Coiled Mats Progression, Step 3

After mastering circles, ovals and coasters, I decided the next step would be to add another dimension to my coiled mats. I went UP with them, and made bowls or baskets!

It's quite exciting to see a three dimensional object emerge on my sewing machine from the very flat materials that I start with. There is so much potential with this, I need a few more hours in each day!

Rainbows are a wonderful way to use up loads of fabric scraps, and they turn out so beautifully! While I would love to make this bowl available in my shop, my kids have begged for this one to stay at home. So until I have the chance to make another soon, I must give in to my children for a change!

Choose Your Rebound Journal

I have completed numerous journals that customers chose from the many vintage books I have listed in my shop. Since I can't make these fast enough to list them all in my shop at once, I try to give people the chance to find the right book to have made into a new journal. They are listed in my shop (section: Rebound Journals) so you can choose which book you would like for a journal. Turn around time is about 1 week (plus shipping time). Here's how a few of them turned out:

Andersen's Fairy Tales from 1956:

I was really pleased with the black and white harlequin paper to wrap the signatures paired with the pink thread! It matched perfectly!

I still have Aesop's fables and both English and German versions of Grimm's fairy tales available.

A French Reader from 1903:

I used a Victorian style paper for the endpapers and to wrap each signature.

L'art de conjuguer (French verb conjugation guide) from 1966. This book is still being used in Canadian schools today. I tried to convince my daughter that she should use this vintage copy, but she insisted on the newer copy with 16000 verbs (and was probably better off)!

Since this journal was heading off to France, I used maps for the endpapers.

I still have the Spanish and Latin books available.

Coiled Mats Progression, Step 2

The next step in my progression with coiled mats was to go smaller, with coasters:

Random fabrics for Prism coasters

They look like they'd be more efficient to make 'cause they're smaller, but the starting of each one takes the most time. You just get into the groove and it's time to end off! Still, fun to make, and a quicker project (if you just need one!).

A lively underwater fabric made these colourful coasters

Coiled Mats Progression, Step 1

I've been really enjoying busting my stash of fabric scraps to make these coiled mats. I have a tendency to jump in over my head when I'm learning something new, rather than starting with simple and progressing. With the coiled mats, I've been making an effort to become proficient at one stage before moving on to another.

I started with the basic circle. These have been very well received online on Etsy and locally as well. I can't seem to keep any rainbows or green ones in stock!

I could probably just make rainbows and green mats all day, and they'd get snapped up! But no, I want to progress, and so I tried ovals next. They're a little trickier to get started and the ones I've made are about twice the size of the circles, so they take me twice as long to make.

I think I'm pretty good at these now too! What do you think I tried next?

Where In the World have all my Journals gone?

When I feel I need a little pick-me-up, it's nice to review what I've accomplished since opening up my Etsy shop(s) almost 4 years ago. One way of doing this is with the Map feature on Flickr.

Maps are not only one of my favourite materials to use in my journals, they are also great to use to track where I've sent my items. 

When photos are uploaded on Flickr, you can click the "Organize & Create" tab at the top to access more features. Then click on the "Map" tab and you can drag your photos on to the map. Probably most Flickr users use it to show where the photos were taken, but I use it to show where the items in the photos were sent. 

I'm not the most faithful at uploading photos to Flickr, but looking at the map helps motivate me to do it more often. It's so amazing that items that these two hands have made have travelled all around the world to be in someone else's two hands!

I think I've sent something to about 8/13 Canadian provinces and territories, to 40/50 US states including Alaska and Hawaii, to several European countries, to Australia and New Zealand and parts of Asia. I haven't sent anything directly to Africa or South America, but I know my journals have traveled there! If I could make a second map on Flickr, I'd make one for all the travel journals I've made, and which maps were used!

Weekend Worktable

I've been busy this week, sewing journals and sewing coiled mats, and finally had some time today to take some photos of these new items, plus a few others I made a while back.

Now comes the hard part: editing the photos and getting these items listed in my Etsy shops. This alone is a good reason to stop making one-of-a-kind items, and make only items that can be relisted as they sell! But I like making original items too much to go that route! So I must put up with these time consuming aspects as part of the plan....

Quilt Progress

Well I didn't go to the quilting retreat this past weekend, but I have been doing some quilting. I made progress on the Disappearing Nine Patch Quilt for my youngest daughter.

After cutting all the nine patch blocks into quarters, they were all laid out on the living room floor. C wanted a totally random arrangement, so daughter S helped us out looking for unacceptable arrangements of colour and patterns. It was tough, but being random also means it's also never going to be "perfect."

I think this was the final arrangement, agreed upon by all the consultants. If the two kids agree, I know it's a good place to stop! Next we had to label all the blocks by row and block number, so I wouldn't mix them up when stitching them together.

I've sewn the blocks in each row together and my next step is to sew all the rows together to complete the quilt top. Stay tuned!

Nancy Drew Books

Here are some Nancy Drew books I made  a little while back, on special request for a customer:

Did you know that the first author wanted to create a character who was not "namby-pamby?" When (if ever) have you heard the term "namby-pamby" used?