Finished ! A Rainbow of Twinkling Stars

Just before the end of the year I have finished the scrap quilt made using Cathy's Twinkler Star blocks idea and that I made over around nine months as part of the RSC on Angela's So Scrappy Blog.

 

I have renamed it A Rainbow of Twinkling Stars

 

The quilt is machine quilted with a double row of Perle hand quilting around each star.

It measure 53" squares and is completely made from scraps and pieces of fabric from my stash.

 

I had thought this would be  a Donation Quilt but I'm afraid I can't part with it, I love it!

I have two other flimsies that will be donated and they will be finished in the New Year.

 

I am joining up with RSC 2017, this is the first Rainbow Scraps Challenge quilt I have ever done.

 

Happy Christmas and all good wishes for 2018.

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.

Pink Penguin bag

A couple of years ago my quilting friend Sarah introduced our Patchwork Group to a lovely reversible drawstring bag. It measures 8.5" tall by 7.5" wide and is really useful for carrying sewing threads, needle cases, scissors etc to class.  Sarah has made each member of our group one of these bags as birthday gifts. It's quite amusing to look  around the room at our Patchwork meetings and see everyone's pretty bag being used. Because they are made from scraps each one is different.

I have made several - including one each for my husband and me to keep our various battery chargers safe in one place. So handy when we are packing for travelling, just pick up the bag of battery chargers and pop into the luggage.  No more hunting around the house for chargers!

With this in mind I decided to make one for my good friend Judy.  It's her birthday next week and as she is forever dashing around the country looking after various members of the family I thought a Battery charger bag might be useful. 
You can find the excellent Tutorial on Pink Penguin"s blog: Click on the Tutorials button and then on Reversible Drawstring bag.

Everything came from stash, the buttons from my button box.  I was very pleased to find the pair of small yellow flower buttons which I sewed on the ends of the drawstrings.  The lining is made from one of the FQs in a pack which was a gift from another Patchwork friend Ruth. Funnily enough a few days previously I cut some patches from another FQ in this pack, for another commission Baby Boy quilt I am currently working on.

Here's the bag:

Front

Back

I used 32 x 2.5" squares from my scrap stash and next day added another 12 back into stash.
On Thursday I was gifted a bag of scraps, mostly strips which went immediately into my Scrap Strips Stash bags and other odd shaped scraps were cut into various sizes of squares and strips and the small odd shaped leftovers went into my Crumb blocks stash.  Nothing ever goes to waste here!!

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?

A little "Thank you" gift

I am going to my best friend Barbara's tomorrow for a few days whilst DH is away on a course.
As I am going by train I have to travel light - three trains there and two trains and a tube on the way back.

So, as a little "Thank you" gift I have made Barbara a drawstring bag for her battery chargers.
DH and I have found these bags so useful.  We know instantly which are our chargers and when we go away just toss the bag into the luggage and off we go.

As always, made from stash, using some of the pretty blue ribbon I brought back from NZ that I bought cheaply in Spotlight.

 

I used the same fabrics on the back but rearranged in a different order.

 

As before I used Amy's excellent tutorial on her Pink Penguin Blog.

A finish and a WIP

One of my good friends will be celebrating her 80th birthday in a few days time.  I have made her a bag using Kiwi fabric charms I brought back with me from New Zealand. I decided to frame the charms with black rather than cream to show them off and I am pleased with the result.

Each fabric depicts a well-known NZ item: sheep, penguins, kiwis (fruit and the bird!), pukeko, tui, a New Zealand bach (little holiday cottage) etc.  I hope she likes it. I am also adding a tin of NZ Earl grey teabags which we bought when we were visiting Kerikeri (North Island, NZ).

 

Three views of the bag, showing both sides and the base.

 

I have also been working on another baby quilt, this one for a boy.  I know of three babies being born in the next few months and two of them are going to be boys so I need to augment my Baby Boy Quilts stash.

 

I am hand quilting it, in the ditch around the main blocks and sashing and then I am going to add some decorative Perle larger stitching.

 

All the fabrics for the quilt came from my stash and the yellow buttons on the bag were also from stash ........ I have several boxes and jars of buttons!

Since my Big Tidy Up I know what stash I have, including pieces of batting.
When I came to sandwich the baby quilt I knew I had a piece that would probably be just the right size.  It was  - but even better, I was able to use the trimmings to fold into the bag handles to give them a bit more strength and body.  Great!

I am off to cut out some strips of fabric to start another Baby Boy quilt. This should be fairly quick to put together as I collected together suitable fabrics for the idea I had when I was sorting out my Sewing Room.

So, off to get cutting out!  I love the excitement of starting a new project and love having hand sewing ready to pick up when I watch TV and go to my Patchwork Group.

 

Hurrah! I finished my WIP!

Earlier in the year I decided to use up some of the MANY 4" square Crumb Blocks that had been accumulating in my tin.  There were so many I couldn't fit any more in.
So I created a quilt top by sewing four Crumb Blocks together and decided to use sashing and corner stones to complete the top. All the fabrics came from stash: a lilac Kona Cotton for the sashing and two fabrics for alternating corner stones.

Recently I decided it was time to turn this WIP into a quilt, thinking it needed a couple of borders to finish it.  Then I decided to just go with one lilac Kona border and get it finished.

I machine quilted in the ditch and then hand stitched in a variegated pink Perle cotton to add more interest and stability. I also did a few stitches in the centre of the Crumb Blocks to make sure the quilt top was well anchored.  This is a baby quilt which will get lots of washing so it needs to be firmly quilted.  It's a good size for a baby quilt, measuring 40" x 48" so it's big enough for the cot when she is older and can even be used as a top on a single bed.

And, here it is!

Jazzy Squares: showing the backing

 

Jazzy Squares, resting on the sheep we have in our garden!

 

This quilt is going to live in Leeds, as a gift for Rebecca, born in March. Her older brothers Robert and James already have quilts from me so Rebecca had to have one too.

 

I am really pleased with this quilt.  It is bright and pretty and girly.  Lots of interesting snippets for Rebecca to find as she gets older: there's a tiny rabbit, a cat's face, a rhinoceros, an elephant, flowers, stars, hearts etc for her to find.

 

I made Jazzy Squares completely from stash - including the backing and binding which had been given to me by Sue, one of my patchwork group friends.

 

When we went to New Zealand I took some white acrylic yarn (which had been hanging around for too long) and a pretty woven basket style baby blanket pattern I had found on the internet.  I almost finished it before we came home but I ran out of yarn.  I knew I had more at home so when we came back I finished the blanket and put it away.  I now have a recipient, our step Granddaughter is expecting a baby and has a Baby Shower in August so I will gift the knitted blanket then.

 

Knitted blanket:

 

 

 

 

WIP that has to be finished ASAP

I am making a baby quilt for my NZ neighbours' latest grandson, Max. We are returning to the UK in just over two weeks so, as they say, time is of the essence!

I bought the fabric almost two months ago, from two Quilt shops: Cushla's in Mapua and Quilter's Barn in Renwick and the backing was a bargain end of roll from Spotlight.

I didn't make the quilt straight away as I wanted to make the String Quilt I finished a few days ago.
And then of course there were two trips away, to Sydney and the Bay of Islands, which all meant that starting the baby quilt got pushed onto the back burner.

But earlier this week  I started the quilt.  I had drafted out the design way back when I bought the fabric so it was just a case of cut and sew.  I sandwiched it yesterday and started the hand quilting so I now feel my target to finish by next Thursday is achievable.

How it looks at the moment:

 

 

As you can see the Perle cotton and scissors are ready to be picked up as soon as I have a minute to put in s few more stitches.

 

 

I have made lots of baby quilts over the years but this is a "first" in many respects:

 

• I bought every bit of fabric for this quilt just for this quilt.  I have lots of fabric stashed away(what quilter hasn't?) but 90% of  my stash is back in the UK.. I only keep a small stash here in NZ and I really had nothing suitable for this quilt.  Hence the shopping spree.  It was lovely to buy everything for one project and there is enough left over to make another baby quilt and have scraps for my ever-growing Scraps Stash! Just got to decide whether the left-overs stay here or travel back to the UK with me on 2nd May. What do you think?

 

• I have made a few Coin Quilts before but never combined that design with a band across the top with baby's name appliqued on it.  This is an idea I got from an English quilting friend of mine, Sarah.  So, another "first".

 

• This quilt will be going to South Africa (taken by NZ Granny when she visits in July) and I have never had one of my quilts end up in SA. Lots in the UK, Canada, NZ, The Netherlands and Germany, but this is the first one destined to live in South Africa.

 

I am very pleased with how the quilt is progressing, the bright colours really sing and the novelty prints are very apt, I think.  Dad is a Kiwi so sheep and tractors are good ( Granddad has a tractor). Dad and Granddad are keen bikers so the bike fabric is good too.  Orange for the South African link and a few hearts to show how much this baby is loved. The backing has a pattern of dogs on it, again suitable as Mum and Dad have two large dogs.

 

Off to do my housework and cooking so I can get back to hand quilting!

 

Using up stash

 

I was thrilled to get my sewing machine back, fully repaired, on Thursday afternoon which meant that I was able to go to my Quilting Group this morning. I had a very productive few hours, sewing together the String quilt blocks I had all ready to go.  I am still a way from finishing the quilt top but I made a good start today. 

 

This made me think back to the String Quilts I have made in the past and how much stash went into their making. Reminiscing on all the different fabrics I had used over the years and how many quilts some of the same fabrics appeared in.

 

This is the first one I made, back in July 2010 which I called Rainbow Quilt:

Then came Rainbow Nation String Quilt, a 60th birthday gift to a New Zealand friend.

Handed over in Christchurch just four days before the big 22nd February 2011earthquake.

Then Cat from Auckland ( catalinaz.blogspot.co.uk), had a quilt drive for quilters to send comfort quilts which were handed out to earthquake victims. By then I was back in the UK and made this quilt which was sent over to Cat:

Christchurch Earthquake String Quilt:

Then came a quilt I made for a three year old boy, back in July 2013.

This time, an I Spy String Quilt:

 

Since then I have made several String Quilt blocks as contributions to charity projects, blocks which were included in this Group quilt, a gift for one of our members to celebrate her 70th birthday:

  

And several String blocks turned into cushions like this one:

 

So, I think you could say I am addicted to String blocks!
I have enjoyed looking back over some of my older quilts, remembering the different fabrics which I included - and finished up - in the process.

We all have pieces of fabric which seem to hang about in our stash and appear in quilt after quilt.  However, I have been pleased to notice that as the years have passed, some fabrics no longer appear so are DEFINITELY used up!

Perhaps the message of this post is: Make String quilts to "use it up"!

Using it up, reducing my stash

Whilst I was tidying up my sewing room I took the opportunity to sort out my stash.  Mostly fabrics for quilting but there is a little yarn too.

I discovered some yarn I had bought at a Charity shop last summer.  There were 6 balls: 2 cream, 2 dusky pink and 2 hot pink. Nice soft cotton DK, with bobbles in it. I loved the colours and had imagined making a lovely striped crochet baby blanket.  Of course when I tried to crochet I discovered that the yarn wouldn't work - the bobbles made it hard to do and you couldn't see the stitches.  So away it all went in a bag in my stash cupboard.  Until about ten days ago when I found the bag and decided to make a baby jumper.  I had a pattern for a plain jumper but realised I would not have enough of any one colour so invented a striped jumper with ribbed welt, cuffs and neck edge knitted in dusky pink.  I eyeballed where to make the striped bands, keeping a note of the rows knitted so front and back would match up and then did my best to make the sleeve striped band come in line with the front and back striped band.  Amazingly it worked out!

 

There are 3 buttons on the back raglan sleeve which were also from my stash:

I am very pleased with the result, especially that my striped bands worked out so well.  I am gifting the jumper to Helen for new baby Etta, a jumper she can keep for when Etta is a little older.

I have 2 complete balls left over.

And remnants of the others:

They are all now in a Ziplock bag and will be donated to a Charity Shop tomorrow.  I know I won't use them and perhaps someone else can.  This is a good way to use up stash - use what you can and then pass the rest on.

During my Sewing Room Springclean I re-organised my sets of blocks, some from Bees I had participated in a few years ago. I hope to make these into tops before the end of the year.

I went through my scraps, reorganised how I stored the larger scraps, cut some into strips and squares and threw some small bits away. At least I am now more aware of where everything is and what I really should be finishing.


On a different note. One of my Patchwork Group will be 100 years old next month. She is celebrating by having three "At Home" days when she has invited lots of family and friends to "pop in" for a drink and nibbles.  Unfortunately three of the group (including me) won't be able to attend so we called round last week.  I made a simple sponge cake and another friend made some Danish shortbread. We lit the candle on the cake and sang Happy Birthday.

Win enjoyed our visit. As there were only the four of us we were able to have a good conversation and Win told us quite a few stories from different parts of her very long life.  An amazing lady, still sewing and doing the smallest of stitches, all very even!

My Giveaway Win

About a month ago I was amazed to learn from Rita of Red Pepper Quilts that I had won one of her Giveaways!.  I nearly always enter the Giveaways Rita hosts as they are always fabulous - either bundles of very desirable fabrics or vouchers. I was fortunate enough to win a $50 US voucher from Poppyseeds Fabrics.

I then spent a happy time trawling through lists of fabrics and trying to maximize the amount of fabric I could buy for $50.  I was paying for the postage from the USA to the UK so wanted to buy fabric that would completely fill the mail envelope.  It took a few emails back and forth because several times other customers had chosen the fabrics I had requested and I had to choose again.  However I spent my money, adding just a little bit extra of my own and then waited for the parcel to arrive.  It came really quickly - mailed last Friday and received yesterday, Tuesday.

And here it is:

And these are the fabrics I chose:

 

Several Pearl Bracelets and also a selection of Amy Butler fabrics. Aren't they gorgeous?

 

I have admired Pearl Bracelets for so long on so many Flickr and Pintrest photos but never owned any until yesterday.  I am a fan of Amy Butler designs and have bought and used several of her designs, including the Full Moon Polka Dots one in Caramel which I chose for my bundle.  It's quite an unusual colour but works well with the variety of pink fabrics I have paired it with in the past.

 

I made a baby quilt I called Emerging Butterflies.

Here the caramel fabric makes a striking border:

 

I made a pieced backing for this quilt and used a large piece of the Caramel Polka Dots down the centre and also for the binding.  I love a spotty binding - a tip I picked up several years ago reading Rita's blog!

The backing and binding:

I am delighted to have another yard of this useful and pretty fabric in my stash.

 

So, thank you Rita and Kimberley for this great Giveaway.  I will enjoy adding the fabrics to my stash and using them all in the months to come.

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.

 

 

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.