Busy sewing cushions for birthday gifts

At the moment it is a flurry of sewing cushions for gifts. Several friends have "Significant birthdays", an 80th, a 50th and in December a 70th birthday and I have decided to make String cushions for all three.  I have had such marvellous treatment from my physiotherapist, Sue, I decided to make her  a String cushion too!

Here's what I've made so far:

For Sue:

 

And for Doreen's 80th Birthday:

 

 

Finished today, another String Quilt to be gifted in a couple of weeks' time:

 

All three cushions feature Amy Butler fabrics, the first two use a vibrant hot pink and yellow fabric called Chrysanthemum and the turquoise and green fabric is Amy Butler's Daisy design.

I love making String blocks and hunting out scraps to tone and/or contrast with the main fabric.

Now starting a fourth cushion for a Patchwork friend who will be celebrating her 70th birthday in December. I'm really on a roll!


Having a great time sewing at present. I have several baby and children's quilts to make so in between sewing strings together I have pieced a cream background for another I Spy Bubbles quilt, using up several old pieces of cream fabrics I had gathered together for this purpose.  It's for a 2.5 year old little boy, Robert, my husband's cousin's grandson. We didn't know about his expected arrival until it was too late for me to make  baby quilt so Robert had a regular shop bought baby outfit.
When his brother James came along 9 months ago I made an I Spy quilt for him which has been loved and admired by all the family.  As it was such a great hit, when I saw Robert two weeks ago at his Grandpa's birthday party I asked if he would like an I Spy Quilt too?  Yes, please!

Here is James's quilt:

 

I have decided to make another I Spy quilt using the Freckles design from the Scrap Republic book by Emily Cier as I love making them and they are a great handwork project.  I have decided to increase the dimensions by 10" in each direction so I will need lots more fussy-cut "bubbles".

So, the backgound for Robert's quilt is made and I now have the exciting task of looking through all my fabrics for interesting I Spy motifs.

 

At the same party I met another of the same cousin's grandchildren, a delightful 19 months old little girl called Ava.  Again we didn't know about Ava's arrival until the last moment so I hastily stitched a set of burp cloths and two-sided flannel cot sheet to mark her arrival. 

 

 

 

 As I'm making a quilt for Robert I feel I must make one for Ava too.  I have an idea in mind, a strip quilt of various pretty girly pink fabrics.

 

Three more babies due next year, so I have lots of quilts to make!  But I LOVE it!

 

 

Retail therapy

Well, no cutting out and machining going on here at present as we have our daughter and family staying with us. An extremely lively 2 and 5 months old little girl (aka Little Beauty!) is not easy to work around so everything is on hold until they move into their house in about ten days' time.

But I did go to John Lewis and treat myself to some gorgeous Amy Butler fabrics in the sale ( a metre of the top 4 and 0.5 metre of the bottom one) and a new sewing machine. My cheap Toyota model finally bit the dust and I have been using my late mother-in-law's old Janome whilst I considered what model to buy.

I decided I didn't need anything fancy or too pricey as I do straightforward sewing for my quilts. Popped into John Lewis about a month ago and saw this model, liked the price and decided to go home and have a think about it.

However when I went back last week I had another look, still liked it, so here is my NEW Janome!
You can see my old Toyota lurking in the background. I wondered if my local sewing machine repair man might like it for spare parts.

As you can see my new machine is still in its box, I haven't even opened it yet let alone tried it out!  Not until Little Beauty is safely in her own house and I can concentrate on the instruction booklet!

I have managed a little hand quilting when Little Beauty is in bed.  I'm making a cot quilt for my daughter's friend Gemma. It is for her 6 month old daughter.  They are also moving house and Gemma requested pinks, blues and yellows so she could base her Baby's Room colour scheme on the quilt.
Gemma wanted a quilt in the same style as my Emerging Butterflies so here are the two versions:

Emerging Butterflies Quilt

and here is Gemma's Quilt, still being hand quilted.

The outer border and backing is Robert Kaufman's Paradise Pareaus fabric in a fabulous Girly Pink and white!

Now off to watch the Tennis!  My hero Roger Federer is in the Final at Wimbledon so I shall be rooting for him........................ I expect the rest of the family will be on Andy Murray's side!

Another finish, another Freckles Quilt

Suddenly every baby being born is a boy!
A couple of years ago, they were all girls and I was frantically making another girl's quilt to replace the last one I had gifted.
A few months ago I knew of three babies on the way and I made three quilts.  Two were definitely girly colours,

Emerging Butterflies Quilt, my own design

Rainbow Freckles Quilt, my first from the Scrap Republic Book by Emily Cier

The other one my first Freckles Quilt that I had made in an I Spy version.

I Spy Freckles Quilt

The first baby was born in April ............ a boy, so I Spy Freckles was gifted to little Edward.

Quickly I made another I Spy Freckles Quilt, this time with a pale blue background ( I had run out of Kona Aqua!). 

Second baby was born.  This time I was SURE it would be a girl.  Wrong!!! So I Spy Freckles II was sent to baby Elijah along with a knitted blanket and two Crinkle squares.

But I still had my two girly quilts so I rather took my eye off the ball.  After all I was busy creating an Owl Quilt and matching cushion and another cushion for my daughter's friend, Nina.

Then about a week ago I suddenly realised that the third baby which I was expected in July was going to be a boy.  The only one I had known the sex beforehand, and I had no boy quilts left!  Owl Quilt put on one side and I hurridly searched through my stash for fabrics.  The Freckles were no problem as I have loads of novelty fabrics for fussy cutting interesting I Spy bubbles.  But the background was more of a problem.  Not enough aqua or blue left, even if I did some clever piecing as Emily Cier suggests in her book.  How about yellow?  I was certain I had enough of that colour. Oh no, again only small pieces, I had used the rest on another I Spy quilt I made for baby James (see what I mean about all boys being born?)

Now the hunt was really on as I am determined to try to make quilts from fabrics I already have.  Ah yes, that large piece of Kona Ash may be OK.  About a year ago Kona Ash kept popping up in quilts on Flickr and I thought it looked great so the next time I replenished my Kona cottons from the Fabric Shack I ordered 1.5 yards.  However every time I thought of using it somehow it just wasn't the right fabric for that project, so it sat in the drawer.  Until last week.  I hadn't got time to order more Aqua, blue or yellow from America, so it was Kona Ash or nothing!  I had fun fussy cutting the bubbles and used Heat and Bond for fusing onto the background Kona Ash.  Looked OK.  Onto my favourite part, hand blanket stitching using matching embroidery threads.

Now another dilemma.  What backing did I have?  Loads of big pieces of girly fabrics, pinks, flowers etc or pastel baby style ones which really wouldn't have gone with the modern look that the Ash background had created.  Then I found a small roll of Moda 30s Playtime fabric, a remnant I had bought at a good price several years ago.  Time after time I have auditioned this fabric for the backing of a baby quilt and everytime it has been" wrong".  But this time it suddenly seemed just the one.

I decided to hand quilt with Perle cotton in the same Bubble style as I have used with all my previous Freckes Quilts but this time I chose a more dramatic Royal Blue colour ( still remembering the Diamond Jubilee celebrations perhaps?).  I am really pleased with the result, as the bright blue stitching makes the I Spy bubbles "pop" and livens up the pale background.

Again I decided this quilt needed a striking binding and went for a raspberry red dot Amy Butler I had in my stash.  The large spots complimented the Bubble designs going on in this quilt.  So, all finished and I'm pleased with it.  Mum- to -be is a modern sort of girl so I think this quilt will be to her liking...... hope so, anyway! 

And here it is:

I Spy Bubbles Quilt

And this photo shows the backing fabric:

 

Now I can concentrate on making the second cushion for Nina as I want to hand all of her commission items over to her next weekend.  So, I had better get cracking!

Thanks for stopping by!



Owl Quilt Sneaky Peak

One of my daughter's friends asked if I could make a quilt for her 2 year old's bed. Bethany's bedroom curtains had an Owl motif and I was sent 2 fat quarters to incorporate into a quilt which was to be 40" deep and 55" wide, to go across the bottom of Bethany's bed. Two bright fabrics with really cute owls!

So, how to use them?  After much deliberation I decided to use a fusable webbing on the back of the circular owls and applique them onto spotted fabrics which matched some of the colours in the owls; lilac, blue and a soft green. I hand blanket stitched around the owl shapes.

Then I cut the other fabric into sections of owls sitting on branches. These formed the centres of a log cabin style block.  Again I used the lilac, blue and soft green fabrics but to add a bit more zing I framed some with a Michael Miller Ta Da spot in red and an Amy Butler spot in a mustard shade of yellow.  I had great fun arranging the blocks into 5 rows of equal length, adding extra strips of spotted fabrics to make the blocks and rows uniform.

Once the top was machined together I sandwiched ready for hand quilting, using the lilac spot fabric as backing. I have now almost completed the hand quilting but I have taken a few photos to email to Bethany's Mum so she can see how the quilt is progressing.  I am really pleased with how it is turning out and I hope my customer is too!

And here is a close up of some of the blocks.

A lot of work involved but I have enjoyed it!