A New Start for the New Year!

Look what dropped through my letter box this morning…..millefiori quilts!

This one had totally passed me by until I saw an amazingly beautiful completed quilt which planted a little seed in my mind that has been growing and growing.

‘Should I give it a go I asked myself?’

‘Yes, you should.’ was the answer!!

Might take me a while to get all the stuff together, but can’t wait to start pulling fabrics.

I also managed to finish the meditation cushion that I’ve been making for my friend.

I used these instructions, which I adapted to make it a little prettier and stronger as it would be slightly disruptive if it popped during her teaching!!

I ordered a bag of buckwheat to stuff it with and it was way bigger than expected so will be making more of these..one for myself next I think.

Would like to try and put a zip in next time maybe to allow for topping up, plus a handle.

Linking up with WIP Wednesday.

Petal Pillow / Cushion Cubed

Before I went to London for the Quilt Bee meet up I knew I wanted to make something to say ‘thanks’ to the lovely Jen for hosting AND for making me not one, but two pants bags!!

I love a good cushion and had an idea I’d scribbled down on some paper that I thought would be interesting to try. So I set about trying to figure out quite how it would all go together.

I grabbed as many pink and purple (I had the inkling Jen likes pink) fabrics as I could lay my hands on and set about piecing some squares within squares. The idea being that I would make three interlocking squares to go across the cushion.

It wasn’t quite as easy as I expected, but got a lot better once I realised that I couldn’t just make the squares and put them together. There needed to be some planning…….and puzzling.

I finished the top, basted and decided that I didn’t want to go with my natural instinct to straight line quilt it. Instead I was going to try a bit of FMQ as I thought Jen would appreciate that more.

Not something I do very often and not something I know much about!!

To start off I opted for flowers within the blocks, I love the chrysthanthemums (thank you spell check!) so had a go at those first with pale pink. The thing is the pink didn’t quite cut it. Although I had wanted a subtle look, it just didn’t look great so I then tried the risky approach of adding darker petals around the lighter flower.

This went ok, which was lucky!

From there I really didn’t know where to go. It didn’t look right to stick with the flowers as the rest looked a bit bare.

I knew that I could probably spend weeks contemplating the sprial vs the squiggle, the pebble vs the loop and still not get any closer to making a decision. So I just repeated the petal pattern around the squares until it felt right to stop. You may have seen this process on my instagram.

After that I wanted something to break it up a bit but repeat the shape so I used a lighter thread to quilt the lines as you can see here…..

Then I went for a little super small squiggling which I love. I hadn’t tried it this teeny before, but it’s so fun to do and feels lovely!

I added some zig zaggy bias binding and pink elephants on the back and away we go.

It is now in its new home, soon to be moving a little nearer to its place of origin…. I hope it will be happy!!

 Cushion Stats

Pattern: I made it up

Fabrics

• Front: Scrappy – out to sea, briar rose etc
• Background: Metro Living Circles – Robert Kaufman
• Binding: Ziggy – Timeless Treasures
• Back: Elephants – not sure they were one of my first fabric buys

Quilting: FMQ by Me using Aurifil 40wt!

Size:   Around 20″ x 20″ probably. I forgot to measure, but BIG!!

 

Linking up with A Lovely Year of Finishes

And Crazy Mom Quilts!

Pillow Pop – Garden District

I felt a bit sorry for this little one. It didn’t quite get the post it deserved. So I’m back!

Must admit I was a teensy bit daunted by this design at first and at one point I thought I’d never get it done! There seemed to be a never ending process of steps – cutting then sewing, cutting then sewing, some more cutting then some more sewing and so on!!

Then there was a bit of a mix up with my fabric order so I was sat in the cold, dark, back room (oh poor me!) sewing this on Christmas Eve. I’m quite proud of myself for sticking with it. That was not how I pictured the night before Christmas and sewing against the clock is never clever!!

Buuuut in the end I got there and this is the result……

The Final – A Lovely Year of Finishes!!

Ok so I’m off tomorrow, but just realised that I can’t post this when I get back because it will be too late. So just to confirm I finished my cushion and caught up with the city samplers.

Here’s proof…..

Pillow Popping!

This one has certainly been a long, long, long time coming.

Although I’ve thrown in a couple of pics here and there I just haven’t had time to write a full post until today….. the day I finally finished, woo hoo!

Here’s a bit of background ………

Before the summer happened my mum mentioned that she might like me to make her a couple of new cushions. I’m not quite sure how serious about this she really was, but after some badgering and persistent pulling out of the fabrics and ‘pillow pop’ she came round.

The cushions (sorry I just can’t call them pillows!) my mum chose were Urban Seaweed and Garden District (currently WIP).

So this is where I was up to last.

Then I came to a bit of a standstill.

Looping the Liberty

Remember this……

Well, after much procrastination I gave myself a stern talking to, dug out the darning foot and yes, I got it finished!

A Lovely Year of Finishes – July

So it’s that time again…let’s see what I achieved this month…

Well there was this Wiksten Tank

Modern Mini Quilt Challenge!

Amazingly I’ve decided to enter something in the mini quilt contest over at Ellison Lane.

Now my entry isn’t great, I’m aware of that, but my choice is limited and this one fits the bill best, so I’m entering this baby:

Modern Quilting Cushion – Constructivist Stylee

This post is a bit late, in fact so was the cushion. It was intended as a valentine’s present for my boyfriend but he had to make do with a card instead.  In the end it was only a week late so he can’t really complain I’ve got a cardi that’s been waiting 2 years to be finished and I only need to restitch about two inches of the collar…how bad is that?!

Fabric for cushion.

Before Christmas I had hardly sewn a thing in my life so I decided to start my sewing practice with cushions. Cushions are small, flat, square and to my mind shouldn’t be that hard. Sadly that’s not the case and something still manages to go wrong, but hey I persevere and they’re getting better.  I’ve made a few recently, both patchwork and quilted, and have been looking for opportunties to make more hence the valentine’s cushion.