Inspiration from Cathy K for my latest RSC finished quilt

 Thanks to Cathy K (Crazy by Design blog) for her Creatures from the Deep Orphan block quilts. They all intrigue me and I look at them all intently, trying to pick up tips and ideas.

I had intended to make a green one from some RSC leftover blocks but it all looked rather dull and I didn’t have a lot of green scraps either so decided to inject a bit more colour by using some yellow blocks too.

I love the finished quilt, measuring 42” square.

I always admire pieced backings, a great way to use those larger scraps and avoid adding to the scrap bag.

However, I got too carried away, using far too many leftover blocks and ending up with a backing too similar to the front of the quilt. So much so I confused myself big time. I loaded the quilt “sandwich” onto my ironing board and started smoothing and pinning only to find the backing was far too short all the way round. What???? After a few rude words, which brought my husband into the Utility Room to see what was going on, I discovered I had confused myself and had muddled the front and the backing. 

Eventually sorted out and I’m pleased with the result. No more complicated over-clever backings for me!

This is the backing

I’ve also done a little trimming of RSC Wonky Stars and using some HSTs to make economy blocks for another variation of a Green and Yellow RSC Finish. So, a good week’s sewing. 

Linking with Angela’s RSC So Scrappy blog. 

String Quilt finish!

Back in the summer I started to make the 144 string blocks I needed for another Heartstrings Quilt.

I finished all the blocks quite a while ago but they were set aside so I could finish more urgent projects.  This quilt is a 70th birthday gift for our very good friend, Liz who lives in New Zealand. We will be there to share her birthday on 15th January so I needed to finish the quilt before Christmas.  In a previous post I wrote about the difficulty I had to get the quilt sandwiched, but it has turned out really well.  I am delighted with it and I know Liz will love it and appreciate all the work that has gone into it.

It's a large quilt, measuring 65" square so it will be a useful size for the couch or as a bed topper.
I had decided on a pink striped fabric called Sweet Jane by Deborah Edwards of Northcott fabrics.
I used this fabric to bind the Galaxy of Stars baby quilt I made in October so I thought it would work in the String Quilt too.
I bought this fabric as a remnant a couple of years ago and I thought it would be just right for this busy quilt. I love it! And I have a small piece left for a future project. Bonus!

I made a Heartstrings Quilt back in April when I was in NZ and our friend and neighbour Liz loved it so I decided then I would make another for her Special Birthday.  My original Heartstrings Quilt was completely scrappy but Liz's quilt has solid centre strips in each block which create a coloured diamond pattern once the quilt top is sewn together.  I have used this idea before in my
Rainbow Strip Quilts and I think it is effective.  This time I used any solid coloured strips that I had in my stash and dotted the different coloured diamond blocks throughout the quilt.

Here it is: Heartstring Quilt for Liz:

 

The quilt is actually a lot brighter than it looks in my photograph but taking photos indoors on a dreary December afternoon in the UK doesn't show the colours properly.  I will have to photograph it again in better light in NZ!

 

Perhaps these close ups of some of the blocks show the bright colours a little better:

 

 

Can you spot the appliqued heart hidden among the strings?

 

Like my other String Quilts I have tied it.  Hard work pushing the needle through so many layers of fabric but I like the look tying gives a string quilt.

I had difficulty piecing the large backing but now the quilt is finished I think it's worked out well.

So, my last quilt finish for 2015.  Nine quilts completed this year, not a bad total especially as two of them were big!

My Sewing Room is in a terrible mess so that needs to be tidied before Christmas - not a job I am looking forward to.  The trimmings from Liz's Quilt need cutting into squares and strips to be stashed away for future projects. This is something I always enjoy doing as it makes the scraps so much more convenient to use and speeds up making new quilts if some of the fabrics are already cut to the right size.

I have some hand quilting to do on our latest Group Quilt Project so that can be done when I am watching television at the weekend.

Happy sewing!

 

 

Like the curate's egg .......... good in parts!

Well, what a mixed bag of a week I have had! I am still recovering from the horrendous cold which hit me almost three weeks ago. I dread catching colds because I know I will be in for weeks of misery.
This one was even worse than usual and I spent a lot of time in bed for the first couple of weeks, fighting off sinusitis, hard barking cough, high temperatures etc etc.  However, I finally feel as though I have turned the corner.  Still coughing and feeling very tired so hope my energy levels pick up soon.

So, part one of the Good parts of the Curate's Egg is feeling a lot better than I have for a while!

I haven't done any sewing whilst I was feeling poorly, so it was good to get back to some on Wednesday, although it was not as straightforward as I had planned!  My head still feels very woolly which perhaps explains the many mistakes I made. 

I was trying to complete a String Quilt which has been weeks in the making (there is a lot of work in these quilts).  I had sewn the blocks together before I went down with the lurgy so on Wednesday I started to prepare the backing and batting. 
The quilt is larger than the sizes I normally make ( approx 68" square when it's finished) so the piece of backing fabric I had wasn't big enough - hunted in my stash to find a complementary piece of fabric so I could create a pieced backing.  The idea was to make a strip of pieces either side of the original large piece.  First mistake - I hadn't done the maths properly so had to piece even more bits to make the sides long enough.  All time consuming and frustrating when you are trying to catch up on time lost being ill.

On to the batting.  Joy of joys, no piece large enough so yet more piecing had to be done.  Again, I made a mistake with the maths ( blame the woolly head and breaking off mid-cutting to check on my pot of home made soup) and I cut the piece 10" short!  Even more piecing by which time I was decidedly fed up!!!

Then wrestling the quilt on our bedroom floor, trying to sandwich it without getting too many wrinkles.  It took me a very long time and I was exhausted at the end of it all.  Lots of scratches from the safety pins too.

Note to self ............. don't make another quilt this large.
And, don't try to make equally matched pieced strips to fit either side of a large piece of fabric. 
I failed to centre the top symmetrically so the back will not be equal. Hope it looks OK once it is finished.

Another Good part of the Curate's Egg:  I have now started tying my quilt, so the end is in sight. This quilt has to be finished by the New Year so it can go to NZ with me for a 70th birthday gift for our lovely neighbour.

Here's a Sneak Peek:

 

And the backing!

 

 

Another great bit of the Curate's Egg was going to my Patchwork Group yesterday - first time for three weeks.

One of the Group gift quilts was almost finished and I spent a happy hour last night doing the finishing touches:

 

Only a Sneak Peek because this won't be handed over for a week or so:

 

 

It's really lovely!!

 

I finally managed to get my three QAYG blocks off to Alison  ( littleislandquilting.blogspot.co.uk)for the Soy Amado project. They've been sitting here waiting for me to go to the Post Office.

 

So, another Good part of the Curate's Egg!

 

But the really Good part was this:  A parcel from Australia from my lovely Blog friend Jo - jobutterfield.blogspot.co.uk

 

Inside a gorgeous card with a pen and a wrapped gift which I will open on Christmas Day.  Thank you, Jo.  I do hope we manage to meet in person one day.

 

 

 

And finally, another great part of the Curate's Egg was having a good report at the hospital on Thursday.  My consultant is very pleased, all well at present so that's a wonderful feeling.

So, all in all, more Good than Bad. Hurrah!

In case you are wondering what the saying "Like a Curate's Egg, good in parts" means:
The origin of the phrase is the George du Maurier cartoon "True Humility", printed in the British satirical magazine 'Punch' in 1895.  A curate is being entertained and his host says "I'm afraid you've got a bad egg, Mr Jones!"
The Curate: "Oh no, my Lord, I assure you! Parts of it are excellent!"

Well, having listed all my week's events I think I can safely say that MOST of the parts of my egg were good.... in fact some were absolutely marvellous!

QAYG blocks for Soy Amado

Now that I have finally surfaced from over a week in bed dealing with a heavy cold which got worse and worse and worse - thank heavens for antibiotics, I say! - I can finally write a post about the three QAYG blocks I made for Alison's on going project, Soy Amado Quilts

I have made a couple of lots of QAYG blocks for Alison in the past and thoroughly enjoyed making them.  I am full of admiration for Alison because she continues to make these quilts for a great cause: they are sent to a children's home in Mexico where every bed has one of her colourful quilts to cheer up the rather utilitarian surroundings. I am sure the children must be delighted as each quilt is completely different.  Have a look at Alison's blog: littleislandquilting.blogspot.co.uk
and her Flickr Group page: Soy Amado - quilted blocks for charity

As I finished the group quilt top and looked through stash for suitable squares for making lavender bags I thought I would take the opportunity to use up some orphan blocks and scraps to make a few blocks for Soy Amado.

Firstly I made two blocks using two orphan blocks from the group quilt top:

 

 

I surrounded the centres with scraps found from stash and the leopard print FQ I also  found in my stash.

 

When I made the lavender bags I discovered a bag of 3.875" squares and striped blocks I had used to make a Pinwheel Quilt for my sister - back in April 2010!

 

I used the 4 striped orphan blocks to make the centre, halved the squares and joined to make borders and created this QAYG block:

 

 

 

Two of the blocks had pieced backings, again using scraps and the rest of the leopard print FQ whilst the third used a leftover piece of fabric which has lingered in my scraps stash for several years.

 

 

 

All three were hand quilted using Perle thread - a process I so enjoy.

 

They have been waiting patiently for me to get better, so now I hope to get them mailed in the next couple of days.

 

Wonky Stars Quilt is finished!

On Thursday evening I finished hand sewing down the binding on my Wonky Stars Quilt.
I have wanted to make one of these quilts (Bonnie Hunter's free pattern on her blog Quiltville.com) for a long time.  I love scrap quilts and always have a stash of 2.5" squares which are needed for this Quilt design.  However you do need a lot of neutrals for the stars and I realised there is a big gap in my stash where neutrals are concerned.  This quilt pretty much cleared me out of neutral scraps although I have a lot of neutral 2.5" squares leftover ready for another Wonky Stars Quilt.

 

Close up of a block:

 

I did a lot of hand quilting with variegated pink Perle thread so it took a long time to complete.  But I am really happy with the result, well worth all the time and effort.

The quilt is a large quilt, much bigger than the normal sizes I make baby quilts but this should be very useful for a long time as it will start as  Playmat and snuggle-time blanket, then it could be used on the child's first bed.

It measures 42" wide and 55" long.

The piece of Froggy fabric I had in mind for the backing wasn't big enough so I rooted through my larger pink pieces and found a pretty flowered fabric which was exactly the same shade of pink as the background of the Froggy one.  Although they are different patterns they really merge into one!

And here's  a photo of the whole backing:

 

 

It is finished just in time for our Step granddaughter's baby which is due tomorrow.  If it's a girl of course!  I have a boy quilt ready as well.

 

So, that completes all of my "To Do" list.  I am very pleased with myself!

 

 

Noah's Ark is on its way!

Little Tobias (Toby) has arrived in New Zealand so my Noah's Ark Quilt was posted yesterday and is now on its way, on the long journey to Aotearoa - The Land of the Long White Cloud.

A reminder of the front:

I was very pleased with the pieced backing, using up lots of leftover scraps from this quilt and others too.

The Pieced  Backing: 

 

 

Granny Rose emailed us a lovely photo of the wee boy, at the very new age of 6 hours!  Hope he loves being snuggled in his quilt and spends happy times kicking on it on the floor.

Welcome to the world, Toby!

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!