Sunday, April 22, 2012

Scrappy Sparks Quilt

I got the binding on this quilt only a little while ago after a few hours work on it today.  I'm down to the wire as I am entering it into Canoe Ridge Creations Festival of Half Square Triangles.


It's a quilt for my daughter, she chose the pattern and most of the colours.  I don't know what the name of it is, so I call it Scrappy Sparks Quilt.


The background is white rather than the usual off white I prefer.  The mixture of colours in the half square triangles really stand out next to it.  The border and binding are DS Fabrics.


I made the half square triangles using the method described here so I had lots of bias edges to try and keep from stretching.  It's quilted with swirly diagonal lines, I wanted to keep the quilting fairly simple and not overdo it so that it will be warm and snuggly for Indy.  I'll be handing it over to her later this week!  


I'm really excited to be linking up to Megan's party!

Saturday, April 21, 2012

Lots of quilting to do!

I met a friend for coffee and a trip to Spotlight today.  So I thought I'd better make a list of all the quilt flimsies that I've made, check what size wadding pieces I have at home and work out how much I am going to need to buy.  I was amazed to find that I have eight quilt tops waiting to be quilted!  I have three pieces of wadding that are the right size, so I need quite a few metres of wadding for the remaining five!

We got to Spotlight and were very happy to find that they had all DS Fabrics 50% off.  So after enjoying the thrill of the hunt to get a few that I didn't have, I completely forgot to get any wadding.  I've got plenty to do so it's not really a problem but I do wonder about how easily distracted I am when faced with pretty material!

I finished up these two quilt tops at Sewjourn, one is a long term WIP and the other I started from scratch and finished the same day.

This quilt was started at Sewjourn about 18 months ago.  It's a pattern by Ashley at Film in the Fridge which she made to showcase Tufted Tweets fabric when it was released, called Unfurnished.  It is available free on the Robert Kaufman website.  I call my version my Sweet Unfurnished Meadow, as the print fabrics are all from Sandi Henderson's Meadowsweet and Farmer's Market lines.  Meadowsweet has long been a favourite of mine, and I have quite a stash of it!  Making this quilt has not made much of an impression on it. I also used some lovely shot cottons, and the background is an off white Kona I think.  



The pattern was much harder than I thought, and as you can see it still doesn't lie very flat.  I'm hoping that quilting it with a stipple pattern will improve it.  


The fabrics are actually brighter than these photos, very citrusy and fresh.  I've made it for myself and I'm happy with the design and my fabric choices.

This quilt is a pattern I've made before that is so much fun to put together, especially as it uses on only 8 fat quarters of fabric and the equivalent of a background. You can see my previous one here.  The pattern is Through the Trees by Kate Conklin.


I chose my fabrics around the four prints from the line Too Muchery by Helen Dardik.  The warm chocolate brown background is a Spotlight Prima.  I've used Prima solids for a few projects now and really like them, they are soft and not too thin, and they are available in a good colour range.  


I think I will put a border on this, maybe 5 or 6 inches of the background so that the coloured fabrics are not on the edge of the quilt.

I'm hoping to get some binding onto a quilt tonight so I can enter it into the Festival of Half Square Triangles.   The binding is all ready cut out, just have to put it together.  There is also a bit of quilting to unpick on this particular project, so I'll be busy!




Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Stitching with the gals!

I am lucky to have a few friends who I go to a sewing retreat with a couple of times a year.  Last week we again went away to beautiful Sewjourn in Lancefield.   We sewed away the days and evenings and had a great time. 

Four of us were there for the six nights, and two were able to join us for three nights.  Our seventh girl chose to do some beautiful embroidery and didn't bring her machine.  

Here's most of what we created.



We were amazed when we put everything on the table to photograph it!


I'm going to post photos of what I made while we were there over a few posts.  This lovely lap quilt flimsy is from a pattern by Anorina that appeared in Homespun recently.  Anorina was a member of a bee I was in, and she sells pre-cuts at great prices through her shop which you can find through her blog.

Called Step by Step, it came together fairly quickly although I was glad to have the use of a design wall to lay it out as I sewed the rows.  It helped me to keep the 'step' pattern working.  This quilt pattern uses a couple of charm packs and two different solids.  I was given a charm pack of Salty Aire for Christmas so ordered a second one, and I matched it with a warm eggshell and a light blue.  


I am really happy with this, it was a great way to use these special charm packs.

I'd done a bit of sewing before we left, and got this quilt top together.


I finished the blocks at least 12 months ago, I don't know why I can get quilts to that stage and then put them aside for so long!  My sister had dropped around and made me drag out all my UFO's, and when faced with them all I realised that I had a few that wouldn't take long to get together, and this was one of them.  Of course laying out the blocks so that the colours were distributed evenly was a big challenge as it usually is for me!  It's called Paintbox, and is a free pattern by Elizabeth Hartmann.  It was originally a quilt along Elizabeth's blog, Oh! Fransson.

This close up shows the white fabric I used in the blocks, and the kona champagne that I sashed it with.  I wasn't sure using these colours would work but I think they look really lovely.


I have heaps of quilting to do now!