Works in Progress

 Here's the quilt I'm making for Nel, partially completed, using her new range of fabrics called 'Sleeping Beauty'. Nel took this photo the other day to use today in her guest post on Sew We Quilt  These fabrics are beautiful! I'm also making some fabric boxes - again a work in progress:

The box is hexagonal and I'm using fusible stiffening. These are based on the techniques in the book
'Fun, Fast and Easy Fabric Boxes by Linda Johansen, although I have drawn out my own templates as I'm making these quite large.

For those of you unfamiliar with these, you cut shapes for the base and sides seperately, join them loosley with a zig zag stitch then fuse them to the fabric:

Here's the lid:

Next I will be fusing the lining fabric on then finishing the edges with satin stitching before sewing the sides in place.

Last Saturday I went to Pately Bridge to do a  Felt Bag workshop with Kirsty Hopkins at her studio. I had a lovely day and came away with my bag almost complete. It was quite hard work making the felt as it involved a lot of soapy water, vigorous rubbing and rolling! Here is a picture taken on the day as I arrange the top layer of wool on the bag form:

Here's the bag after felting:

Can you see how much the stripes shrank? Its a lovely sturdy felt now and I also made some flat felt pieces to add decoration. Kirsty and her Mum Charmian showed me how to make a 3D rose like this one by Kirsty:

I decided this time to use my Accuquilt Go! to cut some petal and leaf shapes to applique to the bag. The Go! easily and neatly cuts through the felt.

So I just have to finish the hand stitching and add a handle.

I'll be back on Friday with a review of QuiltSue's book 'Pick Four' as part of her blog hop. Don't forget to visit all the blogs taking part in the blog hop as Sue is giving away copies of her book on each of the ten blogs!