Valentine's Fabric

Today I pulled out a few different heart fabrics in time to make some thingy bags for Valentine's Day.

As I sit here ironing, measuring and cutting the fabric, I'm taken back to a time in my childhood.  Every year for Valentine's Day my Mom and I had a special evening together.  She belonged to a club and all of the ladies and their daughters would get together for a night together in a hall.  It was such a big deal to me as a child to get all dressed up and go out with my my mother.  We would have a nice dinner then there would be door prizes.

One year I won a beautiful heart-shaped pillow.  I'd never had or seen anything like it before.  It was red with white stripes and had a frill around the edges in white with a red stripe.  I felt so lucky to win such a beautiful prize!  I slept with it every night for as long as I can remember.

It was so nice to have these memories come up tonight.  As I smoothed out the heart fabrics I thought of these special times with my Mom and how wonderful I felt.  It's so nice to have these memories when my family is so far away from me.

Good night, I'm off to bed feeling the warm fuzzies of this lovely memory from childhood :)

English Paper Piecing

Anyone that knows me knows how much I love making hexagons!  I use them to make Christmas stockings as well as quilts.  I just love being able to sit and hand sew and watch the design come together before my eyes.

This process of sewing hexagons together is done by a technique called English Paper Piecing which dates back as far as the 18th Century!  There is an awesome article here that explains the origin of this method.  In short this process of sewing hexagons together is done by a technique called English Paper Piecing (or Foundation Piecing) where fabric scraps are folded  over and around pieces of paper then sewn together.  Apparently back in the day paper was scarce so quilters used letters and newspaper clippings... and back then they kept the paper in the finished quilt so imagine what wonderful pieces of history are preserved in some of these quilts!

Today it's easy to just buy the paper templates.  They are available in a variety of shapes and sizes, the most popular being the hexagon.  I order my paper from from Paper Pieces along with templates to use with the actual fabric.  Here's how I go about doing my thing with hexi's....

First step is to cut all the fabric scraps to a size that will fold nicely around the paper template.  It's important to leave a quarter inch seam allowance around all the edges so that the template be fully covered.  You can just guestimate, but I like using these awesome acrylic templates - just trace on the fabric then cut and you are guaranteed the right size!  Here's a stack of my already cut hexis.

Next, fold the fabric over the paper and pin it in place.

Now it's time to baste!  Using a loose running stitch, I secure the fabric to the paper piece.  Once this basting is done, remove the pins.

I love to take a moment to sit back and admire all the lovely little hexi's that I have created.  And if you're a bit crazy like me, you'd organise them by colour because they are just so pretty to look at this way!

Now it's time to put the masterpiece together!  I start selecting the hexi's I want to use and then begin hand stitching them together using a whip stitch.  This is such a fun part!!  I work as I go with no set plan at the beginning of how it will eventually turn out.  I just choose the colour combinations as I go..  That's why it's so great to start with a container full of hexis ready to go!

Slowly the project begins to take shape.  Soon I have enough to make a stocking front!

From here the world is my oyster!  There are so many things to make from piecing hexis together.  Here are some of my Christmas stockings:

 You can also find for sale here on my Etsy shop

And of course quilts!  Here is a quilt I made entirely by this technique.. it took a while but it was well worth it!

I especially love combining the old and the new in general and in this case using an age-old quilting technique with modern, trendy fabric.  I love how this quilt turned out using seven hexagons to form what is called a 'Grandmother's Flower Garden' block separated by turquoise chevron fabric!

There you have it folks, one of my favourite quilting techniques!  

Tiredness in Pregnancy

I'm just entering my third trimester of pregnancy and boy did the tiredness ever hit me!  I have been finding that by 10 am I'm pretty exhausted and by 1 pm I definitely need a nap.  It's school holidays here, our big long summer ones so having two little ones at home as well makes it a challenge.  Thankfully my husband was home for a week and a half over Christmas and I slept.  A lot.  But I was starting to get worried about what would happen when he returned to work because I literally could not stay awake.

Thankfully I had a midwife appointment just before New Year's.  I had done my 28 week blood tests and glucose screening the day before and she had the results.  My iron levels were low - they were at 4 and my midwife said normal was 20.  After looking at Dr Google, I learned that anemia is anything lower than 11.  No wonder I was so tired!!  My midwife said she was surprised I could even get out of bed in the morning but to be honest, I just thought it was regular pregnancy related tiredness.  And that's the thing with pregnancy, it's hard to know what's 'normal' and what's not.  I just assumed that since this is my third child and I'm a bit older, it's just more tiring.  There are other side effects as well such as grumpiness but again I figured that was just my hormones kicking in.  One other thing that I found curious was that I was craving ice chips, and apparently this is a side-effect as well.  But with so many weird cravings in pregnancy, again I thought it was just par for the course.

So that brings me to writing this.  It was a reminder to me to be vigilant about my health and I wanted to pass my story along in case it can help someone else.  See I had kept telling my midwife I was tired and she would just nod empathetically and say pregnancy is tiring.  There was no further discussion about it being anything more than that.  I think it's great that we have these regular blood tests so that it was caught, but I also wonder if it could have been caught sooner.  For my levels to have gotten so low, it must have taken some time!

Now that I've started taking iron tablets, my energy has returned and although I'm still a bit tired come the afternoon, I can definitely see the difference between low-iron tired and regular pregnancy and life tired.  Before I was always exhausted no matter how much I slept. And I slept a LOT!  So if you are pregnant and feel lethargic, might be worth getting it checked out.

A week after starting the tablets and I feel great!  I'm so happy because I was getting so bored.  I'm not one for sitting around much and doing nothing and the nesting phase has just kicked in so I was keen to get things sorted.  I was so bummed thinking it would be 10 more weeks of this kind of tiredness, but thankfully the tablets help and I feel so much better!

Hopefully none of you will have to go through this, though it is fairly common I hear.  Just something to be aware of so I thought I'd share.  Take care of yourself!
x

Thingy Bags - A bag to hold everything

Most of my designs have come about from a need in our family and my Thingy Bags are no exception!  When my oldest son was just about 3 years old, he LOVED cars.  And I mean he loved them like every three year old boy loves cars.  For some reason, when we went in the car, he couldn't just take one or two.  No.  He had to take his whole collection!  So there he was, with his little 3 year old hands and 10 toy cars trying to get from the house to the car with all of them.  As you can imagine, it was quite the scene.  Looking back now, I can have a laugh at how cute it was.. but at the time when I was just trying to get out of the house to the supermarket before my baby needed another feeding, it was an exercise of pure patience!!

So I decided to make him a little bag for him to put all the toys in.  I knew it had to be durable (not rip or tear when toys went in, and also withstand a 3 year old's bashing it around), it had to be something he could open and close on his own and it had to be big enough to hold the toys but not too big that it would drag on the ground.

And I came up with the Thingy Bag!  A cotton drawstring bag with another layer inside for lining that was both function and cute.

And being cotton, it can easily be put in the washing machine and hung to dry.  

As he got older, he found lots of new uses for his bag.  He brought it to school to show his news to his classmates, it's the perfect size for lego and marbles... it really is perfect for all of your child's 'things'.  Over the years, I have made and sold hundreds of these bags and I've heard of all sorts of interesting uses for them.  Loom bands, gift bags, overnight bag for toiletries and endless other suggestions.

Thingy Bags measure 7 inches across by 11 inches down (28 cm x 18 cm) and I make them in a variety of colours and designs which you can find on my Etsy shop here.  Or you can check them out on my facebook page here.

Welcome

Hello and welcome to Jo-Anna's Attic. I am the creative designer behind Jo-Anna's Attic's lovely handmade blankets and room decor.  It has long been my dream to create beautiful home decor for everyone. I believe that our home environment influences our lives, especially for us stay at home mums who spend most of our time there.  I think it's important to have pretty things to help make our homes a cozy haven for us and our families.  I also believe that everyone has the right to have nice things, regardless of how much money they have.  For that reason, I like to offer my items at affordable prices so that everyone can have something cheerful in their homes.

I will spend time here sharing my creations with you, going through some of the processes and inspirations as they come to me.  I also love decorating on a budget so I will share my work there too..  It doesn't have to cost a lot to have a beautiful home!  Just a little bit of time and some imagination.

It is my desire to bring as many cozy, gorgeous creations to the world as I can.  Please follow me on my creative journey.

Thank you for joining along!