The 100 day project – update

June 28, 2019 by dottiedoodle ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

It’s day 89 of my project, 100 days of stash busting. It’s been going well – the finished projects are piling up, and the stash is decreasing. There’s certainly plenty of fabric left, but it does now all fit in the chest of drawers I bought to keep everything in!

I haven’t got anything completed to show you this week, so I thought I’d post a quick round up of all the unfinished projects I’m hoping to have done in eleven days time.

First is a Warm Hearted dog bed cover I started about a year ago. Every heart is a different print, so it’s a very scrappy quilt! I’ve got one more row to add, then pieces to the edges to straighten them. The pattern is by Tales of Cloth.

This is the top of my Up and Away Baby quilt. The pattern is by my lovely friend and fellow Guild member Sarah Ashford, and I’ve been taking part in the sewalong she is running on Instagram (#upandawaysal).

Next is the result of another sewalong, run by Karen Lewis for her Wire Flower pattern. Each group of nine people made nine flowers, then swapped them. I’m making a laundry bag with mine, and the reverse will be this gorgeous Liesl Gibson fabric which I’m quilting today.

Finally, I’m quilting my Oodalolly quilt – in stages because it’s quite big and I get bored! I’m quilting in between the lines you can see, and then across them to make a curved crosshatch.

I wonder if I could restrict myself to just a couple of works in progress in future!

Quilt-As-You-Go

May 16, 2019May 15, 2019 by dottiedoodle ♥ 1 Comment

One of the first projects I decided on for my 100 days of stashbusting was a quilt for the garden bench. Looking through my patterns and quilting books was frustrating. I have a lot of fabric, but it’s mainly in fat quarters so not enough of anything to make most patterns.

Jera Brandvig‘s Quilt As You Go Made Modern provided a solution, as her Red Square quilt uses 14 fat quarters. I certainly had those! I chose blue prints, with a single golden yellow piece in each square.

I went a bit more scrappy as I went along.

I enjoyed making this quilt. It comes together quickly, and of course you don’t have to quilt it when the top is finished. I did take a break part way through, when I realised I had to make an extra 5 blocks to make the quilt big enough to stay on the bench. It’s a lot of stitching, and I had had enough at that point. A week or so off with some slower projects, and I finished the quilt in a couple of days.

2017 100 day project – completed!

July 13, 2017July 12, 2017 by dottiedoodle ♥ 1 Comment

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I was determined to get to the end of my #100daysofslowstitches project, and here I am. It wasn’t the project I thought it was going to be, and I was pleased I had made the definition of what I could do broad, so I could change it as I went along.

My two main projects were completing 25 blocks of The Splendid Sampler, for my niece – quilt top above. And I kept up with the Ice Cream Soda blocks (see the end of this post).

I started with embroidery and English Paper Piecing, and as the days went on I included machine patchwork and applique. My thinking was, it might be done by machine, but takes ages, so it still qualifies as slow stitching!

The 100 day project I completed a couple of years ago was #100daysofnewrecipies, and that one really affected me. I saw a huge difference in my cooking ability and confidence by the end.

This time, I think I’ve learned what I do and don’t enjoy stitching.

I wanted to make a sampler of embroidery stitches, but hated counting threads to get straight and even rows of stitching.

I enjoyed making a Sashiko sampler, because the lines were printed on the fabric, and the embroidery transfer from the Aimee Ray book worked well too (see my previous post for more). I’d like to use more transfer embroidery on garments, as I prefer to make something that can be used, rather than purely decorative.

The project encouraged me to persist with techniques I was finding difficult – like teeny, tiny patchwork pieces – gah! And push myself to improve my quilting skills (points, people, points).

It might sound obvious, but making the time to do something towards a goal, however small, is a really good habit to get into. I hope it’s something I will continue.

So, I’m glad I did it, I’m thrilled I completed 100 days – and I will probably join in again next year!

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PS I loved this podcast from Elise on Starting The 100 Day Project

The 100 day project – halfway there!

May 25, 2017November 1, 2018 by dottiedoodle ♥ 2 Comments

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So it’s day 51 of The 100 Day Project. I’ve been through the “I love this and never want to stop” phase, the “why on earth did I sign up for this, I hate it” phase, and am currently in “sometimes this is a pain but I am enjoying it”!

My project this year is #100daysofslowstitches. I’ve learned from past years that it is best to go for something that doesn’t take too long and has a broad definition. That way, I don’t get stressed or bored with the project. Actually, I still did, but I would have given up if I’d chosen something more time intensive or restrictive.

I had pictured myself relaxing in the garden/armchair adding a few stitches to a sampler every day, and learning new stitches along the way. I began a sampler with lines of different stitches, and I enjoyed the stitching but hated having to count threads and get the lines straight. This is as far as I got before giving up –

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