my blocks grouped up then I’ll try and work on a couple of blocks a week and have the quilt top done by the time my partner and I move into our house (pressures on!)

Here are a few photos of my progress so far:

This is what I come home to each day! Little baggies of 50 2 inch square pairs ready to be ironed so that I can sew them into 25 sets of four 2 inch squares. (Whew! What a sentence…)

This block is made up entirely of blue squares I received in the recent PSQ swap! I laid it out yesterday and popped it in a baggie ready to be sewn together.

These are the first 3 completed blocks of my quilt project. In the corner are my little baggies filled with sets of 100 unique squares ready to be sewn into blocks. Lot’s of work to be done but I think it will be worth it!

Wonky Houses Swap

A few weeks ago I posted about a Wonky House Swap that I was involved with on Facebook. (You can check that post out here.) The only problem was that when it came time to post the Wonky House off to my partner, not only did I realise that I had accidentally cut it down to 12 inches instead of 12.5 inches, I had also misunderstood the swap and was supposed to make 4 Wonky Houses instead of just 1!

Naturally I had more than a few moments of panic as I tried to figure out what on earth I could do. In the end I just grabbed my box of scraps and got sewing. It was late when I finished but I’m really proud of what I managed to come up with.

The block I’d made previously had to be taken apart and re-sewn with a new ‘sky’ and ‘grass’ so that I could make up the extra inches. Thankfully that didn’t take too long and I think I ended up with a better fabric choice anyway.

Here are my final four wonky houses (please excuse the crinkles, these were taken before I attacked them with an iron!):

 

I hope my swap partners like the ones I’ve sewn above – I certainly do! I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to do with the Wonky House Blocks that I receive in return though. They are quirky and fun and I like the look of them all together so maybe a house quilt is in order. If I did that though I think my perfectionist tendencies would kick in and I’d want to have all the ‘grass’ sections line up so it looks as though the houses are on a street all together… I’ll have to see what arrives and go from there!

Knox Craft Collective

For the past few weeks I’ve been fortunate enough to be working for Knox City Council putting together a local Knox Craft Collective email database.

The Knox Craft Collective is a new register of craft artists living or working in Knox and the surrounding districts. The aim is to facilitate networking between craft artists, community groups, craft businesses and those with an interest in craft. Once it is established, groups and individuals will be invited to send craft related information about their practice, workshops, exhibitions, markets, awards, grants etc. This information will be collated into a newsletter and distributed to Knox Craft Collective register monthly, beginning in 2015.

As a supplier/local crafter listed on the Knox Craft Collective Register, you will be the first port of call for Council when they plan community events and you will also have the opportunity to contribute information about sales/your work to local crafters.

It’s going to be AWESOME when it all gets up and running and I’m particularly enjoying visiting all the local markets in the area to find new crafters to include in the network. I’ll do a post in a few weeks with links to a few of my favourite craft stalls – right now I’m swimming in business cards and emails and I need to get organised!

I’ll finish off my post today by saying that if you’re a local crafter to the City of Knox (Melbourne, Australia) and surrounds, City of Whitehorse, Monash, Yarra, Maroondah etc, please do get in touch. The more local crafters we have on the Register, the richer and more valuable it will be to all of us.

Quilting Memes

Making time for sewing has become quite hard since starting full time work a few months ago. I really have to push myself to ensure that I don’t simply collapse in front of the TV or let all my projects slide by the wayside. One thing that keeps me motivated (and sewing at the forefront of my mind) are quilting and sewing memes on social media.

Memes are generally pictures paired with a few words and are commonly shared on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. Basically anywhere online that people share images, including via email.

So while this week I have nothing overly exciting to show you on the sewing front (mainly because I’ve been occupied with a new contract role outside of my full time work as a library officer) I thought I’d show you some of my favourite memes instead:

 

What do you do to keep motivated?

Quilt Square Swap

I am a big fan of quilt square swaps. They allow you to access a wide range of fabrics you wouldn’t have otherwise. They force you to accept fabrics you wouldn’t otherwise have purchased. And they allow you to share a part of your collection with other crafters all around the world.

This month my favourite quilting swap signup opens! You guessed it, it’s the Curious Quilters 2inch Quilt Square Swap! From September 20 – Oct 5 you are welcome to sign up to participate in the teeny tiny square goodness that is this swap. You can deal in 1.5, 2, or 2.5 inch squares.

I’m really keen to get involved in more teeny tiny square fabric swaps like this one, but I can’t find any more! I’ve searched Flickr, trawled Google for hours and flicked around quilting blogs for months on end – but nothing. I’m beginning to think there just aren’t any more out there. Please can someone prove me wrong?!

The more common fabric square swap is the charm/5″ square quilt swap. Mike over at The Amateur Quilter runs one of these every now and again. The swap itself is run on Flickr.

I had grand ambitions for this blog post, thinking I’d be able to find hundreds of awesome quilt swaps online… but yet again most of the ones I’ve found are either full or happened ages ago. Here is one place I’ll continue to check, but aside from that I’m looking at you dear blog reader! Do you know of any awesome regular quilt square swaps?

Liebster Blog Award

 

A few days ago I found that I have been nominated by Two Arms Full for a Liebster Award.

I’m really excited to share this news and even nominate some of my favorite up and coming blogs! The Leibster Award is a way for bloggers with under 200 followers to network and find out about one another. You tell 10 things, answer questions about yourself,  and ask others questions.

As a nominee I have to answer a few questions:

1. What is your top blogging goal to do by 12/31/2014 @ 11:59 pm?

To have 100 views per day of my blog.

2. What classic movie is your favorite?

Hmm. I wouldn’t say that any classic movies feature on my favourites list. I tend to pick my favourites from my most recently seen… so at the moment it would be Guardians of the Galaxy.

3. Do you have a favorite cocktail? if so what is it and why?

Easy! Fruit Tingle cocktail – purely because I’m still a child and love anything that tastes like lollies.

4. What 1 thing inspired you to start blogging?

I’ve always loved reading and writing so blogging was just a natural progression for me.

5. Tea or Coffee?

Neither.

6. If you needed to write 1 last letter (on paper), who would it be to?

I’m assuming this is before I hypothetically die… my family.

7. What advice would you give to a younger self?

To stress less about getting things done and just relax.

8. If you could be a superhero, what kind of hero would you be and why?

One who didn’t have to sleep! Imagine all the work that could be achieved overnight…. every night!

9. What do you do to stay young at heart?

Well I’m still pretty young at 22, so this isn’t overly relevant to me. But I don’t worry about doing things that people my age shouldn’t be doing. I still read teen fiction and enjoy media targeted at teens.

10. What is your favorite veggie? How do you like it prepared?

Carrots! Carrot soup, carrot spaghetti, chopped, roasted, raw… you name it. If carrots are involved I’ll be there.

11. What is the story behind your blog name?

Well my name is Jess and I make a variety of things. I love creating and recycling and the blog name: JessMadeThis just seemed like a good way to incorporate all my different explorations under the one banner.

My nominees for the award are:

1. Textile Shed

2. Hoarder’s Helping Hoarders!

3. Our Urban Box

4. Stitching Rules

5. Dream Big Live Full

6. Jack Southwell (The AgraProject)

7. Barbie Bieber and Beyond

8. The Flying Drunken Monkey

9. From the Ashers

10. Just Jess May

11. My Little Sunshine

*If any of the above have more than 200 followers – apologies! On some sites it was hard to tell.

For my nominees here are the rules:

• You have to link back to the person that nominated you.
• You must answer all 11 questions that I answered above.
• After completing these questions you must nominate 11 bloggers with under 200 followers and give them 11 questions of your choice.
• You must not nominate the person who nominated you.
• You must let your nominees know that they have been nominated and provide a link for them to your post so that they can learn about it

Thank you again for the nomination, Two Arms Full !