Tuesday, 21 July 2015

Another Low Volume Lovely


I finished this quilt, frankly, yonks ago. December if memory serves, hence the muted winter colours in both the quilt and the photos.


That serpentine quilting stitch adds such a great texture to quilts.




I only have one progress photo of this quilt, I think I took it to check the block layout looked right at a distance; does anyone else do that? I find I can *see* better sometimes in a photo when blocks are too close to similar colours or if a stand out tone has slipped in there by mistake. 

Heres to sharing awful indoor lighting photos! 


I've added this to my Etsy shop it is listed here if you would like any more info about it or if you would like it to come and live at your house.

I have also finished my Florette quilt and a good few others but need to get some photos taken in good light.
I'm trying to catch up adding my finished quilts to the blog this week so sorry for the deluge of posts to come (given my record of blogging this year that made even me laugh!) 

Wednesday, 22 April 2015

Florette quilt

On the 14th I taught a lovely one day workshop at the shop, Jeni's Florette quilt pattern is a delightful quilt to make & I am totally smitten with it!  
Like the fool I am, I totally forgot to take any photos of the class so instead you get the treat of seeing the one I needed to make once I got home :) 
I knew I wanted a deeper tone to this quilt than a lot of my recent finishes, so I pulled out a whole lot of fabrics and started stacking.




I am quite happy mixing cotton lawn and quilting cotton with linen blends but your milage may vary. It felt like a safe thing to do for the flowers in this pattern as I am using quilting cotton for the sashing and hope it will stabilise the other substrates. 




The pattern its self is very beginner friendly giving options for both 12" and 15" blocks. For my own quilt I chose 15" blocks to show off the larger scale fabrics. On the topic of prints Him in doors has forever spoilt the top left print for me after pointing out it looks like Professor X finding mutants with Cerebo in the X-men movie *sigh* 





My original plan had been to make this quilt 3x4 blocks, to be a throw sized quilt, but once I'd reached that point I still had more fabrics shouting out to be used so figured what the heck and went bigger. 




I felt the need to back it with cotton lawn too for a really soft snuggly quilt. I went with Mystery food in Navy (one for the prints I've used on the front of the quilt) from  Sarah Watts Tokyo Train Ride collection and it feels Ah-mazing! 



With all of the soft textures and muted colours it really would've been rude not to add some perle cotton and hand quilting. 

 Hopefully after a few more seasons of Law and Order & The Originals   (highly recommended for Vampire and Werewolf teen drama) I'll have a finished quilt to show you! 


I thought I'd share some photos form my 5th beginners class at the shop (which I did remember to take photos of!) These classes have been going since November and are always great fun. We cover the basics of patchwork and quilting with the ladies getting to take home a project at the end of the class. This time we were making cushion covers from a 9 patch block with straight line machine quilting.




Perfect point matching first time! 



and a final photo of the students with their almost finished cushions, I believe hand stitching the binding down that evening with a glass of wine was on the cards for a few ladies! 



My next project is to sew up A Summer sampler quilt As we are hoping to offer this as a class over the summer holidays and someone needs to make a class sample :D 




Wednesday, 8 April 2015

Easter Holidays, Etsy, Four Winds quilt and a sulky cat.

We're only 8 days in to April but thanks to some time off from my day job I've managed to get some sewing done. I've been posting on Instagram rather a lot over the holidays but thought I'd best get back to my blog and share some pics here too. 
So here are some photos of my month so far, I hope you enjoy the peek.


 Easter days at the beach, we've been heading out for a walk a day over the holidays & the beach is my favourite place to go.



Three customer quilts just needing binding Eeek! I had a large customer order come through at the end of Feb, they are due out the door by this weekend. I. Can. Not. Face. Binding. Them.



Four Winds quilt inspired by Jaimes cotton & steel version & too big to fit on my design wall! This has been my "get away" project, the one I have been planning in-between the Etsy order :) 


Due to all of the time out walking and sewing I think Issabella was wanting some extra attention so she climbed in my scrap basket, she isn't normally allowed in my sewing room so I think this may have been a touch of kitty revenge!

Wednesday, 4 March 2015

Modern building blocks by Moda is now a brick short!


I will admit it, I jumped on the Moda Modern Building Blocks pattern like a pattern crazed, fabric hoarder when it came onto my quilty radar (months after everyone else had bought and started making theirs!) 

Lovely blog readers I paid £14 for a pattern, made one block out of it and stalled.
I do love the idea of this pattern so much and have loved watching all the progress photos popping up allover the internet. 
My problem has been...I really don't get on with that kelly green fabric!
 It has been a total revelation that one colour, in a project, can put my sewing mojo on hold to the point that I have to stop and re-evaluate the whole thing. So executive decisions were made, Issabella was consulted, and I have chosen to make the block into a "stand alone" baby quilt. To be fair its big enough, 36" square makes for a good sized baby/lap quilt so all hasn't been lost. It even managed a mix of machine & hand quilting And a funky backing fabric, I can't remember its name but I'm pretty sure its by Jay McCarroll. (I just know my bolt of britten nummer is in a huff)

So I'm now left wondering where I should place Modern building blocks on my list of "Must make quilts" It's quite a large list. so large in fact I'm thinking of giving it its own page on the blog...