Journal Quilts – May to August

At the beginning of this year I joined the UK Quilter’s Guild and signed up for the Journal Quilt challenge.

Each month I create a mini quilt that will form part of a collection of 12.

There are obviously many, many things I could have taken my inspiration from, but I have always been a little obsessed with the stuff that surrounds us.

Key points of inspiration:

• wabi sabi
• beauty in the every day
• learning to love my horrible house!

Quite vague …yes, but to be exact this is the teeny tiny details in mundane everyday things. Therefore rather than focussing on distant dreamlands (which are easy to love) I decided to consider the little worlds waiting to be discovered in what may seem quite ugly household features.

This lovely bit of skirting board flipped round with a little imagination became this……

And these poorly photographed mirrored tiles…..

Led to this……

And some sketchbook work

For May to August I wanted to try a bit of applique so added some little dome shapes, which was nice to try.

Thinking of using some EPP for the last ones based on our quite spectactular fireplace that I’m drawn to. Here it is in all its blurry glory!!

Hoping to get started on something sooner rather than later!!

Linking up with WIP Wednesday

Oh Vienna!

Summer seems to have come and gone in a flash!

Can’t say I got much sewing done, but it was nice all the same.

We had an AMAZING trip to Vienna where we:

Ate lots of cake………

Saw some beautiful sights…….

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!

I Spy Baby Quilt – ALYoF May

This month has been spent making things for my soon to be niece.

I did think I might be late with these, but actually it’s the baby that’s late!!

She (not sure of the name yet) was due 2 weeks ago and with a little help will be here in the next couple of days.

Anyway when she does arrive she will have a nice pile of quilty goodies!

I made a couple of burp cloths and a light blanket using a stripy knit and some beautiful double gauze. These feel so soft and really comforting I kind of want to keep one for myself. My daughter will certainly be sad to see them go!!

I also finally plucked up the courage to try Ayumi’s fabric basket and found it was actually quite simple. Going to be making a bigger version of this for myself…something else for the list!

If you remember back to this post you will know that I was also starting an I Spy quilt and that I was undecided on what to do about the background.

Thank you very much for all your comments, I did spend a while considering them …no really I did. But then looking for fabrics and not really finding what I wanted the beautiful Lotta Jansdotter fabric caught my eye.

• First thing I thought was……pattern on pattern could be nice
• Then……………it’s dark so not going to get dirty
• And……….babies like the black and white, so it’s got to be good

That was it, it was in my basket and sold!!

I also went for Lotta on the back too as those little seedlings are just too cute to resist.

I was going to go for a grid pattern for quilting, but after finishing the vertical lines I kind of felt that more of those would look better and give a nicer texture to it so that’s what I did.

My quilting has definitely improved since my earlier attempts, it’s still quite wonky, but the stitches are more even and I wasn’t shouting at the sewing machine quite so much this time. My binding was also much neater which is the biggest cause of stress for me.

I’ve ended up liking this much more than I expected. It started off as a bunch of scraps but has become something so pretty. I hope the new baby enjoys snuggling in or on it.

Quilt Stats

Pattern:  Made up!

Size:  38″ x 42.5″

 Fabrics:

• Les Amis
• Indian Summer
• Out to Sea
• Wee Wander
• Sketch
• Briar Rose

Sashing and Backing Fabric: Sylvia- Lotta Jansdotter

Binding: Kona Solids – Cypress

Quilting: Machine quilted by me!

Linking up with ALYoF

Blogger’s Quilt Festival – City Sampler!

100 blocks,

almost 365 days,

at least 20 posts…..

And finally the City Sampler is here!

Actually it was finished ages ago, but I got waylaid by the photography side of things.

Really though it seems to have been perfectly timed for the Blogger’s Quilt Festival, yay!! Last time I didn’t have the confidence to put anything on show, but I did have fun visiting everyone else’s beautiful quilts so I decided this time why not enter.

And that’s what I’m doing with my biggest quilt so far and possibly, most probably, my last……unless I sort out my sewing space!!

May Goals – I Spy Baby Quilt

I’m getting on with my goals again. Or rather blogging about them, I have actually completed what I said I would I’ve just not written about it.

This month my goal is very simple:

• Make a floor mat/quilt for my sister’s baby which is due in 2 weeks – eek!

When deciding what to make I knew it had to by fairly simple (my sister likes simple), cute and colourful. No white!

She has been told it’s definitely, definitely a girl so I think I’m pretty safe picking these colours.

One thing I really love is a good novelty fabric. I can while away many an hour sat on my Bloom Bloom Pow spotting all the goings on in the little scenes.

Because of this an I-Spy stylee instantly came to mind as it’s perfect for showing off some cute pics.

I’m not sure whether to include the two fabrics above as, although super cute, I don’t know if I should limit the colour scheme a little.

What do you think?

Supposed to be on fabric fast, buuut I might have to buy some more novelties, just maybe!

Any suggestions for a background colour are also welcomed. I’ll probably just go for the usual fallback grey again, but we’ll see!!

 

Linking up with ALYoF

 and WIP Wednesday with Quokka Quilts

 

 

 

Journal Quilts!

Soooo blogging went out the window for a while, nevermind!!

We’ve had the Easter holidays and I’ve had a super busy time in the job so something had to give.

My daughter was also sick then developed a fear of being sick and refused to eat which was a little stressful so getting past that has been a big focus these last few weeks. I mean she didn’t even want her Easter eggs…there *had* to be something wrong with the child!

Happy to say we seem to past that now so I am back to the blogging.

Anyway I have quite a lot of things to catch up on:

• journal quilts
• city sampler
• everyday skirt
• it’s a cinch tote
• strip bee
• some other stuff!

Quilty Bucket List!

There’s a great blog hop that’s just started.

Yes, you guessed it ‘Quilty Bucket List‘ over at The Tilted Quilt.

I LOVE lists, I am a list kind of person. It’s my way of trying to organise my very unorganised brain! I’m not sure how helpful it actually is as I tend to make a list, look at it once, forget where I’ve put it, things change, I revise list…and so on!!

I’m hoping this will help sort things out.

1. Improv Sampler Quilt

First on the list is an improv sampler…..like this beauty:

This pic led me to the hop as Heidi of Fabric Mutt is one of the first stops. I just LOVE it!

I’ve done the old City Sampler (no finished photos yet sorry!) so I’m looking for something more relaxed and a bit haphazard (in a good way)!!!

One year on……blogiversary and a giveaway!

HAAAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME !!

Bit late…(no surprises there)….but last week was my blogiversary, yay!

One year on and I can’t believe what I’ve managed to cram into a year.

Here’s what kicked things off………..

This top and thoughts of more quilting led to my best purchase ever, my lovely Janome.

Janome enabled me to produce this baby…..

February Goals – MORE City Sampler!!

Look what I won!

Yes, that’s right, I won a beautiful set of Aurifil threads for the December Lovely Year of Finishes!!

Aren’t they gorgeous?! I only have limited blue threads at the moment so very pleased to see this beautiful rainbowy array, can’t wait to try them out.

Onto my goals for this month.

Quite simply it’s this…….