Some fun little finishes

It may not seem like it, as my blogging is a little bit slow at the moment, but I'm actually getting quite a bit of sewing done lately. We're full swing in the summer holidays and the whole family is at home all day every day. Finding time in between the constant demands for food (seriously, how often do children need to eat, because it feels like my older 2 are hungry every hour!) and baby care can be a bit challenging at times, but short bursts of sewing are perfect when you're working on small projects.

(Don't forget that my giveaway for a $25 gift certificate for Fat Quarter Shop closes tomorrow, so if you haven't entered already, make sure to do it here)

My friend asked me a while ago if I would make a few things for her, and of course I was happy to oblige.
 

First up, she wanted some placemats for her kitchen table. She had seen the ones I made for my brother, but wanted a more regular shape than triangles. I settled on rectangular mats measuring approx 12" x 10", and made 2 contrasting patterns, 3 of each. I loved her colour palette of pink against a neutral and really enjoyed making these. The neutral is Kona Champagne, which I've had in my stash forever, and is such a lovely warm colour. These are a very easy make, and would be a perfect project for those new little mini charm packs so I'll post a quick tute later in the week with the measurements.

 I straight line quilted these using Aurifil 50wt thread, they are quilted approx 1/4" apart in dense lines which I hope will help them to stand up to frequent washing. I really love the stitch definition I got with it.

I found the perfect pink binding for them, with tiny stars, and they are backed with a Tanya Whelan Grand Revival print which I can't remember the name of. I machine bound these (again, to help them withstand frequent washing) after reading a few different tutorials for the technique, I like how they turned out on the front  but could probably make the back a little neater with more practice.

My friend also wanted some bunting for her little nephew. I forgot how fun it is to make bunting and how pretty it looks! Must make some for baby R's room too.

Lastly, after seeing my friend Fiona's piano cover over on her Facebook page, my friend asked me to make something similar for her daughter (my goddaughter) for her keyboard.

 

We decided a rainbow of colour would work nicely for this one, and once I had pulled out some prints, I put this together very quickly. I think this is one of my favourite things I've made this year - so simple, but I just love how it works.

 

I used a candy stripe pink for the backing and a black poplin to bind it. I quilted the white space similarly to how I did the placemats, leaving the coloured "keys" unquilted so they popped that bit more. This measures about 32.5" x 6"

I'm heading off to visit my friend next week, so I have lots of goodness to bring with me and I know she's dying to get her hands on it, which is great.

Triangular Echo Quilted Placemats

So, about 9 months after starting to make some placemats as a gift, they are finally done! But I think they were worth the wait, don't you?

I originally started these placemats with a completely different pattern and fabrics, but made a complete mess of the quilting - absolutely unrescueable. And I didn't have the energy to start again. But back in March, I was inspired by Leanne's triangles miniquilt, and came up with an idea for triangular shaped placemats. I had a lovely bundle of grey and mustard prints from Lotta Jansdotter's Echo line, to which I added a FMF print that fit right in, and a pale grey Aneela Hoey print.

I made 4 placemats. A part of me really wanted to make 6 - not least for the great hexagon shape they would make when put together - but these are for my brother and his girlfriend and I don't think their table is big enough for 6.

Each of the placemats are different with randomly placed triangles.

They are quilted with white Aurifil 50wt thread on the front, and my favourite silvery-grey on the back. I quilted them in ever expanding triangles, working out from the centre in straight(ish) lines.

I'm really pleased with the textured effect the quilting gives. The lines are very close together - only 1/4" apart, so it's very dense.

For backing I used some Hope Valley on two of them, and the medium grey Riley Blake chevron print on the other two.

These measure approx 16" on each side and are big enough to take my humoungous white dinner plates, so they will work great for a more average sized plate.

I was going for a very modern, minimalist, non-quilty/crafty look as my brother would not be into that sort of thing. I think with the unique shape and the Scandavian type prints, and the cool palette, I achieved that.

They are bound using a dark grey dotty cotton poplin. I was going to use white, but my hubby insisted (when I asked his opinion on them) that they grey would be a better choice and looking at them now, I think he was right (though it pains me deeply to type that!!) I thought I was going to have issues binding those angles and couldnt find any tutes online but it was surprisingly straightforward in the end.

They're all ready to go in the post tomorrow. Another finish, so satisfying. I'm linking this up to the Finishalong too :-) I'm on a bit of a roll with finishes at the moment, more tomorrow!!

Kona Tumbler baby quilt finish

Some time ago the lovely Cindy asked me to make a baby quilt for her shop and promised me the opportunity to pick some lovely fabric to work with. Of course I jumped at it and here it is :-)

This is a very simple quilt made with a couple of charm packs of Kona brights, and 1 fat quarter of the Sweetest Thing. I used this tutorial from Moda Bake Shop.

 It's backed with some lovely bright Kona Peacock.

And I used an orange binding to really make it pop:

 I stippled it using a 50wt Aurifil thread, colour 2600 which is a light silvery grey. I love this thread, it is brilliant for using on quilts with multiple colours as it works with them all and the quilt design sinks in nicely from it once its washed and dried. I also changed up the quilting from my normal by adding in very frequent loops, and I really love them - I'll be doing more loopy quilting in the future.

The front and the back work really nicely together. I have to say that I really love the simplicity of the quilt design with the tumblers and the solids, and I think the pops of the print work well. At 30" x 43" its a lovely baby size too.  I'll feel a little pang posting this one off on Tuesday morning to Cindy as I really fell in love with it while making it. But hopefully someone will fall in love with it as much as I did!

I hope that your weekends are going well. We have a bank holiday weekend here in Ireland and are enjoying some good weather - probably our 1 week of summer before the rain sets in!!

This is one of my finishes for Q2 of Leanne's Finish-a-Long - so good to tick another one off my list.

Woohoo! First quilt finish of 2013 :-)))))

 

Those noises you're hearing and wondering what they are? They're the sound of me doing a happy dance that I have finally - almost 3 months into the year - managed a quilt finish. Yippee!

It's a very small quilt - a baby size pram quilt - but a big milestone. Finished this morning as my baba hit the 10 week mark - can you believe how fast the weeks are flying by?  (A hell of a lot faster than the last 10 weeks of pregnancy which were pure torture!) After she was born, I bought a couple of Posy charm packs and when they arrived, I stroked them for a couple of weeks while I was deciding what to do with them. I've wanted to try a tumbler quilt for a little while now, and as the charms lent themselves so easily to cutting into tumbler shapes, I made quick progress once I jumped in and started cutting. I used about 1.5 charm packs - or slightly less - on this, primarily picking the brightest fabrics from the packs.

Back in the Black Friday sale, I bought a yard of Happy Ever After fabric from The Intrepid Thread just because I thought it was lovely - it was one of a few boys and girls fabrics I bought to make sure I had some lovely fabrics in my stash when baby arrived. I really like how it works against the quilt top - totally different, but sweet and girlie also and able to stand on its own enough to make this functional as a double sided quilt.

I quilted it in a random stipple using Aurifil 50wt thread in a light pink, adding in lots of hearts for my gorgeous baby who has truly stolen our hearts! I like how the quilting shows up on this picture I took in the sunlight this morning before washing it:

After that, all that remained was to bind it. I auditioned a few binding choices over on Instagram,  but wasn't really happy with any of them. So I popped off to the local fabric shop and while I was looking at fabrics, noticed they had a premade bias binding in precisely the colour I had been searching for in the fabrics.

I really am happy with the deep purple binding, it works well with the Posy colours and kind of grounds the colours and frames the quilt. (I also might be in love with the premade binding, this was the nicest I've found and super easy and quick to work with. Anything that makes the process easier at the moment!)

And ta-dah, it's done!! I hope you'll forgive me the number of photos for such a small quilt (25 x 36"), but as you can see, I'm very excited to finally have a finish to show you. And here's the lady herself, kicking around happily on it this evening!

I'm working on a few other things - don't forget to pop over and follow me on Instagram where I am posting regular pictures of my work in progress and enjoying looking at what everyone else is working on.
 

Linking up to Fabric Tuesday over at Quilt Story: