Houston, we have a finish!

Stop what you’re doing, pour a little bubbly libation and raise a tiny toast.  Di has actually finished a quilt!

It’s this lovely baby - “Chocolat” – made for my Dear Someone’s birthday a couple of weeks ago. As I told you previously, I used the fabulous cheater yardage from Moda’s “Chocolat” range to make my quick and easy centre, since I lacked both time and energy to take on anything more complex. Moda’s “Peace on Earth” range co-ordinates beautifully with “Chocolat”, so I simply added a couple of borders in warm, winter red, muted teal and chocolate tone-on-tone.Then I finished it off with red binding. It’s stitched now, but half the binding was still pinned when the big day came – ever tried to give someone a gift, at the same time warning that it might give a nasty scratch? – and it does need a little more quilting in the final border.  Oh, and a few threads snipped (see first close-up above).

But don’t let that stop you raising your glass.  Please be happy for me!

Faking it!

Yesterday I took my sewing machine off to my friend 'blogless Di's' place where we spent a fun, and reasonably productive day (as productive as you can be when you're constantly laughing, and contending with two adorable golden retrievers and a schnoodle underfoot looking for cuddles and attention!)

Di is making an eye-catching baby's quilt with appliqueed teddy bears, in bright zingy colours, and we chose colours and cut out the fabrics for the corner squares of the border. I hope she'll let me post a photo of her quilt here when it's finished because it really is starting to look spectacular.

Of course I took advantage of having a few hours away from my Dear Someone to work on his "Chocolat" quilt in secret. I'm loving this cheater fabric! See what a difference my simple stitching makes. I just used my walking foot to puddle slowly around each hexagon shape and - voila! - fake pieced hexagons!

Cheers,

Easter Chocolat

No, that’s not a typo. 

I’ve started using some of my very precious Moda “Chocolat” fabric (along with some from the “Peace on Earth” range, which co-ordinates beautifully) to make a Dear Someone a lap quilt for his birthday in a few weeks.  His study gets so chilly during the winter months and I thought a cosy, but masculine, quilt that he can put over his legs as he’s sitting reading and doing his sermon prep might keep him toasty warm.

The problem is that Dear Someone spends so much of his time working here at home that it’s hard to keep a project like this a secret.  So far, though, I’ve been quite proud of my sneakiness. 

While he was out at church on Good Friday afternoon I managed to whip up the quilt top. 

The hexagons took a while ……

No they didn’t.  Just kidding :-))  It’s actually a cheater fabric. Once I’ve machine quilted between them I’m hoping those hexagons will look good enough to fool the non-quilter into thinking I’ve spent hours and hours piecing them together. 

And exactly how am I going to accomplish all this surreptitious machine quilting?  Let’s just say there might be a couple of stitching days coming up at my friend Di’s place! 

Such sneakiness!