Why do I use production offcuts in my sewing?
Certainly not because it is cheaper. It is the challenge of combining something splendid from given materials, and the good feeling of saving material headed for the tip.
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Stories & guides
Violin case repair
Last school year, I repaired my grandchild's violin case. The loops meant for attaching the backpack straps had torn off. She cycles to school, and it’s impossible to ride while holding the violin in your hand. Naturally, the violin and case—which belonged to the school—went back at the start of the summer. Now that the new school year has begun, she has been issued a school violin and case again, but this one is in even worse condition than last year's. So, I undertook the repair once more. This time, I decided to replace the entire back panel—including the piping—and cover the torn section at the end of the case with a leather patch. I used reflective tape for the top layer of the piping. The video condenses six hours of work into three minutes. If anyone finds themselves in need of a similar repair, I will be able to take on a few jobs starting in February 2027, and I can handle a few at a time during the summer break.
Choosing and caring for a patchwork quilt
Quilt sizes by age, the materials we use, what sets the price of a quilt, and how to wash and dry it so it lasts.
A young sea dog's quilt for a grandchild
Thirty five of the most exciting ships of all time, transferred onto fabric and set among striped and checked dress shirt offcuts, for a grandson starting school.
The patchwork rug THE JOURNEY, A GREEN FOOTPRINT.
Four weeks of work on a rug where animals and people walk together around our green planet as one whole, made entirely from industry's leftover textiles.
The patchwork hanging THE SEASONS
A month of sewing: "The seasons and the dates of the Estonian folk calendar", 260 x 210 cm, with every season's birds, flowers, festivals and characters.
The patchwork rug SUN WHEEL
A round patchwork rug 310 cm across for a seaside village nursery hall: eight pointed stars, the sea with flounders, a passing ferry and an enormous sun.
Three quilts and 80 little bags as prizes for the dance competition
Prizes for the Estonian women's and girls' folk dance competition: 80 little bags and 3 large quilts, two in national skirt stripes and one with eight pointed stars.
The launch of the Patchwork Quilt 100 publication
The album "Patchwork Quilt 100. My Estonia today" was launched at the University of Tartu Library, with all 100 panels and their makers inside.
A homemade quilt frame
My quilts and a quilt frame I made myself, begun at an adult woodwork class: knobs turned one by one, slots cut and everything sanded by hand.
A present for the shelter dogs
The grandchildren's nursery is collecting Christmas presents for shelter dogs, so we sewed mats from fabric scraps together. Mathias chose the colours and cut the edges.
A portable changing mat. Plastic or cotton?
Every changing mat on offer is plastic, nylon or PVC and can only be wiped. So I made a washable one in linen, cotton wadding and flannel, with five pockets.
Who is the real beneficiary of a craft business?
A letter demanding data on my company's "real beneficiary". A micro business with one board member and no employees, so who exactly benefits here?
A waist bag for children
Why are children's waist bags on sale so big and bulky? A new model just large enough for money, a bank card and a phone, with a belt to go with it.
When a pet is bored, or mending horse rugs
What does your pet do when it is bored? Mine are hens. My daughter's horse, though, practises wriggling out of his rugs, so another pile of them came in for repair.
Baby quilts with bears
Another working day behind the machine gone before I noticed. No pattern would come, so it became small squares. How do you like a quilt this colourful?
Natural or synthetic material?
How far do you prefer natural materials? I cannot wear synthetics at all, which is why I put so much emphasis on the materials in my quilts.
A patchwork skirt and quilt from dress shirts (part 2)
Now the quilt: 240x240 cm to lay out so that every size of piece stretches and no two neighbouring colours quarrel. A memory quilt of the client's father.
A patchwork skirt and quilt from dress shirts (part 1)
A big bag of a client's dress shirts to become one skirt and one quilt. Step by step through the skirt: cutting, tapered panels, gathering and four hidden pockets.
Notebook covers, a special order
A wife wanted notebook covers for her husband's 9th wedding anniversary, with embroidery she commissioned herself. She measured his notebook in secret.
A calendar, electronic or on paper?
Our choir moved to a Google calendar and I resisted to the last. Meanwhile, 50 new linen and cotton notebook covers are up in the web shop.
A patchwork dress for the gas grill
My husband got a gas grill for his birthday and then ordered it a dress. Made in one go from artificial leather offcuts, with a zip for airflow.
A reflection on 1 September
A sweet day, and pure nostalgia for me. But seeing all those parents buying supplies, I am glad that annual murder of the wallet is in my past.
The new school year approaches, with a diary or without?
The approach of 1 September still gives me a happy nervousness. And a question: how many people still use a paper diary, and what size is it?
Estonia 100 or Estonia 101?
A change from roses: blue, black and white. A few months left of this beautiful centenary year, and the question of whether to make tricolour gifts next year too.
When does school start?
The town was full of children with satchels last week, although it is only the middle of August. When does your child start school?
A skirt and bag, a set.
A slightly more festive set for myself before a trip to the international quilt festival in Birmingham: a skirt and a matching bag in leather and artificial leather.
A cuddle quilt for a grandchild
Cotton fleece instead of synthetic, with an embroidered name, ribbon loops full of little characters at the edges, and a bag of its own to carry it in.
A handbag for myself, in leather and knit.
A roomy shoulder bag at last: a piece of my patchwork skirt jersey on the front, the rest full leather, with a magnetic outer pocket and two inner pockets.
The Patchwork Quilt 100 project (part 3), the panels at the Estonian National Museum
A day in Tartu at the Estonian National Museum, where the makers' shared birthday present to Estonia reached its second stage. And the story of my panel for the book.
The Patchwork Quilt 100 project, the Dance Festival (part 2)
Sixteen folk dancing girls framed by 52 different striped fabrics, with eight pointed stars in the corners. The most labour intensive small piece I have made.
The Patchwork Quilt 100 project, the Dance Festival
A hundred makers are giving Estonia 100 patchwork panels of 100x100 cm for its 100th birthday. I joined on the first day and got number 4.
A quilt in the Morning Star pattern
Our little patchwork circle picked one block to work with together, the Morning Star. A king size quilt from my leftovers: 2400 pieces and 75 hours of work.
Screens for a nursery
Covers for six nursery screens with a puppet theatre window: 12 covers, 96 pockets, each group's own striped fabric and letters cut from woollen felt.
Greetings for the new school year
Greetings for the new school year.
A homemade cuddly toy
The shops are full of cuddly toys, but a homemade one is still homemade. Carolin drew the dog, cut the pattern and named him Krissu.
Not a patchwork quilt but a quilt with patches
My little artist designed a baby quilt for her brother her own way: no squares, no strips, just the animal pictures she chose, appliqued straight onto grey starred fabric.
A quilt with tractors for an extendable bed
Numbers and creativity do go together: 48 m of strips, a calculator and a spreadsheet, and four tractor quilts for my youngest grandson.
Making a quilt, using one commission as an example
A 235x235 cm quilt as a present for a grandmother, from agreeing the pattern and colours to the name appliques and a backing pieced from leftovers.
Car seat covers
A commission I refused a year ago and was talked into after all: covers for the front seats, patterned from an old sheet and finished with corded binding.
Repairing chair seats
Eight chair seats: fabric, foam and a staple gun, half a day's work in theory. In practice three working days and a staple gun that gave up.
Just some reflections
A year that began with an enormous quilt and carried on with bags, repairs and car seat covers. Plus a look at everything a workshop this varied has to store.
Mending a horse rug
A fleece horse rug with three proper tears, mended with thin woollen felt and a three step zigzag. It blocked my washing machine first.
Caring for and choosing beanbags
Three years on, the school's 12 beanbags come back for servicing: emptied, washed, repaired and refilled. Plus fabric or artificial leather, which to choose.
A sales room in my studio
With the last child moved out, another room was free. Over Christmas we redecorated it, and now the finished products have a small white sales room of their own.
On selling chicks and hatching eggs in 2017
In 2017 I am offering neither hatching eggs nor chicks for sale. See you next season.
Carolin's designer bag
My granddaughter arrived knowing exactly what she wanted: a denim shoulder bag. She chose every last detail herself, and I was simply the help.
The quilt Sunset
Fourteen days of work on the largest and most complex quilt I have made: a sunset over water, 2.5 x 2.6 m, built day by day from a few hundred metres of fabric strips.
Patchwork patterns that speak make the eyes shine
An article about my work in the local paper Harku Valla Teataja: the patchwork room under the roof, how a quilt is designed, and the stories the fabrics tell.
Terry and the accessories for his little house
A dog who refuses to sleep on straw gets a foam base mattress with a zipped cover and two washable five layer wool top mats.
Black and white, with a little red too
A larger than usual play quilt in black and white, 155x155 cm, with little red hearts hidden underneath and a tiny cuddle quilt with cars to go with it.
A shelf of gift sets and corporate gifts in the web shop
A new shelf in the web shop: gift sets and corporate gifts. And a question for you: what present would make your heart sing when you move into a new home?
Ready for the autumn season
A room full of products ready for sale: simple, practical water repellent bags from upholstery offcuts, in four sizes, to test whether price or availability is the real obstacle.
This year's young birds
My own chicks are now 2.5 months old and the finest of all these years: tufted heads and the whiskers typical of a rumpless Araucana.
A summer mood in the patchwork room
Nobody has marked the start of a holiday in the calendar and there is no holiday pay, but I am enjoying the summer to the full. If I want to sew, I sew.
Rhubarb juice, a drink and a cake
The kitchen is the last place I would spend my free time, but here is how I make rhubarb juice with blackcurrant leaves, a summer drink and a quick cake.
Quilts with cars, planes and helicopters
Quilts for boys needed pictures I cannot draw, so I found an illustrator. Plus a step by step account of how I make fused appliques.
The beauty of flowers in June
On the day parliament discusses banning glyphosate, some thoughts about a poison free garden, the bees that have vanished, and pictures of what is in flower.
On sewing a patchwork dress
Step by step: squares cut into trapeziums, sewn into tiers, gathered and attached to a bodice made from an old orange sweatshirt.
Making a patchwork skirt
After years of thinking about it, I finally made a patchwork skirt, and a patchwork dress too. To my surprise it is many times quicker than sewing a quilt.
On selling chicks and hatching eggs in 2016
The chick season in my bird house is open: Black Copper Marans, blue and green egg crosses, and speckled chicks that will lay pale blue eggs.
Chair covers for a cafe
Reversible chair covers from upholstery fabric offcuts: light on one side, dark on the other, washable and steam ironable. Meanwhile my sewing machine is still at the doctor's.
On a wave of instrument bags
February was the month of instrument bags, and March carries on at the same pace. Eight bags means 192 pieces cut out, and a cover ornament of more than 100 tiny parts.
Decorations for instrument bag covers
Dear instrument bag client: choose the decoration you like for the cover of your bag and mark your choice in the comments.
Denim reuse, a football beanbag
A giant football beanbag from old jeans: 12 pentagons and 20 hexagons, and a saucepan lid that finally solved the geometry of a regular pentagon.
Patchwork work dungarees
Patching the same trouser knee for the third time, I gave up and sewed new dungarees from offcuts of workwear fabric in neon colours instead.
Bathroom rugs from old bed sheets. Chenille technique.
How to sew soft cotton bathroom rugs from old bed sheets: eight layers, spiral quilting 2 cm apart, then cut through seven layers and wash.
Baby quilts with 100% wool and cotton filling.
Five new baby quilt patterns and a trial of pure wool and 100% cotton filling instead of the usual blended wadding.
A draw for the Christmas baby's quilt.
A giveaway: name a baby born in December or January in the comments and on 10 January I draw the winner of the Christmas baby's quilt.
An experiment on myself, or how I went to work in a clothing factory.
Three days back at the sewing factory where I worked decades ago. The alarm clock, the traffic jam, the industrial machine, and how it compares with life as a small maker.
My company's birthday
The second birthday of my dear little company, at the busiest and most pleasant time of the year, with a sales record to go with it.
Christmas spirit in the patchwork room
A Christmas baby's quilt, Christmas stockings, miniature elf bags, wash bags for women and men and aprons for grown ups, with prices.
Reuse in my design
I work on reuse and zero waste principles: most of my patchwork comes from production offcuts and reclaimed fabrics. What that really costs in time, and why it is a way of life rather than a saving.
A design update for the kannel bags
A kannel teacher pointed out that the shoulder strap loops sit in the wrong place. So the new bag has them at the top, on both sides of the handle.
A sofa cover for a nursery quiet corner
Nurseries and schools have quietly become one of my main groups of clients. This time a sofa cover with the moon and the stars, to go with the sun on the wall hanging.
A crafter's Christmas wish
A crafter's Christmas wish, in one picture.
A photo session with children
A photography course, a new camera and a shoot with the children in aprons, pots and pans: give children the props and let them get on with it.
A patchwork skirt
If patchwork is a way of life, you MUST find time to sew something for yourself too. A long, warm woollen skirt of eight panels with crocheted flowers.
A quilt in autumn colours
Autumn burst in through the door and landed straight on a child's quilt, brush in one hand and paint pots in the other. Cotton on top, wool wadding inside, flannel backing.
New covers for a garden swing and a sun canopy
Twenty metres of supposedly weatherproof fabric for a 4x4 m sun canopy, sewn in a room smaller than any single piece of it. A month later it had torn to ribbons.
Over half a kilometre of fabric strips
The sewing machine pedal gave up, so if you cannot sew there is nothing for it but to cut fabric. In the picture: 560 m of strips.
A patchwork skirt for a doll
A quick technique skirt from leftover strips: five strips sewn together, cut into trapeziums, and the skirt starts to take shape by itself.
A little blonde refugee (2)
A week on, Emma has her first dress, her hair is washed and plaited, and her eyes are a much lighter blue than they seemed on the first days.
A little blonde refugee
A very old doll from a charity shop, bought for 1.50 euros, who gave me the strong feeling that she is not a WHAT but a WHO. And what people made of that.
A quilt with a kaleidoscope pattern
A quilt of coloured diamonds in black, white and dark pink, waiting since spring for the right inspiration to arrive.
Birthday reflections
Is 50+ a little or a lot? A flat tyre in a car park, nobody stopping to help, and how relative the words "young" and "old" turn out to be.
The patchwork squares want to go home.
The squares left over from the dress shirt quilts became drawstring backpacks, a leather trimmed rucksack and pencil cases for the children.
A quilt from reclaimed material
Knitted jumpers, flannel, cotton, fine bemberg and bright artificial silk in one quilt. Every square backed onto white cotton so nothing stretches or frays.
A new collection of pencil cases, or handmade little bags
A new collection of little bags, from heavy linen with archaic embroidery to denim and flannel for boys. Come to the Laulasmaa fair on 4 July.
A wall hanging with pockets for the teddy bears
A wall hanging for a nursery group's 20+1 teddy bears, part of a bullying free upbringing programme. And one work that nearly destroyed my machine.
A quilt in black and white and a little yellow too
A new quilt on the way, and dense quilting called the winding road. By midday my body has seized into the "smartphone" position.
Picnic blankets and dance day at Pangapealse nursery
Dance groups from nine nurseries, 300 children in one hall, and my new picnic blankets waiting for someone to settle down on them.
Audentes 20
An invitation to Audentes's 20th anniversary, and memories of the years when I set up and ran the Audentes Children's School.
Spring: chicks, the garden, the first herbs drying and urgent sewing
The days race by. A garden turning from ornamental to productive, herbs for tea drying, month old chicks and picnic blankets under the machine.
Thoughts on chemistry and GMO
A documentary about industrial materials, from asbestos to radon paint and plastic, and where GMO fits into the same pattern. Plus where to get GMO free feed.
Speckled chicks and coloured hatching eggs
Have you ever seen speckled chicks? Yellow with tiny black or grey markings. And best of all, in the autumn they will start laying pale blue eggs.
The results of KangaDzungel's "Make something new from old" prize game
A hundred entries in KangaDzungel's April prize game on Facebook. My four quilts gathered almost 300 likes and won a consolation prize.
On chicks, warmth and feeding
People often ring to ask about raising chicks, so here is what I do with mine: how I move them from the incubator, what temperature they need and what they eat.
Coloured egg chicks
Chicks for dark brown, green and pale blue eggs, all fertile at 100%. And why, after years of trying, I buy purebred chicks and only incubate crosses myself.
The first signs of spring
The first hatchery chicks have arrived, my own Araucanas have not laid since Christmas, and here are this year's hatching egg plans by colour.
A black and white quilt
The largest quilt I have made, 240x240 cm, quilted all over by free motion. My shoulders survived; my neck felt as if someone had put a stick in it.
A picnic blanket for a nursery
Wool rather than nylon, so it can be used indoors for music lessons and story time as well. Two hundred safety pins in and waiting to be quilted.
A small thought
A snowflake comes quietly onto the window and then starts to lie there softly. M.E.Kess, aged 3.
So much joy from two beanbags.
The shape and mood beanbags are finished: eight chairs, 50 m of fabric, 4000 m of thread and 1600 litres of granules. And a photo session with my best advertising boys.
And the sewing room is too small after all
Sixty metres of wadding by the roll, and 500 litre sacks of beanbag granules that will not even fit through the door. The garden house has become a multi purpose building.
Beanbags for a nursery. Colours, shapes and moods (2)
Two beanbags got their shapes scattered at random and two got them in sets, with a sun in the middle. Plus the mood beanbags with their little faces.
The seven jobs of a micro business owner, and using a photographer
Designer, maker, salesperson, supplier, packer, bookkeeper and photographer, all at once. And the day I finally paid a professional to photograph my quilts.
Beanbags for a nursery. Colours, shapes and moods (1)
Beanbags as teaching aids for two nurseries. Two questions for today's nursery teachers about how to arrange the shapes and how to attach the loose ones.