It's time to start making for Christmas! Why is it that we are so keen to make things for Christmas?   Is it a longing for times past? Or perhaps it's the pretty fabrics.  Who knows? But there are certainly plenty of ideas around for adding hand-made touches to your Christmas décor. You can make some of your own at our Fabric Fun Craft Club nights in November and December. November - we will

  It's well into October now, so I don't feel quite so bad about mentioning the C word!  And it's in connection with a competition - we haven't had one for a while, so this month's design challenge will be a competition.  Hurray!! Your challenge this month, should you choose to accept it, is to design a Christmas cushion.  We did this a couple of years ago, but we have some new designers

  October's Fabric Fun Craft Club night is on Tuesday, October 8th, when we will be continuing with Half Square Triangles, and making another cushion cover using the HSTs in a different pattern.  (If you need to remind yourself how the club is working now, the details are in the blog post Fabric Fun Craft Club in September. In September, we learnt how to make HSTs and started to make a cushion cover.  This month (after a

  Here are the entries for this month's design challenge.  The theme was Blue & White (you can see the brief here) so the entries are very different. Suzanne, aka Heckadoodledo, created a design based on a Cuban car - something close to many boys' hearts!  (awaiting image) Blue Cuba Cornelia's  (ByCornelia) design  is more of a picture: Cheater Quilt Cowboy Helen (Polly Dextrous) went for a more traditional patchwork quilt design, with her signature

  Have you had a go at making a 9-patch block? If so, you may like to take it one step further and turn it into a magic 9-patch, also called a disappearing 9-patch. Start with your 9-patch block.  If you missed last week's post you can find it here: Patchwork - The 9-Patch.   Cut it in half, vertically and horizontally.   Do this as accurately as possible, measuring the centre square

  If you are thinking that you'd like to make a block for our Project Linus quilt, but don't know where to start, you've come to the right place! A patchwork block (up to 56 x 50 cms in this case) can be as simple as sewing together a number of same-size squares, maybe using alternate white and blue squares, but all blue, in different patterns would be fine.  You can follow the instructions below

  It's design challenge time again, and this month the challenge has a slightly different focus. Can you create a fabric design for use in a quilt? I'm planning to make at least one quilt for Project Linus.  You can read more about this in yesterday's post, Project Linus Quilt. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to design a block for the quilt.  This can be a traditional patchwork block, a block

  Some of you may remember that I made a quilt during the 100 Day Project a couple of years ago, to go to Project Linus.  They make quilts to give to children who are sick in hospital.  I thought it might be nice for us to make a communal quilt - or even quilts! When I spoke to someone from the project, she said they always have trouble getting enough quilts suitable for older boys, so I thought

I don't know about you, but I always feel like the world is full of new possibilities at the beginning of September.  Perhaps it's all those years of education when September marked the beginning of a new academic year?  Who knows? Because of that, early September seems like a good time to have an Instagram challenge, to get us back into regular posting. Starting on Monday, I have 5 prompts for you to spot 'found patterns

  Now that the Craft Club has been running for a few months, it's time to assess it and make a few tweaks.   Up till now, we've tried a new craft each month, with a main 'make' and an additional one to expand your skills, or give you more practice.  However, having a new craft each month has begun to feel a bit pressured, and that's the last thing any of us want - crafting

We had two entries in this month's challenge - neither of them from the UK! This one, Stitched Monogram by Polly Dextrous, is based on a plaster work monogram on a house in Bayreuth, Germany. Helen used ink for the pink render then stitched the decorative outline in a similar shade of silk.   The second entry is Victorian House by By Cornelia. They are both shown at the fat quarter size and then a close up to show a

  Lots of us visit stately homes whilst we're on holiday, or just as a day out.  They offer so much inspiration for designers, whether it's the gardens, the house itself, its contents or its former occupants.  Maybe there's a room with a beautiful colour scheme, or a geometrically laid-out garden.  One of the things I always look at when I'm in beautiful old buildings is the floors and ceilings.  They