Amélie's Butterfly Curtains

This is a way overdue blog post. I made these curtains for Amélie's room a couple of months ago, right before I headed off to Ballarat for Crafty Hijinks, and yes, there is a little girl asleep in her bed in the above photograph.

The last set of curtains I made was for our master bedroom, and the fabric was rubber backed, so really easy to put together. I really liked this fabric from Spotlight, but not being rubber backed, it needed to be lined. This added an extra level of complication to the job, which had me procrastinating for months. And then for some reason it took me a couple more months to get around to blogging them. I was really tempted to not line them, but am glad I did now, as I think they will really help block the hot afternoon sun over the summer, as well as keep her room warmer in winter.


The major difference between these curtains and the last set was the hemming. For the first set, I made up the curtains, hung them and then pinned the hem before sewing it. With this set, I did the hem first, sewed the curtains and lining together, added the pinch pleat tape at the top and then hung them. This was because there was a main hem and a lining hem and both layers were joined at the sides, so hemming last would have been tricky.

Getting the pattern to match across the seams was also a factor in these curtains, I never bothered with the first set, but it was more important with the coloured pattern. I do really need to get a more solid curtain rod, as this one sags in the middle.


Including the lining, I used approximately 106 Fat Quarters making these curtains.
SYST13 Running totals: in = 107, out = 253, total = -146

Home is Where the Heart is

My youngest brother, Allister married his beautiful Tahnee a couple of weeks ago. The setting was beneath some gum trees, on his farm, close to where we grew up. There were paper lanterns hanging from the trees, rose petals on the ground, and the reception was in a beautifully decorated farm-shed. The day was perfect and the location was ideal.


For the three weeks leading up to the wedding I was crazily making this quilt. The fabric is Road Fifteen, by Sweetwater for Moda Fabrics. The fabric features cute little houses and trees as well as roads and street names. A fat eighth bundle was given to me as a gift from the lovely Jodie of Ric-Rac, and I purchased some extra for the backing and the binding - I also used some of the backing fabric on the top.


The pattern is called Starry Terrain, by Jo Kramer and I found it on Moda Bakeshop. The original pattern is 8 squares wide by 8 squares long. I went for 5 x 5 squares. This made the quilt about 60 inches, or roughly 150cm square. I would have loved to have made it bigger, but this size worked for the amount of fabric I had and I had my doubts about being able to get a 240cm quilt under my machine to quilt it. The backing is pieced together with some squares and half-square triangles made up from leftover scraps from some of the blocks.


I used some variegated Sulky thread from Gütermann to quilt it, and went with an all-over stipple. I originally started with some feathers, but it really did not suit the quilt or the thread, so I unpicked it and started again. The un-picking took ages, longer than I spent hand stitching down the binding.


I printed the label onto some Matilda's Own Ink-jet printable fabric, which I blanket stitched to some left-over matching fabric as a border and then blanket stitched to the quilt. I spent quite a lot of time trying to come up with something profound to put on the label, about making a home together (to go with all the little houses) and then just went with "Home is where the heart is" and hopefully, home will be where this quilt is.



As for the Sew Your Stash Thin challenge, I used approximately 36 fat quarters making this quilt.
SYST13 Running totals: in = 107, out = 147, total = -40