Adding to my stash

Over the last couple of weeks I have been hand quilting a Bonnie Hunter 'Wonky Wishes' style quilt. 
I made a very similar one last year which was gifted to my step granddaughter's baby girl Ella. 
It was so well received - many photos of Ella show her lying on the quilt, gazing at the colours and trying to touch the different patches - and I so enjoyed making it that I decided to make another.
I finally finished it the day I discovered the new baby( mentioned in yesterday's post) had been born and was a boy. So this quilt would not be suitable for Tommy and into my Finished baby quilts stash it will go!

 

 

When I first discovered this particular Bonnie Hunter design it was a Free Pattern on her website.

Now, however, it is a pattern you buy through her Shop, just click on the tab at the top of her blog page (quiltville.blog). It currently costs $10 US.

 

I have called the quilt "Girly Stars" but I expect it will get another name when it is finally gifted.

 

 

As you can see there are 4 stars to every block.

Using 12 blocks plus sashing and borders as I have done makes a large quilt, 40" x 54", so it can be used for years: initially as a playmat/for cuddling the baby and then is large enough to be used as a topper on baby's first bed.

However, when I make it again (I already have some Baby Boy stars made up) I think I will just use 9 blocks which will make a Baby Quilt more the size I normally make.

 

The pink sashing and border is a Kona solids fabric, cut at 2.5" and cornerstones are from scraps of  a Riley Blake Owl fabric.  The original large piece has been used in a lot of projects over the last 2 or 3 years and I literally only have scraps left. These cornerstones were already cut to size, stashed in my 2.5" squares box.  In fact, all the squares used in this quilt came from that box - the only fabric cutting required was for the sashing and borders. This is a tip I picked up from Bonnie Hunter's Scrap busting System.
Lots of hand quilting with Perle cotton in this quilt.  My choice as I like hand quilting and I think the double row of stitches around each star make them stand out from the background. Bonnie Hunter machine quilts most of her quilts on a long arm so her finished Wonky Wishes is a little different from my finished look.

Linking up to Mrs Sew & Sow's Scraptastic Tuesday Link Up.

I am now working on another Commission quilt. The baby was born this week so  know I am making another Boy Quilt.  Such fun!

 

Completing a WIP

When I was putting away fabrics and part finished items a couple of days ago I was surprised at how much fabric, scraps and threads I had.  Too much to put away unless I have a big sort out.  I don't have time for that at present but it will have to be done in the fairly near future as I don't always know where certain things are and I will be wasting time hunting for a certain bit of fabric, notion etc.

That made me decide to definitely finish some WIPs that are already neatly stashed in a plastic bin in my sewing room.  There are also sets of blocks in there - some were from Bees I took part in a few years ago.

Yesterday I took out the almost completed top which was on top of the pile in this box.  It only needs borders to be finished. For the backing I decided to use a lovely piece of fabric recently donated to me by a patchwork friend. It's a good sized piece, measuring 56" by 70", more than big enough to back this quilt, with some sizable pieces left for a future project.

Here is the top, backing and possible border fabrics:

 

 

 

I added the first border using the same lilac Kona Cotton I had used for the sashing.

 

This measure 40" x 45", already a good size for a baby quilt.
Now I am wondering if I really need to add a second border and, if so, which of the four fabrics should I use? What do you think?

As I won't be doing any sewing for the next 10 days or so the decision can be left on the back burner - or in this case, laid out on the bed in my sewing room! I will bind the quilt with the backing fabric and I think that may just be enough of a pop of colour to pull together all the colourful Crumb blocks and define the edges of the quilt.  .....................  I think I have already talked myself out of adding another border and that will help me finish the quilt faster.  I have a baby girl in mind for this quilt and as she was born a couple of months ago I do need to finish the quilt.

 

Using up Crumb Blocks

As an avid follower of Bonnie Hunter I am always making Crumb blocks as a leader and ender project.
I usually cut them at 4" square and collect in an old biscuit tin.  The tin was overflowing so I decided to put some together to make a quilt top, combining  ideas from Gwen Marston's book "Liberated String Quilts" and, of course, Bonnie!

A year or so ago I made a Cornerstones Quilt ( Gwen Marston' s idea) using single 4" blocks and sashing them as suggested in this pattern:

 

I am sure I have seen 4 small crumb blocks made into a 9 patch ( Bonnie's blog, Flickr, not sure where) so I pieced together pairs, just as they came out of the tin, no over-thinking as this is a Scrap Quilt!

 

 

Here's my string of 4" blocks sewn into pairs:

 

 

Then I snipped them into pairs of 2s, left them 'webbed' and easily put them together in a 4 patch block.  I did pin the centre but it really wasn't necessary as this webbing idea gets the blocks lined up beautifully.

 

 

Can you see the 'webbing"? It's the tiny thread holding together the pairs between the left hand side of the joined pairs.

 

 

And here they are, all sewn and pressed, a really colourful bunch:

 

 

I am now finishing the sashing of the blocks to make another Cornerstones Quilt.

 

I am using a lilac Kona cotton and a couple of scraps which tone well with the lilac to make my 'cornerstones".  I am assembling this exactly as Gwen Marston shows in her book. But as my blocks are larger I have cut the sashing and cornerstones at 3" instead of 2.5".

 

The cutting didn't take long - even cut up the remaining cornerstone fabric scrap into some 3" squares and a strip for my Scraps Stash - and then chain pieced the sashing onto the blocks.

So far I have only completed one of the cornerstone-sashed blocks but I accomplished so much in a short time yesterday.

 

This is where I got to:

 

And that's where it stays at present.  I'm off to London with my husband for the weekend, setting off for the train station quite soon. We are going to a couple of exhibitions at the National Gallery and the Dulwich Gallery, plus a bit of shopping and sitting and reading in book shops!  Loads of walking of course, catching lots of tube trains where you walk miles along underground tunnels so my Fitbit will be working overtime.  I'm hoping to get some amazing totals on my weekly report next Tuesday!

Happy sewing!

 

 

 

 

 

 

QAYG String Quilt finished

So pleased to finish my QAYG String Quilt today.
I sat in the garden enjoying our beautifully hot sunny day hand sewing the binding and embroidering the label.  Now all ready to post tomorrow!

I loved making the QAYG blocks, using lots of scraps of "Boy type" fabrics, including some scraps I have been given recently.  I also needed to augment them by cutting strips from fat quarters and yardage from my stash.  It's amazing how much fabric you use making strip blocks.
I used a variety of blue fabrics for the back of the blocks, including some novelty prints.  All of these appeared in the strips too.

A great variety of fabrics, so lots and lots of I Spy opportunities from elephants to insects, and space ships to bird houses!  Even some penguins and pukeko (swamp hens) from New Zealand.

 

Can you see the pukeko, bottom left?  The bright blue birds with red beak and legs? They are almost as bright a blue in real life!

 

 

 

 

And here's what it looks like on the back.  I used a lemon Kona Cotton to join the QAYG blocks, hand sewing the joining strips on the back.

 

 

 

Two more close ups to show some of the many different fabrics used in this quilt.

 

 

And the finished quilt, 63" inches square.  Very heavy as my husband will testify, as he held it up for me to photograph!

 

 

 

I have to say I found joining the blocks quite hard.  Joining the blocks into rows was OK but joining the long rows together was a challenge.  The weight of the quilt was unwieldy and dragged the 1/4" seam line off so many times. A lot of unpicking was done.

 

However I am pleased with the result and can't wait to see how this quilt is received by the 3 year old boy who will have it.  I only know of this little chap through his Mum's blog that I follow so hope they will both enjoy playing I Spy and that he will love being warm and cosy in the winter.

Zigzags for New Zealand

During the past few months I have been busy making baby quilts, often using tiny scraps of fabric to create Crumb Blocks and turning them into baby-sized quilts.

There were several babies due this year, mostly grandchildren of friends, so I had lots of places for the finished quilts to go.

A few days ago Annabel was born in New Zealand and I then had to decide which of four finished quilts to send.  I enlisted the help of a friend who had popped round for coffee and we auditioned them.
Mildred loved the Zigzag one! She returned to it over and over again, finding all the parts of owl's faces, cat's eyes, etc and declared that this had to be the one because Annabel would love picking out all the I Spy elements in the Zigzag scraps.

So, here it is, now fully labelled and about to be parcelled up for posting to New Zealand on Monday.

 

And a photo of the hand embroidered label:

 

 

This will be the 4th baby quilt I have sent to NZ this year!  There must be a Baby Boom going on over there.

 

WIp turned into a finished Quilt top

Continuing with my New Year's Resolution to use up fabric in my stash and complete WIPs that were languishing in my sewing cupboard, I had a very profitable afternoon yesterday.

About a year ago I started to make a Plumb Quilt from Emily Cier's book Scrap Republic.
I made four of the six rainbow bands, sorted out the fabric for the other two bands and also some neutral fabrics that I thought would be suitable for the scrappy borders.  And then, for a reason I can no longer remember, it was put into a plastic bag and popped into my sewing cupboard.

And there it stayed until yesterday.  It only took me 3 hours to turn my WIP into a lovely little quilt.  I increased the width of the borders and the completed top measures 41" x 33", so a nice Baby Quilt size.

Here are some photos:

And two close ups of part of the rainbow bands and scrappy borders.

 

 

Many of the rainbow strips are fabrics I have received in recent Swapbot Swaps, the rest oddments from my scrap bags.

So I can honestly say that this quilt top has cost nothing to make ( apart from the cost of thread).

I was extremely pleased with the top; the neutral scrappy borders really show the rainbow bands off well.  My husband made my day when he told me he thought it was the best quilt top I had ever made.  He said it reminded him of an abstract work of art!  I love it even more knowing that!

Tomorrow I am going to a new Patchwork Group where there are tables to use for sandwiching your quilts. So I am taking my Rainbow Bands top with me so I can get it ready for quilting.  It will be lovely not to have to crawl around on my sewing room floor to do this job!

In a moment I am going to cut the binding for my current quilt, the Crumb quilt Cornerstones one.

I hope to machine the binding on so that I can take that with me as well tomorrow.  Who knows, I might even have time to start to hand sew the binding on the back of the quilt as the group meets for about 3 hours.

A productive weekend.  I hope you have been equally happy with your sewing output this weekend.

 

Kona cottons for my stash

I've been using a lot of Kona cottons recently in my Scrap quilts and had run out of some of the colours I like to keep on hand - yellow, aqua, bright pink etc.  I discovered from reading some quilting blogs that Fabric Shack is still keeping to their $12 flat rate envelope for posting overseas even though the US Mail prices have shot up. So I decided to buy some replacement colours, 9 yards in total which they can fit into the $12 envelope. This is a really generous offer as the actual postage was almost $24 and it arrived in just a few days.
There are so many beautiful colours to choose from, no idea how many there must be in total, so it was quite a challenge to pick a few out. 

This is what I decided on:

From front to back of the chair they are:  Banana         Mango
                                                                  Green tea      Kiwi
                                                                  Robin egg     Regatta
                                                                  Thistle           Bright pink

Aren't they gorgeous?  Looking at them through their clear plastic bag made my mouth water!

I will be using the Regatta in the Baby boy quilt I am currently making.  Made all the blocks but they need to be sashed in some way as they are wonky different-sized blocks and I think the Regatta should do the trick.

Another finish for 2013

I've had a busy week, finishing one quilt, sandwiching a WIP quilt top and two little premature baby quilts ready for hand quilting and labelling a little quilt I made exactly one year ago.

Firstly, my finished Zigzag Quilt:

 

I am so pleased with this quilt, all made from stash, nothing new bought at all. 

A few statistics:

Quilt measures 40", which I think is a nice size for a cot quilt/playmat.

I used 72 of my completed 4" Crumb blocks and paired those with 4" squares of yellow, orange and ash Kona Cottons to make the 144 HST units. 

Borders cut at 2.5" from a bright orange polka dot fabric I also had in my stash ( just a small piece of that left now)

Bound in a marbled effect bright green fabric which was sent to me recently in one of the Swap bots I joined.  I had a fabulous parcel of scraps from Shevvy, several of which were very generous sized pieces, including this green one.  Again, I have a little left over.

Hand quilted with a variegated yellow and orange Perle cotton.  I just outlined the zigzags and quilted 1/4" inside the borders.

 

Exactly a year ago I made my first Freckles Quilt fron Emily Cier's Book Scrap Republic. I didn't have anyone in mind for the quilt and put it away with my pile of finished quilts. However, a good friend has recently become a grandmother again so I decided this pretty quilt would be an ideal gift for little Nisha. 
I have embroidered a label ( I have called the quilt Rainbow Bubbles) and sewn it onto the quilt and it is now ready to be mailed.

Here's a reminder of the quilt:

This Close up shows how the circles are constructed from strips of scraps joined together.  It's so effective, especially as the concentric lines of hand quilting make the circles pop out of the background fabric.  I shall have to make another of these quilts!  Again, the quilt was all made from scraps I had in my stash as I even pieced the background of this quilt.

There are three babies due in April and May, all grandchildren of New Zealand friends so I am making a few cot quilts to add to my little stash of finished cot quilts. My Zigzag Quilt was added this week and I also decided to turn a quilt top I made some months ago into a baby quilt.  It's orange, blue and lime green, featuring a lovely Owl fabric.  Simple squares and rectangles.  I managed to find enough pieces of fabric in my stash to stitch together for the backing and sandwiched the quilt a couple of days ago.  The batting is a pale green one made from recycled plastic bottles, a Cot sized piece I won in a Giveaway ages ago.
I even had enough of the batting left over to use for two Premature baby quilt tops that were also sitting in my WIP box. Last night I sandwiched those together, backing them with more of the vintage sheet I used as backing for my Siblings Together quilt.

So, all in keeping with my New Year Resolutions to finish WIPs and to use up my stash!

So, a productive week!  I can now enjoy looking after our little 3 year old granddaughter this weekend, all sewing put safely away, out of reach of little hands!

Have a great weekend and do comment on this post if something has caught your eye.

 

 

 

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!



Another Crumb Quilt

I so enjoy making these little premature baby sized Crumb Quilts.  Completed another one last week, this time using leftover strips of aqua Kona Cotton for the sashing.

I have two commissions on the go at present so as I am sewing those I create crumb blocks, joining tiny fabric scraps together instead of my usual thread catchers!  I now have lots of crumb blocks sitting in a biscuit tin ready for me to make more little Crumb Quilts!

So, here are my two finished premature baby sized Crumb Quilts.  When I have a few of them I shall donate them to my local hospital.