African Urban Chic Quilt

I´m currently working on a quilt, that when I showed my daughter, she said it looked very African Urban Chic….. What is that exactly??…. No idea! ….but I love the sound of it, and because I actually bought the fabric with the tortoise motif, because it reminded me of  home  – Africa, I have staked my claim to name my quilt – African Urban Chic.

Well anyway it´s basically a disappearing 9 patch square. The pieces are pretty big 15cm x 15cm (6 inch) squares.

I cut the the middle squares in half

And arranged the new blocks in the order that most pleased me. You´ll notice that I´ve pinned numbers on the blocks. I have to do this or I lose my way completely!

Sewed the blocks into rows.

And sewed the rows together.

Well that what i´ve done so far, and believe you me, this quick to make top, has taken me forever, because it is soooo…. cold at the moment, that my sewing room is freezing, so I basically sewed for 5 minutes a week 🙂

Well next step will be to sew some borders to this top, ….but of course,  in this neck of the woods that I call home, I´m having trouble finding fabric that complements what I´ve done so far.  I Will have to forage further afield during the weekend, perhaps in the next village they´ll have what I´m looking for 😉

Stay tuned, and stay warm!

 

 

 

Baby Cosmetic Bag

A friend of mine made a lovely cosmetic bag, so I asked her to show me how she did it, and made one for baby, it will come in useful to keep the baby toiletries when mom and baby visit granny 🙂

I wanted the bag to be biggish, so I cut strips of alternating fabrics, 7 cm x 20cm (including the 1 cm seams on either side)

Top stitched the sides of the panels.

After I had ironed on the fusible batting, I joined the animated panels by sewing them together on the top and bottom edge, so the orange fabric just peeps out between the animated panels.

I then added an orange panels to the top, and finished up the cosmetic bag.

A great tutorial on  how to line and attach a zipper to a cosmetic bag can be found here –  http://www.diynetwork.com/how-to/make-and-decorate/crafts/how-to-sew-a-lined-makeup-bag

Then just to make it cuter I added a few odds and ends, a little zip-puller, a bow at the front and knotted accessory at the top edges 😉

So now baby has her very own cosmetic bag! I love the way it all just came together so prettily. hope you like it too 🙂

Crib Bumper

After finishing the baby quilt for my granddaughter, I made the crib bumper. I didn´t want it to be too busy, so I opted to use only 2 fabrics the white and the striped fabric that I used as one of the borders on the quilt.

For each bumper, I cut the white fabric into 3 strips of 17cm x 40cm  allowing for 1cm seams on either side, and the striped fabric into 2 strips of 9.5cm by 40cm.

So the final measurements of the bumpers will be 60 x 38cm each. Of course you can adjust the measurements to any size you want, it all depends on the size of the cot.

 

Sew the strips together

Iron the seams towards the darker fabric.

I did a zig zag along the edges of the strips.

Sew the top of the bumper to the batting and trim the excess batting.

Next, make the fabric tubes  to tie the bumpers to the crib.

Cut 24 strips of 9cm x 38cm (allowing for 1 cm seams) in the white fabric. Again you can use your own measurements.

Fold the strips in half and sew along the length and the top, leaving the bottom open, so you can turn it inside out.

Once you have them all sewn.

Turn them inside out, I use a chopstick to push the fabric inside itself, it´s so quick and easy!

Once they´re all turned inside out, sew along the edges on the right side, it just sort of makes it look neater and prettier.

Attach 2 of the ties to the sides of the bumper and sew along the edge.

When you´ve sewn the ties to the bumper it should look like this.

Next you pin and sew the backing to the front of the bumper (right sides together).

Leave a gap on one of the sides , about 12 to 15 cm.

 

Then sew all along the edge and turn the whole thing inside out through the gap that was left open.

In order to keep the theme of the zig zag, which I had also used on the quilt, I chose to sew a zig zag border, about 7cm from the edge.

Ok, so here is the part where I cheated 😉

Of course the gap should be closed, by hand sewing a running stitch, but because I hate hand sewing, and the bottom of the bumper will be tucked in by the mattress and won´t be seen. I just machine sewed the gap!

Next step. Wash, iron and attach the 3 bumpers to the sides of the cot.

And here´s how it looks on the cot.

Well that´s it, Super easy and quick!

Hope you like it 🙂