Machine Made Cord Tutorial and Indigo Moon Projects

As promised on my Instagram feed last week I wrote a simple tutorial on how to make cord by sewing machine. Here is how it goes:

You will need: 

• A sewing machine with zig-zag feature.
• At least 4 different types of scrap yarns. For example, wool, knitting cotton, thin ribbon or thinly cut fabric. 
• Sewing threads (the colour of your choice!)

The choice of yarns is huge. Chance is that you already have them in your stash! I always need red cords to use in my craft projects so I've chosen mainly red yarns and thread for this project. This is easy, fun and fast to do. 

Five meters of cord ready to go!

Gathered yarns of your choice. The more variety the better. I already have them in my stash so I just randomly chose 4 different types of yarn. 

I threaded my sewing machine using red sewing thread for both top and bottom threads. I set my machine to normal zig-zag stitch. Set the width at 7.0 and length at 2.5. I have a Janome sewing machine, but I'm sure any sewing machine with zig-zag stitches will be fine.

Begin by knotting the ends of the yarns together as in the above photo. You can drop the rest of the yarns on the floor or if you have a basket you can drop them in the basket by your feet.

Place the group of yarns under the sewing machine foot below the knot. Twist the yarns together as in the above photo. Start stitching over the yarns. Twist the yarns as you stitch.  

You can make quite a lot in one go. It's very handy to have cord ready whenever you need it! At Christmas I made more than a dozen sewing rolls for gifts, and this cord was perfect to wrap around them.

I was reading Peggy's blog womanwithwings on her moon stitch ritual project. I love moon stitching and moon dyeing. So I started one too. I sorted through the stash of both hand dyed and vintage indigo fabric for the moons. For the background I'm using mixed Yukata fabric. I thought I would use pieced background for these. They look very nice together! Yes, I'm happy with that!

The idea of this moon stitching is to stitch one block per day for 365 days - the whole year. I don't think I can keep to the rule! So I'm going to make as many as my interest holds up and stop when I'm bored with them, I know I will be!

The first few blocks I started

Some moons are in 2 colours because I treasure every
little bit of vintage indigo fabric.

After Each circle is stitched down, I carefully cut out the background fabric from behind the applique. Now I have these perfect and beautiful inner circles to play with! 

You know how it is, one thing leads to another. I now have another project going side by side with the indigo moon project, but I will call this new project Full Moon!

Sorting through the stash I realised that I have an amazing stash of  indigo fabric. Some of them I dyed myself and some I bought on my visits to Japan, and of course some from Zigu Zagu. If you want to join-in just visit Quilty Folk for the original post.

Only a month into 2016 and I'm already working on 2 awesome projects! I am also working on some UFOs. I will show them to you when I get closer to finishing. 

Until next time

Nat

BORO Ball Tutorial Takes I

After I posted about BORO ball here. Hermila (no blog) from my online workshop asked me if I have a tutorial on how to cover Styrofoam balls.  I don't have instructions for them. Even though I made hundreds of them for school fates many years ago. I mainly made them in Christmas colours then. So here goes my version of the tutorial. It was fun thinking of step by step instructions and taking some photos for each step. Of course if you don't understand anything just leave your questions in your comments. 

Styrofoam balls come in many sizes, but today I will use the 3" diameter ball. It's an easy size to work with. You will need a few pieces of your scrap fabric. I'm using six different pieces of vintage BORO fabric here. You will need a Stanley knife, pen and ruler.

On every Styrofoam ball there will be a line around it. It's a manufacturers line. From that line use the pen and draw over it as you can see above.

You can divide the ball into six or eight segments. Today I will only do six because I want to use the indigo moon fabric I dyed as one of the segments. Divide the ball into six sections by eyeballing it. It's okay if you make mistakes, just start practicing until you get it.  The ball will be covered with fabric afterward. Using the knife cut along the draw lines about 1/3" deep. Be careful not to cut yourself doing this.

This is the template for the fabric. Using the template cut one piece from each piece of your fabric. You can use three pieces of fabric and alternate them, but I'm using six today. The template is about 1/4" bigger than the segment all around. 

Place the first piece of fabric over the section. Pin on the top and bottom of the ball. Using the back of the knife push the fabric into the slit you made on the ball. Start a little section at the time. You would be surprised how easy it is. 

The first section is now covered. Do the same to the rest of the segments. You can be creative with the placing of the fabric. 

All the six sections are now covered. Not too hard right. 

Using any braid or cord to cover the joints. I used handmade cord to match the fabric. You will need about 1/2 meter of cord to go around the ball. To start off with, pin the end of the cord and just follow the lines. You might need another pin at the bottom of the ball to keep the cord in place. 

You can use the left over cord to make a hanging for the ball. You can see that there is no sewing, no glue and no mess. For decoration you can go back and add more fabric or stitches on top. See below. 

This ball was done with eight segments. I added another diagonal piece over the plain fabric. You can try more contrasting colour or use ribbon. 

I hope to see some of these balls pop on your blogs in the near future. 

Scrap Christmas Quilt Part 2

The quilt top was finally finished last Saturday. I have been too busy to get the post together. So much is happening this last week. My DGD is with us at the moment. My DDIL and DGD arrived last Saturday evening and I have been enjoying their visit ever since.

Back to the tutorial: In Part 1 of the tutorial where I only finished the centre and the first border. The next step I joined more strips of Christmas fabrics randomly and cut them into five lengths the same size as the long side of the first border . Join up the five strips, you need two of these. Attach them on to both sides of the centre section. Now do the same for the top and bottom of the centre section. Check the photos for more details.

The above photo showing the first and second borders. I cut the second border 5.5" wide because I have more of this fabric. Unfortunately the first and second border are not the same fabrics, but as I said. The idea of this quilt is to use up my Christmas stash! Now join the second border and repeat the same procedure for the outer part of the quilt.

The outer part of this quilt is left without border. As far as I can see in the original quilt. The binding is attached directly onto the body of the quilt which I thought it was rather nice.

It's not easy to photograph a quilt lying on the floor. I hope you can make it out. I have not quilted it yet and my machine quilter Donna Ward told me she is swamped at the moment and cannot quilt for me in time for Christmas. I was a little disappointed not to get it done by this Christmas!

Scrap Christmas Quilt: with a little help from my friend

The quilt in photo # 1 is not mine. When Jocelyn from Happy Cottage Quilter went on her quilt shop hop, she spotted this quilt at a quilt shop called 'Rainbow's End' in Dunedin, Florida. She took the photo and posted it on her blog. I like it a lot and thought it would be great quilt to make using my Christmas fabric from my stash. I mentioned that to Jocelyn and she told me she would like to make one too if I could figure it out from the photo. Figured it out I did (my way) and with Jocelyn's permission I am posting it as a tutorial: This is my first tutorial on the blog. I have made many quilting instructions on paper, but on the blog is another thing all together. Hope it makes sense to you...!

I guest that this is a wall size quilt. Our dinning table is narrow and long and I am making this quilt for it. I sometimes use my quilt as table cloth so, it is handy to have a Christmas one too.

Last Christmas I made a simple log-cabin quilt and I had some leftover strips 2" wide. So I decided to use 2" strips as a guide. I cut a lot more 2" strips using varieties of fabric. From the strips I cut them into 8, 10, 12" lengths. Then I rejoined them randomly into a very long strips. I mixed all the colors together so that I didn't join the same colors next to each other. I hope you get what I mean. After I joined them all up into a long long ribbon, I cut a 31" length for the centre section. I need 7 x 31".

The next step is joining the 7 strips together for the centre section. I trimmed the centre block to 30.5". Now for the first border. I decided that my first border could only be 4" wide because I didn't have enough light Christmas fabric for a bigger border. The idea of this quilt is to use up my stash. I simply don't want to buy any more fabric! So I cut 4.5" wide of light color fabric and joined the two long sides of the centre section and then the top and bottom (see above).

That's all I have done so far. I have cut more strips for the outer section and I am in the process of joining them. It's looking good don't you think? At this rate I might have a new quilt for THIS Christmas WooHoo!!!

Watch this space for the next installment of the tutorial.