Out of the blue....

Well ...um....I haven't been blogging. It seems life, the universe and everything has been conspiring to use up every second I have to put a stop to anything more than an instagram post every now and then. I'm not saying that's going to change very much any time soon but I've noticed a few blogs I read have also surfaced to say they're back...but no promises. So I thought, well perhaps I should make an effort at least. So here I am.

Quilty efforts of late have been sporadic and I've found myself assembling tops and not getting much further. However I have had two babies arrive (both on the same day actually!) and that gave me the opportunity to enjoy the scaled down, fast finishing that comes with cot sized quilts.

Foolishly I didn't get a photo of the first finish which was a scrappy 16 patch using 2.5" squares beyond the instagram layout on the floor. I'm hoping that as this one was gifted to Joe's nephew's brand new daughter we'll get to see it again. This quilt was pot luck and I was very much relieved that the baby was a little girl as many of the colours from my scrap bucket tend to be pinks and reds.

The other was for a dear friend's first grandchild which I patiently waited until I learned that he was indeed a little boy. This gave me the opportunity to play with blue fabric and everything either side which I pulled out of the cupboard and put back in (and took out again and put back in!) trying to decide what I could possibly make. I ended up settling on solids and isosceles triangles using up some fabrics that I had just enough to cut out a 6" strip.

For the back I used the absolute last of the strips and the corners of the triangles. I can honestly say I used absolutely all of the turquoise, grey, ochre and green and ended up with a back that looks like a front. Not my usual style but so pleased with how it turned out.

And then I bound it all with the indigo which turned out rather smart.

And whilst we're talking about blue, a message popped up on my email a few weeks ago which was totally out of the blue. I received an email from Artsy asking me to link back to a blog post I had made way back in 2013. I had mentioned in that post how I thought a piece of fabric (which was in fact an up-cycled shirt of Joe's that I couldn't bear to part with) looked like the work of Yayoi Kusama. Artsy strive to make all the world's art accessible to anyone online and as part of their site feature the work of Yayoi Kusama and asked if I would be kind enough to make a link from my site to theirs. How they found me from my one little mention I'll never understand but seeing as they had gone to so much effort and were so nice about it (I did email back to make sure it was a real request!) I thought, why not. So if you have a moment check out their site and of course Yayoi Kusama.

At a crossroads....

Literally...and figuratively!
I haven't blogged in months. And I've never not blogged for this long. Blogging this year seems to have been hijacked by the 'in the moment' opportunities of Instagram (I'm @sewandsews) and the mundane-ness of having to connect my Nikon to the laptop because it doesn't play nicely with the desktop computer and the laptop is invariably in someones bedroom because they've been watching a movie....and so on, and so on! It's such a shame. I mostly blog for me as a record of what I've created quilt wise with a smattering of family life, but I also know our far flung friends like to check in every now and then to see what we're all up to...so I'm doing it. Here's a collection of this past winter gone.

Most of my quilting friends know of my love for Denyse Schmidt fabrics. Over the years I've amassed a rather substantial collection of fabrics, both international releases and those released through our local Spotlight store under the DS Quilts brands. I decided they needed to be let loose from the cupboard and whilst cutting one very large project (which is now bundled up in a plastic tub!), decided on another. Using a plethora of 2.5" strips and squares is my Arkansas Crossroads quilt. I used the free download pattern by another Adelaide quilter, England Street Quilts.

To say I'm thrilled with it is an understatement. Right now, it's my favourite.

The back and binding continue with the DS Quilts theme and cobbles together some of my larger pieces of Hope Valley and some Spotlight editions in the pinks, purples and oranges.

The binding uses more...and after a little miscalculation oopsie I had to improvise and added in a tiny odd bit of the blue flower from Picnics & Fairgrounds which I've used over and over in so many quilts these past couple of years. It's a nice reminder.

I've often said how I keep all my scraps. It's a problem but so far a nice one to have. It expands creativity in my opinion. Sometimes this manifests as a sleepless night...but hey, at least there's a positive outcome. This little baby quilt was built using the triangle offcuts from the 'X' blocks in the above quilt and a few lone 2.5" squares to make the little scrappy stars. And because I love the fabric so much, I set it all in scraps of solids. I loved that I had enough solids big enough to cobble out a little baby quilt.

The backing is brown gingham that was gifted from my boss who was purging her linen press. It's perfectly plain and a little bit old fashioned and is the perfect foil for a back to let the front speak for itself.

Another quilt that was a long time in the making was adapted from the Modern Log Cabin book by Susan Beal. It was the cross quilt quilt on the front that inspired me to purchase the book. This is my version of the cross quilt, adapted using 2.5" strips. It gives a slightly different dimension but sweet nonetheless. Here it is finally finished on my clothes line and looking at this picture, taken in the depths of our very cold winter just gone. It's lovely to have spring arrive!

On the back I made a giant log cabin cross, set in white.

And finally, what I'm working on right now. It is scaring the pants off me because it's so big. The biggest quilt I've ever made. Here it is at basting stage. The challenge was to find floorspace big enough and I ended up using my office. You can see my shoes to the side where I had to remove them to accommodate walking over the top of it because it spanned the whole width of the foyer!

This is for my SIL in Perth. She loves everything Sugar Skulls and asked me to make her a quilt featuring them. Typically, I was at the end of the sugar skull fabric releases but did manage to get some locally from Voodoo Rabbit in Brisbane who specialise in rockabilly, tattoo, retro and punk  fabrics and picked up some fantastic Alexander Henry day of the dead fabrics. There was also a release from Spotlight and I managed to score (yes, score but a long story of a frenzied woman who had visited every store within a 20km radius!) some of their coloured skulls. There had been a black and white release but alas, not for me!

The pattern is the Kismet medallion quilt by Kathy Doughty of Material Obsession fame in Sydney from the Material Obsession Two book by Kathy and Sarah Fielke.

There have been others in between all of these quilts but are currently laying dormant in the 'to be processed pile'. Here's to more quilting and blogging in the very near future! And to celebrate all of these finishes, I'm linking up with Crazy Mom's Finish it up Friday!

Vintage vibe....

I can't believe I missed a whole month of blogging. Needless to say, this post will be picture heavy to catch up on all the quilt finishes this past month.

First off, way back when it was still hot and feeling like it was still summer, a pink pinwheel quilt. I started this quilt back in September but missed my deadline of taking it overseas. Then when I realised that our friends were going to be here in February it was a last minute dash to finish it before they returned home to the UK....typical.

I used a whole bunch of low volume squares that were left over from this quilt and turned them into pinwheels using this method. Then I set them in a framework of really pale pink solid background.

The quilt is for a little girl, so lots of pink was in order. It turned out rather sweet and with the pink polka dot binding has quite a vintage look about it.

After I gifted this quilt, my sister in law requested a couple of quilts for babies in her circle of friends. Margaret quite liked the scrappy swoon block but wanted a cot size for a little boy, the first grandchild of one of their dearest friends.

I stuck with the scrappy swoon but off-set it in turquoise and backed it with a piece of Salt Air by Moda. Funnily enough, this one has quite a vintage look about it as well!

For my birthday recently, Spotlight sent me a $10 gift voucher which I promptly redeemed on a copy of Camille Roskelley's Simply Retro book. Inside there's  a lovely little Churn Dash quilt that I was itching to try.

I make no secret of the fact that I'm always on the look/listen out for baby news so I have a chance to try something new. When I realised that one of R's teachers was just about to head off on maternity leave, I hopped to and got cutting and stitching.

Her teacher was keeping baby's gender a secret which made fabric choice difficult.

I don't mind red and navy on girls but some people have a problem with florals for boys. I went with a selection of red, navy, lime Picnics & Fairgrounds by Denyse Schmidt (the queen of vintage looking fabric in my eyes.

This combo has yeilded quite a few florals and to tempt fate, I've used the last of some other DS green and blue floral on the back, paired with a strip of lime solid. But.... you never know, Ms T might trump us all and baby could turn out to be a girl....in which case it's all a moot point!

Tinker Taylor....

I've have finished my Scrappy Summer quilt and just in time for Joe's great nephew's first birthday party this weekend.

The pattern is Scrappy Summer by Alison of Cluck Cluck Sew using the free tutorial on the blog.
This quilt was so lovely to work on. I loved the colours I chose and the easy piecing, much of it chained which helped it come together like a dream. The way the white blocks run through the quilt gives it a really crisp summer look.

Everything I used in this quilt I had, so it truly is a scrappy quilt. The backing came off another that I had got as far as basting but it just wasn't doing it for me on that one. So a bit of an un-pin and re-pin and voila, backing ready to go. It's a Denyse Schmidt floral in blue and green from Spotlight, from the range after Picnics & Fairgrounds....Sugar Creek.

The binding is a fabric I bought from Fabric Shack from their cheapy discounted section. It's a perfect zingy stripe (and dot) in red and aqua which picks up the reds and blues in the quilt. Unfortunately, I cut off the selvedge and didn't have time to go back and investigate the name.

This time I decided to machine stitch the binding. I know a lot of quilters claim that it's more durable and an expedient way to attach a binding...which it is, but....I don't know, I don't love it. It's got stitching through it. I honestly prefer the neat finish of a hand stitched binding. This is probably only about the second or third time I've attempted machine stitched binding and I respect the fact that practice makes perfect, but those little oopsies when the stitches come off the rails on the back drive me nuts. All that being said, I'm not undoing it! It will be fine and no-one else cares except me!

Now that's two little whinges I've had in this post so we'll leave it there for now. I do love this quilt, it's perfect for a little boy and I hope he gets lots of use out of it, at least as much as his big brother got from his a few years back. Happy birthday Taylor!

Tour de force...

There has been an absence from this blog space for some time now and that's because we've been traveling for the past month, spending time in the UK, France, Brussels and Holland. I wouldn't have called it a holiday as these kinds of trips tend to be exhausting with all the sightseeing and jammed packed adventure that gets crammed into virtually every waking moment so as not to miss out one single thing. Coupled with the fact that for Australian's to visit these countries we have to travel to the other side of the world making regular visiting difficult and seeing as it's been a long time between our last trip and this one, we're probably not going to get back again for some time to come, so we were certainly making the most of it.
We've been back a week now and I'm still digesting most of it but there were many highlights and a few dramas that I still shake my head over and wonder how we got through it. One of the things I came to realise is how resilient our kids are and how well they coped with what was being thrown at us.
I spent much of the trip instagraming and sending daily updates on Facebook, so in order to write a recap here, I'll have to review those posts to refresh my memory. However, the clearest was being able to catch up with dear friends. I took three quilts which would become a welcome, a thank you and hello again gifts. (This was also my method of overloading my suitcase to make room for purchases!)
I have previously blogged about my Happy Trails quilt which was a welcome gift for baby E who is now 6 months old, and my low volume quilt was a thank you present to E & P for putting us up for 10 days in London. It was lovely to see it instantly put to use in E's lounge room and I'm thrilled it co-ordinated so well with her decor.
The third quilt was gifted to our dear friends who have been in the UK for two years now. They headed over to run a country pub. The process of getting the pub into shape nearly killed them and they eventually sold and are now based close to M's family and working in London. Luckily, L was between jobs and M took a few days off and they were able to spend time with us and act as tour guides whilst we were there.

Their quilt is my 'This way and That way' quilt. I haven't shared it before but I did post a snippet on instagram which went off for 'likes' and even had a request for a tutorial. (!) It's made from the triangles that are created when making pennants for bunting. There's always one (or two if fabric is doubled) at the beginning of the strip and one at the end and given that I was making bunting out of some of my most precious fabrics there was no way I was going to chuck them so they were filed into a ziplock for safe keeping. I realised that I had quite a few, so I set them into white vertical rectangles a'la Gwen Marston style. The block is actually known as a dog-tooth block. I managed three rows of dog-teeth, and laid them in alternate directions floating in the bottom third of the front.

The back is the red floral from Denyse Schmidt's Picnics & Fairgrounds range which I've used over and over....and never tire! Binding is a black and white stripe which I picked up from Fabric Shack for a song. (I've become quite partial to exploring their 'sale' page and seeing how much I'm not spending! You can get a lot of fabric for not much in that section!)

Needless to say, M & L loved their quilt and started to use it straight away. I hope they think of us whenever they do and when we'll next see them home because whilst it was the best thing ever to say hello again, saying goodbye is too, too hard.

Turning down the volume.....

I have been suffering from incurable 'low volume' quilt love and the only way to get it out of my system was to make one of my own.
Pulling the fabric was tricky.I'm not completely convinced I nailed it but I did get to play with some of my favourite pretties. I left them sitting around for a while and found myself agonising over what to do with them. I've always loved Cheryl's original from her Sunday Morning Quilts book but I wasn't feeling the scrappy strip. In the end I settled on 4.5" squares. Plain and simple.

Night after night or whenever there was a spare moment I would cut into this beautiful pile of fabrics remembering when and where I had bought it or from whom it had been gifted. I obviously got so into the cutting that I ended up with enough squares for the back and for another little number I'm currently working on.

Some of my colours are a little deep but through a lens they're not so bad. They're muted and add interest.

 I love this quilt. It's so pretty. And, I was lucky enough to enjoy a little break in our very rainy weather to sneak in a few shots last Tuesday.

I know low volume is not out of my system yet. They're just too darn nice!
Seeing as I shot this quilt on Tuesday, I'm going to link it up with Quilt Story Fabric Tuesday.

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.

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.