Thursday, February 24, 2011

Our craft forum blog hop weekend

Thank you for joining Our Craft Forum’s blog hop. So what is “Our Craft Forum” a craft forum for like minded people who love crafts. Mostly patchwork, stitching, quilting and the like. It’s a safe place to make new friends who share a love of craft & to have some fun and a little bit of laughter along the way & to join in on swaps of all types.

This week end is designed to tell our blogging friends about our wonderful forum and to invite you to be a part of our forum.

Several of our members will be offering tutorials, giveaways and some tips of the trade.

The blog hop starts at miss~nances blog so if you want to join us on the whole journey please go to http://missnance.blogspot.com/ and follow the links at the bottom of each post to find the next blog along the way.

Each person who joins our forum from this bloghop will go in the draw for a craft pack. So to join our forum please go to http://ourcraftforum.freeforums.org/ and register.

So join in on the fun and maybe find a new forum, new blog and new friends along the way. You never now you may even learn something new or win a great prize. Entries close at MIDNIGHT EDST (Sydney time) Sunday 27 February.


Thank you for calling by my blog and I would like to share with you a quick and accurate way to cut out the octagon shape as used in the tabletopper in my post below.

I used a sheet of newspaper - because it was big enough - and used a pizza baking tray to get the size that I wanted. Trace around the outside of the tray and cut so you have a circle as shown below




Secondly fold the circle in half so you have what it looks like




And then fold that half circle in half again so that you end up with what looks like a wedge of pie.




Take your ruler and pen and draw a line from the narrowest point out to the curved edge then draw a line from the outside edges into the centre line as shown in the photo below




Now take your scissors and cut along the line across the top so you end up with the curves as straight lines as shown below - it now looks like a kite.



Now open up the paper and you should have the perfect octagon. You can vary the size of the octagon by using a smaller or larger plate to draw around.



I hope you found this tutorial useful and if you make a tabletopper I would love to know.

Now for the next blog on this tour please hop over to http://raimareesworld.blogspot.com/and enjoy the rest of your journey. I look forward to catching up with you all on our craft forum.

Aloha

Tuesday, February 22, 2011




This weekend Our Craft Forum is hosting a blog hop, from Noon Friday 25 to Midnight Sunday 27 February EDST . So what is “Our Craft Forum” a craft forum for like minded people who love crafts. Mostly patchwork, stitching, quilting and the like. It’s a safe place to make new friends who share a love of craft & to have some fun and a little bit of laughter along the way & to join in on swaps of all types.

This weekend is designed to tell our blogging friends about our wonderful forum and to invite you to be a part of our forum.

Several of our members will be offering tutorials, giveaways and some tips of the trade.

The blog hop starts at miss~nances blog so if you want to join us on the whole journey please go to http://missnance.blogspot.com/ and follow the links at the bottom of each post to find the next blog along the way.

Each person who joins our forum from this bloghop will go in the draw for a craft pack. So join in on the fun and maybe find a new forum, new blog and new friends along the way. You never now you may even learn something new or win a great prize.

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Friday night sew-in

Friday night sew-in turned into Saturday morning finish off as the night just got away and I did not have time to finish off the binding on my table topper.

I saw this idea on the internet and knew that I just had to have one like it. I kept my eye open when shopping for fabric and saw the robins which I thought would be perfect for the middle of the tabletopper and then matched the fabric for the borders. This is a good size to practice FMQ on and I am very happy with the results. My FMQ is getting better but more practice is still needed. Some of the stitches especailly on the curves are a bit big or small but I guess that comes with time and practice.



I can see a couple more of these tabletoppers coming up very soon.

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Batik quilt

This is the second quilt that I was working on during 2010 and finished off during my Christmas break. It was a gift for our DIL and I wanted a simple design with bright colours but not florals so I went with the batiks in her favourite colours. Again I made what I call a "snuggle quilt" which is approximately 60" wide and 72" long which I think it is good size to snuggle under in the cool weather while watching tv, reading or having a snooze.

I quilted around the smaller squares, then around the larger squares and did FMQ in the pink border. I really enjoyed making this quilt and loved working with the batik prints and colours.