The Bigger Picture

I have been asked a few times what the quilt looks like from my header. I did'nt actually have a finished picture of the whole quilt and I had given it to my mother. Here it is 'in situ'.

Binding Away

My Auntie asked me to make a little baby quilt for a girl being born in July. I bought the fabric last Tuesday (well some of it) and got to work. By Thursday it was pinned and by Saturday it was quilted. Now I am up to the slowest part of all for me - the binding. I cut it out Monday, attached it Tuesday and now I'm just slowly stitching away.

No matter when I finish there are two things I already know - this is the quickest I have ever made a quilt from start to finish, and I will finally finished something for Spring to Finish! Its good timing too because the temperature has been dropping into the 'teens at night, and here I am, stitching away with a little quilt on my lap and socks on my feet.

Kitty Cat Quilt Top

Well, I'm a little late for what I planned on finishing this for, but better late than never. This has been sitting with the center pieced together for a while now, just waiting for some borders.


I was originally going to use a different stripe for the inner border, and had made it to the ironing board to iron it when I realised I didn't have as much as I thought. On the way back to the fabric cupboard I walked past the Prints Charming stripe on the floor (oops) in the hallway (oops) and decided to use it instead. And I had been holding on to the the black and white cat print for a while unsure about what to use it for. I love it! The fat smug cat on it always reminds me of this box loving cat.

Moving on

So I might at least get two things finished before going to Melbourne at the end of the month where I will start 4 more new things. First on the list is this little baby


It is all quilted, and patiently waiting binding.

Then there is another old one which is already quilted, but has waited a couple of months to have the threads woven in. I have it sitting on the arm of the lounge chair so that when I watch tv I sit there weaving them in. I am 1/3 done, yay! and have no new picture of it yet. I have even pulled out the fabric to start thinking about the binding for it, so I am getting there slowly. The one thing holding up the binding process for both of these quilts is that I haven't got a space to set up my cutting mat until I clean up a bit...

And lastly, there is this one which will definitely not be finished before the end of February, I started doing a bit more quilting on it (the white lines) and boy do they take a lot of time! I am not marking where to quilt on this one, just eyeballing it so that I get some wonky lines here and there and so far I am really liking it.

Bound!

With Christmas over and the gifts exchanged I now have a lot of DVD's to sit and watch, making it perfect time to get some hand work done!

I finished the binding on this on Boxing Day and it is already being used on the lounge chair


Here is a bad photo to show the quilting on the back. I used King Tut variegated thread. I have no idea what number it is but it goes between purple, orange and red and I really like it.

That isn't a pucker, that's just where I was too lazy to unfold it properly.

I'm really happy with it, and following with the tradition of working on something mostly finished, I spent a lot of time today weaving in ends on the all white quilt. Unfortunately there are a lot of ends to weave in, so its going to take more than a sitting of Get Smart and Monty Python to get it done.

County Fair

I quilted this a couple of weeks back.


Its a cheater cloth designed by Denyse Schmidt. The front is quilted using smoke invisible thread, and the black is a bright red variegated thread - this meant I didnt need to change thread throught the entire project. Now, like a lot of things round here, its just waiting patiently for the binding. Then it will take its place over the lounge chair properly.

I also broke my "nothing new" rule last week.. I was getting 'cutting crazy' and just had to cut something. So I have started the Extended Pinwheels Quilt out of A Colourful Journey, by Kaffe Fassett.
Just looking at it makes me smile. I am making mine out of green, cobalt and blue fabrics, taken from my shot cotton collection (of which I amazingly had 11 of in just the blues and greens), and then also from the Kaffe stash, which is still as large as ever. Now that I have started it I really wish I had have just used bigger triangles, because now I need to make double the triangles just to make it abouw 8 inches bigger on each side.

Finished!

Woo! I knuckled down and suffered through the hand pain to finish this. Now I just need a large water proof bag to send it in and then it off to Mum.

On to the next binding!

To Appease Mother

My internet exile has ended! Firstly, these are two of my quilts hanging at a local quilt show, in a shops stand. Mine is the pink and black one, and the one to the right of it (which is just a quilt top, I'm picking it up on Monday, buying wadding and a backing fabric and working frantically to get it quilted in time for the next quilt show in a weeks time)

Here are a couple more civil war blocks and one in progress.


This one above is actually made incorrectly. As I was working off a black and white photocopy I didn't realise that the colours are reversed in the opposite corners! However it looks so good I don't think I have the heart to unpick it and throw two blocks away and make two more!



And then there is a new hand sewing project (like I needed another one). Its going to be a yo yo quilt!

I'm slowly moving through my stash cutting two squares of each fabric to make two yo yo's out of each fabric. I started on the scrap pile, then moved onto the spots, which is why if you look closely about 80% of them are spotty. I have 83 made, have the fabric cut for another 43, and to make a 25 x 25 quilt, will need 625 yo yo's! But remember, so far I have only cut the scrap pile and spots drawer, if I end up cutting 2 from all of my fabrics then it might end up being a wee bit bigger than that...
When I get to about 300 I will start whip stitching them together. I am waiting for a friend to produce her antique yo yo quilt (and in her fashion she said "oh I don't know where they are, I'll have to find them") so I can get a look at how they did it. I know its just whip stitching but I still want to see someone elses first!

Next post I might show you my 3 inch across dresden plate, but I need to find it first!

Also, I need to make this quilt.

It needs some binding

On the bias..
But I can't choose which one! Mum, I think you should choose for me.

Two down!

Since my last post:

• One quilt has been completely finished, binding, pocket rod and all and has even been washed and cooked in the dryer.
  This is the first quilt I have ever washed and had fabric run. Doesn't really bother me, but its pretty unfortunate as the back is also pieced, so if the fabric had have been about 2 inches to the right, it would have been on a pink fabric and then unnoticeable! This quilt was 'cooked' to see how much the bamboo batting would shrink. All up it shrunk by about an inch on each side, but I think that could also be due in part to my heavy quilting, and the fact I can't actually remember how big the top was before it was pinned, and I can't remember if I measured it after quilting it and before washing it. Either way, I like how crinkly it came out.
  

• Another quilt that has been 'in progress' for about 2 years (I *think*) had its final border quilted. It is a Material Obsession pattern that was printed in a Patchwork and Quilting magazine. Unfortunately I don't have a photo of this as I have left it with my wonderful hand sewn binding Grandmar for to have it hand stitched. (She also hand stitched the pink and black one aswell, that only took her about an hour! She is superwoman!!)

• And today, I unpinned, then repinned my multicolour barnraiser-ish half square triangle quilt. On top of that, I have also quilted all the straight lines on it already tonight (in about 2 hours, even I'm impressed with my lack of procrastination while doing it). Now I just have to pick a free hand quilting pattern to do in all the white areas and I'm set to finish it! The next big step for this one is picking the binding fabric.

And I didnt resize two the photo's so I could show you (sort of) the other thing I have been working on. It only has 9 rows to quilt in one direction, and 16 in the other. Which isnt bad considering that thing is about twin/queen size and there are about 47 rows in each direction. I'm starting to get excited about finishing it as when it gets folded up it looks georgous, but it will look even better with all those pins out, and a nice black binding on it! I will give more details about it when I'm finished.

Inspiration

A long talk with an old friend (yes I mean you Amy) got me inspired to get something done (yay!). Despite the fact I have been awake since 4.30am, have worked 9 hours at one job, then 2 hours at another, then had a cup of tea with a friend on the way home, I decided that tonight would be a good night to sew. After a long talk with Amy on the phone, I frantically free hand quilted for about 2.5 hours, between looking at the pretty blog pictures everywhere, and have made it about half way down the summer quilt.


Now this is hard work - at one point, my arms were hurting, my face was clammy and I was sweating. That's something considering its probably 12 degrees here at the moment. I'm calling it a night because well, being awake for 20 hours out of one day (after only 4 hours sleep... ouch) that its really bed time. Its sitting up on the wall still though, begging to be quilted.
But I have a problem. I want to quilt horizontal lines out from where there is a green fabric join at both of the edges of the green (does that make sense?), but how do I
1. Keep the lines straight
2. Make sure they are perpendicular
Any help would be great!

As I side note, gee this looks really nice!

Triple Irish Chain

I told myself I wasn't allowed to start anything new until I finished 5 things by the end of July. I failed miserably on the day after that statement was made when I started cutting out the makings of a Triple Irish Chain, using mostly 1930's and a few others from my stash. Then I stupidly decided that I wanted to make it queen sized, so that it would fit my bed.

This is what I'm up to now, and why I will probably fail the 5 by the end of July, but it looks so pretty!!! All up, this is a little less than a quarter of the quilt, measuring 42" wide by 28" down for the rectangle you can see.




I also worked briefly on this:
But the quilting was taking ages and I was feeling lazy so I have temporarily cast it aside. Though, as I have promised mum a loan of my big quilt I had better get this one finished. This one was made last year and its called my 'summer quilt' for when I don't want my really colourful bed quilt to get faded due to the windows being opened in summer. I obviously didn't get it finished in time. The green in the picture is about 12.5 inches by 14 inches, and all up the quilt is HUGE. I'll measure it when its done...

One down!

I started binding this last Thursday night, very late, while waiting to go to bed. Then Friday, I dragged it along to a friends birthday party and did three sides of it. On Wednesday I finally finished it at another friends place, so this is now a well travelled quilt. It has also travelled from Brisbane to Emerald, which is where my Mum paid for the quilting to be done for me.


Mum also came up with the idea to add the black bobble things as a border, but once they were sewn on it made it really hard to sew the binding on, so it sat in a quilted pile in Emerald for a good few months. Then about a month ago, Mum got sick of it being unfinished, and painstakingly attacked the binding. She then returned it to me about 3 weeks ago to hand sew it down - which is in my opinion, the worst part of making a quilt.


But now its done! I would have already started on the second challenge item but I'm being distracted by tiny little squares that I am using to make a triple Irish chain (and will NOT be finished by the end of July)

Update Pt 2

So, lots has happened

My pink and black now looks like this

Thankfully the bad picture doesn't show how bad two of my mitred corners are.

Then there is this which I may enter into the Emerald show if mum doesnt show too many people and I can maybe get it finished in time.

But this is the back, and I also have the wadding and plan on pinning it tonight and getting thread tomorrow so it is possible.

And finally, GRANDMAR! AVERT YOUR EYES!

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Well this one is actually for Grandpop. What do you think Mum?

What I have been up to

Firstly, I finished my little baby quilt (3 years too late for the baby it was intended) and entered it into the Brookfield Show this afternoon. Its 1.2m square. My hands are so sore from all that binding!


Ive been working on this on my design wall. Its all random piecing and when finished will be about 85cm square, then I'll add a really big border and quilt it all in the three different coloured threads - black, white and pinks. I'm hoping it will look really nice. This is a work in progress shot take about 2 weeks ago (bad blogger!) so the arrangement of the squares looks nothing like this now.
Then, when it was FREEZING the other night, I grabbed this out of the 'unfinished' pile to snuggle under and was a bit embarrassed about the number of pins in it, so now I have done all the 'in the ditch' in the middle, which isn't really in the ditch and started on the border.

This is actually a sister quilt to another one I made at the same time in blue and black fabric. But now I like this one more than the other one!

Almost done. Just need the borders to be quilted and then to pick out a binding fabric and first finished quilt for the year! Gee, middle of April - I'm not off to a good start.

This is a really bad photo, the camera had to be returned to its owner.

From The Beginning

This is the first quilt I ever made (that I remember)


I made this in grade 9 (2000) and I was the teachers pet, and totally got an A for Home Ec. It is a pretty simple pattern, I think it is by The Chook Shed, but a pretty ambitious start for me, all up its a bit shorter than a single bed quilt, to fit under it a bit of curling up was needed. All the fabric for those nine patches was stolen from Mum. Thats right, she had cut out all those 2.5inch squares for something for herself, and I asked if I could use a 'few' of them. I'm pretty sure I used all of them in the end. The background for the fabric was stolen from Grandmar, and most of the fabric for the flowers comes from me, with a little help from Grams.


Quilt#2 is this



It is comprised of foundation pieced New York Beauty blocks, which again, pretty ambitious for me. It was made in grade 10(2001) and again, teachers pet got an A. This is the first time I ever did free hand quilting, and looking back at it, its pretty dodgy.. But there are many things that I look back at and really don't like, like the way I did the binding. The pattern is out of a Australian Patchwork and Quilting magazine. Overall though it makes a nice wall hanging and everyone that sees it usually says 'oh how nice'.

Quilt #3


I made this while on school holidays sometime, possibly before the other two quilts, then quilted it I don't know when either, but it was entered into the Emerald Show in grade 12, meaning it was finished sometime before May 2003 and I won the top award out of all the high schools and got my whopping prize of a $10 voucher to Woolies. The fabric for the bright hearts is mostly mine, then the rest was either stolen from my Grandmar, or purchased for me by Grandmar, like the awesome border fabric (Love you Grandmar). The quilting is mostly freehand stippling, in the border it is done so tight that it makes the purpley spots look like trupunto. My mum's friend suggested that I stuff each of them, but because there is an aweful lot of them, I haven't yet. I will one day post a picture of the quilting, but my camera skills arent too great so all the pictures haven't turned out too great.

Quilt #4 was started sometime during grade 12. During this year, seeing as though I was moving from Emerald to Brisbane at the beginning of the next year to start uni and I would therefore no longer have Mum's sewing machine to use, I decided that I would cut my entire fabric collecting into 4.5inch squares and make a quilt out of it. All up, this quilt is about 2.6m by 3.2m, and did not comprise all of my fabric stash (I know, impressive for someone who had only been collecting fabric for 4 or 5 years, with her pocket money). I had enough fabric to add another row of blocks (each set of blocks being about 4x4? I think) which would have made it about 3m x 3.2m but when it was all laid out on our dinning room floor, and it took up all the room, my Mum convinced me I didn't need to add the extra row.

So because of its massive size, I wasn't able to take a photo of the whole thing, so this is maybe a quarter of it. It is quilted all over in a stipple with stars in it. I used tracing paper to quilt the pattern on as I wasn't too good at doing the stars by freehand - I needed lines to follow or else they looked a bit crazy. All in all, it took me about 1.5 years to quilt, mostly because it was done either when I was on uni holidays and back in Emerald, or done when Mum loaned me her machine for a while. I really love this quilt. During the middle of my poor uni years, I would sleep under the unfinished quilt, with the tracing paper still attached, folded over on my king single bed because I was so cold. The binding was finished some time in the start of 2005 I think. Now that I have upgraded to a queen sized bed, I do sometimes wish I had added that extra row, I really like to pull it up and snuggle under it. My one problem with this quilt is that I didn't prewash the fabric (though I never prewash fabric), so I have a fear of washing this and having all those really really bright colours run into each other. I will one day get over this fear, and on that day, a very large quantity of colour catchers will be used and I will wait patiently beside the washing machine for it to finish.

Thats it for now, I need to find some more finished quilts to post, most of them are at Mum's so I might have to begin the very long UFO parade..