An English paper piecing project

My sewing room is overflowing with fabric, so last summer I decided to use a jelly roll I bought years ago (Snippets from American Jane) for my first EPP project ever.

I worked all summer on this project, my first ever hand-sewn quilt top, and found it quite relaxing to do.

Once it was finished, I added a striped border in yellow and white.

The EPP-part was handsewn on the border.

And this is how the whole quilt looks:

This afternoon, the quilt was basted and is now ready for (hand)quilting, which will probably take all winter. I'm already looking forward to it!

A finished HST quilt with borders

I realized I have not yet written about finishing my HST quilt. After two years of (machine)sewing and then handquilting, I reached the final stitch some time ago, and here are some pictures.

As I have written before, this quilt was made from a pattern published in Quilts Japan. Unfortunately, as I do not read Japanese, I can not tell you the name of the author of the pattern. 

 It was the first time I added borders to a quilt and I am so pleased with the result that I will definitely do this again. Quilting the border was a long labour of love though, and I'm not sure how often I'll be able to repeat this proces on other quilts.

I'm now working on my very first hand sewn hexagon quilt, another long term project. For some reason, those always seem to attract my attention.

A travel sewing kit

A month ago, it was my daughter's birthday. And as she started a new job half a year ago, I thought it would be a good idea for her to have a compact sewing kit at her disposal in her desk. In case of wardrobe malfunctions, you never know. And so I started to think about what to buy for the sewing kit.

- scissors, of course;

- thread, of course, and in different colours, just in case;

- needles;

- a needle threader;

- buttons, also just in case;

- elastic, again just in case;

- a thimble;

- pins and safety pins;

- some other stuff.

The layout is pretty straightforward. I just put all the stuff I bought on a piece of fabric to decide on the size of the sewing kit. I knew I would make a folded model with an inserted zip, but that was all I had decided on before beginning.

Pretty quick, I decided to use leftover pieces of batting and quilt the fabric. 

 

After that, it was time to make the compartments for the different stuff. I chose a Denyse Schmidt flowery fabric for this. And a geometric Denyse Schmidt fabric for the zipper part and the scissors. My daughter likes flowers, but I did not wat to overdo it.

Once that part finished, I added a second piece of fabric for the back (will be the front when closed) and stichted through it on two places only: where the left and right part of the sewing kit will fold over. The binding was added to finish it of, the same way you would bind a quilt. 

Finally, a piece of fabric/string was added to be able to close the sewing kit. Tadaa! Finished!

And now, should I hope she'll use it a lot or not at all?