scissors cozy – betukbandi

… and some Christmas cheer!

What do you do as a quilter when you owe your Queen Bees something for their block parties? Try to sweeten up things a bit, right?

Queen Bee for Desi Quilters Bee Desi for September, Vidya had to wait till now for her block! For not killing me, she gets this little Scottie (whom she has named Patchy) to guard the felt farm animals she is making for her grand-daughter.

I had the pattern from my first patchwork book “All About Patchwork” (published Marshall Cavendish Ltd., London 1973).

It is made with 1.5″ squares from a jelly roll, partly machined, partly hand sewed; the ears and tail are paper pieced! It uses 92 squares – 30 for either side and 32 for the centre strip. I would highly recommend EPP if you decide to make this yourself. Sew the toy shapes first (remember to reverse the front and back!) and then join the 32 square strip.

My only regret – wish I had used brighter fabric for it – it should probably look delightful in bright solids.

October Queen Brinda deserved something for not asking me even once for her block. Since she celebrates Christmas in a big way, I made her this little festive quilt which could be used as a mat. Or she could use it as a wall quilt, if she added a sleeve.

Christmas Quilt for Brinda — Miniature Christmas Quilt

I was inspired by a mini-quilt I saw on flickr.com, but am sorry am unable to trace it now:-) Shall add the acknowledgement as soon as I find it again. The 4-patch blocks are 1.5″ square made by my easy/ quick 4-patch method, which I shall tell you about in another blog! The buntings are fused using Heat and Bond (red). A few buntings are 3-dimensional, made by adding fabric to the back and attaching them only on the top. Brinda is a great hand quilter, so I wanted to add a bit by hand to it. So I embroidered tiny motifs in gold thread. This was the first time I did whole quilt by my new Brother, so it is not as neat as I would wish, but…

So, we come to November.

Quilted cozy for scissors

I made a block in prints instead of solids for Queen Nirmala.

Quilted, scrappy cozy for scissors - back — Back of scissors cozy

And made this little scissors cozy to make her feel a little better

(Psst…do you recognise the prints from Vidya’s Scottie? I used the one inch strip leftover from the jelly roll after cutting 1.5″ squares to make this 😉 )

For December, I was not late 🙂

But…the mess that I made of poor Elvira’s block is really nobody’s business. Besides cutting it wrong and sewing wrong pieces together, I had a lot of thread tension problems, which no amount of fiddling with the tension knob could sort. Adding to my woes, I could not find my 1/4″ seam! I would have made her another block, but I had no other black cotton thread and a friend told me it was not available in the market either. Perhaps Elvira, who sews so beautifully, will be able to tell me how to adjust my machine!

The only good thing was that I had a lot of hsts – a by-product of Elvira’s flying geese, besides a few rectangles left over. I decided to put them together to make a mini quilt for Elvira. I do think it looks quite Amish, I wish I had the confidence to do some more quilting on it!

Amish style miniature quilt. A little egg-cozy made by MIL poses with it !

Amish style mini quilt — Back of Elvira’s mini quilt – with my mother’s play tea-set from 1937!

So those were the gifts I really enjoyed making! Before I sign off, here is wishing you all a very Merry Christmas!

Scissors quilted cozy — Scrappy, quilted cozy for sewing scissors or shears

Here is a quick delightful last-minute gift you can whip up for a friend all in an afternoon, using your small scraps.

I made it from this book in the Hobby Craft Series that I have had forever! I have loved turning the pages and dreaming of making all those pretty things in it.

Have also made a few things like that little elephant I made into a bag for baby stuff when my son was an infant – the bottles went into the legs and tissues into the trunk! The cat I made into a pillow!

But one thing that I always wanted to make was this scissors cozy – with the instructions in Japanese.

Instructions for scissors cozy (in Japanese!) — Instructions for scissors cozy (in JapaThe

This would make an ideal gift for the queen bees in my virtual quilting bee! And English paper piecing or the paper foundation piecing method would be perfect for this, I decided.

For those of you looking for a quick and easy gift for someone who loves sewing, I am sharing how I went about making this delightful little cozy!

You will need

– 25 scraps of assorted fabric about 1.5″ X 2.5″

– 12″ X 8″ fabric or assorted scraps for back.

-12″ X 8″matching fabric for inner lining

– 30″ matching bias binding 1′ wide

– Two pieces of thick batting 12′ X 8″ and 10″ X 6.5″ for back and front respectively.

If you decide to do English paper piecing – Each of those small triangles has dimensions 0.75″ base and 1.5″ height. The top angle is 30 degrees; you can easily make a template on stiff card paper, using your quilting ruler or a protractor if you have one.

Use the template to draw 25 triangles on paper and cut them out very accurately. Ensure your fabric is starched real stiff! Place the paper triangles on wrong side of fabric and cut roughly 1/4 ” outside it. Tack the fabric to the paper. This comes up really fast 🙂

Follow the picture here to join 5 rows of 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9 triangles. To join, you place two triangles right side together and take tiny whip stitches along the edges to be joined. There are several excellent EPP tutes available on the net and on youtube!

If you decide to use the foundation paper method (like I did), the ready height of the front is 7.5″ and the base width is 3.75″. Follow the picture to make your foundation paper pattern. Trace out rows on separate strips of paper about 3″ wide and add 1/4′ seam allowance on either side of the row. Begin with the centre triangle as piece 1, adding on triangles on either side as you go along. When the rows are ready, trim them and join them up . I used hand sewing to join the rows for a more perfect finish. Here is what the front of my cozy looked like.

Scissors cozy front — Front of scrappy scissors cozy

For the back, I decided to go for a scrappy look and joined up 1.5″ X 2.5″ rectangles in 7 vertical rows roughly in a triangle shape about 7″ wide at the base and 12″ in height. This is what my unfinished back looked like. Of course, you could use a single fabric to make the back.

Untrimmed scissors cozy scrappy back — Scrappy scissors cozy back

Then came the lining. I was at my stingiest best and stitched the lining into a tube along its longer side. I marked a point about 9″ on the seam and cut and cut it like this! The shorter piece with the seam would be used for the front inner lining and would not show up 🙂

Preparing the lining — The lining piece stitched into a tube and cut to get the front and back linings.

Front and back lining for scissors cozy — Front and back lining – now iron the centre seam flat!

Add the batting and quilt each piece individually ( without trimming the back). I just quilted in the ditch.

Bind the front base only. ( I now drew a template 10.5 ” tall and 5.5 ” wide and trimmed the back.) Place the front and back together.

and do finer trimming if any required. Put the binding and you are ready! I also added a little loop on the back to facilitate hanging the scissors near my workplace.

Do ask me if anything is not clear, this tute assumes that you know the basics of EPP / foundation piecing! This is how my finished scissors cozy looked from the front…

Quilted scrappy scissors cozy — Front of scissors cozy

Scrappy sewing scissors quilted cozy back — Quilted scissors cozy back

And here is the back! At the end of it all, I so fell in love with the cozy, that I decided not to send it to the Queen Bee :-p

Instead a made another one, this time for a pair of small scissors , pictured here!

Scrappy, quilted cozy for small scissors - front — Quilted cozy for scissors

I decided to quickly mail the gift and block to Queen Bee Nirmala, before I changed my mind, again! Hope this will make up for sending her a block made of printed fabric instead of solids like she wanted, and that too three weeks late 😉

Tag: scissors cozy

A taste of honey for the Queen Bees…

… and some Christmas cheer!

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The gift that wasn’t and a tutorial

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… and some Christmas cheer!

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