T-shirts ALWAYS do this to me (grumble grumble). I'm short but I have a bust so it's virtually impossible to buy something off the rack and have it fit perfectly.

I just got a new job (yay!) and I will be in need of some new tops to wear to work. I'm hoping that someone will be able to give me some alteration tips in this area.

Sorry for the awful picture but it's very overcast today.

Oh and it's a T-shirt style top with jersey material.

Thanks in advance.

It ended up on Miss Five's bed (after being banished to the linen closet for the last three months, I never wanted to see it again) and she loves it. Strangely enough I don't mind it so much either.

Thanks to everyone who posted lovely comments on my previous quilt which I had written off as a disaster. I had a smaller piece of patchwork from last year sitting in my stash which I ended up cutting up and re-piecing with sashing to make this eye-catching, fun play quilt which will now to go the triplets. Still a few places where there's a tiny bit of bunching, but nowhere near the train wreck of the last one.

I was so careful with the basting on this quilt! I taped the backing to the floor, I sprayed, I pinned, AND I hand-basted a big 'X' from corner to corner and then another big '+' in the middle of the quilt. It worked. Phew.

I love it and I'm very pleased to be able to gift something that I'm personally very proud of.

(Oh and he's giving me $100 for it so it's not entirely free!!)

I really set the bar way too high for myself this time. Also, I think I made the mistake of basting and quilting it while fresh out of the worst flu I've ever had.

Result = serious, serious puckering and diagonal shear. Sh^t.

Resisted the urge to collapse in a heap and wail, "I'VE RUINED IT!". Finished it off anyway, bound it, attached a label. It's for a friend who has a friend back home with new triplets. He's not picking it up until Friday so I'm tempted to try and whip something else up in the meantime and really make sure I baste this one properly. I don't know what went wrong - I always use a combination of spray adhesive and safety pins - but maybe because of the size of the patchwork pieces and the randomness of the design it just didn't have enough stability in the sandwich phase.

Anyway, C&C welcome on the rest of it while I work out what to do next.

...out of some old T-shirts, lycra (cotton elastane) for the waist band and some fold-over elastic that I had left over from making nappies.

THEY ARE SO COMFY

I've just made another pair where I worked out how to include a double-layered gusset with the entire seam enclosed.

I think I'm hooked!!

It could have been a disaster....

http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=381774.0

But now it's finished. And I AM SO RELIEVED. And pleased with how it turned out.

This is a slightly-larger-than-cot-sized quilt, 54"x43", backed with an upcycled thrift sheet and quilted with random wavy lines using my walking foot. There are a few too many areas where the fabric in the patchwork has shifted with the quilting, because I realised, too late, that my basting spray was out of date and no longer sticky enough to hold all the layers in place properly. Lesson learned for next time!!

C&C welcome. X

Patchwork is finished. Now I just need to quilt and bind and it's off my hands!



(My Miss Nearly-Five just said, "nice quilt, mummy!")

Anaximander, I LOVE that design. It's on the list for the next one.

Well, I made it work. I cut up the FQ into small squares and incorporated some other neutrals into my signature "scrappy" style. Here's a small bit:



It's taken about ten years off my life but I think it will look fantastic. Will post in completed projects when I'm done!!

Let me just say, AAARRRGGGGGGHHHHHH.

Why do I do this to myself??!!???!!!

A friend saw the quilt I sold on eBay and asked if I could make him one for his friend back in the US, who has a little boy. He wondered if I could add an Australiana element to the patchwork.

I had been looking for an excuse to go fabric shopping, and so picked up a 1/4 of this fantastic vintage Holden cars print against a map of Australian roads:



It wasn't until about 24 hours after about 16 solid hours of quilting that I realised I had a serious problem. Every single design I tried sucked. Then I realised:

IT'S NOT ME.

The colour scheme. The "cutesy" aspect of the print. NONE OF IT IS MY STYLE.

And I've already told him about my purchase.

So now I just have to make it work!!!

Deep breath. I'm starting all over again.

My community womens' sewing group was donated a free stall at the local artisan market recently, so I went rummaging through my stash for some UFOs to quickly quilt up. I found a stack of HSTs and made this quilt:



I'm going to do the same for all my other UFOs and see how they go. It's coming into winter here, so hopefully it's a good time to do a run on these. C&C welcome!