Trip the light fantastic....

After a giant leap into the new year with a Scrappy Trip Around the World back in January...(just like quite a few of us!), the rate of progress slowed to a virtual snail pace leaving the quilt top languishing for a while. Mind you, I wasn't ignoring it...I just had a few study issues to sort out like major assignments and exams! Now that they're over for the moment and seeing as this quilt is intended for someone special by July, I thought I'd better get myself into full throttle and finish this little beauty up.

The intended loves green and her room features a lot of saturated rainbow colours. So each block has a bit of green. I know this quilt is known as 'scrappy' but I can assure you, to get the desired look I cut into quite a few horded fabrics.

I debated about how to quilt, almost deciding to attempt some dogwood or orange peel effect but fell back to the trusty stipple. As part of the process, I quilted one block row at a time, moving to the left, right and down, then up. That probably doesn't make a great deal of sense but it was a wonderful way of keeping the quilt moving evenly. The other bonus was that working with the 2" frame, the stipples are very evenly sized and quite dense. I'm thrilled with it!

Because of the mesh of colours and prints I decided to keep the binding really simple and went with a solid chocolate which works wonderfully framing the backing which is a Bonnie and Camille, lime and aqua from thier Vintage Modern range.

A lovely finish for this week and linked up with Crazy Mom's Finish it up Friday.

Happy trails....

Happy trails indeed!
This little quilt-in-the-making is destined for a brand new little baby boy who lives in the UK. A second baby for our dear friends who are now firmly entrenched in Surrey.
Seeing as I made quilts for their first baby L, it's only fitting that baby E gets one too. What's even better is that we get to deliver it in person later this year!

I've used Happy Trails which is a really old line by Benartex that features all things cowboy including some very sweet but politically incorrect cowboy guns and barbed wire (...hope you don't mind Rache!). I picked various bits of the line up on a trip to Tasmania years ago and they've been waiting for the right aged little person.
Added to the mix are a number of other bits from the stash in blue, red, yellow and green and some solids in co-ordinating colours to create some reversed out maverick stars. I cut 3.5" squares with 2.5" squares for the triangle points. Each block is around 9" and I'v worked on a 5 x 6 block layout which will finish at a nice little cot size of around 45" x 54". Yee-hah cowboy!

X-cited

Oh yes indeed, I'm very excited to share my finished X-Plus quilt. I had finished 14 blocks some time back and was on a mission to finish things up. But 14 wasn't enough so I bashed out another two. Then I didn't care for this quilt as a square so made another four to finish with 20 as a 4x5 layout.

The quilting is straight line and it runs across the horizontal lines. Its simplicity works with the busy scrappy fabrics and not over quilting leaves the quilt quite supple.
I followed this tutorial but adapted my blocks to suit 2 1/2" strips which I always have an abundance. The size of my components are:
Centre cross 1 - 6.5"x2.5", 2 - 2.5"x2.5"
Edges of cross 4 - 2.5"x2.5"
Background triangles 8 - 2.5"x2.5"
Branches 4 - 4.5"x4.5"
This builds a block that's around 10" finished.

Another lovely finish it up Friday to share....I can't believe I've managed two in one month!

Indian Summer....

It's been really warm this week with temperatures hovering between the mid to high 20's, record temperatures for May and a bushfire in the hills this morning. In MAY! I heard someone say the other day that we now have two seasons. Summer and not quite Summer. So even with the leaves changing colour and falling to ground this balmy weather has obviously influenced the colour pallet for this little baby quilt. A simple half square triangle quilt featuring pinks, greens, blues, brown and yellow from 5" squares. Let me indulge you.....

There are some of my all time favourite fabrics and designers in this quilt, Bonnie & Camille, Heather Bailey, Amy Butler, Sandy Henderson, Denyse Schmidt, Paula Prass a whole bunch of 'I can't remember' and some Spotlight. The back is a cherry print that I found on the end of roll at Spotlight. It's a cotton dress fabric but I couldn't leave without it. It's been in my cupboard just waiting for a little girl quilt. The binding is also a Spotlight fabric, a dotty dot in hot pink and white.
The quilt is stippled and finishes at around 30" x 35"....give or take!
This quilt is a gift for Joe's boss whose wife has just had their second baby, a little girl.
A very pretty finish it up Friday!

Lost for words....

I didn't mean to be away from this little space for so long....but for a while I felt like I didn't have anything to say! There was lots on....but I just couldn't find the words.
The activity that took up most of our time was renovating parts of our kitchen. Our oven finally died and with that came the shopping for a new one, the disconnection, the removal of the tiles the previous one sat on, re-tiling, the sanding and polishing of the floorboards and if you're doing all of that, you may as well paint! With that came emptying the kitchen, plonking the contents around the house and the feeling of camping out whilst we were oven-less. Needless to say, my sewing machine and projects had to be packed up in the process to keep the dust out. So a whole month past without any sewing whatsoever. That part was horrible! And added to that was a promised project that was weighing on my mind whilst getting very long overdue. So as soon as everything (well nearly everything) was put back into its rightful kitchen space, I hauled out the sewing machine and got to!
The promised project is a twin-bed (single) black and white, with a touch of red, houndstooth quilt. The pattern is from V and Co and is available as a pdf download. This is the larger sized check.

The back is mainly white but I've cobbled together some remaining blocks and off-cuts to make some smaller sized houndstooth check squares that float in the white background.

It will be handed over next week and I have to say I just might have to make another because I'm rather partial to this one!

And then whilst the machine was out and I started to get back into my 'I'll just do a bit of sewing' rhythm, I worked on a little scrappy string quilt which were some blocks I had in the cupboard. I decided to just use those and ended up with a nice little baby sized quilt. 

I love a quick little finish....particularly after a big one!
These two definately earn me a spot in Crazy Mom's Finish it up Friday!

Threads that connect...

I often find myself saying out loud, "I love my quilting stuff". To which my family roll their eyes and respond with "yes's" and Stepford Wife nods, too scared to disagree or to fight a losing battle!
Even though I consider myself an emerging quilter having only been quilting for 4 or so years, I've managed to build an extensive assortment of 'stuff' quite apart from the fabric that is lovingly glanced at every time I pass the glass paneled cupboard.  Amongst other things, there's the various configurations of rulers, different sized cutting mats and roller cutters, special needles for hand and machine, pincushions (well they're almost at collector stage), machines for piecing and quilting, a hera marker, curved and straight pins, tape measures and then there's the threads....not only in a range of colours but some of which that are antique and purchased for the spools, not likely to ever be used!
It's these haberdashery items that connect quilters around the world. Symbols of what we love and use and items that we could all talk about for hours on end given the chance. 

It's fair to say that very little willpower was applied when I pressed the 'order' button for a pdf of the Spools pattern from Thimble Blossoms as a quilt just for me. A quilt design that celebrates the cornerstone of quilting...thread. Mind you, the construction phase took a quite a while as it was something that I picked up and put down! However, on a mission to finish what's been lying around for far too long, it became the second quilt this year to be pulled from the 'half-baked' pile.

I used a jelly roll of Snippets by Sandy Klop that I purchased on my very first interstate fabric buying spree with the Sew & Sews girls...way back in May 2009! It was high time this little treasure was used in something so personal. I love the traditional primary and secondary colours this line features which I think work perfectly with this design. The greys are Kona Coal and some Bonnie & Camille Ruby in various shades and pattern.

One thrilling note was the unearthing of a 30cm piece of Snippets featuring the pink 'outfits' lying on a remnant table at Ballarat Patchwork and purchased whilst the family was travelling to Melbourne last October. For such an old fabric line, this was surely a wonderful find and the piece was promptly incorporated into the back.
The binding is some Denyse Schmidt Picnics and Fairgrounds that combines beautifully with the traditional colours of Snippets.

And speaking of trips away, this time to Sydney visiting a gorgeous shop, Burnt Orange in Mosman, NSW just last week. Another item to add to my plethora of quilty treasures, a beautiful little bowl featuring a button print that is nothing short of delightful. Originally designed as a sugar bowl, meet my new thread bowl.

I'll tumble for ya....

Yes, showing my age a little here with a Culture Club/Boy George reference but I could also say I really fell for this quilt and in more ways than one!

This is my red, pink and grey tumbler quilt. It was born out wanting to have a go at a tumbler pattern, which I strongly recommend. But more importantly, falling instantly in love with the quilt featured on the front cover of Sunday Morning Quilts by Amanda Jean Nyberg and Cheryl Arkison. So it's absolutely fitting that I should finish this quilt this week and share it through Crazy Mom Quilts Finish it up Friday.
It's fair to say, I'm a red and pink girl and had plenty of it in my stash and when I started pulling fabric from the pile was pleasantly surprised at how much grey I also had.

One such piece of grey was a piece of re-purposed fabric from a shirt of Joe's that met a sad demise. It was a shirt that I had help him buy when we first met. We both loved the print but I think I was more of the enabler in the purchase. His mum wasn't too impressed that he'd spent so much of his pay on one shirt and it always made me feel awful that I'd talked him into buying it! But he got lots of wear out of it (...perhaps to prove that he too really loved it) and it ended up ripping across the back. When we were cleaning out his mum's place I found it in the bottom of his wardrobe. I couldn't bear to throw it away so I squirreled it home, washed it and popped it in my stash cupboard. The colours are perfect so I cut quite a few blocks for this quilt.

I have to admit that this quilt was a long time in the making. My initial, "I have to make this" flurry soon passed and it became one of those long-term projects. I picked it up and put it down and then late last year I decided I would make an effort to finish it.

So out it came again and I began to share it on Instagram. My sister noticed it and commented that her friend would love this quilt. Sure enough that was indeed the case so it finished with a new purpose. The really funny thing is that what influenced their liking for the quilt was that little bit of Joe's shirt when they exclaimed, "there's even a bit of Yayoi Kusama in it". I don't know if Yayoi ever designed fabric used by Sportscraft back in the early 90's but I have to admit...it does look like her work! Wouldn't that be funny!

 Later edited: Here I am in 2016 and haven't blogged for months when out of the blue I received an email from Artsy. Somehow they managed to track down my earlier mention of Yayoi Kusama. By way of explanation Artsy strive to make all of the world's art accessible to anyone online. Their admiration for Yayoi Kusama is demonstrated through their bio featuring over 150 of her works and exclusive articles and up-to-date Kusama exhibition listings. To check it out visit here. Thanks Artsy for getting in touch. More than happy to help share the love.