Half Finished But having a coffee break

Gosh, I'm on a roll.  I'm already half way through my quilting my Baby Billboard quilt, and I was only stitching the backing together this morning.  Just goes to show what you can do when you put your mind to it, ignore the kids (well, they've been bad, bad children today), and don't get anything else done.

After much angsting about backing and batting... couldn't decide whether to use cotton or polyester... should I do a pieced backing like the original billboard quilt, or use the flannel I have tucked away in my stash... I measured the amount of background fabric I had left, and what do you know it, it was exactly the right size for the backing with the addition of some extra stripes from the left over jelly roll.  Right, one decision made, and just use cotton even though I bought it for another project, because I like how it quilts... it's predictable, and I won't have to live in guilt about wrapping a baby in polyester.

A minute of sketching came up with a perfect quilting design too... so everything just flowed.

An oldie but a goodie - certainly not original, but I also wanted to add
a circular element and the echoed "e" shapes work really well, and you can
enter and exit the design which ever way it suits to carry on.

Hopefully you can sort of see the quilting???

The connected boxes quilting is extra familiar to me, I spent quite a bit of time dreaming about it when I quilted my very first quilt - Dylan's baby quilt (which got finished sometime after Nadia was born).  It has had lots of love since then.

I can blame Alex Anderson for getting me addicted to quilting
after the Road to California block appeared on the reruns of the show (back
in the big hair days). 

I quilted it on my tiny Bernette sewing machine with a 4" throat space,
and used teal thread on top, and burgundy thread on the bottom, because
that's what I had left over from my dressmaking days.  My husband asked
why had I scribbled on it?  He knows better now!

Finished!

My cushion is finished and looks glorious!  Now it does require a matching buddy... but all good things come with time, and I did want to make sure that it worked before getting too carried away.

Stuffed with a down filled inner, it survives even a man squash, is very comfortable and still looks good a day later.  I bound the edges using the same technique as for a quilt, and this makes a very smart finish.

An action shot - after the correctly applied karate chop to get the kink in the top.

 So you might be wondering what prompted the making of this pillow?  Are you one of those people with quilted items filling your house to overflowing?  Well I'm not.  I have tended to avoid pillows and other little items... I've made placemats which we hardly ever use, and table runners that always end up being the wrong size.  Quilts are mostly on the beds... plus a couple of wall warmers.



This is an oversize table runner that was just
too big for the table.  It looks very nice in the adjacent
hallway where it is framed by the doorway.

I've also purchased some accessories which have helped to create a cohesive colour scheme to accent the relaxing beige everything else.

So it looks like a variety of soft greens won!

The Adventures of A Bali Pop Cushion

Ages ago I weakened and puchased a Bali Pop - sort of a batik version of a Jelly Roll.  Up until yesterday, it was still in it's packet.  It seemed a waste to open it up without a purpose.  I have however been planning a cushion out of it... and so it started.  The instructions called for 4" x 2 1/4" rectangles, so I figured I'd just resize it to fit the 2 1/2" strips - forgetting of course the Bali Pops are hand cut - which means the strips tend to wave up and down... not good if you want things to match up.  So I stuck with the instructions and trimmed my little rectangles down to even little-er rectangles.

Then it was on to placing, sewing (only two rectangles sewn the wrong way...), quilting...

and voila!

A bit of an action shot - some imagination still required!

Because it's going inside a cushion never to see the light
of day again, I used the opportunity to get rid of this insanely
ugly piece of fabric - but look what happened with the quilting...
again lucky it is going to disappear inside.  Very frustrating!

I also got my row by row round robin row (that's a lot of "row"s) finished and it is all safely tucked away in it's bag now.  The row on top was the starter, and the row below a different makers row.

Sorry it's a bit dark.

I've also put some borders on my Sew Happy Me stitchalong week 1, and had a play with some different placements for alternate blocks using my charm squares.

We've been having grotty holiday weather - so the kids have been in the sandpit while the rain has been holding off, but it doesn't last all that long.  Nadia spent about an hour organising and reorganising these unused blocks...

This is a really interesting setting, and has two of the small
squares together.

So that's been our my day - I still have some washing to fold... and tomorrow I think I'm gonna have to buy some cushion inners...

School holidays

So the school holidays have finally started.  It has been a long, long term.

Last school holidays we bunked our two kids in the same room with bunk beds to free up the small bedroom as a sewing/office/overflow space.  This worked really well as far as the new room went, however the behavioural issues we started having with our son have plagued us all term long.  So the first weekend of the holidays was shifting the kids and the sewing room around again.  Something I was not looking forward to as over the course of the term I have become quite settled in my small space, and had succeeded in making quite a mess.  All of which would need to be moved.  Including the rather newly installed design wall.

But we did it.  Design wall and all.  Dylan has moved into the small bedroom:

 and Nadia and I share the larger bedroom.  She has kept the bunk bed, and we share shelves.

So far I have already had to tell her that I do not want my little ponies on my quilting shelves, but on the up side, she did sort out some of my fabric scraps into colours and started putting them away in their plastic bags - not sure if this counts as child labour - but she enjoyed being "a helper" and might do a bit more tomorrow.  Well, there are plenty of scraps for her to "help" with.

I have started my row for the row by row round robin - the theme this month is "traditional triangles" (please let me know if I have remembered this incorrectly).  So I've been pouring over books looking at different triangle patterns and trying to work out what they will look like as a 8" block set in a row of 5 blocks.  Most of the ones I liked would need more than one row to get the effect, or they were asymetrical/had a diagonal pattern and it bothered me that 5 blocks were uneven and made the pattern irregular across the row.  After browsing through the blocks on the EQ6 block library, I stumbled across a pattern I made a table runner out of, and quite enjoyed the construction of - so that was the winner. 

The standing on a chair photo shoot including optional feet.

As far as relating to the theme, well, it has triangles and is pieced - so as far as I'm concerned - that's traditional. 

The red pohutukawa flower print and the one with maori icons
were included with a varied assortment of other fabrics.  However
these two had not been used by any other row maker, so I decided
to see if I could make something that would bring these two together.

The fabrics included with the round robin were an interesting mix, so quite some time... and sorry Nadia but quite a mess was made deciding what colour scheme to go with.  Decision made I spent the rest of the afternoon cutting out all the pieces and adhering them to my design wall - not the normal flow of things as I usually start sewing things as I go, before they are all cut out.  This really goes against the grain, but after the unpicking required on my Baby Billboard quilt because I kept sewing it up, when really I should have cut things out and viewed them on the design wall, BEFORE sewing them together.  However, I shall get there, and after a few small changes, I'm happy with how the row is now progressing.

My Sew Happy Me stitch along is also progressing.  A little bit every few nights means that while I'm still a week behind - I shouldn't fall any further behind, and just quietly, I may even catch up!

Week Two

I had a bit of a weak moment after a Thousands of Bolts email arrived to say the Moda Bella solids were on special (NB this was several weeks ago), and when I went for a browse, these were the lovely colours that appeared on the first screen.  I never got to any of the other screens...

Now, I'm not a solids girls.  Give me prints anytime.  But these intrigue me, and I'm thinking along the lines of something of very traditional design, but where the colour placement is, well, lets just say not.  Sounds interesting doesn't it?

Starting to feel a bit better about this one

So, I wasn't overly impressed with how my Baby Billboard Quilt was progressing.  Ms Lottie asking whether it was the front or back didn't help (best friends can tell you anything), but reaffirmed what I already felt, it just wasn't quite right.

A bit of tweaking later... success.  Well, I hope you can now tell that this is the front?

I pieced the row along the bottom with the alternating bright squares, and fused the strips.  I wanted something a little bit funky, a little bit different, asymetrical, modern, but meaningful at the same time - I think I achieved it.

Now, if you want to see something quite funny, you must check out Ms Lottie's chicken flower appliques.  You'll find her at The Slightly Mad Chicken Quilt Lady.  Her latest posting had me reminiscing about my floral basket quilt (still in the WIP stage) which also had a bit of an identity crisis with basket blocks in the centre...

And little floral sprigs scattered around the border.  Funny how a flower with four leaves looks undeniably like a flower, but the same flower with two leaves all of a sudden looks like Piglet?  Now, even I agree that it looks like Piglet, he just needs some little eyes...

And finally Santa has had his coat stitched... slowly getting better at the french knots... so just his boots and surrounding stars to finish.  And the next one to start...

Stitch-along with Sew Happy Me

OK, so I'm a stitchery virgin no longer.  Not that I really know what I'm doing, and the stitching leaves a little bit to be desired (I won't blow the picture up any larger - it's one of those smaller, further away, eyes slightly squinted, the better sort of things) - but I can see what the attraction is, and now that we've installed better task lighting in our lounge, I can actually see at night to do things like this.  Maybe not hooked yet, but I'll continue with the stitch along patterns hmmm each week (or so) - reminder to self that I am already a week behind... but that's the great thing about doing things online, no mean teacher growling that you haven't completed your homework!

The instructions make a square sort of hanging bunting... there is probably a proper word for it, but it seems to be escaping me at the moment (OK, OK - I read the instructions... big words at the top say it is a BANNER).  I postponed the starting of the project because, well, I didn't really want to make a bunting thing banner.. and it sort of distracted the important bit, actually starting.  After mulling it over for a week or so, in my head I could see the stitching completed on a solid grey/stone that I have also used for the words on my Baby Billboard quilt, with a teal thread, and using some of the Figgy Pudding fat quarters that have been sitting in my drawer since that last Regional Day (thank you The country yard)... which was probably quite some time ago, and a pile of charm squares that were on special almost as long ago (courtesy of The Powerquilter).  The problem being that when I put them together in real life (as opposed to being in my head) - the colours didn't quite mesh together as well as I had expected.  Another reason for postponement.  Well, I just decided to go ahead with it in the end.  It is really only the cream background designs that don't "go" with the grey, I think it looks OK with most of the other ones... decision made... and I've done Santa in a dark khaki sort of colour, which I thought helped to blend it back to the Figgy Pudding fabrics.

The instructions for the bunting complete the stitching through the top layer and a layer of batting.  As I want to add quilted blocks, I didn't want to do that... and after discussing it with my Friday group, the consensus was that either I try using a hoop, or use some sort of stabiliser.  If anybody has any thoughts about this... I'd really like some expert input.  The hoop seems to be working well enough at this stage.  Now I'm not going to take a photo of the back - let's just say I'm sure my technique will improve over time and that the back will probably reflect this - fingers crossed - and is there a trick to getting french knots the same size??  Santa looks a bit squinty.

Baby Quilt Progress

My baby billboard quilt is slowly growing.  Some of my design decisions haven't worked out quite how I had planned - so has been a bit of an evolving design - and I'm still not quite 100% satisfied with how it's going.

I have done blanket stitch around the words, but still have "dreams" to complete.  It is a bit of a mission doing the script words because they're all joined up... what I wanted, but takes ages to get right the way around.

I have been thinking about whether to add a bit of extra applique... perhaps some circles or something randomly placed... will see how we go.