Let's Get Acquainted ...

Hello everyone, my name is Nat, and welcome to my blog. It is the final week at Plum and June's "Let's Get Acquainted" blog hop.  And it is my turn to tell you a bit more about me and Made in Home, the place where I share all my Made in Home projects, quilted, knitted, crocheted, cross-stitched, upcycled, baked... 

Me wearing the Contemporary Beanie Hat 

So I am French, and have been living mostly in Britain since 1998. I was only supposed to spend 2 months here, improve my English, and then go back to my undergraduate studies in France. I came for two months, decided I loved it so much that I could not go back to France - gave up my French undergrad studies and became an au pair for a year. I did go back to studying though - and managed to get a lot of acronyms after my name in the meantime (I have a BSc, MSc and PhD). So much for my parents worrying I would never go back to studying. 

I met my husband nearly 8 years ago (our anniversary is some time this month, we are a bit fuzzy on the actual date), we got married two years and half ago and we are now expecting our first child (very beginning of December) - and the little one will be 3/4 French and 1/4 British. I do/did have a full-time job in finance, and I am now on maternity leave, as Baby MiH could come at any time apparently - although it would be really handy if he could wait until his due date... 

I am slightly bigger now... 

So I mentioned that this blog is not just about quilting, although it is more and more present in my life at the moment. But I am first a knitter - as this is the craft my Grandma taught me when I was little, I learnt how to sew in classes my Mum sent me to as a teenager, crochet came much later (3 years ago), baking sort of come with being French and my sweet tooth. Then I learnt most of the other crafts on internet, thanks to blogs or youtube videos - and the learning is never ending. 

The 'petites souris' cushion for Baby MiH cushion cover

Let me share a bit more...

       - My quilting tips - 

Spend time preparing your fabric and cutting accurately. I think I realised this way too late, but the final result is SO much better. It is therefore key to change your blades - do it now, it is quite expensive, but so much better!

Also I only use some of my scissors for fabric cutting and sewing related activities, and do not use them for paper, in the kitchen etc - so they last longer. 

       - Favourite fabric -   

 If you have been on my blog before, you will already know that I am a big fan of Lotta Jansdotter, Rashida Coleman-Hale and most recently Leah Duncan. 

       - Favorite book - 

I love all the Harry Potter, and more recently the Hunger Games triology. Otherwise crime novels (Agatha Christie is one of my favourite authors). 

       - Favorite quilting tool - 

My rotary cutter - with brand new blades!

       - Blogging tip - 

Good Pictures - it is harder and harder to get some good natural light at the moment (short days and autumn) but it is worth spending the time getting nice pictures - makes it nicer for you and other to read. I think.. 

Thanks to Beth at Plum and June for organizing this amazing blog hop - It is totally what blogging is all about for me, finding a community of like-minded people with whom I can share tips, my projects and will get support from. And it was in fact great to meet some fellow bloggers over the summer!

There are loads of blogs for you to check out this final week... I am off to go and say hi!

         Michelle from The Quilted Tortoise

         Kim from Quilty Doodads

         Stephanie from Smalltown Dreamz

         Cynthia from Quilt Doodle Doodles

         Diane from From Blank Pages

         Laura from Waffle Kisses

         Mary Ann from Rocknquilts

         Angela from Angela B

         Jaime from Stitches to Sprinkles

         Allegory from {sew} Allegorical

         Alyce from Blossom Heart Quilts

         Karen from Sew Well Maide

         Christa from Christa Quilts

         Lynne from Bouts Choisis

         Francine from Mocha Wild Child

         Lyanna from Purple Panda Quilts

Charm Pack {Giveaway}

Here we are, I am officially on maternity leave and I am THE snoozing machine (dixit Mr MiH). I have not been a lot over the weekend except sleeping - and again today. Is that what maternity leave is like? 

However I did manage to get together a very special charm pack - the one made of Baby MiH's room fabrics (some that I have used, will use, or was going to use but decided not to but still love). Some of my favourite designers are there: Lotta Jansdotter (of course), Rashida Coleman-Hale, Leah Duncan.. 

The charm pack is made up of 20 different fabrics, two charms of each fabric so a 40-piece pack. I put some solids that go with the overall theme. 

So here is how the giveaway works. You can enter the giveaway up to 3 times:

1. You need to be a follower - leave me a comment and let me know how you follow my blog - if you are a non-reply blogger, please leave your email address
2. Tweet about the giveaway and let me know when you have done so (or tweet me @NoasLibellule)
3. Like my facebook page, and come back and let me know

The giveaway is open until Friday 9 November until 7pm GMT. Good luck everyone!

Groovy Reveal {Quilting}

It is finished! No, yes - this is NOT a WIP post! The Totally Groovy Quilt is finished, finito, fini..  and looks how it fits the colour scheme of Baby MiH's room! 

 So the quilt in full.. 

 The back of the quilt... 

For the quilting I focused a lot on the solid colour (Kona charcoal) as it was the one that would show the most. The quilting of the patterned fabric was more of a challenge as I decided to stay as close as possible to the fabric patterns. I stitches the blue Echo along the actual lines of the pattern, around the flowers of the orange Echo in FMQ, and hand-stitched the stalks of all (ALL) the flowers of the white Echo. 

Every single stalk is hand-stitched!

The quilt is in fact not for the chair, but for Baby MiH's Moses basket - which is (was?) in fact Mr MiH's Moses basket. The basket will feature again - so this is just a sneak peak at the basket and to show how the quilt will hang.  

Entering Amy's Blogger's Quilt Festival Fall 2012

Name: Retro Quilt

Quilt Measurements:130cmx110cm 
Quilted by Nat @ Made in Home
Entering the Baby Quilt category

Linking up to Alyssa's Totally Groovy QAL page... Check out the Totally Groovy QALs! 

Update: My quilt is in the 10 chosen ones, and now it is up to you to choose the quilt you like best. You can vote here. 

Size matters {quilt}

I have finished it! Yes the Totally Groovy quilt top is finished - ready to be quilted (once I have found the backing fabric - a walk in the park after the piecing together!). And although the light will be different in the room this is meant to be in, you have an idea of what it looks like now. 

What really surprised Mr MiH and I is the size of it. This is meant to be for a crib, it is currently on our king size bed... Yeah, do I need to say more? Baby MiH will be able to use this quilt for a wee while - no excuse for me to make another one. It is not bad or good, just surprising. I was worried I would not like the fabric combination anymore once finished, but no still loving!

As you know this is meant to be colour block quilt, and I used patterned fabric. And there are a couple of things you would need to consider if you were going to make it that way. For the white Echo fabric, I had to remake a few curve pieces to match the way the flowers face as it looked weird if they were not all facing the same way - same applied for the light blue triangular fabric. I did not bother think too much about the orange Echo fabric, but if I were to remake it I may 'break' the fabric a bit more, I think (ie more squares and less one pieces). It is worth bearing in mind when you do the cutting - just delays the piecing together process otherwise - and a few wasted pieces. 

So of course the next step is the quilting. So we have strong bold colours, big pattern... and also a block colour. Should be an interesting challenge for the weekend! I shall just admire my handy work for the time being. 

Linking up to WIP Wednesday over at Freshly Pieced. 

Les souris grises cushion cover {quilting}

As promised here is the little grey mice cushion that will be in the baby's room. So nothing fancy in terms of pattern, it is all made up of equilateral triangles pieced together in strips. 

The fabrics chosen is as follows:

- The little mice fabric is from Heather Ross,
- The other fabrics are the ones used for the Totally Groovy QAL - so it fits together. 

I quilted each little 'white' square and used the Aurifil I won for the blue and orange quilting. I had made a drawing before to see what I wanted to do. I think any quilting pattern would have looked bland however next to the colourful triangles. I only quilted in colours the top and bottom colour triangles lines. 

I have used for the first time some fusible wadding (Hobbs Heirloom). I hate when my fabric is bunching when I quilt. It did work, as in it was much easier to quilt and no bunching - and it was not like cardboard when finished - Result. However the top quilt kept un-sticking itself and I had to iron it again and again. I may need next time to bast it. It worked ok for this project because it is quite small but I intended to use the same wadding for the Totally Groovy QAL and that is a bit bigger. 

I went for simplicity in terms of the backing - yes I just wanted to finish it in the end, but also the top is so fussy I needed something more plain. I used some Echo from Lotta Jansdotter - in reference of some of the fabrics used at the front.  

So not the easiest project to do - but a great result for my first handling of triangles, at least I think.. This is the chair that will stay in the baby room, and it seems to work really well. 

Linking up to TGIFF today hosted by Better Off Thread.

post Holiday Blues {sewing - or lack of}

Can we make today Friday? Coming back to work has been quite a shock to the system. In front of my computer all day long (no beach hopping anymore!!) - and the workload that no one has touched for a whole week. My maternity cover has also started this week, and well, I am not very good at delegating - so that is going to be an interesting two month period. So not a lot has been done on the sewing front since I left - but a lot of falling asleep on the sofa. 

The beach bag will become a project bag (as it was not done in time for my holiday), everything is ready I just need to find the energy to sew it together now. 

I did go for the piping option in the end. And, after some tricky moments with my sewing machine, I think it will look quite nice. So hopefully you can expect a review of the pattern I used next week. 

Other than that I had many parcels welcoming me back home - it was Christmas before Christmas. Mr MiH is always amazed at how much I buy on line - at the same in terms of weight he wins hands down (he is expecting deliveries in tons - cement mix is one of his top buys at the moment). So received was the fabric for the Low Volume Swap organised by Rebecca Lynne. Needs to be cut and send, and then the wait of receiving my charms!! I am still undecided on what I will make, but I am hoping to be struck by the creativity genie when I receive my parcel.

And yes I had to send some Rashida Coleman-Hale design. The choice for the second fabric was between the Little Red in Icing featured or some Lotta Jansdotter - but I thought you might be bored of me sticking to the same fabric. I need to widen my horizons.  

The Retro Cut {Quilting}

There has been a serious amount of cutting in the MiH house, and also total changes in colour schemes that I thought set in stone. I had to admit that it just looked ... wrong. The Totally Groovy QAL colour scheme just had to change, not totally but enough to actually work as an overall quilt - for us at least. So that meant two cutting sessions - and a lot of scraps being generated. And so came the idea of making a cushion as well for the room... So here is the result of my cutting labour. 

The Totally Groovy QAL has taken a very retro turn, not on purpose - I blame it on my stash (the stash I bought by myself). Yes, it is some Lotta Jansdotter that you can see (I do like her designs A LOT). 

The cushion is made of triangles - yeah to triangles, I LOVE triangles! But I have never done anything like that before ... so I may not like it as much when it comes to sewing these together. It took a bit of time to come to this boring arrangement, and it may change again... I just need to sleep on it. 

Did you notice the fabric from the Heather Ross Nursery Versery collection - one of my purchases from the FoQ. I am on the look out for a children song involving mice - maybe some hand stitching will be required - or it may be too much.. How do you know when to stop?

The little mice are so cute! And it is a bit sad that I used up all the fabric I bought. 

Linking up to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced - to see other WIPs go here. 

Of the manly kind {sewing}

The passport wallet is done. That took nearly the whole of the closing Olympic ceremony to finish it off (you know the one that was never ending). And I love it!

The different fabrics I used are as follows: the 'newspaper' fabric is from the Etsy shop of Stefaniexu, the blue one is Lotta Jansdotter's Ruta in navy (I love her range) and the third one is from the Washi range designed by Rashida Coleman-Hale (Star flower in charcoal). So basically some of my favourite designers in a wallet!

I loved making the wallet. Firstly the pattern from One Shabby Chick is brilliantly written with loads of pictures - just in case you are a bit confused with just seeing written out (or not reading the instructions). Then I learnt a lot from it. I have not that much top stitching before - and it was  a great exercise. I loved how the binding of the wallet was done, I found it so clever. I did change the closing with a big press stud - because that is all I had handy at 11pm. 

The only thing I would do differently is that at some point I had to stitch through many layers of fabrics (I think 6). After talking to Kelly, it seems that I should have changed the size of the needle (it may have written in the instructions to be fair,but see point on reading instructions). Anyway I would not have the energy to do it. If you have the energy, do it - change the needle when it comes to top-stitching the whole thing, it will look better.

All in all a very interesting project, that happens to bring something useful to the house - we actually know where our passports are now (except that I have not found the British one still) - very useful! So you remember that I had Mr MiH in mind in making this, and that it needed to be manly. I am not sure Mr MiH agrees it is manly, but is happy to carry it. Result!