Tuesday 30 July 2013

Boob Quilt

This is the biscuit or bubble quilt, or as many of my friends call it, the boob quilt. There's a few different ideas of how to do this, mine have simple pleats on each side with an 11cm base. Enjoy!

Cut out 15cm squares in the colours you want, these will be the top of the quilt (A rainbow or random patchwork design or similar works well, google will provide inspiration. My quilt had 9 squares in each of 7 colours). Cut the same number of squares in a scrap fabric, 11cm wide
Pin a small square to the WRONG side of the large square at the corners.

On each side, make a pleat roughly in the centre 
and pin. repeat with each square

Sew pinned sections together, and the ends of the rows.
When you've got a whole row of squares pinned, place 2 pleated squares RIGHT side to right side. Repin pleats together and pin at the corners as well.
Sew all pinned bits together, and the ends of the row pleats need to be sewn down as well. For the FIRST row only, sew along the bottom, closing each square on 3 sides and sewing the pleats down. Repeat with the next row, NOT sewing the bottom.
Pin the next row of SEWN squares to your first row. I tacked the pleats in row 1 together, which made stuffing easier. Then pin the first and second rows together at the seams and at the pleats.
Stuff! When you finish stuffing a bubble, pin your heart out to attach the bubble to its backing and the next row.
Sew the very pinned stuffed bubble to the unstuffed bubble row. It gets a bit fiddly, but I managed with a normal foot and 3/8th of a inch seam allowance.


You should end up with it looking something like this. I missed a little bit of the fabric once or twice, but went over it again quite easily. Repeat this for every row, you may need to go in stages if, like me, you have a limited supply of sharp pins.

















All in all, I found this worked very well for me. When you get to the last row, you just need to sew it all up without sewing it to another unstuffed row. You should get a lovely quilt top of bubbles and puffy stuff and they are so much fun to squeeze! Any questions/problems etc, you're welcome to email me at mara__day@hotmail.com, or leave a comment on here! If this tutorial isn't to your liking, I know its a bit hard to follow at times, Awaiting Ada has a couple of tutorials as well :)

Tuesday 16 July 2013

Dearie me...

Well, Christmas was a disaster. I flew back from the UK on Christmas day, so was an absolute disaster for the next few days. I've been working steadily on a few projects, including an enormous jumper for a very close friend. She's about 6 feet tall, and it just seems to be all arm...

I've got a lot of crafty sewing projects coming up as well, so here's some more photos :)
A wonderful lady, Antonia, about to burst with baby, recipient of most of my summer knitting...

Titus, some of the softest pure wool I've ever felt, form Ramshambles in York. Its turning into a Fylleryd Shawl

3 lovely skeins of Cascade Heathers, which I'm not sure what its going to be yet!

Some bunting for work, going to be a nice sign telling people who we are :)

A cross-stitch announcement for above baby

My crowning glory, which is a biscuit quilt. I'm intending to post a nice tutorial later on, because I had a lot of issues finding a nice one online!