It ain't easy being a stripper.....

Oh please!  Not that sort of stripper!  Last night and this morning I sewed strips together, some cut me, some by Irene and some by Andrea, both from the Gumnuts (my quilts group).  We are making 15 laundry bags to send to Aussie soldiers in Afghanistan and we are also making 15 quilts to send them as well.So far 12 of the 15 laundry bags are sewn!  Yippee!  And these strips are for the quilts. 

We have cut loads, and I mean LOADS, of 6 1/2" strips of any length and I have pieced them all into a long strip.. this washing basket contains 120m - yes one hundred and twenty metres!  I think I worked out that we needed another 38 or so meters to have enough for all 14 quilts.  The fifteenth quilt is already made and it is a much girlier pattern for the one female soldier.

 So, we needed another 38m!  I cut a few more strips

 and then tonight Cynthia dropped in this 4 1/2" pile of more strips.

 After a couple of hours of sewing look what I ended up with - about 65m of strip!  I have sat my mobile phone on top so that you get an idea of the scale of the pile!

 Tomorrow the quilt group comes and we will get stuck into ironing these strips, cutting them into 42" lengths and then sorting them into piles of 11 strips for each quilt. Then the next round of sewing will begin and we should have two sewers tomorrow.

I showed you a bunch of the laundry bag in my last post and these ones were made by Andrea.  the first one has all sorts of beer labels printed on it and Andrea was concerned that the initials done show up well but in the end decided that the beer labels would make it stand out anyway!

And to finish off here are a couple of reasons why my hubby is the best,  He has just come back from a two week trip to the States and look what he brought me.  Two little boxes of chocolate that he saved from one of the hotels he stayed in.

 And also a couple of Calendars.  My girlfriend Barbara from Halloween Wall Hanging Fame always gives me the Quilting Magazine calendar pictured on the left but this time David bought me another Quilting Calendar as well as next year's Mary Engelbreit calendar.  Anyone who knows me know i love all things Mary and I try and get her calendar every year but the last couple of years it hasn't been so easy to get.  So thank you lovely hubby!  Mwah!

A big stitching day tomorrow but I am excited as we should have lots to show for it by the end of the day!

Just before I go, I hear there is a really neat giveaway happening over here.  Be sure to check it out if you haven't already! 

Till next time...........Happy stitching!

Guess what I learned....

Triple stitch is an absolute pain the the butt to unpick!!!!But it is do-able thank goodness.  How do I know this?  Coz I have done plenty of it in the last two days.  You see, all the laundry bags are triple stitched for strength and they are also lined.  The way I make them is pretty much the same way I make the Japanese lunch bags.  I sew the outside into a bag, then I sew the lining, then I put them right sides together and sew them together, then finally I unpick a small part of the lining seam to pull them right sides out.  Easy!  Sure, if you don't do triple stitch.  I made that mistake yesterday with the four I sewed but I sat and unpicked while I watched TV with Fly Boy and it was fine - just took longer than it would have had I just sewn with a normal straight stitch.  You would think I would remember that lesson today when I sewed the next four wouldn't you!  Well I did.......until just before I sewed the linings again and then I forgot again!  Grrrr.  Oh well,all's well that ends well and it ended just fine.

Four more bags completed, all except for the top stitching around the top but that can wait till tomorrow.

 Irene did the applique on these ones.  There is one more of hers to complete but I had to pre-wash and pre-shrink some calico for the lining first so that will be tomorrow's job!  I have folded them up so you can see the top band and the applique.

My husband has just arrived home from a two week trip to the States so I will keep this short.  Before I go, don't forget to enter my giveaway.  I will happily post anywhere and if you are one of those bloggers who is having trouble commenting on my blog as sometime inexplicably happens then feel free to enter by sending me an email.

Till next time, I am off to sew a few 6 1/2 inch strips together for our soldier's quilts and for you............happy stitching!

4 more down....

Sometimes you have got to have a win and my win today was getting my 15 year old boys to change the sheets on their beds without any complaints!!!  I know that seems like a simple thing - ask them nicely, give them clean sheets..........ah not exactly.  Apparently it is a really unreasonable request.  So, I stopped asking.  No, I didn't give up.  I still put their clean sheets and pillow cases in their rooms for them and tonight they made their beds without me needing to say anything and without a word of complaint!  How?  Easy!  I stripped their beds for them and removed the dirty laundry.  If they want to sleep on bare mattresses and pillows they can....but guess what........they don't, so they make their beds.  Ahhh bliss!!!

All in all had a very successful weekend.  I managed to get my five laundry bags sewn.  I showed you the one I made for our female soldier and today I finished the some for four of the male soldiers. 

We had to work with what fabrics we had and luckily we had a few pieces of ticking and similar.  I am not sure what this chek is but it is about the same weight as the ticking.  We needed to make the bags different and easily identifiable so hopefully we have achieved that with the initials and the contrasting strips at the top.

Tomorrow I will collect a few more from one of the girls.  She has done the applique and if I have time I will sew them up.  Tonight, once I finished the laundry bags i spent a little time sewing the 6 1/2" strips for the quilts.  Heaven only knows how much we have here but I suspect we will have more than enough for our first 15 soldiers.

Before I forget, don't forget to enter my giveaway.

Till next time...happy stitching!

better late than never!!!

Well at least I hope it is better late than never.  I promised you a giveaway when I hit 300 posts and as you know I was a bit tied up and so am running a bit late!  Only two posts late thought thank goodness. 

And here it is.....one of my favourite Japanese Lunch Bags.  I haven't put the draw string in it yet as I want to get some cream ribbon for it.  That is a trip to the store tomorrow. 

And I am not telling you what is in it!  A few posts ago I asked for giveaway suggestions.  I wanted to know what sort of things you would like.  I  received a number of great suggestions.  Some of them will be included here and some will be part of my next give away.  One of the suggestions was a surprise - so that is what you are getting.  Something I have made and some surprises!

All you have to do to be in the running for the goodies is leave me a comment.  Feel free to blog about this and if you aren't a follower, feel free to become one, but you don't have to to win.  I am happy to post anywhere as long as I have your email and can get your address.

I will draw the winner on 30 October 2011 and will let you know the winner in my post on that day.  Please make sure I can contact you via email.  Only one entry per person please.

Till next time.....happy stitching!

One down, 14 to go!!

Laundry bag that is.  This is the laundry bag for our female soldier.  It is lined with more of the pretty creamy yellow floral and it is all triple stitched.  This thing is not going to come undone!

To go with it I have made one of my favourites - the Japanese Lunch Bag. 

 And a tissue cover.  I will be buying a pack of these tissues to send with the goodies as I doubt she will be able to buy them over there!

And now it is my bedtime and I am so ready for it.  Tomorrow is another day of sewing!  More laundry bags to work on......

Till next time......happy stitching!

300!!! Oh my goodness!!!

300 posts!  I can't believe that has gone so fast.  I am still planning to do a giveaway.  It was supposed to coincide with my 300th post but I am a bit tied up with another project at the moment so forgive me but it will have to wait a few days.  But it is coming...

I have been promising to explain what my current special project is so, assuming my teenage boys can leave me in peace for a little while, I will tell you what is happening.

One of the many blogs I follow is one called Posie Patchwork, written by Jennie. Jennie always makes references to her handsome soldier husband and being ex-military myself that catches my attention.  Last Friday I was reading this post in which Jennie told us her husband was now in Afghanistan.  I was prompted to write to her and ask if there was anything I, or my quilt group and I, could make and send over for him and his mates. You see, I am always reading American blogs which talk about the Quilts of Valor Project.  Such a wonderful project and I always wish we had something like that here, so when I heard about Jennie’s husband it seemed a good chance to do something for at least some of our service personnel. 

As it turns out, Jennie’s husband is in charge of 15 soldiers and, believe it or not, a really useful gift would be a laundry bag.  Sounds like such a little thing doesn’t it?   Well not so.  You see the soldiers send their send their uniforms to an Afghan run laundry, in hundreds of plain white, navy & green ‘sacks’ with only marker pen initials on them for identification.  You can imagine how hard it would be to find your laundry bag amongst hundreds of similar ones and apparently emails go around each day saying “someone picked up my laundry bag”.  Jennie made her husband a colourful one with large initials; he finds his laundry very easily.   So, Laundry Bags it is.

I emailed my quilt group and as I hoped they are all on board as much as the different individuals are able to be.  We are going to be making 15 very durable laundry bags with lots of reinforced stitching etc as the actual laundry bags also get tossed in the hot commercial washing machines & dryers too.  All the fabrics must be pre-washed so no colours run – as Jennie said “we don’t want pink soldiers on patrol”.  We have chosen a selection of tickings and upholstery fabrics which we luckily had on hand and at Jennie’s request will be appliqueing the soldiers’ initials in large letters on the side using various novelty fabrics. 

We will also be adding some goodies to the bags to make them like Santa sacks.  Our goal is to get them in the mail no later than 7^th November, or if we absolutely have to, the 10^th of November. We want to make sure that the goodies get to the soldiers in time for Christmas and we have to allow for three to four weeks in transit plus the normal Christmas rush!

Once the laundry bags are under control, if not finished, we are planning to start on a quilt for each of the soldiers, hence my sneak peak of last night.  Did you know that it gets down to MINUS 25C over there at Christmas time!!!  There are 14 males and one female that we are sewing for.  All the guys will receive quilts similar to the one I showed you last post, except that we have come up with a few ideas to jazz that simple quilt up easily and appropriately.  The one female soldier is getting some special girly love from all of us.  Her parcel will contain some nice smelly pampering etc.  Her quilt will also be a bit more girly.  We are gathering all our soft and pretty orphan blocks, or making some new ones, and will be putting a much more pretty and feminine quilt together for her. 

Today I cut out her laundry bag from a pretty piece of curtaining I have had for awhile.  I will line it with the same fabric for extra strength and will applique her initials on in green. 

 I also made her a matching tissue cover though I expect I will need to send the tissues along with it.

During yesterday’s sewing bee we sorted out the fabrics for all the laundry bags, even cut some out, divided up all the soldiers amongst us so that we could get on with appliqueing their initials, finalized our plans for the guys’ quilts and began planning for the female soldier’s quilt.

Today I collected some orphan blocks from the lovely Audrey around which we will base the girly quilt. 

We have decided that we will just use the soft and pretty blocks and will save the darker pansy blocks for another time.

Apparently there are other soldiers that Jennie’s husband can identify who do not receive mail on a regular basis and that just breaks my heart.  Imagine being that far away from home and all the normal comforts and not having someone to send you mail and care parcels.  I have decided that once these fifteen soldiers have been sent their laundry bags and quilts I will continue to send parcels over to others as well as long as there is someone to tell me who to send them to.  It is such an easy thing for me to do and it is something that just feels so right!

So, now you know why I am not quite on schedule with my giveaway.  The last few days have been consumed with getting this up and running!  Now you can see why the quilts have to be quick to construct and serviceable in style.   

Till next time....happy stitching!

Boxers? Not exactly!!!

We had another quilt group sewing bee today which had two main purposes.  The first was to help some of the girls make some of my favourite little bags, the Japanese Lunch Bag.  Irene is making three adorable jumbo ones for her grand babies to use as Santa Sacks.  Here she is after making a slight mistake - sewing the wrong seams together and ending up with a strange looking pair of boxer type shorts rather than a bag.

 She finally got it right though and here is the completed Mickey Mouse bag for Eric! - CUTE!!!

 And the equally gorgeous Disney Cars bag for Max - Just too cute!!!  I need grand babies!!!

Don't you love this Cats stripe!

 Sharon and Cynthia both made lovely bags too, Sharon even made two, and i am really cross with myself as I forgot to photograph them for you!   aggh!

Over lunch we got on to the second purpose for our sewing bee and planned our next big project which is what the sneak peak was for last post.   This is one of the quilts my 31meters of strip will make.  It isn't pretty but it will be serviceable and for where it is going that is much more important.  Hopefully tomorrow I will have time to sit down and tell you the whole story!

This is a really exciting and humbling project for me and I am just so impatient to get going with it.  It is for such a good cause!!!  Sorry (not really) to be such a tease I will try and fill you in tomorrow - it is a bit of a long story!

Till next time.....happy stitching!