The Little Mushroom Cap: A Quilting Blog

I guess I have been sewing up in my head more rather than actually doing it! LOL. These days I get sooo tired after school days and the new sewing room in my new home isn’t yet fully utilized. (have to learn and practice Madame Samm’s advice on making time!)

But here it goes…

Ummm, firstly to tell you the truth, my cutting mat was like this for a couple of week.

…because I couldn’t get myself to cut it as I don’t really have a clear idea of what to make. I am not familiar with Nancy Drew’s but I decided to join in because I like how different the fabrics line are from the common fabric lines out there. ( I thought I would have time to read at least one of her book before today comes… but shhhh don’t tell anyone..but I didn’t ! I guess I am missing out huh..)

Finally three days before today, I decided to make something simple. Bright primary colours. I love how different this is to my common colours.

I ended up making a zippered pouch for my scissors to carry around especially when I am working around my little one. Plus its bright! I am sure not to lose it!

My favourite out of the lines are the magnifying glass, the books and Nancy Drews in circles. Which is your favourite?

I still have plenty left out of my charm packs.. I am thinking of more small things to make..

Thank you to Madame Samm and Carol for hosting this bloghop! They are superb cheerleaders!

Till then, have fun blog hopping!

XOXO

Keep Reading

In Custom FMQ Sampler Quilt Along

About A Quilt Sampler QAL #5 : Piecing Block 2

March 13, 2013 6 Comments

Hi!

Sorry for being late. My sewing mojo is definitely taking a break, so I am pretty slow at my sewing machine.

I guess the really busy times and stress at school has taken me over. I am now feeling the pressure of being the 2nd year student…Yikes.

Anyway, today I am sharing with you the instruction for making the second block of the About A Quilt Sampler Quilt Along. This block is commonly known as the card trick block.

You will need 4 pieces of fabrics for the cards and 1 background fabric

From each of the card fabrics, cut 1 piece of 5 ¼” Square and 1 piece of 4 7/8” Square

From the background fabric, cut 1 piece of 5 ¼” Square and 2 pieces of 4 7/8” Square

From the 5¼” Square pieces, cut them into 4 piece of triangles by slashing through diagonally while from the 4 7/8” Square squares, cut in half diagonally so that you will have 2 pieces of triangle of each fabrics.

For the large triangles, match one of each piece of printed triangle to solid background ones and sew along the diagonal edge.

For the smaller triangles, do the same but this time sew on one of thesides of the triangles, making sure that the printed one would be on the right side.

Position the sewn pieces as below

Now place the leftovers of the large triangles into place as below

Place 4 pieces of the small triangles in the middle part and take note where the seams are to be sewn.

At this stage I normally put the pieces to be sewn right sides together and carefully place them so that I will know which sides to sew.

Once all the pieces are sewn into 4 ½” square, sew them row by row. Trim to 12.5” block. And voila! You are done with the 2^ndblock!

We will be quilting it soon!That post will be up this weekend.

XOXO

Keep Reading

In Quilt

A little Update In between

March 4, 2013 20 Comments

Hi!

This week I was not yet getting my sewing mojo. After moving house break, I seem to be lost with where to start back again.

This week I spent a lot of my free time after school doing preparation for my little one’s birthday party that I barely have time for my sewing machine.

But, I hope that will not be long. In the mean time, I hope you’ll enjoy a bit of party photos..

We share the birthday party with our friend who has a daughter turning one close to my little boy’s birthday too. The theme was Pink and Blue, Butterflies and Plane.

My last W.I.P before I pack my sewing machine for moving in the new house is the scrappy trip along. It has a progress.. a slow one under the iron for pressing. I hope to get a queen size top soon!

XOXO,

Keep Reading

In Custom FMQ Sampler Quilt Along

About A Quilt Sampler QAL #4 : Quilting Block 1

February 20, 2013 12 Comments

Hi!

Firtsly I am sorry for putting this up a bit late. I was totally wrapped up with moving to a new house and unpacking.

Which; the whole thing had caused me to lose my block 1, so I piece another one. LOL.

Anyway, I am done quilting it!

Here it is :

So, for your block, you can try and design how you would want to quilt it. I suggest you to try and do a feature in the plain background.

In mine, I had that squiggly seaweed that I want to pop out.

You can be free and do whatever you fancy. It can be a triangle forming a star feature for the whole block like the one I design in photo below (in blue); or you can add curves (eg the green one) which would definitely give a new look to your block. This is why we call it custom quilting.

Once you determine the main feature, determine what type of filler quilting design you would like to use.
If you really want to pop out some parts of the quilting design, make sure you use very dense filler design.

I love scribbling as it is very dense and very easy to do and to travel from one place to another.
Here is a great VIDEO TUTORIAL for scribbling by Cindy Needham. Practice the filler quilting on a piece of scrap sandwich (by sandwich, I mean a small scrap of top, batting and backing)

I first outline the outer 1/4inch seam and outline my feature. Then I start quilting the filler surrounding the parts where I want the design to pop out. (in this case I quilt densely around the seaweed)

Layer your block with the batting and backing. Spray baste if required. Then off to the machine!

First quilt following the outline you drew, then quilt the dense design surrounding the outline.

I continue to do the corners by adding some swirly. I travel to these corners by quilting in the ditch. Do not worry, it doesn’t have to be really perfect, mine is far out but I am happy with them.

Back of the block:

As you can see, I also tried to to pop the octopus out.. if you do not have any fussy cut, don’t worry – even better, you can outline a diamond or and kind of shape in the middle and do a dense quilting around it. It will create a great texture and pop the featured shape out!

If you are a beginner in free motion quilting, here are some wonderful videos to start with:

Beginning and ending by Cindy Needham

Tons of filler designs by Leah Day

and many more inspiration on my pinterest board.

Till then,

I hope you have fun quilting them!

I love to see your work, so if you like, please share them on Flickr group!

XOXO,

Keep Reading

In Custom FMQ Sampler Quilt Along

About A Quilt Sampler QAL #3 : Block 1

February 5, 2013 6 Comments

Hi!

The first block of this QAL is this block :

From the fabric chosen, cut as per measurement in the photo below:

From the 4 7/8″ square, we are going to make 4 pieces of Half Square Triangle. Put one dark value fabric with background fabric right side facing one another and draw the middle diagonal line.

Sew quarter of an inch on each side. And Cut it in half and press towards the darker fabric or press open if preferred.

Sew the pieces in three rows of HST and the 4 1/2″ squares together and press seam open or to side as shown. Piece the three rows together.

Trim to 12.5″ block. You are done!

Have fun making the block!

See you in the next round where we will be quilting it customly!

XOXO,

Keep Reading

In Quilt

Dare To Dresden

January 29, 2013 176 Comments

Hi!

Thanks for stopping by.

Firstly I am sorry I have been really slow with sewing lately.

I have a reason for that.

We are moving house. It wasn’t really planned, so I have a lot of work to do packing up things in a week!

And then, I realised, it was too late too to cancel my turn or to delay my turn of bloghop for Dare to Dresden. So I might as well turn up…

So I just have very little show for you..please don’t be mad.. 🙁

We have Madame Samm and Christine as a great cheerleader this round!

I made this a while back..but still …I haven’t decide how to applique the dresden plate to the background fabric yet. Maybe I’ll try machine applique with fancy stitches or blanket stitch.

I only had enough left over jelly roll strips for two blocks.

So, I think I’ll turn them into pillows to match with my “I Heart Quilt” recently made…

What would you do if you only had two blocks?

I am too muddled up that I didn’t have time to plan them well.

Anyway, today I am sharing this fabulous bloghop with these lovely people! Come and visit them!

A Peach in Stitches

Nancy W @ “that Other Blog”

Charlotte’s Creations

Quilt-n-Queen
Domesticity and Other Ponderous Things

Thank you again to Madame Samm for another wonderful bloghop.. I am regretting to miss a bit on this bloghop as I have very tiny time spend browsing around. I do hope I’ll get time to do that as soon as we set up the internet at our new home though…

XOXO,

Keep Reading

In Quilt

January BOM Update

January 19, 2013 20 Comments

Hi!

I am joining a few BOM this year. Here goes to January so far.

Aurifil Designer BOM ( This month designer is Erin from One Piece at A Time : I love her blog and her appliques!)

Here is my version of Miss January with the fabrics and Aurifil quilting threads I’ll be using for this BOM quilt

Next is, the Lucky Stars BOM by Elizabeth from Don’t Call Me Betsy
So, here is my version of January’s Star:

Then there is the And Sew On BOM by Kristy from Quiet Play,

Here is my January Block : Measure Twice. My measuring tape shall be embroidered with markings on them soon.

xoxo,

Keep Reading

In Custom FMQ Sampler Quilt Along

About A Quilt Sampler Post #2 : QAYG Inroduction + Other Requirements + Lets Link Up Fabric Choices

January 15, 2013 14 Comments

Hi!

So, today I want to just give a brief

Quilt As You Go (QAYG) Introduction.

There are many ways of QAYG, you can see some tutorial here,here and here.

But the one we are going to use in this QAL is basically,

Quilting block by block.

Trim the batting and the backing off.

Attach the sashing fabrics for the top and the back.

Slit in strip of batting in the sashing.

And finish it off by hand or machine.

The detail of all of this steps, will be in a complete tutorial when the time comes (October).

Today, I just want you to have a general idea of how we are going about to do this quilt.

————————————————————————————–

Other Requirements

So, since we will be quilting as we go, we will also need to prepare the backing fabrics as we start.

You can use various fabric for backing, and one colour sashing like this:

(you’ll need 9 pieces of 13.5″ square, 1 yard of sashing fabric)

Or all the same for all blocks and another colour sashing.

(you’ll need 1.5 yards for the blocks and 1 yard for sashing)

Other things you will need:

Quilting threads – either one colour or various – matching to your fabrics

9 piece of 13″ square batting and 2.5 Strips of batting (start collecting scrap batting about that size from now or you can always cut the strips from the large batting piece anyway)

Free-Motion foot

Walking Foot

Standard Quilting Tools

An advantage if you have Supreme Slider and Machinger Gloves but not necessary

…………………………………………………………………………………………….

Now lets link up our fabric choices for this Quilt along!

You can also add your photo to flickr group here.

Keep Reading