Minimalist trees Christmas table runner progress

After I pieced the top of my table runner for the Modern Christmas Table Runner swap, I posted it up in Flickr and asked for opinions about quilting. I wanted to see if my partner had any preference.

Well, I got a tonne of ideas, most of which recommended following the zig zags of the tree shapes. My absolute favourite bit of advice was from Rhonda, who told me to "quilt the snot out of the white parts" to make the trees puff up a little. I'm still giggling to be honest, mostly because that is exactly the sort of phrase I would come out with myself!  But her advice has been on repeat in my head for the last week and I couldn't get away from it!

I decided that a little hand quilting would be nice, and I had the perfect ruby red Perle cotton for it. So I outlined each of the trees in it this week while watching my nightly doses of Aussie Masterchef and really love the effect.

 
Next I took it off to my sewing machine, and, with everyone's advice ringing in my ears, I started by echo outlining each of the trees and then filling in the rest of the spaces. I decided to go very dense and the quilting lines are only 1/4" apart.

I'm totally thrilled with how its looking! Really love how the trees pop against it.

I still need to straight line quilt the rest of the white space but want to put the backing fabric on before I do that.

So this is on target to be all done and ready to post off next week. I also need to do a little handmade ornament, but I have LOADS of inspiration pinned on my Christmas Pinterest board and looking forward to deciding on what to do at the weekend.

Am I allowed mention the "C" word?

You know...Christmas? Well, what else did you think I meant :-))

So, I've been pondering my table runner for Susan's Modern Christmas Table Runner swap. This runner was probably the worst hit of all my projects when my sewing mojo deserted me a few weeks ago. Inspiration was not coming to me and I was starting to really freak out about the fast approaching swap date. I did some sketches a few weeks ago but discarded them. Then I did a few random wonky Christmas tree blocks. I liked them individually but they just weren't singing for me.

This afternoon, in a stormer of a bad mood, I pulled out my fabrics and started cutting triangles. Aggressively. Lol! It made me feel much better. Then I did a bit of sewing. Then I realised it was pretty close to the very first sketch I did. Doh! All that angst for nothing.

I did have a little freak out trying to get my trees to all sit in a straight line. It involved some swearing and a lot of seam ripping. Or maybe, I should reverse those. A bit of seam ripping and a LOT of swearing :-))) I made sure to send the kids out of the room so they thankfully missed the worst of it. But eventually it all worked. And I smiled. To everyone's relief!!

Then, after putting the kids to bed, and never one to pass up some sewing when inspiration finally strikes,  I decided to do a skiny scrappy border. Its a little wobbly but I'll sort that out with the quilting. And now, as if my magic, the quilt top is done. And I think it looks really nice.

It appeals to the modernist in me. I love the clean lines, the simple shapes. Love the border and how it pulls it together. Love that it is Christmassy without being twee. So, now I'm happy. The question is, what does my partner think? I hope she likes it. If she doesn't, well, I have already tried it out on my coffee table and it will work perfectly there. So, now, having got that all off my chest I'm off to enjoy a little bedtime glass of red wine.

For the Love of Solids Swap Mini Quilt

Well, now that my package has (at last) arrived all the way over in Canda, I can finally reveal my swap items for the For the Love of Solids swap! Felicity was a really great partner to have - so active in the Flickr group and lots of hints about what she liked. But as someone whose blog I have admired for quite a long time now, I was pretty anxious that she would like what I made!

Felicity's swap info told me that she loved improv piecing and letters, as well as grey fabric. I checked out her blog and saw she had made a fabulous quilt from free pieced letters. It was so cool, I just had to give it a try and decided to go for something very modern using letters as a starting point. This was a pretty big departure for me. I've never done improv piecing, never done letters and never used a grey backing. I did a fair bit of scouring the blogosphere looking for instructions and inspiration, but didn't find a huge amount of instructions, it being improvisational (doh!). I did find one site which showed me how to make a letter A (can't remember it now!) - not much use to me for the word I wanted but it gave me a starting point and I had a surprising amount of fun making these letters. I love how wonky and irregular they look.

Then I started thinking about the rest of my quilt and how to pull it together. I found this quilt by The Girl Who Quilts  which gave me some inspiration re: improv blocks and how to utilise them. (It also gave me the inspiration for the quilting.) I decided that rather than trying to improv piece the whole quilt top (the thought of which had me petrified!) I would do improv blocks and piece them into the quilt top.

So I made up these little blocks, having a lot of fun doing them I might add!

I really wanted the blocks to be irregular in size and shape, and used some of the crazy piecing techniques I've learned lately to set them into the Kona Charcoal background fabric.  Then I began the process of laying out my top with these 3 blocks, but I just wasn't happy with how it was working. An hour or so of panic later and I realised I needed a teeny tiny 4th block. Once I did that, Iit all came together for me, and I fell in love with it. I moved onto thinking about the back then. I didn't want to go for a totally plain back, and some regular strips would not have fit with the front. So, I did a central block made of randomly cut strips, just for fun! I set this into a vibrant bright teal-ish blue colour (the name of which I can't remember!) backing and I think it works nicely against the front.

After doing a small bit of FMQ on it, which really didn't work, I decided to go back to my inspiration and quilt it in random, angular straight lines to reflect the angular nature of the piecing. It really worked, I was thrilled. Then I noticed that Felicity had used that same quilting technique on her FTLOS small swap item and that made me smile :-) I bound it in the same Kona Charcoal fabric that I used for the background.

Last but not least, I got a rare sunny hour for some photos! Here it is in all its glory! I was afraid to publish any pictures of the whole quilt top, because I thought that the letters might give the game away to Felicity! So its nice to finally be able to show the whole thing off, having only shown partial views in the Flickr group so far.

I then parcelled it up with the Circles Mug rug and sent off to Felicity.

 

The very best thing about swaps though is that you get something in return! And this is the package that arrived all the way from Australia for me last week. Kirsten is someone I have chatted to on email and I loved the look of her progress pics in the Flickr group. So when I saw her name on the return address on the envelope I did a little dance of anticipation in my kitchen before I opened it. And look what I got!! Amazing :-)

I asked for a sewing machine cover or a  mini quilt for my big item...and I got both! Kirsten was amazingly generous. My sewing machine sits on my kitchen table as a permanent fixture, in against the wall. And it has a big ugly white hard cover. But no longer - its now got this lovely double sided cover - with a rainbow on one side and gorgeous straight line quilting and colourful squares on the other.

Then there's the warm/cool HST mini quilt - I'm STILL debating where to put this one, its so pretty.

Lastly, there's a matching little fabric basket which was immediately put into use to keep my essentials beside the sewing machine. How lucky am I?? You should definitely go check out Kirsten's lovely blog - she has great projects! Thanks so much Kirsten, I'm still in love with my swap items!

I have said it before, but need to say it again. This was a GREAT swap. The challenge of working with solids only was really interesting and certainly made me push outside my comfort zone. So thanks Felicity for providing such great inspiration :-) I'm so glad she likes it! And thanks Kirsten for sending me such gorgeous goodies! I'm definitely keeping a close eye out for round 2!! I'm linking up to the mini quilt linky over at Fresh Lemons.

Happy week....

This weekend you find me responsible for not 2 but 3 children! The sudden addition is my gorgeous niece L who at 16 months is possibly the sunniest, sweetest, funniest toddler you could imagine. You can guess how excited my 2 are to have their cousin staying with them for a mini holiday. Its been so much fun, but, my goodness, I forgot how much work they are at that age...exploring everything and so curious. Impossible to leave on their own for even a minute!! But I am so lucky to get this sort of time with L - seeing as how my sister lives at the other end of the country, we don't see each other nearly as often as we would like. And when my sister and BIL get back from their night away tomorrow, they are sticking around locally for another few days to our delight.

So, this visit tops off what has been something of a lucky week for me... with lots of exciting deliveries! The postman has knocked on our door every day this week, much to Himself's disgust. I keep having to tell him they are giveaway wins, not fabric splurges, but I don't think he quite believes me! And what did he bring?

Well, it started with this lovely bag which I won over on Eleni's fab giveaway:

This came all the way to Cork from Athens and I was so delighted when I got it - its absolutely gorgeous! I just love this bag and its already been put to use every day to bring my lunch to work.


Look at the gorgeous lining, isn't it beautiful? Thanks so much Eleni :-)

Next the UPS man knocked on the door with a really special delivery....something you might have seen a fair bit out there on quilting blogs lately...no pics but watch out next week for a tutorial and giveaway..........


Then I was one of the lucky first to receive my Japanese charms courtesy of Cindy of Fluffy Sheep Quilting. As soon as I saw the top one I was delighted.....


And when I opened it up, well, I fell in love. Look at this gorgeousness:

what a fab selection of charms. I have been wondering what I would do with these, there's such a diverse selection of colours and prints. And when I was hanging out my daughters duvet covers on the washing line this afternoon, wishing I had a second set (she has a toddler size duvet so its hard to find covers on their own), it came to me. She will be getting a new duvet cover & pillow case for her bed with these, and they're perfect for it!


Next day, I got a package from Sew Fresh Fabrics with my fabrics for Round 2 of Jennifer's Rainbow Charm swap. Look at these pink lovelies - I'm so glad I added on a little extra quarter yard in case of any cutting disasters and am determined there will be none so I get to keep a little extra for myself.



Last delivery of the week was this Honeybun which I won on Brenda's giveaway last week. Not sure what I will do with this and I'm afraid to unwrap it in case it gets out of control! But so cute, thanks so much Brenda.


Deliveries are nearly done for now, just waiting on my prize FQs from the Quilting Gallery comp and then we're done. But I do need to order some Kona solids for the swap I'm doing.... I have a good idea now from the Flickr group of what she will like.

Hope you're having a lovely weekend!

WIP Wednesday

Well, I've been a bit absent from the WIP Wednesday club these last few weeks. Managing to post at all with how busy things are at the moment is such a major success, I haven't been able to manage a WIP post as well. Plus I'm not working on quite so many projects as I normally do. But I thought I'd do a little update.

Completed this week:

Eh, nothing really.... except that I was totally thrilled to win 3rd place in the Weekly Quilt Contest over at Quilting Gallery, so thank you to everyone who voted for me, I so appreciate it. I can't wait to pick out my prize FQs :-)

Work in Progress:

I have a few things on the go actually.

I needed a small project to work on to balance the bigger quilts so I decided to make myself cushion (pillow!!) covers for some old cushions on my sofa. I saw a lovely scrappy star block show up on a few blogs for Bee blocks and went and had a look at the tutorial on Moda Bake Shop and then made some adjustments for my cushion cover size and to make it a little scrappier. Here's the front pieced:


I still have to quilt it obviously. I'm a bit unsure about this - the colour palette is a bit more pink / pale than I intended, as I only have a small number of Bliss fabrics. (Its to match my Bliss quilt on my sofa.) But my lovely bloggy friend Susan came to my rescue today and is sending me on some scraps which I will use for the other 2 cushions and hopefully they'll all balance out. I do love this quilt pattern - would definitely consider it for my month in the new Bee I've joined (more anon!)

My Kaleidoscope Quilt top is done (or nearly!) Thanks so much for all the advice and suggestions re: borders or not....I'm still mulling it over! Hoping to get this basted and quilted and finished this weekend!


I also have finally made some progree on my bedroom curtains...they're coming along slowly but surely, when I get some sofa time for the hand sewing. This is the fabric I'm using - it a gorgeous, rich, heavy champagne/aqua blue fabric and will blend perfectly in my room where I have a feature wall in a beautiful Laura Ashley duck egg blue wallpaper.



Other Stuff:

I'm really excited to have signed up for some Flickr swaps - the Scrappy Mug Rug Swap and For the Love of Solids. Looking forward to getting my swap partners and doing a little stalking ;-) I find swaps make you think a little differently and force you to be a little more creative, so I can't wait. I'm trying to see if we have enough interest for an Irish swap in the Sew Irish Flickr group - its for a small item so if you're interested, please pop over and let me know on the thread!


I also signed up for Jenna's Sew Bee Blissful which is the first bee I've participate in. Its starting in August. I'm a little nervous but looking forward to it! And lastly, I jumped at the chance to join Jennifer's Rainbow Charm Swap Round 2 having received a lovely bundle in the post last week!

Linking up to Lee's WIP Wednesday over at Freshly Pieced - go check out the talented ladies over there!

Great new fabric swap!

My friend Cindy has just posted a great new fabric swap over on her blog, Fluffy Sheep Quilting! It's a Japanese import fabric charm swap and I'm really excited about it :-)

It's open to Irish and UK based peeps so click on the button above to get over there and sign up fast!!!