image courtesy of Havel's Sewing

This year I've been very blessed, and extremely lucky, to welcome Havel's Sewing as a sponsor here on Sew at Home Mummy.

So lucky, in fact, that I just had to show you this skookum gadget Havel's has recently released.

I received this cutter a while back, but like with any product I review, wanted to give it a really good using before writing this up for all of you - and I'm happy I did - this is a Quilter's dream tool. Seriously. If you're someone who cuts strips, squares, and more, you should consider this gadget for your Christmas/Wish List this year.

This, my friends, is a Havel's Fabric & Quilt Ruler Cutter. It measures in at 27.5" long and cuts widths up to 6" wide. It has a no-slip grip on the underside, making slipping and sliding next to impossible as you cut. The sliding blade glides easily along the track, and allows for precise, straight cutting - every time.

The Havel's website states that the cutter 'drastically reduces your cutting time' - so I put it to the test.

As some of you may know, I've been hosting a Cotton + Steel swap here at Sew at Home Mummy. As part of the swap, I've allowed international residents to ship their fabric purchased to me, and I offered to cut them for them so as to cut down on their shipping times and costs. I had to cut stacks  of charm squares as a result: 

A photo posted by Erin Davis (@sewathomemummy) on Sep 9, 2014 at 8:26am PDT

...I timed myself for the cutting. To cut an entire yard of charm squares ((56) 5"x5" squares) it took:

• CONVENTIONAL RULER + ROTARY CUTTING: 3min 58sec
• HAVEL'S FABRIC & QUILT RULER CUTTER: 2min 47sec

Result: it took about 40% longer / more time to cut using a conventional ruler and rotary cutter system over the Havel's Fabric Cutter.

A photo posted by Erin Davis (@sewathomemummy) on Oct 10, 2014 at 2:13pm PDT

The blade is easily replaceable, and measures in at a standard 45mm size. It literally pops in and out when you need to change it; it's actually much easier to change than most rotary cutter brand's handheld cutters.

image courtesy of Amazon.com

To cut, you simply line up your ruler over your fabric, and depress the blade and slide along the fabric. Zing! Done.

Absolutely fantastic for anyone with arthritis or repetitive strain injuries (I have both, and I can honestly say I felt much less fatigued by using this cutter than by using a conventional system each time I've used it).

The no-slip grip on the bottom of the unit is absolutely BRILLIANT. I can't say enough about it. 

Wanna see it in action?

The ruler is really easy to read, too, being a clear ruler with black measurements marked.

So, after playing with this ruler for several months now, it's honestly become my primary mode of cutting. It's lightweight enough to move around easily; stores away easily hanging from a hook on my wall; the blade has a safety on it so I don't have to worry about my kids being around it.

I can wholeheartedly say that this is a tool that every Quilter should consider. I'm in love!

Thank you to Havel's for giving me the opportunity to add this cutter to my arsenal.

Hi all!

The winner of the Rose Room Quilts giveaway has been emailed! The winner of the $25 gift card was:
a Rafflecopter giveaway


Congratulations Nicole! Cindy from Rose Room will be contacting you soon!


Hatbox Update:
I've received fabrics from the following people:


Fat Eighth Group:
AN 85225
DB CMQG
JM 97006
LMJ
ME 22172
PG 23062
RP
SE 82070
SP CMQG
SS CMQG
ST 84120

Still waiting on fabrics from:
CS
JA

Charm Group:
AR 76111 (2 spots)
JM 97006
LMJ 
SP CMQG (2 spots)
ST 84120

All received

I'll be swapping out your fabrics this week and sending them back to you; the charms will probably go out early this week, and depending on when I receive the last two packages of F8's I'll get those out ASAP too :)

The sign-ups for the "Homebody" and "August" swaps will be coming soon - if you'd like to receive an email notification when the sign-up form goes live, enter your email below:

Hi all!

Quick update on fabrics "received" for the Cotton + Steel "Hatbox" swaps ongoing here at Sew at Home Mummy.
F8 Group:
AN 85225
DB CMQG
ME 22172
RP
SE 82070
SS CMQG
ST 84120

Charm Group:
AR 76111 (2 spots)
SP CMQG (2 spots)
ST 84120

Just a friendly reminder that if you're swapping with us, your package back to me with your cut fabrics should already be in the mail *wink*

As well, if you haven't entered the giveaway here for a $25 gift card to Rose Room Quilts, you can do so on {this post}.

Happy Tuesday everyone!

original Doc McStuffins image courtesy of Wikipedia

Hi all!

I'm taking a bit of a blogging break for a few days while I focus on family, and especially, my toddler, Audrey.

She'll be on the mend, watching a ton of Disney Jr. channel, I'm sure, with a strong focus on Doc McStuffins (a little girl who pretends to be a doctor to her stuffed animals) and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.

Oh. And most definitely Frozen. Over and over and over again.

Save me.

Hahaha! I jest. She's worth knowing all the words to all the shows and songs and movies.

See you in a couple of days everyone, stay outta trouble!

Yippee!
It's time for another giveaway!

Up for grabs is a super fantabulous $25 gift card to Rose Room Quilts! WAHOO!!!

1. Use the Rafflecopter widget below to enter. If you don't have a Facebook account, no worries! Just log into the widget with your email address - you won't be contacted by anyone unless of course, you win! Make sure your email is valid so that I can actually contact you if you win!
2. Open to International residents
3. Complete as many or as few options as you'd like to enter! All entries are optional.
4. Contest closes Friday October 24. Good luck!

Hi all!

I'd like to congratulate the author of comment #138:


Kim, as the winner of my giveaway from Shabby Fabrics for the Christmas Keepsakes blog tour post! Congratulations Kim! I've forwarded your email addie along to Shabby Fabrics, they should be contacting you shortly with your $25 gift card!

As a side note:
It makes me sad to say that I had to choose 3 random numbers before landing on someone that wasn't a no-reply blogger. (Good for Kim, bad for the first two people whom I couldn't contact!)

This is a screen shot of my GMail inbox - and these are all of the no-reply bloggers who entered my giveaway:
So - in total: 70 entries were from no-reply bloggers. A lot of you left me your email addresses to contact you back, but most didn't. Which means, if your name was drawn, I couldn't contact you.

If you don't know whether you're a no-reply blogger or not, click {here}. I wrote a tips/tutorial for how to figure out if you are/fix if you are. If you comment on a lot of blogs and never receive an email back from the author, odds are you are a no-replier.

**note: those using Open ID or Wordpress profiles when commenting, make sure to leave your email address in you comment to make it as easy as possible for bloggers to reach you if you win :)

Stay tuned: Tomorrow will bring yet another giveaway here on Sew at Home Mummy!!

So, I'm going to preface this post with this:

...this is not a rant, per se, but an observation I've made and been quite hypersensitive to as I try to work more on 'rainbow' type projects... bear with me... feel free to add your own thoughts in the comments below, I'd love to hear them...

Okay.

image courtesy of Sweet & Lovely Life

Purples are pretty colors, no? I mean, I don't personally use a lot of them in my quilts, but I've been trying to expand and step out of my comfort zone with respect to palettes, and I really have found that I like purple.

I never really gave the color much thought before;  I'll be honest. It was never on my radar.

But then I started working with a lot more solids in my quilts (primarily, I'd say) and as I did, and started to play more with colors, shades and hues, I began to realize something.

The world of solid fabrics is seriously lacking in the purples department.

image courtesy of Caldwell Carpets

Here's an example:
Robert Kaufman's line of Kona brand solids had, up until their new launch of their 32 new colors, only 14 distinguishable purples* - i.e. - those that couldn't be mistaken for another color (you know, the ones you look at and think "is that purple, or pink/burgundy/blue?", etc.)

As a comparison, the same line has 35 distinguishable blues.

Poor purple.

image courtesy of Fashion Telegraph

To RK's defense, out of the 32 new colors this season, 5 of them are purples. Not bad!

But then I got to looking at my scrap bins.

My purple bin is nearly empty. It makes it tough when I'm making a scrappy something-or-other, and it just shouts out for a bit of regal-ness.

And then I look at my stash piles of purple prints. Another sad state of affairs.

So what is it about the color purple? It seems to be a pretty versatile color, since its hues range from on the red-side to on the blue-side. You'd think it'd be an easy-ish color to incorporate in a quilt.

I just wonder if:

1. I'm just not attracted to lines of fabrics which have purple prints in them
2. Purple is just not a popular color for designers to incorporate into their fabric lines
3. Purple isn't an attractive enough color to use as quilters/sewists.

Thoughts?

*Footnote: this obviously, is open to interpretation. What you might call blue, I might call purple. I tried to be as critical as possible when determining these numbers.

I recently had a giveaway celebrating 700+ readers here at Sew at Home Mummy - my promise was that I would make a customized, personalized notebook for two of my lucky readers - and each will get a spool of Aurifil thread, some of my scraps, and a few other little things. The notebooks won't look exactly like this, but here's the one I made myself, and is the inspiration for this giveaway:
...the winners of this giveaway are as follows, and were randomly selected with Random Number Generator:



Congratulations, Ramona and Beth! I've emailed you a list of questions, please get back to me ASAP so that I can start creating for you!



If you haven't entered the Shabby Fabrics $25 giveaway yet, click {here} to go to that post.


Cotton+Steel Update (HATBOX):

Hi to those swapping C+S Hatbox with me!

The fabric assignments have all gone out, and some have emailed me to say that they've received their fabric orders already!

A reminder that your coupon expires on October 11, so if you haven't purchased your fabrics yet, please do so ASAP.

I won't be able to update with received cut packages before Tuesday next week, but rest assured that there'll be updates if I've received fabrics early-mid next week.

 The fabric in the center is a large panel with ABCs on it, which I have plans for one day creating a nice cozy blankie for the kids for the living room!

I had a lot of fun playing with these fabrics, and made a few (much needed) things for the kids, stuff I'd been meaning to do for quite some time!

First up was a little cover for a blank-page book for my 2-year old for coloring. I loved the multi-colored ABC fabric, and decided to quilt a cover for her book!

I used my ThermOWeb spray adhesive (I love this stuff. So much faster than pin basting!) which made the project go that much quicker. I quilted the blocks with a 40wt Aurifil to make them pop a bit more:
 ...and put a little polka-dot green button on the front with an elastic closure:
 ...it's hard to see, but I used the really pretty polka-dot print from the line for the lining:


Next up:
Well, now she had a skookum journal cover, she had to have an upgrade on the old Ziploc holding her (beat-up!) crayons to match!

Mum and Dr. Seuss to the rescue!

I used some left-over 20ga vinyl I had left over from another project and some of the awesome striped fabric in the line for a matching crayon bag:


Super cute, right? I think the yellow zipper looks great with the fabric :)

Next up:
Whenever I go out with the kids, I always make sure to have a bunch of snacks with us. My kids get SUPER cranky really quickly if I don't keep them fed. So I have this large, beat-up Ziploc bag which I put all of their pre-packaged snacks in when we go out. I'll also stick dry cloths, bibs, etc., in there for their snack time.

I decided we needed something a bit nicer than that - so I made a couple of 'wet' bags for taking their snacks out with us, and again, used some vinyl for it.

I made two, one for Audrey (in the white bear print) and one for Ewan (in the blue bear print):
So, now I can get rid of that gungy old Ziploc, and replace it with their own individual bags:

Hi all, and welcome to the next stop on the Christmas Keepsakes Blog Tour hosted by Shabby Fabrics! Links to the other bloggers participating in the tour's sites from October 6 - 10 are listed below - make sure to head over there once you've read my post to share the love with them, and see which blocks they've created!






Today (Tuesday, October 7):
Me! Woot!
Paula @ The Sassy Quilter
Karin @ Leigh Laurel Studios

Wednesday, October 8:
Melissa @ Happy Quilting
Kristyne @ Pretty by Hand

Thursday, October 9:
Erin @ Why Not Sew?
Caroline @ SewCanShe











I recently welcomed Shabby Fabrics as a sponsor here on Sew at Home Mummy, and I'm so happy that we've partnered together - their store is fantastic!

Shabby Fabrics is an online fabric store, specializing in "shabby" prints; what is "shabby", you say?



shab·by: adjective \ˈsha-bē\
A style of design where fabrics are chosen for their appearance of age and signs of wear. They are typically floral with a very feminine, soft, romantic feel.



Shabby Fabrics is an online quilt shop specializing in floral quilt fabrics and unique quilt kits made from the best manufacturers of today’s popular quilting fabrics, and free shipping with purchases over $75. They provide great prices on fabric and precuts from all of the major fabric companies, including an extensive collection of Christmas, batik, patchwork, floral and cotton quilting fabrics. 

Shabby Fabrics offers over 1000 unique quilting patterns and quilting books to keep you inspired including several applique quilt titles. You will be sure to find something new to quilt or sew every day.

Christmas Keepsakes is a 10-month Block of the Month quilt  designed by Jennifer Bosworth exclusively for Shabby Fabrics.  This darling 36" x 36" quilt was sewn with Maywood Studio fabrics and features appliqued blocks in classic Christmas shapes and colors. The pretty scalloped inner border and embellishments add the perfect finishing touch to this adorable holiday wall hanging.
This is the prefused laser cut block option (the BOM also comes in the more traditional BOM option if that's something you'd prefer) - you pop out all of your pieces, peel the paper backing off of the back of the pieces (these are pre-fused with Heat n Bond for you!):

I cheated and used some scraps of batting - do you do this? I sew them, butting flat edges together, using a zig-zag with a fine thread, like Aurifil 50wt. I then press the seam nice and flat so the seam doesn't show once the item is quilted.

Using my ThermOWeb Spray Bond, I spray baste my three quilty layers together (I highly suggest using an adhesive spray like this - it's fantastic, especially for these small projects - really quick and easy to use and so much easier to quilt vs. having to place and then remove pins!). You can see here below, I've drawn a circle around the toe of the stocking using a Frixon pen - I'll use this as a guide for my quilting later:

I centered the concentric circles around the holly and toe of the sock:

And that pretty polka dot Moda print binding looks awesome with the background of the block:

You can see here below that I used a variegated red/black 12wt to zig-zag applique the stocking pieces to the background fabric:

Tip: when using a 12wt thread in your machine, use a Topstitich 90/14 needle to avoid breakage and tension issues. A 12wt thread is heavier than regular quilting thread, which is usually a 40-60wt. 12wt will give you a more pronounced stitch.

Here's a close up of the embellishments included with the block pattern - I used the included embroidery floss to stitch the green vines, and a 12wt Aurifil to attach the (included) cute little buttons:

...and the backside of the mug rug, concentric circles centered over the toe and the holly:

 ...and just for the camera, of course, I had to try the rug out!

More information about the Christmas Keepsakes Block of the Month, and to sign up for the program, click {here}.

Make sure to head over and visit The Shabby, Shabby Fabric's blog {here}, and to stay up to date with all of the happenings over at Shabby, you can sign up for the Shabby Fabrics Newsletter {here}.

Giveaway!
The awesome people at Shabby Fabrics have offered up a giveaway for one of my lucky readers - a $25 gift certificate to their site! WAHOO! Thanks Shabby!

So! Here are the rules:

• Leave a comment on this post telling me: if you were to sign up for and make this super cute 10-block quilt, who would you gift it to? Or would you keep it for yourself?
• Open to international residents.
• Winner chosen by random number generator on October 15, 2014. Winner announced shortly after.
• Make sure to leave your email address if you're not sure whether you're a no-reply blogger or not, so that I can contact you if you win!

I have been very blessed this year to grow my readership substantially - and I appreciate that all of you, who read along with me, take the time to read my ramblings.

Whether you follow via Bloglovin, Feedly, Email, GFC - thank you.

So, to celebrate over 700 readers now on Bloglovin', over 100 on Feedly, I'd like to have a giveaway.

I guess this won't be a conventional giveaway of sorts. More of a...customized...giveaway.

For two of you!

Here's what you're entering to win:

- A handmade notebook cover, much like this one (won't be exactly like this, but I'll customize it just for you):

....but yours will be customized just for you. I'll email you and ask what colors you like, whether you'd like a lined book or graphed (I love a gridded book for sketching out quilts and block patterns!)

- To facilitate your creativeness, some skookum pencil crayons

- A pretty case for said pencil crayons

- a stack of my 'scraps', in the color (or range of colors!) of your choice

- a spool of Aurifil thread

....and maybe a few more little treats ;)


.... to enter, leave me a comment - any comment will do!

Randomly chosen winners will be selected on October 7. Open to lovely internationals (i.e. those outside the US).

Lots of love to you all :)




...and the winner of the Rush Hour giveaway is:
Commenter #64, "Farm Quilter" - I've emailed you, check your email and send me your mailing details, your prize awaits!

Thank you to all who stopped by on the hop!

It's October 1! Fall is officially here, and there's another block for the Classic meets Modern Quilt Along here at Sew at Home Mummy!

<div align="center">
<a href="http://www.sewathomemummy.com/2013/12/the-classic-meets-modern-qal-at-sew-at.html" title="Sew at Home Mummy" target="_blank"><img src="http://i848.photobucket.com/albums/ab46/sewathomemummy1/9b96ca11-fe49-4a07-84be-2fed7fb87810_zps3ad83995.jpg" alt="Sew at Home Mummy" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

If you're just joining us for the first time, welcome! Feel free to play along. Each month I post instructions to a very classic/traditional block, with a bit of a modern spin - be it in composition, style, or fabric choices. Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to join in on the fun and put your spin on the block (and feel free to just use my instructions, or to take the proverbial ball and run with it! But please - no running with scissors.)

Previous month's instructions can be found {here}.

Please be respectful of my original patterns and work - and make sure that if you use my tutorials, you credit it back to me.

Okay! Let's get going, shall we?

Again, I've created two patterns for you for this month's block - feel free to use them, or use them as a guideline and go crazy with your blocks!





Click HERE for the block instructions for October's block, The Flying Geese!

Feel free to link your Geese up below, and, don't forget to add them to the Flickr group if you'd like!


   

    An InLinkz Link-up