The Red Wren

A few weeks back I enthusiastically signed up for Pip of Meet me at Mike’s Granny a Day 2010. It’s taken me a little while to get started and there’s been a lot of pulling apart failed first attempts, but today it finally clicked and I made my first ever square! It’s wonky and my hands hurt but by golly am I proud!

I’m rather optimistically making them in our lounge room decor colours as I’m visualising the finished product will be a cushion cover.

Yay!

I spent some of this afternoon sitting in a sunny spot in the lounge room finishing the last of this quilt;

I really enjoyed working on this and it will be sad (in a good way) to see it head off to it’s new owner – a sweet little 18 month old by the name of Georgia.

I was thinking about an article I read over at Make and Meaning (my new favourite blog), while working on this about process versus product. Normally I’m more of a product girl – I want a dress therefore I whip it up, then enjoy wearing it – but with the quilt I found I really enjoyed the process. It was quite relaxing once I got past the lining everything up (and unpicking) stage.

I look forward to working on another but for myself this time!

PS- I can’t seem to fix the RSS link up in the top corner- it seems to just spit out the feed rather than allow you to subscribe, so instead I’ve added a Subscribe button in the side bar – just pick your reader and follow along.

Today we’re going to make a doily garland. It’s essentially a string of doily’s and paper circles sewn together.

You need:

1 packet of paper doilys. My garland used 32 (plus one extra for your circle template)

Christmas themed paper

circle template – cut the centre circle from your spare doily.

scissors

sewing machine, thread

1. Using your circle template (the centre of the doily), trace out circles onto your Christmas paper.

2. Cut out the circles.

3. Once you’ve cut out the circles, stack them in the order you want them to be in for the garland.

4. Take your first doily and place a paper circle over the centre holding in place with your fingers. You’ll need to be mindful of the pattern on the paper- if it only has one way ‘up’ make sure you consistently face the circles the way you want them to hang- not in the direction you are sewing.

5. Start sewing and feed the doily and circle into the machine, sewing roughly along the halfway mark.

6. When you reach the edge of the first doily keep sewing! Once you’ve sewn a presser foot of length, feed the next doily and paper centre through. Keep going!

7. When you’ve sewn all doily’s leave long tails at the end to hang.

Hang and enjoy!