Lately

I've been instagramming a lot lately, it's so quick and easy to keep up to date with everyone and share what I'm doing - with pictures! I'm a visual person, so I find it works better for me than Twitter. I realise there are lots of you who aren't on IG, so I thought it would be fun to share with everyone what I've been up to lately...

1. A while back my local charity shop had a 'vintage fabric sale' and although there was no vintage fabric? they had a stack of table linens, which I just go weak at the knees for - so I bought the lot! As you do ;) 

2. You know I always go on about our DIY projects each weekend, well here is one of them. My lovely partner Robin (pictured looking very pleased with himself) fitted these great shelves for us in the living room to house my growing collection of sewing reference books. 

3. With the haul that I got from Ikea recently, I also picked up this letter rack, I just love it! I will share some 'proper' pics and how I've arranged it on the blog soon :)

4. I just couldn't resist this boat in a bottle from my local antique shop, we don't really have 'stuff' in our living area so I'm slowly, slowy adding nice decorative objects when I see them. I had to sleep on this for a night, but couldn't stop thinking about it so I guess I made the right decision! 

5. I'm a list-making kinda' girl, I really can't function if I have a bunch of things to do and no plan. I need a plan!

6. Car-boot season is in full swing now so it give me more opportunities to buy the things I love, these are some sweet things I picked up on Sunday morning.

7. This is planning stages of a potential sewing project. I've wanted to make a mini quilt from one of my Japanese sewing books for so long, so I pulled some fabrics and got cutting!

8. Auction viewing day is one of my favourite times of the month! I love to nose around my local one to see what's on offer. There's always some treasure to be found, I don't bid all the time but it's fun just to look and wish :)

If you are on Instagram, you can follow my updates @messyjesse1 ! xo

Craft/Sewing Room Update

I'm really excited to share with you guys my updated craft/sewing room today! as you may have read already, I had quite a clean out in here a couple of weekends ago; there was mess and then chaos and then more mess and then thankfully it came together rather nicely, if I do say so myself!

So I decided to replace my Ikea trestle desk legs in favour of the Antonius drawer units. They're made of steel so I figured they would be a great support for my desk top, and heavy machine. I've been using it for about a week now and I'm so glad I got them! Not only are they full of storage space, they are slightly lower which makes sewing much easier!! I got one unit with four wire baskets to hold my paper-crafting things and some of my sewing bits and bobs and my neutral solid scraps that I always use. 

For the other unit I purchased the Antonius frame only, and four of the small matching drawers. In here I hold all of my scraps by colour; pinks/purple, red, blue/green, yellow/white/brown/grey. 

ahh I just love it, the layout of £48 for both has been completely worth it just to have all my scraps nicely organised! It's made tidying up after a project a breeze now.

These Antonius basket inserts are great for organising little things. I found that you can fit two of these inserts per basket, (not the Antonius drawers though) and because they're clear you can see exactly what's in them. 

At only £1.70 each I thought they were a great buy so I bought a bunch of them to store on my regular shelves too! This one holds all my hexies! 

Above my desk I now have a rail system in place to hold all my sewing necessity items like rotary cutters and scissors close by. These are the Ikea Fintorp rails with matching buckets and hooks. I love having my craft things out on display and easy to grab - there's nothing worse than digging through boxes and baskets finding a stitch ripper is there? so this works great for me. 

On the left wall as you come into the room I have two Ikea Bekvam spice racks, which I painted white to blend into the wall. These display my vintage sewing patterns, and jars for buttons, pins and hair grips I use for binding. I also got handy with the hammer and put in a couple of nails on the side of my big shelving unit to keep my rulers in place, they have never seemed to have a good place to be put away before, so this has made me really happy! Did I mention that I love wall storage!? ;) 

On the other side of the room, I have culled alot of my stuff and cleared out a whole Expedit unit!  I was beginning to feel quite cramped in here and I really needed more floor space when laying out quilts etc so it was time for a change. It was mainly books I stored, so Robin built us some shelves in our living room to house them, free'ing up a lot of much needed space! I now just have this old ikea ladder shelf, to store some books, sewing patterns etc as well as my paper storage unit. 
    I'm planning to change this area just as soon as I find myself a nice high-backed rocking chair (just missed out on one on ebay, deep breaths...) to fit nicely in the corner. I think it would be a great little snug place to do some english paper piecing, next to my fire :) I also want to hang a design wall up at some point as I have a lot of wall space now. 

So there you have it, my new and improved sewing space! I hope you enjoyed it, and perhaps picked up some organising ideas of your own :)

p.s. some really sweet new fabric's arrived at the Sew and Quilt shop yesterday, I hope you can take a look! xo

A Little Bit Country

Happy Thursday guys! Now don't you just love a great deal, and even more so when it's from one of these huge companies that seem to rule everything. Well I do, and that's exactly what I got last week when I was drooling over all the different quilt books I dreamed of owning on Amazon - I found this great little book for 1p !! Yes you heard me correct, a penny! It drew me straight in after eyeing up those pretty quilts on the front, I really love the traditional patterns and colours more and more at the moment so I had a closer look ;)

And so there it was, 'available from 1p', and as quick as a flash I added it to my bag and checked outta' there!

I've only just had a quick flick through as it's just come through my postbox now, but on first glance it looks very informative and gives instructions for lots of traditional quilt patterns, just my cup of tea. Also, more importantly how to use speed technique's, very much what I need to take lessons in with my quilt making ;) 

You can find the link to this book with my Amazon widget on the left sidebar and apparently it's still 1p!! Quick ...

And in other country news, I whipped up three more farmers wife blocks yesterday. It was such a pleasure putting them together in my new tidy craft room (more on that next week!) 

I used my new very, very cute kitty and scottie dog prints which are now available in the Sew and Quilt shop! xo

Quilty Barn A-Long Complete!

Yippee! I finally got round to hanging up my Quilty Barn-A-Long mini quilt yesterday, and I am so pleased with it. I had finished it at the weekend but had to delay things slightly as the wall where I wanted to hang it in my craft room had a slight damp issue, (oh the joys of living in a victorian house!) so I cleaned it, treated it and painted it - and now it's as good as new ;) 

I also had a major clean up in here over the weekend too, it was quite a task! I've managed to clear out a whole IKEA expedit unit to free up some much needed space, so the new mini quilt does a perfect job to brighten the place with all my new wall space! It hangs perfectly above my fireplace and shelf of cute things :) Yes, I collect felt and crochet cakes!! 

 ahh so annoyed I didn't get the point on that red chimney top! deep breaths ...

Though I do love all the fabrics, they play so well together :) and the blocks were so fun to make, they've got me itching to catch up on my farmers wife block too! 

Thank's Lori for such a fantastic quilt-a-long, I hope you can all join in too. xo

A Work In Progress ...

So it started with this ...

A very messy and overflowing scrap box, which was completely impractical! With every project I would have to rummage through this banana box in search of a particular colour or fabric print I needed. Most of the time it would be all over the floor, and even more annoyingly; screwed up! So a while back I decided something had to be done about it; an IKEA online shop was needed. A month later (grrhh slow ikea) two antonius units arrived, amongst other things ;) to house my ever-growing scrap collection. 

So the morning after, this is where I'm at right now - it's definitely a work in progress! I've decided to re-arrange things completely in here as it was just getting out of control. I didn't have enough storage units so I was just piling things very precariously on top of one another. You all remember when I first did my sewing room yeh? Well, the IKEA trestle legs have gone, in place of the new antonius units and I will hopefully be plotting some other things in here this weekend too. I'm so excited!! Seriously, I love organising, and even more when it's fabric and craft stuff! 

I hope you all have as much fun as me this weekend! :) See you next week friends, xo

Quilty Barn Along

Happy Monday friends, I hope you are having a good start to the week! It's a bank holiday here so I've been enjoying a longer weekend with time to quilt :) so let me introduce you to my quilty barn mini quilt I've been busy with! 

This is a super fun block designed by Lori Holt; it just screams Lori, right!? She made these blocks as part of the backing for her farmer's wife quilt, love this idea! (really need to catch up with my FWQ!!) and then decided to start a quilt-a-long with just the barn blocks, I've seen more and more cute quilty barns lately so of course I had to join in the farming fun. You can find the flickr group here, with a link to all the tutorials so far. Also, I'm using #quiltybarnalong on IG if ya'll are interested in joining? ;)

Eeeh! Isn't the CK cowboy fabric just the ticket for this!! yeeha! I'm planning on a mini quilt for a wall in my sewing room so I'm not going the whole hog, and I've had to change the sashing from Lori's original instructions to make it the right size to fit my space. I'm really pleased with it so far, so I hope it finishes up that way!

Will keep you posted on how it turns out. Thanks for stopping by, xo