Carried Away part 3!

I don’t know about you but I’m loving having a new bag to make every month! The anticipation & excitement waiting for the 15th of the month to see what this months Carried Away pattern collective bag is going to be.. then the thrill of pulling out fabrics and hardware from my stash to see what works best and then sewing it.. it’s all soo much fun! 

This month did not disappoint - the Carter messenger bag by Swoon is another fabulous everyday useful style. It’s a medium size bag approx 12” wide x 9” tall x 5” deep and the inside has two compartments separated by a zippered pocket. It has a carry handle, detachable shoulder strap and various options for fastening closed.

  

I made a couple of changes.. I used little clip connectors instead of d rings for my shoulder strap swivel clips to clip into. I made my detachable strap from a 2” wide strip the width of my cork fabric so it gave me slightly longer length of 27” by 1” wide strap.  I used a bit of stiff stuff (it’s like a slightly lighter weight Peltex) in my flap and bottom and put foam interfacing on my front and back panels rather than the fleece as I wanted it to have a bit more structure. 

I can't wait to see what month 4's bag will be! Oh and incase you're wondering what fabrics I used for my Carter.. I used Tula Pink Zuma - Seabloom in Aquamarine and dark brown espresso cork for my exterior with Tula Pink Zuma - White caps in Aquamarine for my interior and I have the full line of Zuma in stock available to purchase on the website by the half yard too!

Carried away part 2!

Yahoo it’s September 15th which means the release of the 2nd pattern in the Carried Away pattern subscription. This months bag is the fabulous Coneflower crossbody bag by Blue Calla.

I made mine in Navy Blue cork from, my favourite Neptune and the Mermaid fabrics by Tokyo milk and super luxurious zipper and hardware from Bringberry hardware.

Just as the description says on the carried away website.. The Coneflower cross body bag is a great, medium-sized unisex bag. It is an easier project perfect for confident beginners and has a lots of pockets.. even one that will fit an iPad! 

You can read all about the Coneflower bag here.

So without further ado here is my Coneflower.. just scroll down to see all the photos

Carried Away!

I’m mega excited as two of my favourite handbag pattern designers Alicia Miller of Swoon patterns and Celine Allaert of Blue Calla Patterns have teamed up to form the Carried Away Pattern Collective and I got to test the first pattern!

The 6 month subscription costs $35 USD. You get a brand new never been published before pattern every month for a total of 6 patterns starting today and continuing on the 15th of every month until January 15th 2019.

First up in the pattern subscription is Swoon Patterns with Sierra the zip top handbag.

So without further ado here’s my Sierra! 

Sierra is approximately 13” long x 10” high x 6” deep. She has two pockets.. one zippered one inside and a handy slip pocket outside (I did mine in cork). The top is fastened with a long zipper for easy access and the side straps hold the bag in its shape. She needs minimal hardware as you can see in my bag above.. but you can totally bling Sierra out with feet, rivets, snap hooks or tassels. Instructions in the pattern also include a removeable crossbody strap which clips on to the d rings. I’ll be making one for my Sierra as soon as I decide if I want it in my Anna Maria Horner print or cork!

To purchase the Carried Away subscription just head over to their website here

and if you are on Facebook you can join the support group here 

and the winner is......

The time has come to announce who won the fabulous Anna Maria Horner Design roll...

There were just 32 comments so I numbered each of your comments 1 to 32 in the order in which they were posted.. then headed off to the random number generator and it chose #18!

So CONGRATULATIONS Tara E! 

I hope your mother in law has a lot of fun using it

I’ll be in touch shortly to organize sending it out to you/her :)

Fiona

x

Sharing the love!

Photo by FreeSpirit

Since Jaftex bought FreeSpirit earlier this year i've been following Scott Fortunoff on Facebook. If you haven't heard of Jaftex you can read all about all the fabric brands that make up their amazing family fabric business on both Facebook and Scott's blog here.

You'll want to follow on Facebook though as that's where Scott posts live videos of behind the scenes peeks at all things Freespirit and occasionally does giveaways too.

Soo why am I telling you all this? Well at the last live giveaway I answered a question right and won an Anna Maria Design Roll! 

I love the Sweet Dreams range soo soo much and i've been really torn about keeping it and sewing something gorgeous with it but I appreciate all of you my fabulous customers and followers so i've decided i'm going to be good and share the love and GIVE IT AWAY!

All you need to do is follow me on Facebook and Instagram (if you can) and then leave a comment below telling me what you would sew with it. Giveaway is open to everyone worldwide but if winner is outside Canada/USA you may have to pay a contribution to shipping. 

Winner will be chosen at random this Sunday 6th May at 3pm Atlantic Canada Time.

So come on tell me what would you make?

Child’s Play Quilts

As many of you know i'm a sewer of handbags these days, before that it was clothing but a quilter I am not! I did dabble in a tiny bit of patchwork when I was a teenager many many moons ago .. a block here or there but nothing spectacular.

I have long admired Stacey’s quilts though and have often wondered how hard could it be to make a quilt? So when Stacey asked for volunteers to sew a design from her new book Child’s play quilts, I decided now was the perfect time for me to find out exactly how difficult it was and give sewing some patchwork a go! BTW Stacey is giving away a copy of her book (scroll to the bottom for details) but if you can't wait.. her book is available on Amazon or for a signed copy head over to her Etsy shop here Stacey Day Quilt on Etsy 

I fell in love with a lot of the quilts in the book.. here are just a couple of my favourites.                       

Baby Shower - Photo courtesy of C&T Publishing

Whirling - Photo courtesy of C&T Publishing There are 20 quilt designs in the book and with them all being as gorgeous as these it was to super hard to choose. In the end Prism's simple piecing won for me.

So as I said I’m a pretty much a beginner when it comes to patchwork so it was pretty nerve wracking deciding on a colour scheme. Tula Pink AllStars that arrived last month made it a little easier for me to decide though as i've been dying to make something with them since they arrived! Using the colour and tone suggestions in the pattern I found a combination of AllStars that spoke to me with one change.. instead of cream as suggested for the background colour I opted to go full on bright and use the Aqua PomPom, Raccoon in Poppy and Owls in Forget-me-not instead. To help me keep track of my choices I made a list on each template of the number needed of each colour/print got to work cutting them out.

Then the sewing could begin.. you start at the top left and work your way diagonally across in strips joining all the diamonds together. When you have the diagonal strips sewn together you then sew each of the strips together matching the seams as you go. 

I learnt that sometimes things look very strange indeed when matching seams but when the seams are pressed open it all looks correct.

By the way when you get going it all comes together very quickly and suddenly it starts looking like this!

Next up was making the quilt sandwhich, I decided to use the warm and plush Stacey mentioned as I prefer cotton to polyester. After making sure all the layers were smooth and pinned securely into place it was time to quilt. I don't have a long arm machine and wasn't feeling brave enough to drop my feed dogs for some freehand meandering so I opted for stitching in the ditch of all my diamonds. The bonus of not too doing too much quilting meant the resulting handle of the quilt is soft and squishy.. not stiff at all. My quilt edges were still straight all around so I luckily didn't need to do any squaring off, just had to trim off the excess batting and backing fabric around the whole quilt. Unfortunately my table wasn't quite big enough to lay it out flat so the floor became my new best friend for getting this bit done.

The final stage left to do was the binding. I went with Stacey's full proof easy binding (instructions in the book). After a few false starts I found switching to my #10 edge stitch foot and moving my needle position slightly to the right helped enormously with lining up the edge of my binding and sewing it on straight... then I was done!

 

So here it is... my very first patchwork quilt!

Thanks to hubby for patiently holding it outside in freezing temperatures so I could get some straight on daylight photos <3 you :)

Our youngest has tested it out and so far it looks like a hit.. she is especially loving the super soft n smooth Tula Pink Freefall quilt backing!

Don't forget to enter the GIVEAWAY!
For your chance to win your own copy of Child's Play Quilts follow these 3 easy steps!
1. Follow me here on my blog
2. Follow Stacey day on her blog (here) 
3. Comment on Stacey's blog post

The winner will be drawn on April 21st.

Want to see more? Check out the rest of the book tour schedule below!

Stacey Day @staceyinstitches        April 9th      

Brett Lewis @naturalbornquilter                  April 9th

Cheryl Brickey @MeadowMistDesigns         April 9th

Karen Foster@CapitolaQuilter                       April 10th

Cathy Mackay @cathysmithmackay             April 10th

Fiona Kelly @tangledblossom                       April 11th

Jackie White @jackiesartquilts                      April 11th

Jean Jones @sew_catstudio                           April 12th

Reece Montgomery @reecemontgomery     April 12th

Carl Hentsch @3dogdesignco                       April 13th

Brooke Sellmann @sillymamaquilts             April 13th

Kaitlyn Howell @knotandthread                  April 14th

Amy Gunson @badskirt                             April 14th

Kelly Bowser @kelbysews                              April 15th

Karis Hess @themodernsewist                     April 15th

Sara Lawson @sewsweetness                        April 16th

Leslie Meltzer @lelliebunny                          April 16th

Pamela Morgan @sweetlittlestitches            April 16th

Amy Garro @13spools                                    April 17th

Stephanie Perrins @stitchandbobbin          April 17th

Chelsea @Pinkdoorfabrics                            April 18th

Michelle Wilke @ml_wilkie                          April 18th

Tiffany Sepulveda @sewtiffany                     April 19th

Rachael Riechmann @sewilearned               April 19th

Pamela Lincoln @mamaspark59                  April 20th

Kate Maryon @katydidklm                           April 20th

June's Cottage Satchel

Welcome to Day 3 of the fabulous June's Cottage Maker's Tour and my turn to do a big reveal!

All of us in the tour have been busy working on our secret projects since December last year so it’s wonderful to finally be able see what everyone has been making. If you’re just finding the tour today head over to Alyce Blyth (@blossomheartquilts on IG) to see the first stop of our tour on February 5th and then Cassie (@lilyshinecreates on IG) for yesterday’s makers reveal. Our makers tour ends this Saturday February 10th with @briarhilldesigns themselves and an amazing RJR Instagram giveaway you won’t want to miss!

So what exactly is June’s Cottage I hear you ask? June’s cottage is the beautiful floral brainchild of RJR fabrics latest designer duo Briar Hill.

Briar Hill consist of sisters in law - Julia and Caverly and they are fellow Canadians. I was lucky enough to get talking to them at my Etsy Made in Canada show a couple of years ago when they were just in the process of designing this range so I was super excited when Julia and RJR fabrics got in touch last year to see if I’d be interested in joining their makers tour and sew something with it.

Being a bag maker I of course couldn’t resist making a bag and now also had the perfect excuse to sew up one of the many bag patterns I’ve bought but haven’t got round to making yet. Choosing which bag to make was easy as I decided to keep it Canadian and go for one of the many gorgeous Blue Calla bag patterns I have.. The snapdragon satchel (affiliate link)

Choosing which fabrics to use out of the June’s Cottage range on the other hand was much harder. I love so many of them.. the watercolour “Prized roses” especially. Eventually I managed to whittle down my choices to 4, sent off my fabric requirements email to RJR fabrics and sat back to wait for them to arrive. 

Just a few weeks later they arrived and as always seems to happen with digital prints versus the real fabrics they were even more beautiful in person. 

I got to work straight away figuring out which cork colour would go best.. in the end I opted to use my navy cork with the Nova Prized roses (blue colourway), the Baby’s breath in Ribbon (deep purple) and Rosebud in Bonnet (light purple). The meadow (green) Prized Roses are gorgeous but unfortunately don’t match any of the cork colours I have.. what a shame (wink) I’ll have to soon go online shopping at my favourite Canadian supplier MM Cork supply for something to mix with those gorgeous purple and greens.

Next decision was the hardware.. I have a thing for gunmetal coloured hardware at the moment but against the delicate florals it was too dark so I opted for my super shiny Emmaline bags nickel coloured hardware instead which was perfect! 

Anyway enough chat about what and where... let’s get into all the fabulous bag features and more photos!

The snapdragon satchel has very pretty and unique pleated side panels. I chose the deep purple Baby’s breath print as I felt the small scale of this print would especially suit the little half inch pleats.

Those of you that have made this satchel already may have aligned your pleats the other way up.. I liked the look of them with their open edges facing the bottom so that’s the way I pressed them. The pleats work just as well pressed the other way up though!

So as not to make the exterior too jazzy I chose to use the same baby’s breath print for the bottom flap too. That way I could feature my favourite Prized Roses print in Nova on the top flap and inside the crossbody strap. 

Now for the inside... I love using lighter colours for bag interiors as they make it soo much easier to find things when hunting for them in the bottom of your bag. The rosebud in Bonnet is just perfect. The pattern has both a slip pocket and zippered pocket inside but I decided on doing just one divided slip pocket to leave more room in the main compartment.

The bag flaps are both secured with magnetic snaps. I used a slimline one for the lower purple flap and a gorgeously shiny half moon one for the Prized roses flap.. it has a larger plate on the inside of the flap and the glossy half moon piece on the outside.

But that’s not all... I bet you’ve all been wondering why there are two flaps?! Well it’s because there’s a fabulously handy exterior slip pocket under the purple flap! Deep enough to tuck not only your mobile phone but all sorts of things everyone likes quick access to... maybe your pens/keys/lipstick/tissues!

Lastly all Satchels need a good strap and this one is adjustable.. the pattern clearly shows you how to make it. The only change I made to mine was to do a two tone strap.. cork on the outside and prized roses on the inside. 

So there you have it.. my June’s Cottage snapdragon satchel! I think it’s stunning and a fabulously versatile bag.. equally good for everyday use or a night out.

This satchel is available to purchase over in my online store! For all the size specifications etc head over to the website and check it out here.

Don’t forget to check out the next stops on IG of our makers tour over the next few days at...

February 8th @aggieandfrancois
February 9th @Katylivings
February 10th @BriarHillDesigns

.... and come on over to my IG @tangledblossoms on Saturday for all the details on the big $250 RJR sponsored giveaway on Instagram!