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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Fresh quilt start!

It feels like there has been a lot of writing and organising going on here the last few weeks, and not so much sewing! I was determined to change that this week and took myself to my stash to pull fabrics for a new quilt. Then, last night and this morning I got cutting and did a little piecing. Oh, there is nothing nicer than a fresh rotary blade in your cutter and miles of lovely fabric to cut!!!

This is a baby boy's quilt. The person I am making it for wants blue, yellow and white. I love the combination of colours - so fresh and gorgeous! I had to order a number of yellow fabrics as I'm not strong on these in my stash, but I had lots of blues. With the limited colours, I wanted to have lots of interest in shades, prints and values and I think I assembled a nice mix in the end!

Then I trialled a couple of blocks. Pinwheels, I just love them. So simple, so classic but just lovely with the right fabrics because there is so much movement in them.

Do you hear that satisfied sigh? That's me, all ready to get chain piecing tonight when the kids are gone to bed! Now, time to go off and do what I've been avoiding all day: tidy up, put away the shopping, spend some quality time with the kids and supervise the homework (that doesn't fall in the quality time category....maybe I will leave that job to Himself when he gets in from work!).

Hope you're having a good day! I'm linking up to WIP Wednesday over at Freshly Pieced.