A Quick Easy Quilt

Just before Christmas I ordered some of my fabric from Spoonflower and in the order was a yard of Big 5 Headboard Quilt I designed it so that it looks like a finished quilt top, so that all you have to do is put it together with Batting, Backing and Binding.

The fabric draped over our saloon table.

The batting I decided to use was a lovely thick fleece fabric. The backing I finally decided on after a lot of agonising was some beautiful Faux Suede and the binding I used was a lovely gold Silk.

Before I did any freehand quilting I stitched along the edges of each strip and square to get the three sections joined together. The first long stitched rows I did went along smoothly, but when I came to stitch across the quilt....I wished I had a 'walking foot' to stop the top being pulled and then puckering.. It was a learning curve to figure out how to stop that happening with an ordinary foot. But I kind of pushed the fabric towards the foot so that it pulled it through and so when I got to a cross piece of sewing there was no pucker...
Then I got to the scary /fun bit.. lol

Some free hand quilting.. My first attempt :^D 

On the gold batik crackle fabric I drew some trees and various animals, Giraffe, Ostrich, A hippo yawning, A termite mound, some more giraffe.. ha ha and then had to put my new as yet unused quilting foot onto the machine, take a deeeeep breath and start sewing... ha ha ha ha I had to unpick and unpick... It took me a bit of time to realise that it was up to me how long each stitch was going to be.. so now I have the fabric in an embroidery hoop.. to keep it nice and tight... and I have to move it at a certain pace and also try and control how fast the machine is sewing.. Oh BOY!
Lets just say.. I'll have to do a heck of a lot more quilts before I'm as good as the ones I've seen on shows... whew! LOL :-)

Some freehand quilting around the Lioness and her Cub.

This was interesting to do...
I went around the design that was originally stencilled over the batik crackle..
to enhance it.

This is a close up of where I quilted along the Ellie's trunk and around her eye. 

The Animals were a challenge too.. The Elephant may not look so good in this view but overall she looks great. :-)

A Shot of the back of the quilt where I quilted the Lioness and Cub.

The back of the Quilt with it's sleeve at the top so it can be hung if required.

The Sleeve is quite wide. I followed instructions that I found on the internet as to how to do it. The width of the sleeve allows the quilt to hang nicely without any bend or bulge or puckering at the top. I made the sleeve from the same silk I used for the binding.

All the corners ended up right.. yay!

The first time I did the binding.. yeah I had to unpick the whole thing..lol.. anyway the first time I did it, I sewed it onto the front intending to fold it over to the back and sew it down.. ha ha ha for some reason the corners just would not work  so i unpicked the whole lot and sewed it down on the back of the quilt, folding the fabric over to the front and sewing it down by hand. It worked perfectly... as you can see by the picture above. My Binding could have been tighter and so more..smooth.. but I wanted it this wide and so it's not as 'Full' because I didn't leave a enough edging sticking out to fill it up with.. I now know that if I want a one inch border or binding, I need to have at least two inches of stuffing, to make the binding nice and tight and full. Well that's what I figure anyway.

Previous to this quilt I always used to make small 1/2 inch bindings and so have never had this problem before. LOL..

The finished Quilt.

Hope you enjoyed reading this.
Cheers for now.
Sylvie.....xx

A New Idea

well I was looking at my designs for Cocktail napkins / serviettes and a thought struck me. Thwack! :^D
I can make them even more personal to each and every person who would like a yard or two. HOW?
Like this:

The Wedding / Anniversary Napkin

The collection of all the napkins I've designed can be seen in a previous post or click HERE to go to them on Spoonflower.

Each customer could request whatever they liked to be printed onto the napkins. I'd upload a revised design, they'd place the order and in a few days it arrives on their doorstep. I don't think you could ask for more! They would have to have a hem sewn around the edges or cut with crimping scissors, to stop them from fraying. 

There is also a product called Fray Check that can be bought from almost every sewing shop and some Wallmarts. What you'd do is with a ruler draw a line of Fray Check along the thin outline edge on the fabric, then with your roller cutter slice the napkins out. The Fray Check will hold through many washes. 

Another thing that can be done is a simple line of sewing, straight or decorative, along the dark edge of the napkin, then cut along the thin line and allow the edges of the napkin to fray... That would be rather pretty I think. 

Whatever you can think of, to have written on one of these, it can be done.. just let me know :^D.

I've recently WON an AWARD!

Whoohoo I was recently sent an award for my blog!

Apparently, I've been checked out and deemed a great author of a great blog that is above all TRUSTWORTHY. 

I'm really pleased about this and have dutifully pasted the award onto the side bars of this blog.
This is what it looks like : 

Sweet hey!

Holiday Cocktail Napkins / Serviettes

There is this contest on Spoonflower at the moment, for the nicest cocktail napkin design 5 by 5 inches in size. Rather small I thought but then I said to myself.. why not, it doesn't need to be large when you're standing holding a glass of bubbly and a canapé.
I could only enter one, but that didn't stop me from designing a whole collection. :^D
This is the one I entered :

Christmas Cocktail Serviette.

I wanted to create something that was smart and hopefully with a touch of class, that would attract a customer of discerning taste...
The choice of fabric for this should be Cotton Silk at $27 a yard.. you'd get 42 Cocktail serviettes from each yard.
Here are the others  in the collection:

An alternative Christmas Cocktail Napkin.

A Hanukkah Cocktail Serviette.

Cocktail Serviette for Easter.

St Patrick's Day Cocktail Napkin

Halloween Cocktail Napkins.

Thanksgiving Cocktail Napkins.

Frangipani for Any Special Party you may have in mind.

To make that special day perfect. Wedding / Anniversary Cocktail serviettes.

So there they are.. I'd love to hear your comments on them.. 

A friend is a precious thing indeed!

I have this friend. Her name is Evi Nemeth and she did me a HUGE favour earlier this year. I racked my brains to try and think of something I could give her to say thank you and finally I came up with this.

It's a Quilted Table Topper. :^D

The centre piece was created by me. I dyed the fabric and painted the bird. There are some other strips of the yellow that I cut and added to the design. The strips of fabric that look like Batik crackle are exactly that. I made those too. 

The quilting was fun too and I learned a lot while I was stitching away.. lots of unpicking was done in the process. My Mum says she never feels that the job has been done correctly when she hasn't done any unpicking during it.. ha ha 

The backing fabric was hand dyed by me too and I also designed and actually printed the label out on my regular printer! I ironed it well before I sewed it onto the quilt. It's washable, believe it or not. 

It was fun and I'm happy the way it turned out. It's been a while since I did any creative sewing and Evi was really pleased with her gift..whew :^D 

Father and Mother Christmas in Fiji.

Father and Mother Christmas in Fiji.

This is breaking news... Father Christmas and Mother Christmas are on holiday in Fiji.

We spotted them one day as we drove past their houseboat. Even while on holiday Father Christmas is at work. At this time he was making some really great looking fishing lures that, he says, "are guaranteed to catch you a great meal". Well, who can fault that! 

A Lure...He makes all different colours, but we liked this one.

Mother Christmas is a lovely lady, she's just as I imagined her, kind , cheerful and generous. 
Of course they do have names other than what the world calls them, but they asked me to keep those a secret. They said that they'd like to be able to avoid junk mail as much as possible. They get a huge amount of mail every year and they didn't want to add to that. "Thank heavens," they told me, "that we have such a great team of Elves helping out back home otherwise we'd never be able to sneak off like this and enjoy a bit of sun."
I asked them when the Elves go on holiday. I was informed that that too was a secret or the Elves would get no peace from all the children in the world. 

To prove that this isn't a hoax, They agreed to a photograph, so here they are in their casual relaxed mode. 

I think they look very happy together. don't you?

PS: If you'd like one of those lures, send an email to Sylvie at artonfabric@gmail.com and I'll arrange for him to contact you.

Wallpaper and Decals

The very latest and hottest news is that Spoonflower are now able to print your favourite designs onto WALLPAPER  24" by 144" and a DECAL that is either 5 in, 15in or 30 inches square.
These you can cut up and stick into tray's , on the backs of chairs, inside your bathroom door or on any side of any door come to think of it. lol. Also stick it on the wall, onto a piece of wood and hang it or frame it, you can also cover that special book with it. The mind boggles at it all.

This is the size of the Decal on this design..15 inches by 15 inches.

I have wallpaper in this design and in this :

On the Spoonflower site, when you look at the Wallpaper design it shows it to you with a chair and table in front of it to give you perspective as to the size of the print. Sooooooo Coooolllll!! :^D 

The designs are set at the sizes you see them on the site... BUT I can change them to pretty much any size repeat you'd like.  All you have to do is send me a message... the box can be found on THIS PAGE on the left hand side of the page.

Happy perusing folks! I have 70 something designs up and more in the works lol.