Last 2 quilt finishes for 2013

I am a fan of Bonnie Hunter's Quiltville blog.  I love scrappy quilts and think Bonnie's ideas for using up small scraps accords with my approach to quilt-making.  Hence my Crumb blocks and the quilts that I create from them.

Another of Bonnie's ideas is her "Leaders and Enders" projects.  Instead of using scrap bits of fabric as Thread-catchers she adds to blocks for her next project.  In this way she sews a whole pile of blocks as a sideline to the quilt she is focussing on.

This is how I make my Crumb blocks and how I have made these two little Premature Baby Quilts:

 

I had been given a huge pile of scrap triangles, trimmings from blocks a prolific quilting friend had collected together.  She knows I enjoy using the tiniest of scraps, so as a series of "Leaders and Enders" projects I first created the small HST squares and then put them together in fours to make the kite-style blocks.

 

I had some of the Rabbit fabric left over from a child's quilt I had made for Ava so cut strips of this to intersperse with the kite-block strips.  Then more scrap string for the borders and I had made two Premature baby sized quilts.

 

I had a quick sort through more small left over pieces of fabric for the backing  and another look through my bag of leftover bindings and I was able to complete the little quilts.  One has pink binding scraps joined together and the other a mixture of blue scraps.

 

 

So, my final two Quilt finishes of 2013.

 

After these were finished I sorted out my sewing room.  Put all the scraps away neatly in drawers and sorted out my Crumb blocks-in -the-making tin so I could leave it with the lid shut!

Then a big dusting and Hoovering session and the room is packed away until 2014.

 

Only one more thing to do now - embroider a label for this quilt:

 

Baby Charlie was born on 11th December so this is a gift to welcome him to the world.  I will post it after Christmas to, hopefully! , avoid it getting lost in the Christmas Post Rush.

 

 

Strangely I have just realised that the Rabbit fabric leftover strips were from Charlie's big sister Ava's quilt!

 

Happy Christmas!

 

 

14th Quilt finished this year

I sewed the binding on to my I Spy Blue Freckles quilt yesterday which makes it the 14th Quilt I have completed so far this year. I am so pleased at this total, especially as 4 of them were UFOs.

Here's my finished quilt:

 

My New Year Resolution was to use up some of my stash and scraps and that really happened with this quilt.

 

• All the 'Freckles" were cut from fabrics in my stash, some have been there for a long time, many of them used in other Freckles Quilts or other child/baby quilts.
• The backing is from a piece I bought several years ago from Spotlight in New Zealand.  It was a bargain and I bought 3 yards to use as backing.  Up until this quilt I have always felt it wasn't quite the "right" fabric for the backing.  However, with this quilt I decided not to be so fussy:  it is a typical baby fabric and although it is a contrast to the front which has such bold colours I think it works.  Being paler shades it shows up the bright turquoise Perle cotton hand quilting very well.
• Again, using my principle of using up I looked in my bag of spare bits of binding, all left overs from various quilts I have made over the years.

This is quite an old photo of my bag of scrap bindings and several of these have already been used.
However, I found two lengths of spotted bindings (I love spotty bindings), one was a pale blue with white spots, the other a turquoise with yellow spots). When I sewed them together they went all around the quilt with about 8" to spare! Perfect. ............... Guess where the spare 8" is?

• The Perle Cotton was also from my stash, a bright turquoise variegated one.  Almost finished it on this quilt but a little left for a future small project.
• The batting was a leftover piece which, when I sorted out my stash cupboard earlier this year, I had measured and pinned on a label with the dimensions.  Very useful when I looked through my batting pieces and found this piece which was exactly the right size!
• Embroidery threads used for blanket stitching the Freckles were all from stash.

The only new fabric in this quilt is the blue background which I bought at the Festival of Quilts in August this year. About 6 GBP per metre.  Got a small bit left to use for framing Crumb blocks or using in a future Strip Quilt, perhaps.

So, a small baby quilt, it measures 30" square.  Ready for the next baby boy.  I know of three babies expected between December and mid April so perhaps this little Freckles quilt will find a home with one of them.

A Close up of some of the Freckles and stitching:

 

And, finally, the backing and hand quilting:

 

A few stats about my finished quilts so far this year:

• 14 finished quilts, 4 of them UFOs
• 8 of the 14 gifted so far: 4 are now in New Zealand, 1 in Germany and 3 here in the UK.

Isn't is lovely to have lots of scraps to use up, whether they are fabric, batting, embroidery threads, bindings or Perle Cotton!

Linking up with Clare's Maybush Studio Brit Linky Thursday blog.

 

 

Rainbow Strippy finished

I have finished my Rainbow Strippy Quilt this week and I love it.

It is based on the Beeline Quilt from Emily Cier's book Scrap Republic.
However, I have increased the size as the one in the book only finishes at 30" square.  That's a nice size for a playmat or pushchair/Moses basket quilt but this will be useful for a cot too.
I made the centre panel around 30" and the borders 5" or so and the bound quilt measures 38" wide by 42" long.

Every single part of this quilt was made from stash:  scrap strips (many of them given to me or ones I received in Swaps), the various colours of Perle Cottons, the batting, binding and also the quilt backing.  I bought this piece of fabric about three years ago and had never found it quite right for any quilt I was making.  Until this one and I decided it went really well. It was obviously meant for this quilt as the size was perfect!  I have just been left with the trimmings which have been added to my strips stash.  Nothing gets thrown away here!

It looks pretty and shows up the variously coloured rows of Perle quilting very nicely.

I added photos of the quilt yesterday onto my Flickr Photostream and added it to the Scrap Republic Group's photos.  As I have made several quilts from the book I now appear as No 1 on the list of most photos in this group.

During the week I have also made another little Preemie quilt top, similar to the one I showed in last week's blog post.  They are both sandwiched ready for quilting and I have started to hand quilt one of them.

I have also sandwiched the Freckles Quilt top I made a couple of months ago and this morning I started to hand quilt this one at my patchwork group. Again this is based on a Scrap Replublic pattern.

Hope you have all had a successful sewing week too.

Linking up with Maybush Studio's Thursday Brit Sewing Linky.

Triangle scraps being turned into Pinwheels

Linking up with Maybush Studio blog on her Brit Thursday Sewing Linky.

I have been continuing to turn my bag of gifted scrap paired triangles into HSTs and then into Pinwheels.  Quite a time consuming task but I am doing bits at a time.

I have now sewn all the paired triangles into HSTs and they are all trimmed to 1.75".  Most of those have been turned into Pinwheel blocks, with about 8 more left to sew into Pinwheels.  Some of the finished Pinwheels have also been trimmed to a scant 3" block.

This is what they are looking like:

 

The top row are waiting to be sewn, the middle row need trimming (not 4 Pinwheels there, but 4 PILES of Pinwheels!) and the bottom row ARE trimmed!

 

As I was congratulating myself on being so productive with the bag of gifted scraps I suddenly remembered a previous bag of paired triangle scraps the same lady had given me several months ago.  At the time I had lots of projects on the go and decided to put the bag away in a drawer.  And then forgot about it!

So, a couple of days ago I looked it out and was a bit non-plussed to find this bag 2 or 3 times the size of the previous one!  Oh my goodness!

 

Here it is!

 

The triangle pairs are literally stuffed into the bag! 100s of them!

For the past hour I have sewn paired triangles together and am now off to press them.  Then I will put all the piles into plastic bags until next week.  Of course I have barely put a dint into the stack of scraps in the bag.

However we have our granddaughter for the weekend, so no sewing can be done then.

I have also finished hand blanket stitching the I Spy bubbles to my Freckles Quilt.  That's now ready to be sandwiched.

And I have done a lot of hand quilting on my Rainbow Beeline Quilt.  It's looking great, the rainbow bands of colour being embellished with a row of largish Perle cotton stitches.

So a lot accomplished on the sewing front this week.  Hurrah!

 

 

 

Sorting out WIPs and tidying up

Had a busy time sorting through the cupboard in my sewing room.  All in a terrible mess! Finished quilts, unfinished WIPs, batting, etc etc. It's a job that I have been intending to tackle for some while but felt daunted by the task so it was put off and put off.

I treated myself to 4 new plastic storage boxes with lids then set about creating some order.
I put all the finished quilts into one storage box, the WIPs into another and smaller pieces of batting and stuffing for cushions into the 2 smaller boxes.  Looking better already!

I was ruthless with very small pieces of batting and threw them away. Sorted the other pieces into similar sized ones, ready for Premature baby or small cot quilts. I was surprised by how much batting I have and will not have to buy any for a long time. Good job as batting is SO expensive these days.

Then I discovered an abandoned quilt which I started many years ago at a Workshop.  It was going to be a Seminole Patchwork single bed quilt in turquoise and purple.  I had made all the strips, each one a different Seminole patchwork pattern and had started to put it together........................ then I obviously lost interest!  Looking at it now I know that I don't like the colours or the fabrics any more and that I will never finish it.  So, I have pressed all the Seminole strips and will pass them on to another quilter I know who has a group of ladies making Linus Quilts from donated fabrics and  left-over blocks.  I am sure another quilter looking at these strips with  a fresh eye will come up with a pretty Linus Quilt.

I found two of my little Premature Crumb Quilts which were almost finished.  I set to and have finished both in the last couple of days.

This one with Blue Sashing:

 

and one with Pink Sashing:

 

 

And now I have 6 ready to donate to the local hospital:

 

 

I now feel justified in starting another project which is on my "To Do" list, the I Spy Freckles quilt for little Robert.  I have made it larger and pieced the background from left-over pieces of cream fabrics.  There are 49 I Spy bubbles which I have fused to the background and this afternoon I started to hand blanket stitch them onto the top. This is my favourite kind of handwork so I am enjoying myself.

 

Welcome to my BLOG!

My first blog!
My passion is quilting so this blog will be about sharing ideas and quilts.
Having seen Emily Cier's book Scrap Republic endorsed so many times I asked for a copy for Christmas. Since then I have made 3 quilts using the Freckles design and also based two Bee blocks on quilt designs in the book.

This is the first Scrap Republic quilt I made:

Then I made two more!

This one has an Aqua background

This quilt has an ice blue background