Stash Note 71

Care for one more stash note this year ?
Right after Christmas a package from Fabricworm arrived that I ordered right before Christmas. You gotta love them for their super speedy shipping.

It's a mixed bag of Kokka prints that I partly ordered for a lap-top cover commission and partly because I just could not help myself.

First up a fat quarter set of Melody Miller's new Ruby Star Sparkle collection.  I ordered the 'Skat-a-thon' colourway. As always with Melody's creations I am totally smitten even though this has sparkle on it and I am normally pathologically allergic against bling fabric. Look at those telephones; aren't they fab !

Next are four different colours of the 'Insect' print from the Echino Fall 2012 collection and two of the 'Stamped' collection by Ellen Lucket Baker; the cheater print in Multi and in grey.

Aren't these Insect prints fantastic. I think they would be fabulous as a lap-top cover.

Cheaterprint in Multi.

A few presents

A few presents were delivered by me this Christmas. Amongst the family adults we stopped buying presents for each other years ago when we decided we had everything. A good decision on the whole. But of course my nephew still receives his presents but his year he didn't get a quilt but a fantastic go-card from us all.
But there were two other people that got presents from me and those were homemade ones that I can share with you now that Christmas is over.

One was a Secret Santa for one of the Brit Bee Ladies. Although I am not part of the Bee anymore the Ladies still asked me to participate in a Secret Santa swap and I was delighted to take part.

My secret Partner was Laura and it was an easy decision what to make for her because I knew she loved this fabric ('home sewing is easy' from Alexander Henry) from when I made the i-pad covers for my craft fair. So I made here a fabric bucket and stuck some more fabric in it. I hope she liked it but I have a funny feeling that she did. I used this tutorial from Film in the Fridge.

 

The second present was for my best friend Leigh. Again the decision was an easy one - for two reasons. Firstly they are in desperate need for some new cushions and secondly Leigh loved the Rumba cushion I made from the 'A stitch in colour' collection from Malka Dubrawasky.

 For the back I chose a great animal print from the 2012 Echino collection because Leigh's husband is a very good wildlife photographer and loves to spend time in Africa photographing all the wild things that are running around there.

Merry Christmas

Let's pretend for a moment that I am not living on the northern hemisphere of our planet (did you notice that the world actually hasn't come to end over night !) but somewhere in the south where summer is in full swing. If you do that then I hope you appreciate my not so Christmas inspired images but I couldn't help myself and show you the cushion I made this week.

The fabric is from Laura Gunn's new Cosmos range. The panel is called 'Cosmos Suite' in Aqua and I bought one panel from Hawthorn Threads a while ago. Each panel has two images and it was just the perfect size for a 20 " cushion that desperately needed a new cover.

And with that I want to wish all of you lovely followers, regular commentators, occasional visitors, flickr, facebook and twitter followers  a very merry x-mas and happy new Year ! I have had a lot of fun with you this year and am very grateful for each comment and advice I received from you.

I might pop in here "between the years" for a little statistical update of 2012.
See and hear from you soon.

Judith

She loves the Blues - a finished quilt

...and the last finished quilt of the year. Most definitely; no I will not do another one for this year. But maybe start one ? I dunno....perhaps my sister is right when she asked yesterday if I was already on cold turkey.

Sunday morning I finished the last stitches on this commissioned quilt. The brief for this quilt was to use blues but other than that I had free reign on the design and that is what I love best at times.

I came up with the design on my way home from dinner at my brothers. Him and his girlfriend have similar colors in their living room and from a design point of view I wanted to do something very modern, uncluttered, yet striking.  Inspiration also came from this quilt, Katie 'from the blue chair' made a few months ago.

I didn't use a pattern but drew a rough design on a piece of paper, then laid out a bed sheet on the floor that I folded to the same size as the finished quilt was supposed to be (1.8 x 1.6 m/ 70" x 63") and started to sew and arrange log cabin blocks until I had a composition I was happy with.

I then filled in the space between the blocks for which I used mostly strips of 2 1/2" width until I had a rectangular around the log cabin blocks. The final but most difficult part was to add solids until I had the desired quilt size. Difficult was that I ended up sewing large solid pieces on the bias and we all know what can happen with that. Let's say it took me a while to get this one square and a lot of measuring and resizing was involved.

My original quilting plan was to go in diagonal straight lines but eventually I abandoned it in favor of circular quilting to give it that wonderful extra dimension. I fear that this way of quilting is fast becoming my signature style because I come back to it time and time again. Many of you commented on the first post that the colour reminded you of the seaside and beach. Somehow that hadn't crossed my mind but after reading the comments I thought I might as well add a little bit of actual seaside to the back. The sea star prints are from the 'Going Coastal' collection from crazy old Ladies that I still had in my stash. I also added a few strips of blue/white gingham from a very old bed sheet that I salvaged from my sister a while ago. The remainder are solids that I used on the front (see first post more colour details)

 

I kept the binding simple as I wanted to give a feeling of infinity when looking at the front of the quilt. The background fabric including the binding is Kona Putty which I absolutley love as it has a very soft cream undertone somewhere in the middle between off-white and proper cream. Very subtle and beautiful.

Do I love this quilt ? Oh yes I do very much and it is most definitely in the list of favorites of the year. I will be a little sad to see it go but I guess I can always invite myself to another dinner at my brothers' and check-up on "my"quilt.

Ladybug

I hope you are not getting bored of seeing these but there was another baby born recently (as they do !) and of course my colleague deserved to have a little something made for his newborn son.

I again used another of the panels I bought at Fabric Inspiration and added solids and other prints from my stash.

I scrambled together the last pieces of my Kokka cotton/linen blends with those adorable little cars on it, added binding from the Innocent Crush collection and a little while later another changing mat was done.

I so love making these and even more love seeing them in use.

She loves the Blues

A new week, a new quilt. But this is probably the last quilt I will finish for 2012. I am starting to feel a bit quilted out to be honest.

My dear brother sent me a mail a few weeks ago asking if I could make a quilt for his girlfriend. She likes Blues and he would trust in my design skills (basically saying I haven't got a glue - bless him).
Luckily they had invited me for dinner the night before and when I left there sumptuously fed and and watered, a design idea had formed in my brain even before Johannes asked me to make a quilt.
Annette has a store bought blanket on her sofa with blues and beige and I thought I could do something with this arrangement.

Antique Blue curtsey of Design Seeds

I decided to make a quilt just of solids and the first stop if you decide this is Design Seeds. I just would not do without this fantastic website. And sure enough it was not long until I found my perfect combination.

So I started to take out my color charts of the various solids producing companies and found to my surprise that all are lacking a decent selection of Blues. You can have masses of turquoise in every shape or form but not the Blues ! Still I ordered the above stack from Annie at the Village Haberdashery (top to toe: Kona Sky, Surfe, Alegria, Navy, Stone and Putty) and added some more from my stash such as Kona Windsor, Royal and Mustard)

And then I started stitching a few log cabin blocks ! Let's see where that is going to take me this week.

Bedspread improvements

Somehow it seems that I am only working for my family at the moment but they really are lovely customers to have. After having finished the quilt for my sister's mother-in-law I moved on to improve a bedspread for Anja and have in fact already begun to work on a quilt my brother ordered for his girlfriend. And of course all should be done before Christmas.

So to the bedspread then.
The bedspread is a heavy beast in white. The right side is rather beautifully embroidered white on white. But the wrong side is just... a wrong side (sorry forgot to take a photo). So the thing looks a bit like a quilt without a pretty backside and without quilting.

Quilting wasn't an option here but I thought I could make a pretty back and sew it against the wrong side.

Two possible fabric collections automatically came to mind to pretty this bedspread. These were Bella by Lotta Jansdotter and Summersville by Lu Summers. Both use a lot of white and that is what I wanted. In the end I decided on Summersville because I think the smaller designs work better.

I kept it simple and cut 20 large sqaures around the 17" mark and sewed these together and then sewed this against the wrong side by turning the edges over an inch. I used this technique rather than the easier "bag" technique (fabrics right sides together, sew all around except for a turning hole etc.) because the bedspread already had very thick edges and it would have possibly killed my machine. This also has the advantage that the backside is not visible from the right side at all thereby giving it  two distinct sides.

The new pretty backside still required some more stabilizing in the absence of quilting. So I sewed little crosses on the intersecting lines and in addition tied the two layers together. Though the tying is more a decorative accessory here as the sewn crosses do the job of securing both layers. I used bright white thread so the crosses aren't visible from the right side and the thread from tying is neither.

I am rather please with this and it really makes all the difference to the bedspread because it not only looks pretty now when it is folded back on a bed but it can be used reversible.

And you know what the best thing is, that bedspread is on the bed in the spare room which is where I sleep when I visit, so I have my favorite fabric line of 2012 around me all the time when I am at my sisters' !

Dr. Seuss at dinner

 First of all I want to thank everybody who commented on my zick-zack quilt here on the blog, flickr and twitter. I think I have never had such a great response to a quilt I made before and I am truly grateful. But the show must go on and there are still a few more things to finish before Christmas.

My lovely neighbor asked me to make a couple of place-mats for her two adorable children. They are all massive fans of Dr. Seuss and so dived into my dwindling Seuss stash and got on sewing.

Not long after I had those little beauties which I hope will make meal times a lot more fun at their house.

Rumba II

Recently a customer bought my 'Rumba' cushion I made of Malka Dubrawsky's collection 'A stitch in colour'. A few weeks later I got a mail asking if I could make another just like this. After a little chat we decided that I would use the same fabric but a different patchwork pattern to add some interest to the couch on which the cushion will be sitting (and for me the maker !).

So last Saturday I made Rumba II.

I have had it in my mind to make a string quilt for quite some time and thought this was a good opportunity to try it out on a smaller scale.... it is a lot (LOT) of work if you want the strips to be exact like above but I do love it. I paper pieced the four quaters and drew strips varying in lenght between 3/4 and 1 1/4". Still I need to rethink the quilt idea a bit.... maybe go for improv strips which would be a breeze...

The back is again an Echino print, in fact the same pattern as the original cushion had but his time on a turquoise background. Both cushions should sit lovely together on the sofa. I had to add a little solids strip to the bottom as the cushion is slightly larger than a fat quarter (21") and I chose it in the same turquoise as the some of the leaves in the print.



I quilted in circular lines in 50w Aurifill as I wanted the quilting to basically disappear as the prints themselves are interesting enough and I thought a third dimension in addition to the bright fabrics and patchwork design might be a bit to much.

I am happy, let's hope my customer is too !

Stash Note 70

It's been a while that I did a stash note. The reason was that there wasn't anything to show but today I have something rather special to share with you. Colette Moscrop is a member of the LMQG where I met her this year when we started the guilt in January. She is a very talented crafter and who loves quilting, crochet, sewing for her children and pottering in her allotment AND also now screen printing.

I went together with Colette and a few others in the summer to a screen printing workshop at Lu's and whilst we were all very impressed and full of plans to do some screen printing ourselves, Collette is the only one so far who actually turned the plan into reality.


This week she opened her little Etsy store where she sells these wonderful hexadots that I just could not resist to add to my stash

Sunshine yellow Hexadots.

Sumptuous raspberry hexadots

And deep grass green hexadots

And that is not all. Colette also has gorgeous circle prints in her shop. The prints are all done on this wonderful light grey rayon that I have been coveting for quite a while. The colours really shine on this background.

Go hop over to her shop and have a look, you know you want to.

Laptop cover

It is only 6 weeks or so until Christmas and I have equally as many if not more commissions to finish; two of which are large quilts. Pressure is creeping up somewhat....

My neighbors asked me to make a lap top cover and two Dr. Seuss table mats. The mats are in progress (i.e. not started yet..) but the lap top cover is and I am so pleased with how it turned out. I bought the coffee house fabric at this etsy store around the time when I was preparing for the craft market. I thought to make some cushions but in the end didn't have enough time.
 

So when my lovely neighbor asked me to make a cover for her laptop this fabric came automatically to mind. I wanted to make something a little bit cool and different.

The lining is a remnant from Alexander Henry's 'Farmdale' collection I had in my stash.

Mod Century log cabin quilt

My latest quilt is finished and it might just be one of my favorites in the baby quilt category. I started of with a fabric pack of 'Mod Century' given to me by Tina from Tikki and I was determined to make the most of it.

I added a lot of complimentary text prints from my own stash as 'Mod Century' already features text as background and some solids.

Then I went onto the joyous task of making log cabin blocks with a fairly random arrangement of fabrics. The only rule I had was that the middle squares should be highlighted with a solid coloured border. When I had 9 blocks I contemplated onto twelve but instead decided to add a pretty pin dot border.

For the quilt back I used 'Seafoam' in aqua from Lu Summer's 'Summersville' collection which I think works really well with the overall design of the quilt.

I just couldn't help myself quilting in a never ending circular pattern. I love this quilt pattern because it is fairly easy and yet incredibly effective and works very well with square quilts. The binding is also kept in aqua to compliment the quilt back and gives a little contrast around the pin dot border.

You can find this quilt in my Etsy shop here

Cottage Windows

In case you have seen enough of the Liberty 'Stile' prints then just skip this post (but really who would ever have enough of Liberty fabric ?).

I still had a fat eights of prints left from the commission and wanted to make it into a quilt right away rather than letting it disappear in my stash. My intention was to make something entirely different to the appliqued quilts. But I also wanted to do something that worked with the noveau art movement on which the collection is based. So I did a bit of research and found that stained glass windows were used as part of the art movement. That got me thinking and let me to create a simple pattern using squares that are set as little four part windows.

I kept the colourways together rather than mixing them up within the windows. Each window has 4 prints and hence each colourway yielded 16 windows. These are obviously not as sophisticated as art noveau stained glass windows with all their curves. In fact they do remind me a lot more of English cottage windows (hence the title) that really have next to nothing to do with the art noveau movment....but there you go. One inspiration usually leads to another.

I framed the individual windows with a wider sashing strip to separate them a little from each other. The arrangement is entirely random though I made sure the colourways were nicely mixed up.

I quilted in straight double lines which took for ever and used about 8 bobbin wheels. But it was well worth it. This is a huge quilt with 72' x 82" and thus needs stability. Another reason for quilting it narrowly along the seam lines was to keep the individual prints largely free from quilting lines.

The back is simple. I used Kona Ash, a strip of left over 'Stile' squares and some off-white cotton. As much as I love a print quilt back I do appreciate that the quilting lines come out much better on solid backgrounds.

I bound in exactly the same prints as I used for the first quilts. I simply scraped every last bit of it together and joint all the colourways which gives it a slightly scrappy look.

And that was the last of the 'Stile' prints, all used or given away, nothing left at all BUT the good news is that Annie from the Village Harbedashery just got a shipment of 'Stile' in before anybody else!!

This quilt can be found in my on-line shop here has sold.