Creatures, Great and Small is completed

I accomplished what I intended to do yesterday and sewed on the binding for my latest baby quilt.

I didn't think of a title for this quilt straight away.  Because of the rows of elephants and rows of various creatures in the appliqued circles and Happy Blocks I originally decided to call it
 "Animals on Parade" but then didn't think that was quite accurate as there were caterpillars, butterflies, pukeko and hens included. I expect they are technically part of the Animal Kingdom but decided on "Creatures, Great and Small" instead.

Coincidentally I noticed Cathy's post yesterday (Sane, Crazy, Crumby Quilting) was called "All creatures great and small" but she is doing hexies.

A few photos:

The completed quilt

 

 

 Two close up of some of the "Creature" fabrics and Perle hand quilting:

The backing:

 

And a close up:

 

As I said yesterday nothing was bought specially for making this quilt, everything was in my stash.

The backing was a piece of fabric I bought at a reasonable price at the Festival of Quilts, maybe last year or perhaps the previous year - the time goes by so quickly! I wasn't sure whether it would be large enough, but it fitted just right, only strips to cut off when I trimmed the quilt. I have been very good and trimmed those strips and added them to the relevant bags of my Strings stash.  So they will someday appear in a future quilt!

There is a lot of work in this quilt: the fussy cut creature fabrics, the fusible webbing process, hand quilting and hand blanket stitching around the circles etc. I also spent quite a time designing the quilt and finding suitable fabrics from stash.
I am delighted with the result and now hope the new Mum who will receive it will enjoy using it for her baby and that it will get lots of use. It's a good size, 47" x 39" so it should be useful for a long time.

The joy of giving

In my last post I wrote about a Spider Web Quilt that my Patchwork Group was making for our youngest member Sarah.
It has not been made for the usual reasons we gift quilts to members: a 'Big" birthday, 60, 70, 80, 90, even 100! Or because someone has been ill or receiving treatment.  It was because Sarah is so much younger than all of us we thought it was about time she received a quilt as over the years she has contributed to everyone else's! And we knew she would be thrilled!  And we were thrilled to make it for her and anticipate her surprise.

Sarah makes a lot of baby quilts: for friends and also commissions from friends and we know she loves bright colours and hand stitching with Perle threads. We also knew she loved the Spider Web pattern as we used that last year for a 60th birthday gifted quilt.

A No-brainer then to make Sarah one. We used a fine pale cream muslin (from Ruth's stash) for the background kites and strips of all the colours she loves. 

The result was this lovely quilt:

 

Everyone in the Group contributed strips from their stash and we shared them out so there was a continuity of colours and fabrics throughout the quilt.

Here's a Close-up of A Close-up of some of the spider webs.e Spider Webs.

I finished the quilt off by tying the centres of each web and sewing a button in the centre of each kite star. Ruth provided the buttons from her stash as she had a packet of buttons in exactly the colours we has used in the quilt: red, green, hot pink, shell pink, orange and green.

My attempt at an "arty" photo, the quilt draped over my armchair!

And the backing which was pieced:

Win, our 100 year old member has been in hospital and a convalescence home for a few months so she  recently asked a friend to sort out lots of fabrics for our Group. We all chose a few pieces and made a donation to Win's favourite Charity and then the rest we have kept as our "Group Stash" to use in further Group Quilt projects. The lovely soft flannel mauve and white checked fabric and the fuchsia pink binding fabrics both came from Win's fabrics. The piece of flannel was not quite large enough so Lynne found a lovely strip of fabric which matched so beautifully with the checked fabric.

This morning was our last Patchwork meeting before Christmas so we presented it to Sarah today.
She was utterly amazed at the gift, thrilled with the choice of design, the colours, the softness, etc etc!

In fact she was almost in tears as she had never imagined receiving a quilt.  Sarah sat with it on her lap for the rest of the morning and said she was going to have it tucked round her knees when she watched television this evening. 
We couldn't have wished for a better response!  Giving is such a joy, isn't it?

Finished baby quilt - Robots in Space

On Thursday I finished hand sewing the binding on my latest Baby boy quilt. As the weather was actually quite pleasant and sunny yesterday I took the opportunity to take some photos outside. 
The first one was held up by my 5 year old granddaughter who then decided her arms were tired so my daughter was asked to complete the job.

 

And then a couple of close ups:

 

 

 

 

I am SO pleased with this quilt.  It measures 42" x 34" and is really bright and cheerful, ideal for the baby boy who is due to be born in three weeks' time.

 

I started with 2 gifted strips of funky robots and airplanes.  I made the centre row first, adding Bondaweb to the back of the robots and planes, hand blanket stitching with embroidery floss. Then I just built the strippy quilt around them, finding suitable fabrics and scraps from my stash.  Two of the fabrics used were won in a Giveaway so this quilt hasn't cost me much to make.

 

The quilt came together very quickly and I love the hand quilting in a variegated Perle thread.  It looks great on the back too. Just realised I forgot to take a photo of the back ( using the yellow striped pieced backing I recently blogged about) so I must take some more photos tomorrow.

 

So, everything in this quilt was from stash.  I have 4 of the robot and plane motifs left so  hope to make another baby quilt, using the striped rows in this quilt.

 

It was such fun to design this quilt.  Definitely a unique gift!

 

Creative Use of Stash

As I have been trying to get my stash in order for several years, making loads of Scrap Quilts, cutting up smaller pieces into squares and strips I wholly empathised with Bonnie Hunter's blog post that she wrote a couple of days ago.

As you might imagine the amount of fabric I own and am dealing with is a mere 'drop in the ocean' compared to Bonnie's!  I gazed in awe and wonder at her filing shelves of see-through plastic shoe boxes containing FQs, sorted into colours, one or more box for each colour collection. She even had enough FQs to differentiate between the shades of pinks etc.

But of course Bonnie is a designer, teacher and prolific maker of HUGE quilts whereas I quilt as a hobby, making quilts for family and friends, the local hospital and good causes. I don't have a huge basement as a studio either, just a small bedroom that belonged to my son.

But, I do have a chest of drawers full of fabrics, a bookcase holding books and plastic boxes of threads, ribbons, embroidery floss, tins and jars of buttons, plastic bags and boxes of strips and squares of various sizes, a big box of batting off-cuts and bags of larger pieces of batting, three bags of strips, and tins of small scraps of fabric to use for making Crumb Blocks.  A lot for me to keep on top of and to keep moving from stash to finished quilt.

Very conscious that I need to use up some of this stash, I have been concentrating on using some of the pieces of fabric I re-discovered in my recent Big Sort Out.

I found a lovely Noah's Ark panel - bought so long ago I had completely forgotten I owned it and can't even remember where I bought it.  So, before it got buried again I decided to USE IT UP!  As I sorted I gathered together fabrics, squares and strips that I thought would blend with the panel colours.  Quite an unusual combination of muted colours but I found plenty to make a Boy Baby Quilt.  This morning I managed to use more from that fabric collection to make a pieced backing and it is now sandwiched ready for hand  quilting with a variegated yellow and olive green Perle cotton.

Every single part of this quilt was what I had squirreled away in my Sewing Room and I am pleased with the result.  Even more pleased that this quilt completely uses up stash that has been lying around for far too long.  Of course by the time I trim the quilt for binding I will create yet more scraps and strings which will go back into my stash.  You can't win, can you?

Here's the quilt:

 

And here's the pieced backing:

 

Of course there is another ulterior reason for my Big Sort Out. From 6th - 9th August it is the large Festival of Quilts Show at Birmingham's NEC.  I will be going on three of the days as there is far too much to fit into one visit. On the Friday I will be taking my sister with me so that's a nice opportunity for us to spend quality time together.  There are vendors galore and now I know what stash I have I know where the gaps are: batting, neutral fabrics ( 1/2 metres and FQs ), large pieces of green, yellow and blue fabrics, especially for backings and some solids.  Good job I am making more than one visit so I can carry everything home with me!

Happy sewing!

 

 

Hello World baby quilt finished

I have been making a baby quilt for a baby boy expected mid November.
I decided on a more modern design, using an idea my friend Sarah uses in many of her lovely baby quilts which incorporates the baby's name, appliqued at the top of the quilt.

I put the top together some weeks ago as the Mum-to-be knew she was expecting a boy.  I hand quilted the majority of the quilt using Perle cotton, leaving the top section for the name to be appliqued and the quilting and binding to be done when baby arrived.  Little rascal came a few days early but I finished the quilt quite quickly and passed it along (via another friend) yesterday.

I love the cool colours of this quilt and I think they will match baby's room décor and his Mum's style. Hope so, anyway.  As long as it is used, that's all I want.

The front:

 

A sneaky peek of the cool green and white striped backing fabric:

And a Close up of the appliqued name:

 

 

I hope baby James enjoys his quilt.  It measures 30" x 40" so it can be used in a variety of ways:

as a playmat and for 'tummy time', snuggling with Mummy or Daddy, wrapped around in his pushchair, Moses basket or car seat and, a little later on as a cot quilt.

 

Welcome to the world!

Rainbow Single quilt, finished

I have been having a very busy and productive time sewing and have managed to finish several projects in the last few days.

My latest finish is a large quilt based on Emily Cier's  pattern in her Scrap Republic book.

The quilt design is called Beeline and the pattern is for a baby quilt.  I made a baby sized one last year but decided I had more than enough fabrics to enlarge it to a generous single bed size. 
The finished quilt measures 88" x 54".

I started the quilt back in February when we were in New Zealand and I managed to complete the top by the time we came home at the end of March.  I used lots of rainbow coloured scraps from my NZ stash but took out a few more and many of the neutral fabric scraps I needed for the borders.
Whilst I was there I managed to find a suitable fabric for the backing and, even better, it was on sale at a good price.

So, on and off over the past months I have hand quilted it with Perle cottons. I used cream for the borders and coloured Perles to match the colour of the rainbow stripe.

I love rainbows and this year we have seen lots, both here and in NZ so I have decided to call the quilt Remembering Rainbows.

Showing the backing:

 

I am giving it to a friend's 5 year old daughter, just in time for the winter.  It is a surprise and I shall be handing it over on Monday. Hope she likes it!

All rolled up, ready to gift.

 

 

Shop till you drop

Yesterday saw the first day of the Festival of Quilts 2014 at the NEC, Birmingham.

For 9 years I worked at this Quilt Show as a Quilt Angel but for the last 3 years following my health problems I just visit!

Yesterday I went with my big sister and we had a great day together.  Pat doesn't quilt but she has been a sewer and knitter (she used to make my clothes from when I was a little girl up until I finished college) and she even did upholstery.  However, Pat does enjoy looking at quilts and is always interested in the quilts and bags I produce - some of them have been for her grandchildren. We mostly concentrated on the Competition Quilts, all beautifully displayed and all of a very high standard.  We had fun trying to decide which was our favourite - an impossible task! We had a little look at the stalls and I bought 3 well-priced fabrics.

Today I went on my own with a shopping list in mind.  I mostly make baby and children's quilts so I am always on the look-out for cheaper fabrics to use as backing and binding and also good deals on batting.  Some of my Quilting friends had bought bundles if white Egyptian cotton at previous shows which are ideal as sashing for baby quilts.  Found one of those at an excellent price. Also topped up my supply of machine thread and bought 2 more Perle cottons, a turquoise and a pink as they are colours I use a lot.

Then I went mad on fabrics:  some yardage and lots of FQs at cheap prices. And a Jelly Rolly - the first one I have ever bought.  Got a great deal on batting too so I am now well and truly stocked up.

Here's a photo of my haul:

I will put it all away tomorrow but for this evening I am going to sit down and have a rest.  I have been using a Fitbit for the past few weeks and today I clocked 31/2 miles, walking to and from the train to the Show and walking around the Show.  Good exercise as well as good shopping!