First Quilt finish for 2015

I have just finished hand sewing the binding on a baby quilt.
My first Quilt finish for 2015.

My daughter asked me to make a quilt for a friend who is expecting a baby in about a month's time.  The parents know it is a boy and my daughter loves Overall Bills so they had to be part of the design. DD hand blanket stitched a few of the blocks but the design, fabric choices etc were my ideas.  The parents lived in Australia for some years so as I had a small piece of Koala bear fabric I included that as the centre block.  My intention was to have Overall Bills walking in different directions throughout the quilt as if they were seeking the koalas.

Finding Koalas

 

The quilt is vibrant, much brighter colours than in my photograph.

I pieced the backing, using some of the fabrics used in the quilt front.

The pieced backing:

  

 

The Overall Bills were hand blanket stitched and I echo quilted with Perle cotton around each appliqued figure.  Otherwise the quilt was machine quilted.

I used two of the Pearl bracelet fabrics I won last year in a Giveaway - almost nothing of those two pieces are left!  Lots of small scraps were used to make the Overall Bills.  Everything in this quilt came from my stash......... nothing extra was bought at all.  Just how I like it!

Passing it on to my DD this weekend, so she has it ready for when baby puts in an appearance.

 

Never too old to learn

I have been Quilting since 1997 and made so many quilts that I cannot even remember them all.
However, I was never a sewer until I started making Patchwork quilts. 

I hated the year of sewing we had to do at Grammar School: the teacher didn't have the patience to explain to a girl like me who didn't have a clue about sewing machines!

After I qualified as a Primary School teacher I attended an evening class for Dressmaking but again it didn't really thrill me. 

When I was in my mid 20s my mother-in-law gifted me her old machine when she replaced it with a Bernina and when our daughter started ballet and tap dancing I was forced to use the dreaded machine to make costumes for the various Dance Shows Caroline was in.  Oh dear, the ups and downs of those costumes!  I once had to make a proper net tutu on a fitted satin strappy bodice.  Lots of downs with that one but I got there in the end.  I'll let you into a secret.................... that tutu is still hanging in the Guest room wardrobe as I just cannot part with it ( too many hours of sewing went into that dress).

Fast forward to 1997 when I got bitten by the Patchwork and Quilting Bug.  I HAD to conquer my fear of sewing machines and I managed straight stitches OK..... nothing else, nothing fancy and certainly NO machine quilting!  I tried it once and nearly ruined a lovely baby quilt so it was back to hand quilting for ever as far as I was concerned.  I love hand quilting and like the effect it gives the quilts.

However last Sunday I decided to make an I Spy Playmat for a baby born a couple of days before.  Baby Caspian is part of our extended family and I know playmats are useful for babies to lie on and kick and have their "tummy time".  In addition it can double up as a Moses basket and crib quilt and even keep him warm and cosy in the car or when he is being cuddled.

In an afternoon I chose the patches and sewed them together into a top.  Next day on went the bright yellow spotty border and the following day I sandwiched it ready for quilting.  Then I heard a family member was going to visit the new baby on Saturday so, if I could finish the quilt in time he could deliver it by hand.  Much safer than trusting it to the postal system.  In order to meet this deadline I would have to machine quilt!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I bought a walking foot almost three years ago but had never been able to work out how to put it onto the machine - that sticky up pokey rod flummoxed me.  So I asked my good friend Ruth to show me how to out it on when our Patchwork Group met at my house on Thursday. She put it on (I hope I can remember how next time!) and after lunch I set to, sewing up and down either side of all the seam lines.  And I DID IT!  It's really good, I didn't stress about it and the finished grid is perfectly acceptable.  I am so thrilled with myself, you can't imagine!

So by Friday evening I had a completely finished, bound and labelled (my own hand embroidered label) quilt which was delivered to baby Caspian yesterday.

Which just goes to show YOU ARE NEVER TOO OLD TO LEARN!

And here it is!

 

 

 

Can you see my first-ever machine quilting on the back?

 

This quilt came together so easily.  I enjoyed rummaging through my stash to find 49 different fabrics to use.  Many of them were novelty prints but I also incorporated some African fabrics I bought a few years ago and never found a suitable project where I could use them.  However I like the animal skin prints mixed up with the more traditional boy fabrics.

 

Another friend had bought the remains of a bolt of fabric half price in a sale and offered friends the chance to buy a metre from her.  The pale yellow and pale cream checked fabric had been in my stash for perhaps a year.  Do you know it was the exact size for my Playmat? 

 

The trimmings have been trimmed to a 2.5" strip and three 1.75" strips for Alison to use in her Soy Amado Project.

I am busy making some more blocks for Alison and also adding some strips for her to use as sashings and bindings. Alison joins up the strips to make her scrappy bindings and uses a variety of strips for  joining the QAYG blocks to make her delightful colourful quilts for the Children's Home in Mexico. She has now completed 19 quilts ....... check them out in her Soy Amado Group on Flickr.

 

So, from a very happy bunny, I wish you a lovely Sunday!

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.

 

 

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.