Upcycled textiles - sewing for profit

I'm in the middle of a project sewing together handbags, totes and clutch purses out of vintage and repurposed textiles to sell through the local not-for-profit recycling organization Reverse Garbage.

The label I'm sewing under is Made by Midge Lloyd, which is a name that I've been kicking around for a few years now. 

In September I bought this fabulous book of bag patterns from which I made a birthday present for my mum. She lived it and even better it was super easy to make and really stylish too. And then suddenly there was this invite for new artists for an upcoming exhibition, so it all seemed like a confluence of good omens that I just had to run with. 

So here I am at 1am making a tote bag out of an upcycled curtain, jeans pockets, thrift store found zippers and destashed cotton fabric donated from my great aunt M. This will be bag number 6, and tomorrow I need to make a couple more to bring the total closer to 10 items for the upcoming exhibition opening next Saturday the 30th.

I think I'm using up my own stash, but at the moment it's hard to tell. Each time I start a new bag I begin with a ritual of reorganizing all the boxes and piles of fabrics and assorted tools before commencing cutting out. I'm laughing at my OCD as I do it, but also don't feel comfortable with the new project until things are just-so around me.
I've bought two new pairs of scissors and two new rotary cutting tools since I got going. The extra expense was definitely not meant to be the aim of this exercise. It was meant to be about reducing my own fabric stash and make some income from sewing.  I have that terrible feeling that no-one will buy my bags and it will all end in crushing failure. Go me! Way to keep the positive flowing.

Sebastian's Quilt

Some of you know that I was blessed with a nephew this year. One of the cutest and most handsomest baby boys ever produced. Well done, Sister K!

But I haven't made him a quilt yet. I've bought fabric, lots of good themed fabrics, including a fabulous reproduction of the London Underground map so that Mum and Dad can explain where they met to L'il Seb.

So with Christmas on the horizon, I have a deadline. And I need to get cracking. So here goes with the planning to get the best out of all these fabrics.

Pinwheel Frenzy - Another Unfinished Project at last Finished

Here is a PinWheel Quilt top that I finished up last night by sashing the blocks together and then sashing rows. I really made it up as I went along, finding left over white background fabric from the pinwheels I had actually constructed about 10 years ago and never completed.

 

I was sorting in my sewing room last night because I knew I need to do something methodical and creative because my brain and body were very tired, but I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep. Working through a project is more mentally soothing that a early bed time. Especially during the week when the next days's expectations are still hanging in the air.

 

Sew, as I was sorting I started reorganising the "Under Completion" project boxes into high priority and one day priorit, and came across these pinwheel blocks I had made in about 2000 from metallic multilayerd fabrics that were from a Christmas release. Because they were metallic fabrics, they were very suseptible to fraying and stretching across the grain. Disheartening! And when I laid them out on the floor last night, there turned out to be 15 blocks - just one shy of a full square of 16. So instead of making it smaller, I used what little fabric remained to make one more block to finish it off.

(I really tested my skills and memory last night trying to remember how to make a pinwheel block!)

And then when I had finished the new final block, I found it a half inch smaller than the rest of the blocks. Which means, they were all trimmed down to 11 inch squares. Then I made 11 inch x 3 inch sashing blocks and sewed the blocks into rows.

 

For the first time I really ignored the balance of colour across the quilt top, and I think I was rewarded quite nicely. Usually I play with the layout of the blocks, but this was all random, as it was laid out, is where it stayed.

 

I considered getting technical and measuring the length of each column to make the column sashing, but ended up making a big ole 3 inch sash and started sewing onto each column and then trimming and squaring off at each end.

 

As I sashed the top and bottom of each column, that first border was pretty much made when all the columns were sashed together. And all I needed to do was sew a sash on either side.

 

I've packed this quilt top away in the Finished box, but I have plans to find a complimentary fabric to sew as another bigger border. Or I could just quilt as is, and then bind with the complimentary fabric. Who knows, but so far, this one is finished!

 

 

I think in this pic you can see how the fabrics and metallic and shiny. The background fabric is a white on white fireworks burst pattern. 

 

And here's a picture of Sol just waiting for me to leave the room so she can pounce on all the blocks and throw them around. She's a bad kitty!

 

A clutch for any day from Bags the Modern Classics

I can't recommend this book enough - Sue Kim's "Bags, the Modern Classics". I've only made two of the 19 projects and they have been easy, stylish and quick. Clear instructions and easy to follow picture tutorials, I'm impressed with how simple it was to create this great little clutch bag.

And the best part was the book was from Spotlight and it wasn't expensive and all the fabrics were already in my stash. All I bought was the magnetic snap and some heavy weight interfacing. Bargain all over.

Get yourself some.

Good intentions

I had good intentions of doing some sewing tonight but as soon as something goes wrong it was all over. Start over tomorrow night.

Embroidery Project

A year or so ago a friend of mine passed to me a partially completed embroidery project she inherited from a relative.

Two cushion covers: one already embroidered, and one only just started. I even received a little zip bag of the embroidery threads, which is terrific.

I've had this collection for a while now, in a drawer, and slowly my interest in embroidery has grown while I've been preoccupied with fabrics and crafting patterns.

So I picked it up last night. Boredom is a fabulous motivator when you can't move and reading just doesn't do it anymore.

I occasionally get a little bummed with my poor stitching but I realize this is the only to learn and improve.

New Year 2013 - New/Old Quilt circa 1999

Hi, so it's been some time since I posted about my quilting practices, but that's mainly because it's been a while since I've done some quilting and sewing.

The last quarter of 2012 became a blur after a little while with a manic work schedule, the new James Bond movie Skyfall, and Christmas celebrations, and then all of a sudden it's the 31st December. Phew! (See Skyfall if you haven't already, it's a brilliant Bond movie!)

But I realise that there are some quilting/sewing projects I have neglected to post about. One of the unfinished quilt projects I started in August 2012 from left over quilt scraps has become a quilt in need of a border, and the Rose Quilt that I made for my Aunt M's 60th birthday was finally machine quilted and bound with a lovely scrap binding of fabrics used within the quilt.

And then in October I decided to make a counted cross-stitch embroidery sampler for a dear friend of mine as her Christmas present. I found a delightful Etsy dealer PopSoupSupplies who designed samplers of two favourite movie quotes my friend adores, but alas I was only able to complete one, and not the cushion that I had first envisioned. It became a wall hanging, but turned out pretty elfin good for elle-adhoc sewing. (Picture to follow soon).

So I've only really made one new quilted item since August, and that's the wall-hanging, and then with my job being advertised and the need to spend time writing an EXCELLENT job application, the quilt project I wanted to start over the Christmas/New Year break was delayed until this weekend. But I've started it. It's a 30's print quilt kit that I bought in 1999 from Patchwork Products in Rydalmere, Sydney when I went for my first sole holiday. (I'd like to point out that Ansett collapsed the weekend I flew to Sydney. Yes, my flights were booked with Ansett)


I've spent the day cutting fabric into squares and strips. The good thing about waiting so long to start a kit is that I have amassed a larger 30's fabric fabric stash since 1999. I think 30's fabric reproduction fabrics were only new at the time, so there's a lot of similarity between the fabrics in the kit. Basically the same print in different colours.


But because I've taken so long to start the kit, I can now swap in different fabrics from my stash to increase the scrap variety of the quilt. It's a scrap quilt, after all. I trend towards scrap quilts and scrap styles of quilting. That's my signature I suppose.

A lot of my substituted in 30's fabrics came from St Charles, Missouri when I found a great place when I visited Missouri in 2005 - Kalico Patch, and came away with swarms of 30's and reproduction Civil Wars prints. It was a brilliant experience, and I still haven't used most of the fabrics I purchased so long ago. I think I bought them with the intention to make a Wedding Ring quilt for my Mum as the colours I bought were her favourites; Purple, Yellow and Green. (Needless to say I haven't started a Wedding Ring quilt. Curves are so in the Too Hard Basket!).


And at the end of today I have a shoe box of 2" red squares; a shoe box of 2" strips that only needs the green and blue fabrics cut up, and then I can start on the white background fabric cutting.




Shoe boxes are so invaluable for quilting. Keep them. Don't throw them away. Keep them and use them for your quilting projects. They're an excellent way to store cut pieces of fabric waiting for assembly. Usually they're of a large rectangle size so your fabric pieces don't get folded or warped and need further ironing which can cause them to stretch.

And I've found them to be great as I re-use them for each new project I start, saving the previous projects scraps and leftovers within large ziplock bags which are then stored within plastic storage boxes. (I love the storage section of Big W and Bunnings, I really do!)

 

 And just so you can see one of the 30's fabrics I'm using for this project, to see what fun it is to play with 30's reproduction fabrics, here's one of the red fabrics which is prevalent within the pattern. It's 30's white highland terriers' like my sister V's dog Harry who's a little love bug that likes to bite!