Kaleidoscope Quilt Finish!

Last night I finished my Kaleidoscope quilt and here it is:


Didn't it turn out nicely? I'm really pleased with this one, love the bright colours and LOVE the pattern. I did this quilt as part of Elizabeth's fab quiltalong. It's the first full size quilt I've done as a quiltalong and despite being a week late starting, I am impressed with myself that I managed to finish up on schedule.

The pattern was really great and I so enjoyed making it - all the more so for looking at what other people were doing with theirs. It's so amazing to me how the same pattern can look so different depending on fabric choices and design decisions. If you want to see more, just pop over and have a look at the Flickr group to see what I mean! I also learned lots making this quilt, not having done a lot of work with triangles before. Most important note to self - don't use paper templates again for cutting, after ripping back about 4 blocks a number of times to get my points matching. Even a millimetre or two here and there in your cutting makes such a difference on accuracy where you have so many points meeting.


Thanks to everyone who offered their advice on borders and binding. In the end, I decided to leave the quilt top as it was with no border, to maintain the illusion of those blocks whirling off the quilt. After posting the pics of the quilt top, I couldn't get the word whirligig out of my head. That, and the fact that its for a lovely baby boy influenced how I quilted it. I have a little 5 year old boy myself and completely love how he runs everywhere, with no pattern or meaning, round in circles, retracing his steps, covering about a million miles more than he really needs too. So I decided to free motion quilt it in a meandering, looping pattern, crossing over itself, looping around and around, going back and forth in no particular pattern, to mirror the whirling blocks and a little boy's motion, and I do think I captured that.


I think it works well and I hope my friend N likes it. I will definitely quilt in this looping style again, I love the effect.


I dithered about what binding to go with and dug around through my stash looking for something for quite a while, being too lazy to piece together all the strips necessary for a scrappy binding. I found this lovely blue fabric I had forgotten about and thought, with its red, white and green bubbles, it would work perfectly as the binding and I'm pretty happy with it.



I had this backing fabric in my stash and thought it was perfect for this quilt. Its actually from a small bolt of fabric I bought in IKEA and its a great gender neutral print which blends with whatever colour you put with it.


So, another quilt finished and this one is off to be washed and dried for that lovely crinkly texture before I post it off to N for baby O's room.


Quilt Stats:

Name: Whirligig Kaleidoscope
Made For: Baby O
Fabric: A mix from my stash including Riley Blake's Hooty Hoot, and All Star, Michael Miller Ta Dot, Ann Kelle's Urban Zoologie and Ready Set Go, Amy Schimler's On A Whim II, Saffron Craig's Beetle Bugs and lots more
Batting: Warm & White
Size: 36" x 48" approx
Quilting: Loopy free motion quilting
Pattern: Elizabeth's Kaleidoscope pattern

I'm linking this up to Sew & Tell over at Amylouwho, Summer Fair over at Gen X Quilters and

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!

Kaleidoscope quilt top finished.... Or is it??

Here's my quilt top for the Kaleidoscope QAL all done. It's for a baby boy and I'm a bit in love with how the colours twirl around it! Keeping the colours blocked in it was definitely the way to go rather than my normal scrappy mix-everything-up style.

I found this quilt quite challenging from a colour design perspective but it was worth it! I also found it challenging from a technical perspective and love how much I learned making it! I havent done a whole pile of work with triangles so far, and getting the 8 points meeting in the block centres took quite a bit of ripping back and re-sewing on some blocks. Now, I'm usually pretty relaxed about things being very precise but even I couldn't leave these go! Plus, it's for my friend's little boy and I wanted it to be right. Me and my seam ripper are best buddies these days!!

I'm still on the fence about adding a border or not. I put the question out on Flickr yesterday and thought I would post it here to get some more opinions from my wise bloggy friends :-) A few people suggested a colour border. What do you think? If so, what colour, one of the fabrics from the quilt or a different one? Or White (which is how I was leaning)? Or none? If I did do a colour border, how about binding then... would you stick with the same colour family? Eeek!!! Too many questions in my mind!
Please, o wise ones, send some suggestions my way... and N, if you're reading, as this one is for you, let me know what you think!!

I'm linking this up to Sew Chatty, Sew Modern Monday, Manic Monday and Fabric Tuesday! Go check them out for other lovely sewing and crafts!

Kaleidoscope Quiltalong Progress

This last few days has been all about catching up with the Kaleidoscope Quilt Along. I'm pretty please with where I've gotten to and should be fully caught up by the time Elizabeth posts the next set of instructions on Thursday.

By this afternoon I have half of the blocks for this quilt fully finished, and the other half pretty far down the road. I found it a bit difficult at the start to envisage how this was all going to work and flow together, never having tackled a project like this before, but the Flickr group has been really great to provide inspiration and, together with some great ideas and hints on design from Elizabeth, I am really loving how this quilt is coming together.



I'm doing the baby quilt size for a friend who asked me at the start of the summer to make one for her soon-t0-arrive baby, and I'm hoping that this will be a hit with her for baby O's room. I decided to use some of my nicest boy's novelty prints in variations of 3 strong colours - blue, green and red. I did doubt at one stage that it was all going to work, but decided to go the monochromatic route rather than mixing it up and have fallen in love with it.


I must admit that I have gotten to be best buddies with my seam ripper (and found a few new choice phrases!) in sewing up these blocks, mostly through my own stupidity (i.e. getting too excited and rushing ahead without checking my layout and sewing the wrong pieces together). I've also struggled to get my points matching up precisely on a few of the blocks which is a bit frustrating - this one has been ripped back and resewn about 5 times and this is the best I can get it. I know it doesn't look too bad in the photsos but the points are definitely NOT matching!


This one caused me some heartache too! But I figure that the little imperfections will get lost in the overall effect once I have it pieced together. It's actually reassuring to realise that they don't look as bad even already in the photos! I'm also trusting that the centres of the blocks will flatten out when its all together and quilted. Despite trying to press it into submission with my iron this afternoon, it was not playing!


Here's the layout for the top half of the quilt - isn't it fun? I really like the colour blocks and how the colour moves across it. It definitely draws the eye in.


Fingers crossed that piecing the rest of these goes reasonably smoothly:


I can't wait now to get it all together! I'm linking this up to

and

I'm Back!

Did you miss me, my friends? I suspect not! I've been off on a little break with my family - and it was really lovely to catch up with them. We visited my parents and caught up with my siblings and gorgeous niece and nephew and while I was there I even got to visit a very special person - my friend's brand new baby boy. He was so adorable! While I was there I talked to N about the quilt she wants me to make for him and I think that the Kaleidoscope quilt might just work out perfectly!

I am a little behind on this quiltalong having been away but catching up as quickly as I can. When I got back today I got out my cutter and got to it and ended up with this little pile of triangles:


I now need to cut my white solid (well, I need to go buy some first!) and play around on my design wall/bed/floor to get it working and flowing. Then its time to crank up the machine for some chain piecing and hopefully by next week I'll have caught up with the group!



The surprise of the week was our visit to Johnstown Castle in Co. Wexford which is home to an Agricultural Museum and Famine Exhibition. I was not terribly excited about going to this museum but thought it might be fun for the kids. Much to my total surprise, it was really really interesting and we all really enjoyed it - the kids adored the old farm equipment! A lot of the exhibitions were social history centred and there was a lovely exhibit of old country furniture upstairs - including some replica quilts. But the star of the show for me was this unfinished Famine Quilt which was part of the Famine Exhibition.



Isn't it amazing? Its paper pieced and as you can see, the newspapers date back to 1847.



I can't believe the tiny stitches, the tiny hexagons, and how much time and work this must have taken! I also just love the colours and how this pattern was put together. And all by hand...



It was made by a lady called Mary Stedmond who lived in Co. Wexford and its quite amazing to think that something this beautiful came out of such a terrible period in Irish history. Seeing as how I was blown away by it, I thought some of you might be interested to see it!

Another finished quilt top

I managed to get finished today this quilt top which is for a commissioned quilt. Its based on my previous "Sophie's Dreams" quilt, using a similar colour palette but with a different colour balance and many different fabric prints. I'm happy with how its turning out :-) I'm hoping to get the baby girl's name appliqued on the backing and get it basted tonight so that I can start quilting it on Sunday after picking up some natural cotton thread tomorrow.

Not sure what I'm going to call this one - I don't want to call it Sophie's Dreams 2! Any ideas?


I also decided to join up with Elizabeth's Kaleidoscope Quiltalong which I'm really excited about!

These are the fabrics I have picked - I'm going to do the baby size quilt for a little boy.


What do you think? I love them!!!