Happy Easter 2014

Happy Easter everyone. I hope you have an amazingly quilty long weekend.

I am busy doing the binding at a blinding speed and can see the end in sight. 

I have been fiddling about with Label ideas and soon will be hauling out my thread and needle and stitching one.

I was sitting stitching the binding which is so very boring when I thought it would be fun to share all of the things that I use for quilting.

Firstly who could do quilting without a computer. I love doing my pattern, progress and maths on spreadsheet. The internet is also needed for getting inspiration and just viewing other people's blogs. I am sure that there are many people who would be surprised as to what an inspiration they were to me.

The next is my work box. This is the box that organically gets filled with what I am using for the current phase of my project. Most of the stuff shown below was taken out of this little box. I know when a project is finished, when I unpack the project box and put away all the items contained in it.

Glasses who can do without them. It is one of those annoying things of when you have the calmness of spirit to do quilting, you are probably old enough to need glasses to see small details.

The next thing is duct tape. No it is not for keeping the family quiet so that you can stitch longer, but rather for making stencils out of paper and then backing these stencils with tape to make them stronger.

While we are on stencils I must say that I find a husband really nice as they are way more pedantic so my stencils are normally amazing. These are the stencils that I have been using for the border on the Dear Jane.

I made my own bias binding for this project and these little things were really helpful in the creation of all of the metres of binding that were made.

I suppose I should have included a picture of spray starch as that was equally a hero in the production of the tape.

I love the little roses on the fabric.

This is something new in my collection. Oh how I like using these amazing clips. They seem to make the whole binding exercise a piece of cake. They have sped up the whole binding process. If you are ever going to hand stitch binding, then these clips are worth it.

I love their red plastic goodness!

Needles. I seem to go through in inordinate number of needles when I am quilting. Maybe it is due to being too heavy handed when rocking the fabric. I need to change needles as soon as the curve. I currently have a whole bottle of bent needles.

To mark the fabric I have gone through almost every pen, clutch pencil and system that has been put on the market. These are ones that really work. The general pencils were suggested by someone on facebook. I ordered some online and have been excessively happy with using them. I added some extra pictures to show which pencils they were.

I know you can all recognise the quick unpicks. The crochet hooks I use to snag any threads that I can see under the fabric. Doing all of the piecing by hand, there are often bits of thread left behind. Unfortunately there are pieces of paper left behind as well, this is where there unpickers come in handy.

I always try to check that there are no pieces of paper left behind, but...

The next thing I found in my work box were Plasters. This proves that quilting is an extreme activity.

I use a plaster under my thimble to stop it from hurting. I also have a whole collection of thimbles, The rubberised ones go on my left hand. This is normally under the ring and guides the needle back up. This no doubt proves that my style needs some adjustments.

I am still learning. I hope that I will get better at this activity.

I have three pairs of scissors in my work box. They each get used. I like the black scissors. They cut fabric like a dream, but, are inexpensive. In fact they are affordable enough that I cut both paper and fabric with them and then get a new pair when the scissors become dull.

And lastly. My thread. Oh YLI, how I do love using you. I used a whole lot of other quilting threads until I can upon YLI. Well I will always use it even though I do sometimes find it difficult to source it. The effort is worth it. I find that it does not tangle or split as much as the other threads that I have used.

Well that is all from my sewing box. I must get back to sewing on the binding.

Enjoy the First full moon after the spring/autumn equinox and I hope the Easter bunny bring you a whole lot of chocolate.

Have a good one.