Laurel burch quilt and another new look

The Blogger dynamic view wasn't working for me so I've decided to change it yet again :)

I made another small quilt for our karate club to raffle this year, this is a Laurel Burch quilt kit I bought on Ebay ages ago. This isn't a great photo I'm afraid, I was in a hurry taking a pic the night I had to hand it in. The colours are lovely IRL with metallic highlights here and there and lots of quirky cat families. The backing fabric was randomly grabbed from stash and I went for straight line quilting because I was in a hurry. It's a baby size quilt, good for playing on the floor or in a crib when they get old enough.

Mendocino mini quilt

A sweet little quilt for the window sill in my stairwell, made from some of my favourite fabrics.



The fabric line is "Mendocino" designed by Heather Ross for Free Spirit. I think the mermaids and the seahorses are my favourites.



The candle holder boat was the inspiration for choosing the fabrics, the boat was a gift from my mother last summer so it has waited a long time to be launched upon the sea!

Stacked Coins quilts

Yes, I did indeed get them finished in time for Christmas :) Using this tutorial and these instructions to make them the sizes I wanted, here are Toddler (blue) and Monkey's (pink) new bed quilts.







It was a bugger wrestling with the twin size while quilting, my shoulders were aching for two days afterwards. I tried out a few random spirals throughout the quilting too, just for a change. They need some work!





Both quilts are backed with Killington flannel which is so very, very soft and snuggly. And they are both pieced with a strip of coins running across them.





I love these quilts, I have enough coins left to make them a cushion cover each and then their beds are going to look so cute they might even be persuaded to make them in the morning without complaining :)

Quilting update

Work is progressing nicely on the quilts - yes, that was meant to be a plural :) Not content with getting started on my own king size bed quilt I decided this would be a good month to start work on one for Monkey and one for Toddler too. Might as well get them all done at once!

I've so far pieced together the centre of the Round the World quilt that I'm making for me. After much thought I decided that there is no way I'm going to be able to squeeze it all through my machine when it's all pieced so I'm going to quilt as I go, the centre is in four 5x5 block pieces which I will quilt, stitch together, add borders to then quilt the borders, bind and Ta Da, it will be done without having to manhadnle 100" through my teeny tiny machine space. Here it is, all folded up and waiting patiently on me choosing a backing fabric. I am loving the brown with the colours in the Soiree prints and you would too if I took a better picture, sorry!



On to the girls. They are both getting a bed size quilt (in Toddler's case it's only a cot bed so not quite as much work) as part of their Christmas gifts this year and as they share a room I decided to make co-ordinating quilts for them. The Stacked Coins Baby Quilt from Crazy Mom Quilts has been on my ToDo list for a very long time and as I happened to have several charm packs on hand I decided it was the perefct time to try it. The charms are from Moda's Frolic line which I simply adore, I wish I could get a whole bolt of every print. Joining together over 700" of sashing strips to then cut them to length was more than a little tedious, as was chain piecing the bazillion and one coins. It will be worth it in the end though!







I've used different coloured Kona cotton for the sashing on each so we can tell them apart better - Toddler doesn't quite get the concept of "yours is the smaller one" yet but she can manage "yours is blue" :)

November's project

I think I will only have time for one project next month, it's a biggie! I have been wanting to make a quilt for my bed for a while now and have slowly been getting my supplies together and deciding just what I want to do. After much doodling on graph paper I have finally chosen a layout, bought in the fabrics and am all ready to go. Here is the design:



Yes, that does say the finished size will be around 100" x 100" - told you it was a biggie :) The inner diamonds ( a take on the Round the World pattern) will be made up of chocolate brown Kona cotton and a Soiree layer cake with the Soiree diamonds grouped more or less by colour. I've chosen a couple of extra prints from stash to go in with them as I need 100 finished units and the layer cake will only give me 88. The first outer border will be white Kona cotton, the second border will be pieced from a Soiree honeybun and the final border will be white Kona cotton again. I think I will piece the binding from a Soiree jelly roll and I should have something in the stash that I can piece together for the backing.



I have a feeling I may have bitten off more than I can chew....we'll see!

Raffle quilt

Almost the last post for today, promise :) The kids and I go to karate once a week and our club has a raffle once a year to raise funds for new equipment so this year I made a quilt to gift as one of the prizes. The pattern is from Fast Quilts from Fat Quarters and is the second quilt I've made from this particular book. I'm really pleased with how it came out though I think my fabric choices could have been better for some of the blocks. I need to work on looking at value, not colour :) The fabrics are from the Woodland Bloom collection, designed by Lila Tueller for Moda apart from the white which is Kona cotton.





The back uses the largest scale print I had from the collection and I love the binding, it's quite a large scale print which looks great as a binding as all you see are the fab colours, I wish I had yards and yards of it! The binding on this is machine stitched. I much prefer the look of hand stitched binding but I didn't have enough time for that.

I have three favourite blocks...



And as you can see I just stippled in the white areas and left the rest untouched. After a wash and dry it now looks wonderfully scrunched (excuse the foldline! I took it out of its bag for one final photo and didn't smooth it out properly). I hope whoever wins it likes it, it's big enough to use as a cot quilt for a toddler or a lap quilt for an adult. I'm secretly hoping I win it back ;P

Happy birthday Toddler!

Toddler turned two this month and I realised that she still didn't have her own snuggle quilt for movie time. Of course I realised this the day before her birthday didn't I? Not having much time I had to keep the design simple and just went for 6" squares in a stepping stone pattern. The fabrics are all by Amy Schimler for Kaufman (I *love* Amy's designs, I would have a bolt of everything she's ever brought out if I had the cash!) and the backing is a rosebud swirl Minky that has been laying around for a couple of years. It's roughly 36" x 48", great size for Toddler to snuggle under when we all watch a film on a Saturday evening. Boy is particularly pleased about this as she would always pinch his before getting her own :D





You would not believe just how much fluff came off of that Minky fabric as soon as the scissors came within an inch of it. I was covered, the table was covered, the floor was covered and my poor ironing board is *still* covered, I'll have to take the cover off of it and wash it a few times to get it all off I think. Have a look!







I have one more of these quilts to make, for Niece E. I am very tempted to find something else to back it with!

"Nine by Nine" quilt finished!

A fanfare if you please......









Phew! The Boy has been waiting on this quilt for over a year now, he was very very happy to open up the blanket drawer last night and see it there waiting for him. I was very very glad to finally have it done lol! The main hold up this time was the backing fabric, he wanted red minkee. Nothing else would do, it had to be minkee and it had to be RED please. I finally found some at a decent price on Etsy, ordered it at the end of November and it arrived January 11th! Just a bit late for Christmas then. Never mind, it's done now and he's happy so I'm happy :)

I tried straight line quilting on this one, outlining the sashing and the centre blocks of each star. It turned out OK but I prefer stippling or meandering, my straight lines aren't really that straight.

Baby Rails and Bright Stripes

I finally got these finished about a week ago and hubby has given them to their new homes, they were very well received. Here is the Baby Rails pattern:



I quilted it with an all over stipple, took ages!! It's backed and bound with a Robert Kaufman cotton I've had in my stash for a very long time, a pretty lavender shaded check.



And here is a close up of my favourite of the fussy cut fairies I put at the corners.




The Bright Stripes quilt has been made entirely with leftovers from the Boy's quilt, I added a narrow border as the white was just too white on its own, it really needed something else to hold it in a bit. The backing is another Robert Kaufman cotton that has been languishing in my stash for a few years which happened to match the bright colours of the quilt very nicely. And there was one purple fat quarter left from the pack which was just enough to use as binding.



I tried a kind of loopy quilting on this one, I need to work on my technique a lot. Here's the back, I had one leftover square that I used as a label.

A little more quilting

Bit of a catch up post this one, sorry for all the pics! The Boy's quilt top is almost done, here are the last three blocks:







And here it is with the sashing and inner borders in place - it looks a bit bumpy here, I've since taken off and shortened two of the borders which has fixed it and left it laying much flatter.



I have four co-ordinating FQ's left which I'm going to put on as a piano key border, it is getting there!

There were quite a few scraps left over from this so I made a baby quilt which will be gifted to one of Hubby's work colleagues who has recently had a baby boy. It needs something else as a border, I haven't decided what. I didn't have a pattern for this one, I just pieced the leftovers together and made strips while trying to keep some degree of symmetry.



Another of Hubby's colleagues has had a baby girl in the last week (they're just popping them out over there lol!) so he asked me to make a quilt for her too. I have just the right thing to use, this FQ pack which I was given last Christmas.



All lovely soft, glittery pastel colours just perfect for a baby quilt. I felt like a break from triangles so chose a simpler pattern from another of my secret santa books, the centre panel is a simple rail fence:



Then it has a plain solid inner border and the rest of the rail fence blocks make up the outer border along with four fussy cut fairies for the outer corners.



I'm not sure what to use for the backing and binding, I'm sure something will show up though, it's not like I'm short of fabric in this place lol!

And just a final few pics to show you how tough on my sewing space piecing all these quilts have been!

Hard at work on my increasingly messy desk


Snip, snip, snip....I've been finding trimmed triangle points all over the house!


My ironing space, in front of the shoe cupboard which has been out of bounds for over a week.




Okay, that's it, all I've been up to for this time :)