Skittles Quilt (my hand quilting heaven!)

It's been a glorious weekend here in Cork. Hazy, sunshine filled days...something we had almost forgotten could happen in the last couple of years. The garden has been weeded and the grass has been cut. The kids bikes have been ridden for miles up and down our road. The local insects have been adopted as pets.

The washing has all been line dried. A lot of ice cream has been consumed. (The house has gone to pieces, but who cares when you spend the whole day outside?)

And I finished my Skittles quilt. Yay!

This quilt was my biggest and longest-standing UFO. I started it last April...almost a year in the making. When I cut the fabric for it, Kate Spain's Central Park was high on the trendy fabrics list, and I remember seeing it on so many blogs. One year on and I really think these fabrics from that line still look fresh and gorgeous. I love the purples and blues together.

I used Kate Conklin's pattern to make this quilt, and I really loved it, plus I learned a new technique for piecing while doing it (Stack and Slash). There's no reason it took as long as it did to make, as it was relatively straightforward to piece...I think it was just the size - the thoughts of quilting it! - and trying to decide on the backing that delayed me.

Once I decided, after doing some small handquilting projects, that I wanted to hand quilt it, suddenly I couldn't wait to get to it and I have spent a very pleasant couple of weeks working on this in the evening in front of the tv.

 

I loved the original Skittles quilt so much that I decided to use the quilting in that as my inspiration, and meandered a line in deep purple perle cotton across my rows. Occasionally I broke it up by adding in some turquoise and teal threads, outlining individual stitches. I like how the different colours break it up a little.

 I didn't worry too much about the stitching, figuring out early on that a few crooked stitches would not be noticeable in the overall effect and how right I was. In fact, most of it I am pretty happy with, I managed to get my lines pretty straight.

The back is a lavender whole cloth piece of Klona solid, with appliqued small panels of Saffron Craig's magical land. I had intended not running the handstitching through the panels, but did one by accident and loved the effect so much I kept at it.

I really like how the stitching looks on the back of the quilt!

I used an aubergine coloured dotty poplin to bind it. Its a much darker purple than those in the Central Park fabrics, but it matches the thread colour pretty closely and I think it works really well to frame the quilt. The finished size is a generous lap size quilt at 72" x 52" approx.

 

I can't tell you how proud I am of this quilt, or how much I love it! I adored the process of making it, and I just love the effect of the hand stitches. Hubbie loves it too, and even the kids have commented on it (and I found them using it one morning when I came downstairs, while it was in the process of being quilted. The raw edges and messy bits of batting sticking out didn't bother them at all!

This is a big finish for me so I'll be linking it up to {Sew} Modern Monday, Manic Monday and Fabric Tuesday.

First Quilt Finish of 2012 - at last!!

At last, finally, I have a quilt finish this year. It feels like a long time. It has been a long time! I finished up the last quilt of 2011 on Christmas week - more than 5 weeks, eek!

But I think it was worth the wait and I hope you do too :-)

This is a quilt for a baby boy born last week. I was asked to make it in yellow, white and blue, and while this combo of colours is quite traditional, I really loved working with it (much more than I anticipated.) The lemons and yellows are so cheerful and happy and absolutely lovely to have peeping out at me every time I looked at my sewing stack in the kitchen on these gloomy days. And the blues, well, what can I say, you know I love my aquas. Interestingly when I went to my stash for blues, there are very few true blues there, most of them are in the aqua/turquoise/teal family, but I think that is ok, and it keeps this quilt very fresh.

The pinwheel blocks are approx 7.5" finished size. I am really happy with the point matching on this one. When making my HSTs I took my time, gave myself an extra 1/8" while cutting and piecing so that I could trim them to a perfect size, and you can see it in the blocks. It was so much easier to piece the top than other HST quilts I have done because it was so much more accurate. HSTs are a LOT of work, but I always think they are worth it in the end. The quilt measures 39" x 47" finished.

I love the movement in the quilt and pieced my blocks so as to give a slight optical illusion to the pinwheels spinning.

I also, for the first time on a full size quilt, handfinished the binding. I wasn't convinced I was going to love it but I got friendly with my thimble, stitched away in front of the tv a couple of nights, and I *might* be a convert. I went with a slightly wider binding than I normally do and I must admit I like it more than I thought I would.

The backing is a cream fabric with a tiny blue and yellow floral print and works great with the front.

I quilted this one with a meandering stipple and a few loops. It was so much fun to quilt because the size is so manageable, compared to the big quilts I did at the back end of last year. I used Aurifil white thread on the front and cream on the back. Now that its been washed and dried, the quilting has sunk into it nicely and its beautifully crinkly!

 This one is wrapped and ready to post off in the morning and I hope baby will love it!

I'm linking up to {Sew} Modern Monday, Manic Monday and Fabric Tuesday with this one!

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I Spy a Square Quilt

Here it is, my very last quilt of 2011! This is for a gorgeous little baby girl, our friends' daughter, which her mum asked to make a number of months ago. It was a bit difficult to get decent photos in the dark midwinter light but I did my best!

This was the sort of project I love - lots of scope to develop an idea and colours and I decided on a red, pink and aqua colour scheme as it has been my favourite all year! I also have lots of fabric in these colours in my stash so it was a natural choice.

I went with a "square within a square" type design (although one of the internal "squares" is a rectangle!) and it allowed me to use some teeny tiny precious fabric scraps I had been saving. Better again, a lot of the internal squares work as I Spy type squares as I fussy cut most of them, so there is lots of interest there for little E. I know that other quilts I have done with similar prints have been a real hit with my friends' babies and they love picking out the birds and animals, so hopefully E will too.

I found this a slow project to work on, for some reason it just did not come together as easily as most of my quilts do. I took a long time to piece the blocks and do the layout and also ran into some probs with my backing fabric, requiring me to take it off and redo. I won't bore you with the details, but a lot of unpicking was involved! But alls well that ends well and I think it was worth the time and effort.

I quilted it using a meandering stipple, but added loops and little hearts randomly throughout. I was really pleased with my little hearts  - it took a little practice to get used to doing them, but I just love the effect! I got the idea from Jessica's Double Wedding ring quilt and I'll definitely be experimenting with other little motifs for future projects.

The (second!) backing is a Jenean Morrison print from the California Dreamin' range.

And the binding is a cotton poplin with tiny pink and red apples - I've used this before as binding and the fact that its much lighter weight than quilting cotton makes it perfect for binding.

The finished size is approx 64" x 56" and sized for a toddler type bed, or to layer up over covers on a big girl bed. It's been washed and dried and is all ready to give to my friend who I will be meeting over the holiday period!

Quilt Stats:

Name: I Spy a Square quilt
Size: 64" x 56" approx
Fabric: Various Kona solids plus prints from my stash including the following lines- Bliss, It's Hoot, Just Wing It, Willow Wren, Ta Dot, All Star II, Penny Lane, Sherbet Pips, On a Whim 2 and more!
Quilting: Quilted by me on my home machine with a meandering stipple with loops and hearts
Batting: Warm and White
Pattern: My own design