Stitching the Made to Measure

The last few evenings have been spent very pleasantly on the sofa stitching up a storm.

I table basted this massive quilt top on Saturday and am glad to have that part behind me. I have a few weeks of hand quilting to look forward to now - I love having a big project to work on in bits and pieces. This is the first proper big quilt that I will have entirely hand quilted - usually I do a little bit of machine stitching in the ditch to secure the layers. But I could not face wrestling it through the machine, and I'm interested to see how it turns out done entirely by hand.

It is slow, but very enjoyable.

I outlined all the seams in the central star block with pink perle cotton. I didn't mark any quilt lines at this stage, but may need to for some of the other borders...will wait and decide when I get to that point.  Need to pick another thread now for the next border.

On the home front, only more day at work and I'm off for a whole 11 days....cannot wait!!

WIP Wednesday

I'm playing more catchup today with stuff I've been working on in the last few weeks. If you follow me on Instagram you'll have seen these pics already but I hope you won't mind having a little peek again! I hope you'll excuse that the photos aren't wonderful. November and December are so dark and dreary here, its practically impossible to get good photos when you are at work during daylight hours.

First up - my Made to Measure quilt. This one was on the back burner for a little while until I faced up to doing all those HSTs for the big 8th border. I finally got on with it a few weeks ago. Here's what the layout is looking like - ignore the quilt top full of creases please!

 

Once I had them laid out, I pieced those flying geese strips pretty quickly actually. I'm really happy with how they look - I used 4 different low volume prints as the background, and it worked exactly as I hoped. 

Now I just need to do the star blocks for the corners (more procrastination here, avoiding those teeny tiny HSTs for the little stars) and then one more border for which I have a Road 15 text print, and I'm actually done with the quilt top. This is another mammoth 80" x 80" quilt, so I'll try the table basting method again on this one and I've decided that I'm going to hand quilt this which has me excited and terrified in equal measure, and means it probably won't be done before next summer.

Speaking of mammoth quilts, Swoon is almost done. I sewed the binding on the front last night and plan to spend the next couple of evenings curled up on the sofa, handfinishing it on the back. Apart from the piecing, handstitching the binding to finish is my absolute favourite part of making a quilt. 

 
I see a lot of hand stitching in my future in the next couple of weeks. I'm having keyhole surgery for gallstones on Friday so I have lots of time to fill in the next couple of weeks recovering. I've been working on Aneela Hoey's Cherry on the Tree Swing embroidery pattern for the last couple of weeks, picking it up here and there in the evenings, and its not perfect but its coming along nicely. This hoop is for baby Rachel's room, along with a few other things I am making for her.

 

Beside Cherry on the Tree Swing, I also bought some lovely embroidery patterns from Lilipopo, including this gorgeous  Carol Singers one which I'm planning to start next week.

Image by Lili Popo

So that's my WIP Wednesday. Linking up to Freshly Pieced with lots of very talented ladies, and looking forward to seeing what everyone else has been up to.

WIP Wednesday

Its been a productive week here at FairyFace HQ, I think maybe the sunshine is making things flow easier and faster! In any case, I have a lot of projects that I've managed to finish/make significant progress on.

In addition to some very satisfying finishes, I have been making progress on my Made to Measure quilt (from the Handquilted with Love book).

 

This is the first medallion quilt I've made and I'm really enjoying the process.  After making the centre and the first border, I decided to add a teal/aqua border with orange and purple pops as I didn't want to get stuck in a pink and orange colour scheme. I doubted this choice a bit, and I really wasn't sure about the purple border 3 when I was making it. But now that I've put on the grey Loulouthi last border (I have been hoarding that print for just the "right" project for a long time!) I am delighted with how its looking, I love the jewel tones. The next border is going to return to pinks and oranges again - the brighter the better! But all those HSTs, especially the teeny tiny ones for the star cornerstones, make for a lot of work so I might take a break for a few days.

I've also been basting hexies in the evenings when I'm sitting down in front of the tv. I cut these from fabrics in my scrap bin one weekend using my Go! Baby when I was trying to make some room in it - I have over 400 of them! I gave some to a friend, and started basting the rest. Not sure what I'm going to make with them yet, but I need a new cushion cover for my sewing chair, and I'm thinking I may use them for that - particularly as there are so many favourite scraps from lovely projects in there. They're small - the sides are only 1" long, but because they are that size, they were perfect for some of the teeny tiny scraps I had.

I'll keep adding to them until I decide! I have a lot more than I need though so I'm running a little giveaway for 100 of them over on Instagram where I am @sewfairyface - head over there and check out my photo for details of how to enter.

This week's finishes include my Kona tumbler quilt:

And my triangular Echo placemats:

I also tackled one of Ayumi's lovely projects in her book Patchwork Please! - the Prettified Pincushion. I found this a little bit tricky to make - mainly because of the tiny little blocks, and working with the Essex linen was a bit different to cotton. (I also think baby brain had a significant contribution to my messing up the blocks more than once). But in the end I rescued it, and it turned out very pretty and is sitting proudly on my sewing table.

So that's my very productive week. Linking up to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced!