A friend of mine recently had a baby. I was thinking about what to get her (and him) when I decided that it would really be a nice idea to make something. It is somehow more meaningful to go to the trouble of finding fat quarters and matrerial to go with them and to cut squares and sew.
Here is my sewing machine. The last time I had this out, it was to hem some trousers I had cut and altered for SK. I had to use one of the complicated stiches to stop them from fraying, I don’t have a proper overlocking machine. I don’t have my own large work desk either.
This is my craft table. In the living room. I hope to soon have a proper desk installed in our “study” so that I can leave the sewing machine out permanently. I had forgotten that I actually enjoy making stuff. The leaving the machine out so I will use it problem I hope to solve soon in Ikea. I want an Ingo table that I can paint and cover with oil cloth. They are so ridiculously cheap it would not be a splurge to get some oil cloth from Liberty except that would require a trip to London. I might have to make do with oil cloth from Hickeys.
Getting back to the current reality and not dreams of Ikea, I wanted to protect our dining room table (which I extended by opening the flap, it doubles in size) but I didn’t have oil cloth. So I used a sheet. Fitted sheets make interesting table cloths, I like the way they look like puffball skirts on the table because of the elastic.
The thing about not using your sewing machine for a long time is that you forget how important tension is to a sewing machine. Suddenly, it just won’t sew and you get loops of top thread stuck in the material. While trying to rectify the problem (cos you can’t remember how you did it the last time) you make a thread ball.
Still, it was worth it. These are my rows, ready to be stiched together. The thing I am most pleased about is the total lack of baby boy blue, which I don’t like any more than I like baby girl pink. I loathe the boy equals blue, girl equals pink nonsense. I bought a baby grow for another friend last year and I never gave it to her. It seemed so unoriginally boyish in the baby blue sense.
Once the rows are stitched together, I will have to wait for the wadding to come from England, then I will be sewing on a back cover and quilting the whole thing, ready for delivery to my new mother friend. Who presumably might have a pram or cot to use this in.
I completely overestimated the size of the quilt (not thinking about prams and buggies, thinking more about beds) so I might make another one. I have enough squares to make a second one. If I do, I might sell it on Etsy. I don’t know would anyone buy such a quilt.
Photographs of the finished product to come, less grainy photographs hopefully, ones taken with a proper camera and not my mobile. I suppose then I can decide about Etsy. When I have a finished product to advertise with proper photographs.
(SK, where is the canon?)
