Sewing resolutions....complete!

During January this year I wrote a post about finishing some rather large UFO projects. Obviously I tackled the smaller projects first which only left the quilt. I finally got the drive to finish it as we put an offer in on a new place and I began to imagine it laying on the sofa.

The quilt itself is a Kaffe Fassett design called Dotty All Seasons Garden from the books Kaffe Quilts Again. I bought the fabric online from Glorious Color (an American company) and the cotton batting from Cotton Patch. The quilting threads were bought from a local shop, I used a variety of colours rather than a variegated thread.

The quilt is a mixture of zip-zags, straight lines, semi-circles and free motion quilting. The free motion quilting was rather challenging and I went through a fair few needles trying to get the hang of it!

I think that the infinite number of needles I snapped are worth it though as I love the end result.

The back is made using one colourway from the front.

I have a feeling that I will be spending many an evening hand stitching/knitting with this on my lap in the coming months.

Happy stitching x

Peppermint Magazine Peplum Top

I am head over heels in love with this top. I wanted to make a peplum top for ages and when the peppermint pattern turned up on Instagram I knew that it was the one. The fact that it was free was also a total bonus!

I used a piece of fabric which is the longest standing member of my stash. Double bonus! Sadly it was only 112cm wide and I had just over one metre so pattern matching/consideration of print had to go out the window.

The fabric is a quilting weight cotton which gives the peplum shape which results in a gorgeous silhouette.

The instructions and construction of the top were easy to follow and resulted in a top which was pretty both on the outside and the inside. Because of fabric constraints I couldn't make the full neck line bias binding/arm hole binding so I used shop bought for the sleeves. For the neck line I cut out the back facing to keep the nice shaping at the back then finished the front neckline with shop bought bias binding.

I joined them together as you would two separate pieces.

I'm already planning another version in a brighter African wax print. I'm hoping that I will love it just as much.

Happy stitching x