Hello,
Here are a few more sewing projects I have been getting on with, bit by bit, slowly, slowly.
Anyone ever made a jelly roll quilt? I saw a YouTube video of someone using one to make a quilt top and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I knew Moda fabrics sold them but I can’t afford or want to pay the crazy prices that their fabrics go for. I found a nice rainbow cotton set of 44 strips on eBay and I loved it! SOoooo bright and cheerful.
I can see teeny tiny baby feet in the corner!
The cotton was nice and smooth and felt good, not cheap nasty cotton you can sometimes get. To make a jelly roll quilt you sew all the strips together end to end. Then fold them in half and sew them together down the long edge. It is a bit complicated to explain but it’s the easiest way to make a quilt, ever! But it is pretty tedious.
I really like the effect when done though. This is going to be a quilt for my youngest brother. I gave a quilt to my Dad in March this year and a MASSIVE blanket to my Mother at last Christmas, so it is his turn now. We shall see what blanket I make for my other brother next!
It’s pretty big. I am going to put in 4oz wadding. Well, we shall see. It is about six inches too small at the side. I can of course just sew some more wadding onto it but I don’t want any bumps left. I have bought a single duvet in the sale for £3 and I’m hoping that it will serve well as wadding… if it fits! There were no doubles or I would have bought one of those instead. I have a duvet that I bought for fabric a year or so ago. It has tiny rainbow dots on the back of it, which I thought would be perfect for this! I’ll be folding the edges over to make the binding instead of attaching separate bias binding. I shall have to give this blanket a really good iron first though!
I made Eliza a dress using a McCalls pattern. It is far too big for her which is perfect, she has dresses for when she is bigger! This is the smallest size in the pattern which means I have a few more years of use out of the pattern, so good value for money. The fabric was 99p a metre from Oh Sew Crafty in Kidderminster. The lining is from pillowcases. I really took my time on this and am so pleased with the result. I hand-sewed in the zip, like I do with all zips.
I added the lace on the bottom to give it a bit extra, rather than completely red.
The zip is almost invisible, yay!
She wasn’t too pleased with this, she was a bit tired and cranky! As you can see, it is far too big for her, so plenty of room to grow into it!
The last thing I have made recently is something you either love the idea of, are on the fence, or are completely ‘urgh, no way!’ I make my own sanitary cloth pads. It is no joke when I say that since using these my periods are lighter, less painful and over quicker. The pads I make have no chemicals inside them and do not rub me in ways that disposables do.
I use scraps of cotton for the tops, jersey for the bottoms and either towels or nappy inserts in the middle as the core.
I am addicted to the Luna Wolf pattern which you can find on Google. It is so simple and effective and best of all, FREE! I sewed around the cores (on the right) to make them sit inside neatly and to keep the cores all in one place, rather than sliding all over the place.
These are the best I’ve made so far. And really, they only use scraps so I have a good use for the bits of fabric I have left lying around. And they are not bulky so cannot be seen. Here is eight of them, one on top of the other.
I think I have about twenty reusable pads now. To wash them, simply rinse and then put in the wash along with the normal washing load, and dry the same way as the clothes. No different to reusable nappies. But each to their own!
Right, must go now, it’s time for little ones bedtime!
xXx Love Kais xXx