It has taken me a few days to get to this post. Blogger was doing weird things with my pictures and I gave up in the end. Luckily he seems to be behaving himself tonight so hopefully this will post without any further ado!
I finished the pink half-square triangles bonanza and whizzed it over to my friend's newborn last week. I was in such a rush to finish that I didn't quite make it - I literally had to sit in her lounge and finish hand-sewing on the label, while gooing and gaaing at the baby of course (so it took me forever!!) Unfortunately I didn't get any more photos of it. I stipple-quilted this one - my first attempt! Looks pretty good, but I thought I would need a bit more practice, sooooo... in a few idle moments on the weekend (yes I surprise myself too - idle moments, I'd forgotten they even existed!!) I whipped up this one:
The truth is, about 10 months ago I purchased a Birdie charm pack, and that very same night I chopped all the charms in half and sewed them back together again, yielding a pretty stack of double coins. Then they sat in one of my fabric bins. Until a few days ago. Out they came, combined with a few charms from some extra Birdie FQs I'd picked up along the way, some sashing strips were cut, extra bits added to either end of most of the rows to make them appear as if they're floating, and ta-da. A finished quilt top.
Would you believe I have even got the batting sorted for this one, and another Birdie strip to use for the binding. The backing is another matter, but I'm sure I can cobble something together pretty quickly. I am not terribly fussed - I had intended this would be more of a 'practice' piece that my daughter might use as a cuddle quilt. It is pretty big though - more than big enough to cover her cot.
Some more works are in progress, including a big pile of cutting which awaits me in order for my month in the
Fresh Modern Bee 2 to begin - how exciting! But more on that later....
More works in progress - some long-promised pillows/cushions for my two little boys. These are based on patterns by Kellie of Don't Look Now - she has whole quilt patterns for the cars and the monsters which I would love to tackle at some point in the future! Hopefully before my boys get too big...
It has taken me a few days to get to this post. Blogger was doing weird things with my pictures and I gave up in the end. Luckily he seems to be behaving himself tonight so hopefully this will post without any further ado!
Well after many hours (I don't like to think about how many!) Willow is finally complete (OK, I admit I still have to hand stitch the binding down, but that doesn't count, right?) Sooooo happy with this, and even though there is something slightly irksome about the wonky swirls in the top right hand corner of the quilt (why didn't I pick somewhere a bit less conspicuous to start?), it is kind of satisfying to notice how much better my technique has become through doing this project. I'm so proud of it.
Just had to share with you also a little binding accident. This has never happened to me before, but it was inevitable really. I don't know about you but I struggle with the last bit of joining the binding together with a mitred seam. It is just so unbelievably fiddly and I can never remember exactly how to put it together. Anyway, I thought I'd managed it, after about 10 minutes of wrestling and only a couple of swear words, when I went to iron the seam open (and yes I trimmed it first!! Big mistake!!) I realised that the bloody thing was twisted. There is no fudging a twisted binding I quickly discovered. And now thanks to the trimmed seam allowance I had even less fiddling room. All is well that ends well and I succeeded in covering up what was an extremely dodgy seam. You wouldn't even know!
I even added a hanging pocket. Really! How organised! I amaze myself sometimes. This is going to go up on my daughter's bedroom wall. And hopefully she'll love it for a very long time.
