Double Trouble: Baby Boy Quilt Finishes

 

The best things come in pairs right? Quilts are no different and I seriously was not joking last Sunday when I proclaimed that I was in a super productive phase right now! So I'm going to post lots of photos here - just because I actually got a sunny morning to take pics and took loads, all of which I love! I'm really pleased with these two. **If you're looking for the ticket giveway for the Knitting and Stitching show Dublin, it's here**

First up - the Frogs and Snails quilt is done! This one was made for my MIL and is a gift to my husband's cousin who has a new arrival and I love the freshness and crispness of the triangles. I decided to free motion quilt it rather than quilt the diagonal lines and love the effect.

I had some tension issues on the back (and had to rip back about 1/3 of the quilting, eek!) but got them sorted by actaully adjusting the tension successfully (a major achievement for me, I am usually a "don't touch the manufacturer's standard tension" kinda girl) and flew through it.

I used a very soft blue and white gingham on the back and love how the quilting pattern shows up on it.

I found this little hearts fabric in my local store - its a really lightweight cotton and perfect for binding, I'm really pleased with it.

All in all a successful make.

Quilt Stats:

Name: Frogs and Snails baby quilt
Made For: Baby J, a new arrival in our extended family
Fabric: A wide variety from my stash - mostly from my scrap basket. Including Riley Blake's Hooty Hoot, Wheels, All Star 2, Saffron Craig Beetle Bugs, Moda Just Wing It, Ann Kelle's Urban Zoologie Owls and Whales, and Ready Set Go, and lots more!
Batting: Warm and White
Measures: 37" x 46" approx
Quilting: Meandering stipple by me
Pattern: Simple half square triangle design

Next up, the Autumn Baby quilt. This is one my friend A asked me to make some time ago and she was pretty clear on the colours she wanted - greens, browns and oranges. I have had this quilt in my list for a few months now, but wanted to wait till we hit autumn to make it - those colours being so seasonal and autumnal and perfect for a new baby arriving this time of year. I really was inspired by the falling leaves in the countryside around me and when baby F arrived a little earlier than I had expected last week, I was ready! And delighted, as originally I had planned it to be a gender neutral quilt but now I had a great opportunity to use some complimentary boy fabrics I had. I cut my fabric, did the layout and ran up the quilt top in the 2.5 hours I had free on Wednesday morning when E was in playschool. I basted it very quickly and last night I was just in zone and got it quilted completely (plus finished the Frogs and Snails one). The binding went on this morning (you know I love a machine bound quilt!) and I rushed out to get the pictures in the October sunlight, seeing as how it was the first sun we have seen for about 2 months here. So, like its friend above, its not all crinkly after washing and drying but its on its way to that right now :-)

I stuck to a simple 6" square design to let the fabric do the talking. This quilt came mostly from my stash too - there are some really precious fabrics in there - my 1001 peeps, the Spring Street, the Ann Kelle cars, my prized Saffron Craig Beetle Bugs and my last big pieces of Michael Millers Hedgehogs. I really love the interaction of the colours and how autumnal and natural it all looks.

I free motion quilted this one too with Gutterman cotton thread - the 919 colour which is a natural, ivory type shade. At first I wasn't sure about it over brown blocks but as I went on, it really grew on me.

I backed in it a piece of Amy Butler fabric from the Love range called Bali Gate. Not only was the colour perfect for what I wanted, but the feel of the pattern had that lovely natural, slightly bohemian type of feel to it that complimented the front. I appliqued  on the baby's name in some of the leftover brown fabric - and handstitched to secure. The handstitching gave a bit of texture around the edges of the letters, giving them a slightly "distressed" look which I like.

(For the curious, that's an Irish name pronounced Fee-un-awn -the Fee is a very short sound, emphasis on the last syllable!)

The binding is another lightweight cotton from my local store in a tan colour - not a colour I'd normally go for, but I wanted a neutral and a darker brown would have been too heavy against the rest of the quilt and overpowered it. I wasn't sure about this one till I put it on but am really loving it now.

So this one has been washed and is drying now, ready to be parcelled up and posted off to A in Germany tomorrow.

Quilt Stats:

Name: Autumn Baby quilt
Made For: My friend A
Fabric: As above - a total mix!
Batting: Warm and White
Size: 36" x 48"
Quilting: Free Motion quilting
Pattern: Simple squares

So, there you go. Two quilts in two weeks. And I'm working on a third, plus the Christmas table runner, no wonder I can't figure out where the weeks are going ;-)  Don't they look all squashy and lovely together on the chair?

I also did get to my Drop Art FMQ practice for Cindy but just couldn't get to post it over the weekend, with laptop trouble. So I'll save it and post it with next week's. Plus, I'm sorry I've been a bit flaky about visiting blogs, commenting and replying to comments the last couple of weeks - I'm spending so much time staring at a screen in work these days I'm finding it hard to turn on the laptop in the evenings, particularly when its being so temperamental. And I've been trying to clear the decks a bit sewing wise, and when I'm online, I'm not sewing! But another week or so and that should improve! And lastly, by popular request, I'll be starting up a Winter Sewing plan & linky in the next 2 weeks so get started thinking about what's on your lists and start preparing your posts :-)

So, having 2 quilt finishes, you can be sure I am going to be doing some serious linking up this week. Watch out for me hanging out with some really talented ladies over at Sew Modern Monday, Manic Monday, Fabric Tuesday, (buttons all here) and also I'm entering my Autumn Baby quilt in Celebrating Colour over at Stitched in Colour:

Across the Sea Quiltalong Finish!!

Today is the big Ta-Dah day for our Across the Sea quiltalong. It seems like a long time since myself and my lovely friend Jennifer announced our Quiltalong back in August. I'll never forget the morning we posted it, waking up so nervous wondering if anyone would join us!  We quickly had some great peeps on board and it has just grown and grown since then, with over 100 people in the Flickr group - 100 people!!!!! It has been inspiring and amazing watching you all interpret the design, give it different looks with your fabric and layout choices and make it truly your own.

Today, I am really proud to be showing you my own finished version. Apologies for the quality of the pictures - they were taken in a misty drizzle this morning which is the best weather I have had in the 8 days since I finished it up. (I'm so jealous of peeps across the small pond in the UK who have had a glorious week of weather. Yes, I mean you Hadley and you Susan and you Nicky - I am completely jealous of your beautiful pics!!!) Despite the moaning I'm still going to bore you with lots of photos, just because I love it so much :-)

This quilt is for my beautiful new niece R who is just a few weeks old. I used a FQ bundle of Momo's Just Wing It for Moda, and mixed a few other fabrics in there for a little colour balance including the owl print from Its a Hoot, and a yellow print from Dream a Little Dream with Me by Keri Beyer for In The Beginning. I really love how the colours worked. It is girlie without being too pink and the aqua and green and touches of brown give it a nice depth of colour. I love Jennifer's cross block design and think she was inspired to include the scrappy border, it really ties it all together for me! I went superscrappy on my border because I just love that look, but I do wonder if it would have been even nicer with the longer border strips.

The back was my design and I really appreciate all the people who kept faith and made it - I know how strong the temptation is to not bother with a pieced back when you have the quilt front done, so thank you! I hope you feel it was worth the extra trouble - personally, I am very happy with it. I really love the bordered cross block, and I love how the other crosses just float there - particularly that cute little baby cross. Here's my finished back:

I used a white fabric with a baby pink polka dot for my backing - its hard to see here (thank you, crappy light conditions) but it really does add to the quilt and looks very nice.

When it came to the quilting, I went with an all over meandering stipple, a little larger than I normally stipple. I will definitely be using this sort of scale in the future, it was much quicker and looks just as nice - I was definitely over-quilting before!

You saw my binding last week - I'm still in love with it. I used to have some of this fabric in a blue/green colourway and I'm heading back into my local fabric shop this week to see if I can find it, its absolutely perfect for binding.

So there you go, I can't believe its all over! I'll be so sad that our little quiltalong crew is disbanding, but I know that I've made lots of new friends and discovered lots of great blogs in the course of this process.

I want to say a huge thank you to Jennifer, my partner in crime! She's just the best and we had lots of fun doing this, despite the challenges of being in two completely different time zones.
So, a really big reminder that you need to have your finished quilts posted in the Flickr group by tonight to be eligible for the giveaway this week. Winners will be announced on Wednesday. Also, instead of doing a linky of finished quilts which might be hard to manage between two blogs, I have set up a thread in the Flickr group for linking up your quilt finish posts - I hope you all go round and visit the blog links and spread the quilt love. That thread is here.

So, last but not least, here are my quilt stats in summary:


Quilt Stats:

Name: Across the Sea quilt
Made For: My niece R
Fabric: Just Wing It by Momo for Moda + some additional fabrics
Batting: Warm and White
Size: 46" x 58"
Quilting: Meandering stipple by me
Pattern: Mine and Jennifers quiltalong pattern.

Ok, and after all that I'll be doing a bit of linking myself! Linking up to Sew Modern Monday, Manic Monday and Fabric Tuesday with this one :-)

         

Skittles Quilt Top

In between the raindrops this morning I managed to get some pictures of my Skittles quilt top which I finished up this week. See that bit of clear sky? It was there for approximately 3 minutes and its gone again, the rain is back to pelting down :-( Seriously, its like November out there. Sorry this pic is so dark, its the best I could get. You'll get a better idea of the colours further down in the indoor pics!


It feels like I have been making this quilt top forever but in fact, its actually a very quick make. I just did bits and pieces of it here and there over a few months, but if you sat down to make it you'd have the top pieced in no time. I used Kate Conklin's pattern and it uses the "stack and slash" method which is very quick and lots of fun. It really suits a quilter like me who is looking for low stress quilting rather than needing to have pinpoint accuracy in blocks. It's also incredibly economic in terms of fabric usage - because of the way the blocks are constructed, you are slashing across big blocks rather than cutting squares/rectangles etc from fat quarters, so there is really suprisingly little waste. So, if you like this kind of look, which I do, I would definitely recommend checking out this pattern. It includes a second pattern along similar lines and measurements for both lap and baby size.

The first stack of blocks I "slashed", I made my cuts quite evenly - but after that, I made them really randomly, going in the same and then different directions and I love the randomness and unevenness of how they work:


I used some of the purple and blue fabrics from the Central Park line and am totally delighted with how they worked together. The original pattern is in a purple colourway too which I think influenced my choices here, but as soon as I saw those trees and the big flowers in Central Park, I knew they were made for this :-)

Next decision is how to quilt this one. I could outline quilt the blocks and handquilt around each fabric slash as in the original pattern. But I've never handquilted before so I would be a bit nervous about it. And I would need to source some perle cotton somewhere. Or I could FMQ it which I'm leaning towards as I love the texture. One way or the other, I still have to piece a backing for this one before I can cross that bridge so I'll keep mulling it over - but let me know if you have an opinion, as always!

Linking up to:

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

Crazy Home Mini quilt

Here it is, my crazy scrappy mini quilt!

When I had done my crazy blocks I got the idea for the centre block. I wanted to display this mini somewhere in the house and have a perfect spot in the hall. I thought it would be a nice "welcome" type quilt to display. I appliqued the letters on and pieced tiny 1 inch squares in each colour around them to tie the quilt together.


For the same reason I decided to use a natural cotton/linen rather than a white solid - the blocks are so colourful that I felt they would pop almost too much against the white for the place I want to hang it and I wanted the tones to be a little muted.


I quilted it in a free motion stippled pattern using a natural cotton thread. I used a poly batting which is a higher loft than my normal cotton batting, which gives it a little extra body.


The binding is a colorful dotty fabric that I spotted on Monday when I went to buy some more white solid fabric at my local shop - its a lightweight cotton and is perfect for binding.


Quilt Stats:

Name: Crazy Home Mini Quilt
Fabric: Scraps & cotton/linen sashing
Batting: Poly
Size: 29" x 29"
Quilting: FMQ using natural cotton thread
Pattern: The crazy block tutorial from Aneela Hoey's Crazy Scrappy QAL.



Another finish for my Summer Sewing list - I'll be posting the mid-summer check in linky on Saturday, so get your posts ready people! This is off to be hung in my hall to welcome us into the house. Its got so many of my favourite fabrics in it, scraps from lots of projects I've made, scraps I've received from friends in swaps - really, this little quilt has a lot of meaning for me.



I'm linking up to The Girl Creative:

as well as So You Think You're Crafty, Fantastic Friday at Iron Violet Designs, Feature Yourself Friday at Fingerprints on the Fridge.

Summer Dreams Quilt

The Summer Dreams quilt is finished! Another summer sewing list item done :-)


This is a commissioned quilt for a Christening gift for a baby girl. It is based on my Sophie's Dreams quilt, using the same simple square pattern but with a slightly different selection of fabrics. I did stick with a similar colour palette though. I think for little girls the red and green combo is a good one. It avoids too much pink but is still girlie and pretty - but I did get some pink in there (of course!), especially some stronger pink values.


The backing is a pretty cream fabric with a small floral print with reds, pinks, and greens which I found in my local fabric shop. (They stock it in a number of colours and I love it, its a great backing/lining fabric). I appliqued the baby's name on the centre of the backing using raw edge applique - you can see the first few letters here. I like to make the letters a little wonky to match the wonky lines of the quilting.


Its quilted using the same wonky straight line method I used for the original Sophie's Dreams quilt, but I spaced the lines a little further apart this time. I do like the texture they give. This quilt fought me all the way when I was quilting it. I originally tried to do alternate straight & wavy lines but 5 lines in, it really wasn't working and I had to unpick all the rows :-( Even on the straight lines, nothing really flowed, I don't know why! Maybe because I took so long to baste it - it was on the floor for 3 nights because of my work schedule and I think that the fabric loosened out - the masking tape I used to hold the backing taut on the floor had come away in a few places but because I was almost done I didn't think much of it at the time, but I could feel it when it came to quilting.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with this one and I hope that it is well received by baby's mammy and J who ordered it.

Quilt Stats:

Name: Summer Dreams
Made For: Commissioned quilt for J - a Christening gift for her niece M
Fabric: A mix from my stash including Riley Blake's Rainy Days & Mondays and Bloom & Grow, Michael Miller Ta Dot, Ann Kelle Remix & Urban Zoologie, Alexander Henry Willow Wren. Momo's Freebird, Laurie Wisbrun's Tufted Tweets, Amy Schimler's On A Whim II (Owls & Cats) and lots more
Batting: Warm & White
Size: 59" x 51" approx
Quilting: Wonky straight lines
Pattern: Simple 7.5" squares

I'm officially on my holidays now so I think that posting might be very sporadic for the next couple of weeks as I spend a little quality time with the kids :-) But I will be posting an update on my Summer Sewing project the first week of July so if you linked up in May, get your posts ready for the mid-term review!! I can't wait to see what you've gotten done from your lists :-) You can also join in at that point if you want! I also have a new button for it if you want to grab it.

I'm also linking this up to Lily's Quilts Fresh Sewing Day - it's my fave make of June!