Spellbinding

A few more pictures in somewhat better light yesterday morning, before this top too disappeared into a moving box...

Now all my projects, supplies and tools are packed away, I feel all antsy. It's a bit strange as I can often go days or weeks without touching any project if I'm too tired or busy or distracted to work on anything, but as long as the option is there, I feel fine. Take away all those options, and I feel a bit uncomfortable. Whilst outside catching a little natural light for a few last pictures before things were packed away, Miss Matilda wanted to snap some too, focusing (or trying to) on the fabric that caught her fancy: the moons with the clouds:

I just liked how she ended up framing the shot, with a chunk of leaves.

Fossil Squared

Over the summer I finally finished my brother's quilt. This was the quilt I'd hoped to finish back in May to take with me when I visited, but sadly it didn't work out that way. I was unhappy with the random straight line quilting I was doing, and had to take all that out. I ended up running out of time to take it out and re-do it.

The pattern is based on How To Be Jenna's Dusty Springfield quilt (which she now sells a pattern for on her site!) I made mine larger and made it 6x7 colored squares rather than 5x6. I wanted to be a nice big quilt for a 6 foot guy to snuggle under, hence sizing up. At this size it'll also be a decent throw across the end of his bed too.

For the back I used a charcoal batik from Joann's with 2 more squares from the Benartex Fossil Fern charm pack. As my brother liked quilts that ran from warm to cool colors, I picked one of each. In the future if I go the route of (Joann's?) batik again, I will likely pre-wash the batik, or not forget the color catchers in the wash. I think it was the batik that bled through a bit and left some staining on the white on the front around the stitching. It wasn't hugely noticeable, but it was a rather devastating find, as I had wanted it to be amazing. The color catchers would likely have really helped. I quilted it with straight lines through the white between the color blocks and the crosses.

Besides the bleeding issues, I'm really happy with how this turned out. When my dad and step mom came to visit from the UK in October they took it back with them and will be giving it to my brother when they see him in December. I hope he loves it as much as we here all did, it was hard to let that one go!

WIP Wednesday #9

I'm feeling pretty good about the progress I made on the weekend with my brother's quilt, which only has the hand-stitching on the binding left. A task that's being accomplished in the evenings whilst watching TV.

Then there was the Flip Side top I finished, which now moves towards another stage of completion. Or, rather, the stack of finished quilt tops that need assembling and quilting. With that one, I have the backing fabric, and won't need to agonize over the choices for a pieced back (Ghastlies quilt, I'm looking at you! And my Lotta Jansdotter Echo quilt for that matter.)

Over the past few days, though, I've been working on a Sparkle Punch (Wonky Stars) quilt. I'd cut 3.5" wide strips of about 81 Lizzy House fabrics back in April, and now came time to convert those strips into squares. 80 pairs of 5 squares for whole stars, and then more squares for the partial stars.

Monday I sliced up some white cotton for the 384 neutral squares I'd need. Then more cutting as most of the patterned squares needed slicing into triangles. Presently I'm sewing the star points. Hopefully by the weekend I can get most of those sewn, trimmed and sewn some more and ready to plan the layout of the entire quilt.

Echo sitting on a project in a more embryonic stage, which will be an adapted Jaybird Quilts' Chopsticks quilt, with Wrenly fabric and Kona solids. This will have to wait a little longer, as I want to clear a few more WIPs off the list, or make some more progress on them first, before I end up with a huge stack of quilt tops and too few finished quilts.

Wip Wednesday #3

Back in August, I was lucky enough to win 2 charm packs of Kate Spain's Terrain over on Melanie's blog, and a while ago I decided to indulge my love of whirligig pinwheels and make some. For this, I used the Charmed Whirligig tutorial over on the Turtle Hill Quilter blog.



Now I have a stack of lovely colorful Whirligigs!



Of course, in a moment of inattentiveness, I messed it up a bit too, and cut 2 of the charms the wrong way, so they whirl in the opposite direction. Doh!



I'm considering using the two wrong-way-round whirligigs in the backing. No real loss, but it shows you what happens when I start cutting before a morning dose of caffeine!

Happy New Year!

A belated Happy New Year!

I hope everyone made it through the silly season okay. Ours was a fairly low key affair, and I have to say I enjoyed it that way, no stress and just some quiet enjoyment of the season. The kiddos were with their dad for Christmas this year, and we let them open their presents on the Solstice. Miss Matilda loudly exclaimed with everything that it was just what she wanted, which was pretty funny. I'll have to dig a few pictures off the boyfriend's phone camera of the event.

My big gift to Jeff this year was a Kindle Fire. He had asked for one, and once I knew nobody else was getting it for him, I got one and surprised him with it. Of course this also meant a new Kindle case needed to be sewn:



As he rode professionally for a couple of years, bicycles were a natural choice. I had picked up some of the Michael Miller fabric a while back with him in mind, though no real project. Whilst going through some stash fabrics to figure out what to make the case out of, I grabbed that one again, and realized that the piece of Kyla May fabric from her Smirk line matched really well. Voilá!

I did pretty well this Christmas and got some lovely stuff...

Jeff and his dad each got me a quilting book I'd asked for:



Jeff's mom sent me some money, and unsurprisingly I bought fabric, from the awesome Hawthorne Threads:



Some Echo by Lotta Jansdotter. They were out of the aqua colored blooms (which I have in the orange also), so that's the only print I had wanted that will have to wait a while. I've seen some amazing uses of the saffron yellow prints too, but I will have to try and resist that temptation!

A FQ bundle of Denyse Schmidt's Hope Valley in the New Day colorway:



A few prints from the "Cut Out and Keep" and "Across the Pond" collections from Cloud9:



Rendezvous by Khristian A. Howell:



And from Sew Lux on Etsy some Magic Beans/Pez by American Jane for Moda:



And some Cape Ann, by Liesl Gibson for Moda:

.

A bit of stash building!

I hope you got some nice spoils this season also!

Olivia The Pig

I managed to snap some pictures of the finished Olivia quilt as the leaves were turning and Autumn was in its glory. As I type it's gotten pretty cold the past few days, the leaves are long gone and the outdoor icicle lights have just popped on, as the light already starts to fade at 4pm.

I do wish Fall lasted longer, the turning of the foliage is such a fast process. Over almost as soon as it's begun.


Pattern by Elizabeth Hartman



The back of the quilt is pieced. Two large dot fabrics that were 54" wide. The binding is Kona charcoal with some of the white-on-red polka dot fabric that was used in the quilt top. The background is Kona medium grey.



It presently lives on Miss Matilda's bed (it's not a bed-sized quilt though), where Lieam spends as much time sleeping on it as he possibly can!

WIP Wednesday

On Monday I picked up my Flipside quilt again, and took what I'd assembled apart again (2 rows of blocks and the sashing between them), and reassembled them with some tweaking so that the inaccuracies are either gone or much less noticeable (spray starch with the pressing was a lifesaver here, smaller pieces tend to be so much easier to get pulled out of shape, and this stops that quite a bit). I'm much happier with it, though there are still 2 other rows that need to be attached, and the sashing will need to be duly tweaked, because those inaccuracies from having pieced almost half of each block on a terrible and inaccurate sewing machine before I got the new one certainly took its toll. Ah well, onward and upwards!

Here's what I have so far (Lieam made himself at home almost immediately):



And yesterday I managed to get the Olivia the Pig quilt for Miss Matilda basted. Apparently I need to do this during the day and not in the evening. For a start, the kids are at school for large portions of the day (though yesterday they were with their dad), and the cats are asleep most of the day, which stops Miss Isobel from lying on it immediately, and Mr Lieam from tearing across it as though it's a playground, as he is wont to do when I make the bed as well. Both he and Shiloh L-O-V-E it when you make the bed or fluff the sheets and covers. I'm not sure why it tickles them so, but it does.



Now, this isn't a large quilt at all, but man do your knees hurt after sitting that way for a while basting the entire thing. I'm a bit iffy about the idea of spray basting, though I guess it washes out completely? The fact that my knees wouldn't feel like I'm 85 when I get up after half an hour on a wooden floor makes it appealing though. Ideas?

I hope to get the Olivia quilt quilted tonight, it'll be some simple quilting, probably wonky lines straight across. I haven't decided on grey thread or white or possibly to go for pink. I made the binding a few weeks ago, so I don't have to worry about that, and can sew that on pretty easily. The binding will be Kona Charcoal with bits of the red with white polka dots interspersed.

Oh, and I extended the dining table and put the leaf in. This gives me a bit more working space, and also enough space on the table that I can keep project stuff on one end, and have enough room for everyone to sit comfortably and eat at the table. I do so long for a separate work room! I have to say I was a little bit envious of seeing Julie Herman's lovely new work space on her blog yesterday. So much sun and light in there! A very happy place to work in.

Making Whirligigs

The problem with not having a dedicated work space is that it ends up getting taken over pretty fast. Or, reclaimed for its real purpose I suppose. This place is pretty small and so my work space is usually the dining table. I do usually leave the sewing machine perched on a corner, and often the cutting mat stays on the table too, but sometimes it's a bit of a pain in the ass having to move all the other things on and off the table when other life things need to happen there. Mostly it was reclaimed with other things, and I haven't sewn all week until today.

Admittedly some of my evenings have been taken up by some other hobbies too. I dug into the game I bought back in March last year, Torchlight. It's a single-player adventure game, in the dungeon crawl/hack-n-slash style. It's a lot of fun, if you care for those kinds of things. Also, I played some Civilization V too, the popular strategy game (and achieved victory as Catherine the Great, whoop!). Both are worth checking out for those of you who also enjoy some computer gaming once in a while.

Trying to sew today was obviously a little foolish too, as both kids are home because of the schools being closed for Rosh Hashanah. But I got a bunch of the Terrain and white solid charms cut and parts of the whirligigs pieced. Even if it wasn't much, I feel like getting back into the swing of things.





(Excuse the dark pictures, they were taken with my phone and the indoor/weak natural lighting is a bit odd.)

I'm using a tutorial from this page, which is about how to make whirligigs using charm squares. Handy because I wanted to use the 2 charm packs of Kate Spain's Terrain I won on Melanie's blog. I had 2 charm packs of Moda Bella solids in white, so I'm good to go for a while!

And now off to bake some banana bread muffins with Miss Matilda. Mmm!

For Avery

The other night I finally finished my baby quilt. I watched myself some of Ridley Scott's Robin Hood (with Cate Blanchett ♥ and Russell Crowe), and hand-stitched the binding down on the back (I much prefer how this looks to machine sewing it down, even if it takes infinitely longer). I saw the movie in theaters last year, so I could work without watching the screen all the time.



The top was pieced in about an hour or two, months ago. It was a free tutorial by Elizabeth Hartman, on her site. It was the first quilt top I sewed. I kept putting off finishing it because the baby wasn't due until July (and the top was sewn in April) because the idea of free motion quilting it myself was pretty intimidating. I still find it intimidating, but I decided to give it a shot. I like how it came out, it looks whimsical, though maybe in future I'd go for an all over loopy stitch, not straight-ish loopy lines.



This baby quilt is for dear friends overseas. I feel a tiny bit ambivalent about it now, as the baby it was made for sadly died at birth. It makes it tinged with some sadness. The top sat around for a while, well before the birth, as I hadn't been in a rush to finish it before the baby was due. And then the news that Avery was born sleeping, which was so heartbreaking. The quilt top sat in its box for a few weeks longer, and I decided to pick it up again and finish it last week. I wanted some time to go by as well, before I asked his grieving mama what she would like me to do with it. It was made with love for her and her son and her family, but as people grieve so differently, I figured it was worth finding out what would be most appreciated... the receipt of the gift, not sending it, donating it somewhere.

The back is one of the Modern Workshop prints. I picked the brown print as a gender neutral print, and also a dark one in case the blanket would end up being used outside on grass, or on the floor, so that dust and things wouldn't show as much, or that grass wouldn't stain lighter prints. The binding is also a MW print, the green with white (and the occasional yellow one) dots.

Starting With New

I'm not sure there are words to describe how much better sewing is with a machine that functions properly. It's so much easier! I'm not fighting to make the pieces go through straight now that I have a new 1/4" foot (after having to replace the one that came with the new machine due to being slightly bent). The feed dogs on this machine actually work properly, so things don't shift as much. I can finally sew without feeling all frustrated and on edge.

I'm very excited! It's nice not to feel constantly stressed while you sew, afraid that the inferior machine is bungling up your nice fabric, and that your quilt will, at the end, not be as awesome as you imagined because there are all these tiny mistakes constantly adding up to make the whole thing off.

The replacement foot didn't arrive until Friday, and I didn't get as much sewing done on the weekend as I would have liked, due to various social engagements, but I've managed to sew on my Flipside blocks a little yesterday and today:



That's roughly two-thirds of the way in, then I'll need to cut up the white sashing and such.

Holiday Weekend

I hope the US peeps all enjoyed their holiday weekend. My lack of a functional 1/4" foot meant no piecing this weekend, sadly. We also spent part of the 4th of July without power in half of the house, so a functional sewing machine wouldn't have helped too much. I did, however, use some of the time to select 20 squares from my Kate Spain Fandango layer cake for a planned Carnival (Jaybird Quilts pattern) quilt. And I cut a bunch of the pieces for my Halloween Taffy quilt (also a Jaybird Quilts pattern).



Thankfully the power didn't go out in the kitchen, so I was able to try out a recipe I'd seen on Heidi Swanson's blog, 101 Cookbooks: Salt-Kissed Buttermilk Cake.


Mmmm! Surely berries are one of the best things about summer!


Salt-kissed Buttermilk Cake



A cake that you can feel a lot less guilty about! It uses whole wheat pastry flour (Bob's Red Mill to the rescue), 1/2 cup of sugar (+3 tbsp on top) and 1/4 cup of butter. As anyone who does any baking knows, that's not a lot at all.

I baked mine in a 10" tin, rather than an 11", which meant a few more minutes in the oven.

It's a very subtle cake, which I enjoyed a lot. A lot of cakes get drowned out by excessive use of sugar, and with only a little of it used, it really allowed the lemon zest in the batter to shine too.

Certainly this is a recipe to add to the rotation. My only future tweaks would be to use a little less of the salt on the top, as 1 teaspoon ended up being a little much for us. With the buttermilk making the cake a little saltier anyway, and there not being a huge amount of sugar used, too much of the topping salt can be a touch overpowering. However, your mileage may vary and all that.

The kids enjoyed the cake too, though it was difficult to get Miss Matilda to stop digging out and consuming only the berries. Cheeky miss monkey!

Olivia the Pig

Having teacup humans means that you get exposed to some children's TV. One of the shows I actually find amusing, and doesn't make me want to bang my head into a wall, is the animated series of Olivia (on Nick Jr), based on the children's book series by Ian Falconer. Olivia is a peppy, resourceful and determined little piglet and reminds me a lot of Miss Tilly, whom this is for.

There are 2 different fabric lines by Andover of Olivia. The first line was based on illustrations from the books, and the second on the animated TV series. I went ahead and used some prints from both collections, and some coordinating prints.

For the quilt I chose Elizabeth Hartman's "12 + 2 = Q" pattern because I wanted some larger pieces that showcased one of the larger prints. I didn't however want to have a quilt that was as large as her original pattern was for (which is roughly 90"x96"), so I ended up halving the pattern (after breaking my brain with the math trying to scale it down in other ways.) The quilt top at the moment measures 42.5"x45".

First!

I finished my first large quilt top. I would say it was my first quilt, and it was certainly the one I started first, and acquired fabric for first, but not the one I finished first.

The honor of truly being the first one goes to a Charm Square Baby Quilt I made using Elizabeth Hartman's free pattern, and with a pack of charm squares of Oliver + S's Modern Workshop, with Kona Meringue for the sashing. As that is intended for a gift, only a sneak peek of that one:



My Kitchen Window quilt top, inspired by a custom bundle that I saw on Fabricworm's site a few months back. Pattern from Elizabeth Hartman's book.



Certainly it was a learning experience. It has plenty of flaws, though nothing that really takes away from the enjoyment of the piece (the underside is a little embarrassing though, where I can see all the issues with not so accurate seam allowances), but definitely something that has taught me a lot in various areas. I still have the basting and quilting and finishing to do, so I can't get too ahead of myself here, but I'm pleased with the results.