After a December dedicated to camel costumes and Christmas sparkle, it was a bit of a relief to sew something plain and simple. At work, our clunky old laptops have been replaced with new, sleek devices, which are thankfully lighter to carry and have batteries that work for more than 5 minutes. Mine clearly deserved a snazzy case to protect it on the daily hike to and from school. Off to the fabric drawer!
There are always leftovers from a quilt project, so I used up fabric squares cut for Jo's quilt, mixed in with some of the beautiful batiks that Deb and I bought in Birmingham. To save the long-winded job of measuring and cutting out templates, I reused paper triangles which have been lounging in an old ice cream tub for about ten years. Good job I'm a hoarder! On New Year's Eve, I set myself the challenge of getting all the bits sewn by midnight, and took a start photo to get myself going.
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| Laid out and ready to sew (cup of tea on hand), New Year's Eve 2017 |
That proved a bit optimistic! After chatting with everyone on phone and skype, doing the last washing up of the year, and watching the neighbours' fireworks, I only had about half the pieces joined, but ploughed on to finish it on New Year's Day. A piece of bright blue fleece (leftover from a puppet project) doubled as wadding and lining, and I machine quilted along the seams, following the patterns - a zigzag on one side, and diamonds on the other.
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| Machine quilting "in the ditch" follows the seam lines. |
Binding wide enough to give a good lip and something to grip on proved hard to find - even Boyes let me down. In the end I folded a long piece of blue material (left over from a shoulder bag project) and machined it on. Now my device can be safely tucked away and the cover adds a splodge of brightness to these grey January days. It's amazing what you can do with leftovers.
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| Tucked up and ready to go to work. |
