Ripple (Finished and Featured!)

A few weeks ago, I promised to show you a couple of quilts that have recently appeared in magazines. The quilt I'm sharing today can be found in the Spring issue of Modern Patchwork (that came out in, ahem, April. That's recent, right?) This is Ripple - she's a 96" square beast and was a wee bit tricky to get a full photograph of. 

 
I would have really loved to free motion quilt this quilt, but I decided to save my shoulders and use my walking foot because of the massive size. It was a sensible decision - this is the biggest quilt I've made, and even walking foot quilting it was pretty tricky with the 7.5" throat space in my machine. I ended up quilting a rectangular crosshatch across the diamond design, but only extended the lines out in one direction into the background rather than cross hatching across the whole quilt. I really like the effect, and the texture is lovely. I used wool batting, so it has a little bit of puff and is incredibly warm and snuggly.

This quilt has quickly become our favorite bed quilt. I think I'll be making another version of this quilt from my scrap basket later this year. I'm in desperate need of using some of my scraps, and I'm thinking a rainbow version would be pretty cool (and I'm pretty sure miss 4 would agree)!

I'm hoping I'll be back later this week to share some of what I've been working on lately, and some quilts that my students have been making in the classes I've been teaching so far this year :o)

xx Jess

Finn's Quilt - a Finish!

I am so happy to have finally finished this quilt. I actually started this one back in March, intending to enter it into the Festival of HSTs - but then decided to enter Outfoxed on the High Seas instead. So it sat as a pile of squares for months. I put the top together earlier this month, quilted it and then had a major binding fail. Following that, I had a bit of a tantrum, and kind of ignored it for a few weeks (in my defence I was waiting on some black Kona to arrive to make the new binding ;o) ). And then yesterday I bit the bullet and put the binding on. And it took all of an hour - a lesson to me to get these quick jobs done and not let them drag on forever while a nearly 8 year old harasses me daily about when his quilt will be done...

So. Some pretty pictures! First of all, I am SO glad I took off the green binding and rebound it in black - it looks so, so much better.

It's quilted using 50wt Aurifil thread, in straight lines following the zig-zag pattern - 1" apart in the coloured section, and alternating 1" with 1/4" spacing in the black (my favorite part, actually!). The black is still covered in batting fluff - I think next time I'll use grey or black batting when making a quilt with this much black. I'm not sure I'll ever get all the fluff off.

 Quilts are so much easier to pose than children ;o)

For the back, I used a huge piece of Bright Light (I think that's what it's called) by Alexander Henry that was sitting in my 'backing' stash. It is a great back for a boy quilt - and it's such gorgeous quality fabric! I used white 50wt Aurifil in the bobbin, and it's blended in really well, so you only really see the texture of the quilting from the back.

Quilt Stats:
* Quilt measures about 52" x 70"
* Designed, pieced and quilted by me.

xx Jess

WIP Wednedsay

The little sewing time I've had this week has been spent quilting Finn's quilt. It's probably 90% done and I am so happy with how its coming along. I'll be honest - I hate the process of straight line quilting, but the results are soooo good, it kind of makes it tolerable. 

I've quilted the coloured parts with straight lines 1" apart, following the zig zag pattern in the quilt top, which has given it the most amazing texture. I've used 50wt Aurifil in off white and its worked beautifully (the stitches kind of dissove into the quilt top). I'm really happy I decided to echo quilt - it is totally perfect for this quilt. 

Please ignore the massive amount of batting fluff on the back - and this is after a go over with the lint roller!

I decided to get a little bit fancy in the black sections - they're quite large areas, and I wanted to give them a little more visual interest, so I've quilted 1" apart, then 1/4", then 1" etc. using 50wt black Aurifil. I am totally over the moon with the black sections - it looks amazing! And Finn is thrilled with how it's coming together, so it's a win all around!

Hopefully this will be a finish by the end of this week :o)

Linking up to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced (button in sidebar) - I'm looking forward to checking out what everyone has been up to this week :o)

xx Jess 

Rainbow Snail Trail Mini Finished!

I finished most of this quilt back in February, and had half-stitched the binding down and then it languished unfinished on top of our piano with all the other mini quilts waiting to be hung somewhere (yes, we are very lazy in this household ;o) ). I took me about an hour last night to finish stitching the binding (whilst watching a couple of episodes of Spaced - so excited they are replaying this series!) Cue photos.

Despite the miserable, grey day today, this one was a good little model and behaved itself perfectly for the photos.

A couple on my favorite bush in our garden (such a great colour!)

I quilted this one in the grey areas in straight lines following the edge of the rainbow trails, spacing the lines about 1/4" apart.

Quilt Stats:
Design: my own, using snail trail blocks
Fabric: a range of rainbow scraps (including Lizzy House, Denyse Schmidt, Jenean Morrison, Joel Dewberry) Kona Coal, Kona medium grey
Size: 24" x 24"

This quilt is about 90% HSTs, so I'm entering it into the Festival of HSTs over at Canoe Ridge Creations. Stay tuned for entry number 2 later today!!

xx Jess

Rainbow trail mini - progress

I am a little (well, okay more than a little) obsessed with these blocks at the moment. I'm really enjoying playing around with colours and value with them and seeing what I can create. I've decided to make a snail trail block for my 4x5 Bee hive members (yes I know. MORE of them...) and one of our group asked for rainbow colours with a dark grey background. Cue me trying to work out how to make it work, and pulling a couple of piles of rainbow fabrics (SO much fun - I'd never done it before, but I see some rainbow quilts in my future!)

I decided to make a couple of trial blocks to see how it worked - and then though I might as well make them into a mini while I was at it. So I made four rainbow snail trail blocks over the last couple of nights. My original plan was a layout something like this:

But once I'd made the blocks it just didn't look quite right - not how I'd imagined it. I actually stuffed up the blocks when I sewed the four patches - I wanted the light and dark grey to alternate on the sides (which I think would have looked better). So then I tried flipping tow of the blocks to create this:

Again, it didn't quite look like I wanted - and I didn't like how the eye was drawn to that centre bit. So I flipped them all so that the centre of the mini was the light and dark grey:

I really like this placement. I love the rainbow running around the edges of the quilt, and how the greys look in the centre. So I sewed them together, and was pleasantly surprised by how well the points matched up (a bit of easing required though ;) ) I started quilting it last night with straight lines about 1/4" apart. I toyed with doing dense FMQ on the grey, but the geometric lines in the quilt really sang straight lines so I went with that. I'm pretty happy with how it looks so far:

I don't think I'll quilt the coloured parts at all (or if I do, just do a single line of quilting close to the edge). I'll straight line quilt the corner sections as well.

I'm stoked to nearly have my first finish of 2012 - yay for mini quilts :)

Happy stitching,
Jess

Boys at Play

After working with the girls Children at Play range I was keen to get stuck into my stash of the boys range. I kept this one simple, cutting 6" squares of the prints I had and adding some metro living circles in navy.

I love how it turned out - although I did mix up a couple of the squares when I was sewing the rows together... I quilted it 1/4" away from the seams on both sides.

I did my first pieced back for this quilt too - with a few left over pieces and some blue Kona (hyacinth I think?)

The binding is a red stripe from one of the Dr Seuss ranges, and it suits the quilt perfectly. I machine stitched it and I think I've finally got it pretty much down pat now - it worked really well :)

This one is listed in my madeit shop.

Onwards an upwards... starting another project and getting that done hopefully in time to still quilt my charmed prints quilt for my nephew for Christmas, and my 1001 peeps quilt for my daughter for Christmas...

happy stitching!
Jess

1001 Peeps Doll Quilt

I have been slowly (very slowly) working on a quilt for my daughter using 1001 Peeps by Lizzy House, with Kate Conklin's Fussy Framed Fairytales quilt pattern. I started and finished about four quilts after starting it, but have begun again and am determined to finish it before I start anything else!

I had a few big scraps left over from the fabric and when I saw the doll quilt contest on SewMamaSew, I thought these would be perfect for a doll quilt. I had just received my copy of Block Party (another story all together - but how much inspiration can one book hold? I LOVE it!!) and I was desperate to give a scrappy log cabin block a go - and how much fun is improv piecing? I'm addicted! So Zoe now has a completed doll quilt (but no big quilt...) and I really love it (she does too :) )

I was going to make a few blocks and join them, but got carried away - this is about 20" square.

I had so much fun quilting this - I've decided doll quilts are the perfect way to be a bit more experimental with my quilting - its so much easier to move the quilt around (and doesn't require scrunching metres of quilt up to fit it in!). I quilted this using a variegated pink/purple thread, and spiralled outward from the centre square. I love how it looks, and I'll be attempting it on my big wonky log cabin quilt I am planning...

I'm hoping to have some WIP pics of the big 1001 Peeps quilt up soon (I am really in a purple place with fabric at the moment!)

happy stitching,
Jess

Owls and Spots Baby Quilt

I have had this quilt top finished for a month or so, and rather than finish it off I started a couple of other quilts.

Whoops! I now have two part-pieced quilts on the go, another quilt top ready to quilt, and a birthday quilt to start for my friend's daughter who turns 3 in a couple of weeks. And now I've written it all down I feel quite overwhelmed... I guess I'll just knuckle down and get it done (its a good thing its something I love, hey?)

Anyhoo, I was really undecided about how to quilt it - and even when I was half-way through quilting this one I had a bit of a panic attack and seriously wondered if it was going to look ok. But once I'd finished it and bound it I changed my mind - I really love it! The texture looks great - the lines are uneven widths in the most part, and some are wavy (which was deliberate... although my other-half's first comment was "but some of them aren't straight! and they're all different widths!", which kind of didn't set my heart at ease :/) - but I think it suits the fabric. And I love how it looks on the back of the quilt too.

This one is available for purchase here.

happy stitching!
Jess