Aqua, red and orange

I ca't believe I have actually finished a quilt. It's not a big quilt, but it's a finish.  I wanted to make a quilt for the Mary Potter Hospice, after I saw that Shay had made a couple of quilts for this wonderful cause.

This quilt was originally intended to be a gift for someone, but after I had started sewing it together, I realised that it probably wasn't quite right for the intended recipient.  So the pieces languished in a box for over a year.  I wanted to make something quick for the hospice. As you all know I am the queen of procrastination,  and usually take years to finish anything, but I remembered I had the blocks half sewn and pulled them out.  These were cut from a layer cake and I can't remember for the life of me the name of the pattern, but it was a free one I found on the internet.  I can't remember the name of the fabric either, other than it was a Riley Blake line.

For the hospice, the quilt has to be no more than 48 inches square. As I already had these blocks cut and they were 9 inches finished, I went with a 45 inch square layout.

The excess blocks were used in the backing. The rest of the backing was from my stash too, which was an almost perfect match to the Riley Blake fabric.

 I wanted to have a scrappy binding, so I carefully unpicked the rest of the blocks that were left, and cut pieces for the binding strips. Unfortunately I didn't have enough, but I found a Bella solids jelly roll in aqua, hiding in the back of a drawer, which matched almost perfectly.

I quilted 1/4 inch either side of some of the seams, and also added some random lines to make sure it was quilted enough.  The hospice prefer the quilts to be lightly quilted so they stay soft.

Now I just need to wash and dry it so it's all nice and crinkly and send it on it's way.

Quelle Jolie Fée

I'm so happy I finally have a quilt finished. It has only taken me about 18 months.

It is a quilt for my sister's big *0 birthday last year.  Surprisingly, cough cough, I didn't have it finished in time for her birthday but I had made headway with it, so I "gave" it to her half finished and said I'll finish it for you in time for Christmas.  I meant 2012 not 2013, but as usual, life and my tardiness got in the way.

The story behind this quilt. 

Back in 2009 I travelled to Europe, and while in Paris I bought a present for my sister. Her name is Fi, and I know that Fée is French for fairy but I just couldn't resist this seriously cute cushion cover.  My sis loved it but eventually said to me that it wasn't getting used as a cushion because it's quite big, Euro pillow size, and would I please make it into a quilt. The cushion cover fabric is a very fine pure cotton and creases a lot!  A search through my fabric stash and  voila,  some coordinating fabric.  Even though my sister wanted me to make a quilt, she wanted minimal piecing and minimal quilting. The front of the cushion cover was unpicked from the backing and I started adding borders.

A variety of fabrics from my stash, including a piece from Pashmina by Moda, Kona Charcoal, Bella Snow and a Denyse Schmidt from Spotlight fabric, not all seen in the above shot.

Minimal piecing meant I chose to make a medallion style quilt with simple borders. Minimal quilting ended up being stitch in the ditch, using Aurifil 2021 and 2024 50wt.  I love quilting with the Aurifil thread as it's fine and it sits nicely into the fabric, it's perfect for stitch in the ditch quilting.  I also added a couple of extra machine quilted lines to add some very subtle quilting detail.

I had a dilemma with the wide Paris map border. It was too wide to just stitch in the ditch, so I chose to stitch along the streets. I really like how that turned out. It was a bit of a headache trying to plan ahead with minimal stopping and starting but I think I did quite well and the further I went, the more creative I became following the streets.

The next challenge was how to quilt the centre panel.  That took a lot of thought, I eventually machine quilted around the outside of the fairy, and then used white Perle 8 to add lots of daisies to the design. The original design had embroidered red and blue daisies scattered across the background.  I couldn't match the thread colour and weight so I added white.  They are hard to see in the photos, but that was the whole idea, I didn't want them to be a distraction.  I made each daisy adding two to three stitches in the centre of each flower, going through the backing to anchor it. 

For the backing I used the cute dog print from Aneela Hooey's Sherbet Pips. Not particularly French, but my sister loves it and I think it works really well.

I'm really happy with the whole quilt and I absolutely love the grey and white stripe binding.

Back on the bike again!

I feel like I'm starting to make headway with some sewing. This week has seen the finish of the Hopscotch quilt top.


There are some good points


 and not so good points,


but overall I'm really happy with the way this has turned out. Next I need to make the backing.

I also needed a quick finish and to play with some fabric.

the front

the back

That stitching is not as wonky as it looks here.

Sorry about the huge gaps between photos, blogger is not playing nice today.

There's a little fishy courtesy of Susan. A scrap of fabric I received in a swap, and I used a couple of scraps that I had on hand, including Anna Maria Horner, Aneela Hooey, and Sweetwater.

Pink, orange and elephants

My oldest friend, as in I've known her the longest, not she's really really old, is going to become a grandmother, snigger. I love when my friends become grandmothers. It makes me laugh because I still imagine them as being 20 something, hardly old enough to be a mother let alone a grandmother.


Her youngest son is about to become a father, so it was a good excuse to make a baby quilt.

I was thinking about doing some fancy piecing, but couldn't find a pattern that I wanted to make that wouldn't be too time comsuming.  Bitchypoo suggested simple squares, so I went with that.  I found the oh sooo cute elephant flannel for the backing on a recent trip to Brisbane.  Searched through my stash for some lovely pink and orange co-ordinating girly fabrics and voila, a girly baby quilt using 3 inch finished squares, measuring 36" x 36".

Nice and quick, started Friday afternoon, finished this morning.

Not without it's dramas. I had to unpick the first 4 quilting lines. I spray basted and used a few pins, but the spray basting didn't hold this time. I had lots of puckering. So lots of pins and a walking foot later, success.



I was in two minds whether to use the white, not a very baby friendly colour, but I love the crisp look it gives to the quilt.

That's out of my system now, back to my WIP's and BOM blocks.

Not aiming for any gold medals (or even bronze or plastic)

You may have noticed by now that I'm a total slacker. I've done very little on the quilting front for the last couple of months. Unlike others who shall remain nameless, who are trying to be the equivalent of the teachers pet and get as many finishes as possible before the end of the year, I've preferred sitting in the naughty corner and playing up. It's been fun but not what you would call productive.
I kind of felt a teensy weensy bit guilty that I had lots of WIP's and hadn't really tried to finish any of them, and also the whole of the universe was making Christmas presents except for me. So last week, I got my A into G and made the First Aid bag for my dad. Saturday morning I went to the LQS and picked up some cord and ta dah, it's all finished.

First Aid Bag

I've also had another go at the "OMG, what on earth was she thinking quilt".  Remember this, hideous block.

I was determined to make it work so after a bit of a re-think and some help from the  goody two shoes "teacher's pet" (hint - starts with Sh and is a four letter word) who was very helpful, even though she's trying to win the award for  the most finishes in the universe for 2011, I came up with this.

This pile sat on my dining table for a very long time, was then stuffed placed gently and lovingly into a project bag when Julie my organising fairy came to stay.
I finally pulled them out and cut all the bits.
Last week I finally started sewing the bits together.

There are another 46 of these.

So far I've sewn up about 18 blocks.

Here's two, I'm really happy with these. I've still left a little of the browns in the mix but all in all I think it's much more harmonious. I also didn't choose eight of the wildest coloured and patterned prints to put in a block together. That was a smart move.


Also, should I say,

minor miracle,

I finished another WIP, the first hexagons I attempted and was going to make into a cushion, which would probably never be used, so made it into a mini quilt to hang on the wall.

It looks really wonky, especially the first border, it's not. In fact the first border is straight. Next time I should probably flatten it out before I snap some pics.
It's made with some scraps of Rural Jardin left over from the quilt I made earlier this year. A really yummy stripe that I had in my stash, unfortunately I only had a fat quarter and have no idea what it is. I had to raid my jelly roll of Rouenneries that I have been saving, for the binding. It matched perfectly the two Rural Jardin charm squares that I could use for the corners, win!  The backing is a fat quarter of Hometown left over from the Urban Stars quilt.
I've hand quilted around the inner row of hexies in pale blue, which you can't see in this pic, then burgundy around the outside of the hexies. Finally another round of hand quilting in the first border.

I used this tutorial from A Girl In Paradise blog for an idea on how to hang it using corner pockets. How could I not use it with a blog name like that!

Today the Floral Bouquet went to my other fairy friend, Fiona The Quilting Fairy. It won't be finished until next year, but that's ok, I'll just go back and sit and have a drink in the naughty corner.

WIP Wednesday

Although the actual number of hours spent sewing or working on projects wasn't very high this week, I concentrated on trying to finish something......anything. So I have a finish, finally, happy dance. The happy dance is for finishing this quilt, the happy dance is not for the actual quilt. I've decided I don't like it,
don't you hate that.

I started it because I loved the fabrics and the colours. I had an idea of where I wanted to go with the design, and  around eight or nine months later, nyuh, it's just not doing it for me. I'd give it away except that the quilting stitches tension is rubbish in places.  I might put it away in the cupboard for a few months and if it still doesn't make my heart sing I'll give it away.
So here it is, I couldn't even get nice photos either. I was trying for some arty ones and they just didn't happen.

Spice Boxes

The back

Next on my to do list was to finish the Christmas quilt top. It now has a name "McFlurry".  Kat from  Diary of a Flutter.Kat came up with the perfect name, the actual pattern is Flurry, because it was designed for the fabric line Flurry but I used 12 Days of Christmas instead, and my last name starts with Mc.  Pssst, I think Kat really named it McFlurry after the McDonalds McFlurry but it suits me just fine.

It needs a good press, again.

Finally, I completed the plaits for the fillers in the Mystery Quilt and sewed these blocks together.

I was starting to have second thoughts on the background fabric, but now these are sewn together I really really like it.

I still have one block that has some paper piecing in it from a couple of weeks ago and now I have to make another 7, yes that's right, 7 star blocks for the latest instalment. Sheila is a hard taskmaster, lucky for her, she lives over the other side of the world.

The statistics this week:

Worked On This Week

Spice Boxes - finished

McFlurry - finished the top

Mystery Quilt 

Sitting On The Sidelines

Floral Bouquet Quilt

French Roses

English Paper Piecing

Circle Game BOM

Waiting Patiently For Me To Show Some Interest

Same as the last few weeks (How long is it before they are officially UFO's?)

Tiggly Winks

Plume quilt - backing

Jacobean Flower - quilting

Don't Look Now cushion - quilting

Monochromatic Block

Weeks Statistics

New Projects - 0

Completed - 1  yipppeeeeeeee

Worked On - 3

Hyperventilating Over -  only 4 this week (5 last week)

Ignoring - still the same 4

I think I deserve a gold medal for not starting any new projects over the last few weeks. I think that's the longest ever I have been disciplined enough not to start anything. I'm not sure I can last much longer.

I'm linking up with Lee over at Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesday.

Blogger is playing hard to get again, it won't load any HTML codes so I haven't been able to link my photos directly to Flickr or load Lee's WIP Wednesday button, grrrr.  Oh well, at least I was able to get around most of it.