Hello 2020

Well, hello!  It’s only been eight years since my last post.  I don’t really know what happened to my blogging mojo but I think it just suffered alongside the loss of my entire creative mojo in the last few years.  No dramatic reasons, just foggy mental health and work and health, the usual ...

I haven’t been entirely devoid of creative bursts - I’ve been mini-blogging on Instagram and I’m very happy over there ... But sometimes I want to ramble on a bit more, or explain a process and that’s when the Insta platform feels a little claustrophobic.  So, I thought I’d try an experiment and bring PingsAndNeedles out of retirement. I don’t know how often I’ll be using it or who will read it, but that’s not the point.  It was really only ever for me to have a space to ramble on and document my creative process, so that’s how I intend to continue.  Randomly! I have not spent hours crafting this post because the point is just to begin.

Let’s start with a little item I painted for a friend this Christmas ... and let me tell you the Origins Story:

It all started back here with this Ruby Star Rising and Andover fabrics quilt from 2010!

A few years later it needed a little bit of tlc where the seams were loosening up (prob wrong original tension, I’ve learned a lot since then!) So, having put it into my WIP pile I ignored it for a couple of years (whoops!) and then finally back in 2018 I decided to recycle and revamp the quilt into something new ... (adding more Melody Miller fabric along with some dots and solids, with a mustard tweed backing)

But that left this backing fabric unused .... 

So I used some of it to make make up removal pads (for the same friend)

and then this Christmas at my annual @thepaintingpotterycafe visit I painted this tapas dish which I thought she could put in her bathroom to hold the pads ...

I like the story so far.  

That’s all for now, thank you for reading.

Do any of you have the same kind of theme history behind gifting to people?  

Shots & Spots

…  having a little {slow} fun with my Oakshott charm pack and the spots & dots charm pack I cut from stash.  

Anyway … I've been sneaking 10 minutes here and 1/2 an hour here - really no longer - I'm like a speed tasker now!  All are sewn and half are trimmed. Here's a sprinkling …



All wrapped up in a cheapo fingernail-snaggingly nasty £1.50 fleece from IKEA, which has now become my travelling design wall.  Just lay em out and roll em up.  Marvellous.

Even while I was sewing these babies I was still a bit meh about the mix of dots and shots, but now that I've pressed and trimmed I'm all in love again.  What you miss from any photo is the divine shot-ness of the cotton.  What you get from a photo is the saturation the dots bring to what is quite a subdued set of colours in the shot cottons.

No pinwheels or such malarkey.  I'm just going to keep it simple and let them sing together as naked HSTs.  I'm not even going to agonise over colour value.  I'm just going to piece them as they come.  I won't have another chance to work on it until next week, so this is a nice place to leave it simmering …

What do you think?  Should I spend some time working out the layout/being clever?  Or should I go with my lazy instincts?!

Don't forget you can enter my giveaway here for a chance to win some spotton dotton cotton for yourself too … runs till Thurs 5th …

Triangle Tilt Quilt Ta-Da!

Huzzah!  It's finished - just over a week late, but I hope my partner on the For The Love of Solids swap on flickr won't have minded waiting so long.  Life got in the way.  Bits of horrid life and frantic work but all is calmer now.

I'm so pleased with how this came out.   I wasn't originally intending to do such intense running stitching, but I quite like how the original calmness of the triangles pre-quilting ...



... becomes quite agitated with the flow of the stitches …



I also really like the back.  I like to make the back of my swap quilts interesting in some way … and having some form of standalone pattern without any piecing seems to suit the way I sew …

You can see that this is not immensely talented hand quilting - it is just running stitch, hence the short stubby stitches on the back.  The backing is a beautiful deep turquoise linen, which I used to self bind round the front* …
*no sniggering Hadley …



and all from a bit of a doodle when I was sick in bed with the mutant virus ...



I just want to say sorry to my partner for being so late with this.  It's all wrapped up now, along with a few surprises, all ready to go in tomorrow's post …

… hope you like it!

Foundation Paper Piecing - Victory!

As I said yesterday, I really haven't had any me time for sewing in months.  So, as today was the international posting deadline for the For The Love of Solids Swap  on Flickr,  I've had to do some serious planning and sewing the last few nights after work ... But ... 

... I foundation pieced my wacky triangles idea!!  I can't quite believe it  ... This is the only thing I've ever foundation pieced, except for a pathetically disastrous quarter of a flying geese circle a year ago which took me 3 hours, was hell and I didn't even leave enough for seam allowance! *shudder* 

This time I watched a gazillion videos and read a gazillion wise and talented people to help psych myself up.  This is one of my big things I wanted to do this year.  To give it another go. 

So, I drew the pattern in my notebook ...

 then I blew it up on the photocopier and taped it all together ...  

I traced it onto extra large tracing paper and then used that as my foundation, pre-folding all the lines before I started sewing ... I have to say that taking all the guesswork out of where the bloomin fabric goes made it a hell of a lot easier for me.  That and the 'butterfly' trick really helped me keep my cool  ...  It came together pretty quickly.

I only had to rip one seam (forgot the butterfly trick! Doh!) and I used an add a 1/4" ruler for trimming back - what a brilliant thing it is (I bought it at Bletchley!)

I didn't even practice easier ones first ... But what I did do was unplug RoboSew (my sluggish one year old Brother) and dust off glorious beautiful Damiel - my 50s Novum again ... honestly ... it sews like butter, I may never go back to modernity ... 

So here's how it came out!  Not bad eh?  Not perfect by any means, but I'm delighted and massively relieved that my partner will be getting something at least acceptable and only just fashionably late!

It's backed and bound with a deep turquoise linen and ready for quilting tomorrow and the post on Monday, so it's only a day or so late ... not bad considering what I took on! I'll post more pics another day but I just wanted to share my delight at conquering a fear!  If any of you reading this are yet to take the leap I can only say that if I can ... anyone can ... You just need to be logical (and use tracing paper LOL!) 

I think I might be a convert  ... 

My Creative Space #5

 

So, the fun part of my creative space this week is still a little 3D obsessed!  These triangles are much more pesky (don't look too closely at that brown gingham one! - I've corrected it now) I'll show you when I've joined them all up - I want this one to be more angular than the dodecahedron ball ...

The unpicking featured in my post yesterday was to do with my other little project which had to be put on hold when Mrs Singer had her nervous breakdown.

 The sleeves had to be unpicked and re-sewn because of a weird 'one long one short' thing going on.

I haven't had the patience to sew them in yet.  That will be a little finishing project for the weekend, methinks. 

I'm doing the binding now for the neckline, but it looks a bit like a school dinner lady's tabbard, which is not quite the look I was after -  I may have to unpick that too and go for a plain  binding instead

Which colour binding do you think I should use?  

Purple?

Grey?










Dirty Pink?

Let me know in the comments section PLEASE!!! I just can't decide