Notice the transformation

Me and my housemate were up into the early hours of this morning.  Partying?  No.  Crafting? Yes!!  Inspired by the last photo in my previous post and some that a friend had made we decided to make fabric covered notice boards.  I was making one for my room (which currently has absolutely nothing on the walls) and Beth was making one for a friend.

Notice board before

I started out with an old, probably very cheap, cork board that I’ve had for ages.  With the intention of trying to use things up (bit of a new years resolution to deal with the fabric stash I’m accumulating) I used some batting that I had left over from quilt making, thick cotton fabric left over from some aprons I made and ribbon from my stash.  In order to get the colours I wanted I did add to the ribbon collection with a couple of lovely East of India spools.  I wanted the board to tie in with the colours of my quilt.

i.e. pinks and neutrals

I cut two layers of the batting (which was quite thin) to fit just inside the frame of the board to eliminate the level change.  Then I cut a layer of batting and a layer of fabric a couple of inches larger than the board all the way round, laid them out and smoothed them down and placed the board face down on top.  Pulling the fabric and batting round to the back I stabled both layers to the wooden frame.  Next I arranged my ribbons in different orders until I was happy with them and again stapled them to the back of the frame making sure they were straight and taught.  Et voila…

One notice board with a new lease of life.  I like the eclectic mix of ribbon colour and texture.  The notice holding power of the ribbon varies depending on how slippery they are and how lose the weave is (loser weaves don’t pull so tight).  I like the idea of using pegs to hold bits and pieces on as well.

My housemate took hers to an advanced level by adding pockets to the bottom; pretty and useful!

Two posts in a week, woohoo!  Next make… not sure yet.

 

First Quilt Creation

My first blog, about my first quilt!  Well, the first quilt I started anyway, not the first I have completed.  But it is now finished, two years after I first ventured into the world of quilts, and what an amazing world it is!

The idea of making a quilt arose when I was in a homeware and gift shop in Spain and my mum was looking for something to buy me for my birthday.  They had some lovely quilts but none of them were quite the right colours for what I wanted.  So I thought why not make my own?  My birthday present that year was then money towards the materials I needed to make my quilt.

A trip to the Festival of Quilts at the Birmingham NEC a couple of weeks later (more on the festival to follow) and I had most of my fabric.  I didn’t follow a pattern but I did find ‘The Compendium of Quilting Techniques’ by Susan Brisco very useful as a guide to each stage of the process.  I’ve worked on it in fits and starts over the last two years, sometimes waiting because I needed to find more fabric (one of the down sides of making it up as you go along) and sometimes because I was working on other things.  I was put off by the thought of the binding so it has sat in an almost finished state waiting to be bound for a number of months.  But actually, when I got on to it the binding came together fairly quickly and it was soon done.

I am very happy with the result.  I like the mix of fabrics and the pattern.  It’s not perfect and there are definitely things I have learnt and would do differently if I was doing it again but overall I love it and have loved working on it!