Pillow Fight

I am participating in the second Brit Swap this year. The first was a swap of a mini quilt and now we are fighting over pillows. I love all the fantasticly crafted pillows that can be found all over flickr but have never made myself a pillow for my living room or any other room for that matter. The main reason is that I think that if I have patterned pillows all over the place in addition to quilts that my small cottage will quickly look to busy or sort of overrun with pattern. The consequence is that all my pillows are in solid colours (all bright silks from John Lewis).

Part of the appeal to join in the swap was to make a pillow and see how it would work in my living room. And the result is that I am now utterly in love with it and will make myself another one as this gorgeous number here will of course be sent to my swap partner in a couple of weeks (but until then it remain on my armchair.......eeeeee). I suppose patterned pillows within a reasonable number will work after all together with quilts !

What is also very appealing to me in a swap is the challenge to get it "right". The Brit Swap is very well organized as all participants have to produce a mosaic that showcases there inspiration for the swap in addition to filling in a form with likes and dislikes.

This weeks I spent some hours browsing through my partners flickr stream and then came up with a design that is scrappy yet structured. This arrangement here has some of my favourite prints that I worked with this year.

 

The design was generally well received by the Swap Ladies so after a little re-arranging of some of the crosses I went ahead and finished the pillow. I quilted each plus sign separately to emphasis the design.

 

I used a wonderful linen from my late grandmother's stash for the back and finished it with a hidden zipper in the middle. A lable is of course included that I blanket stitched on the botton part (name of recipient blacked out in the image of ).

 

 And here is the pillow in action. I so love it that I find it very hard to part with it but the upshot is that  I will receive a pillow in return as it is swap. The downside is that I now have to deal with being hooked on making pillows......Surely that can't be a bad thing (famous last words......)

Whilst I was on a roll last night I also made a little present for my Swap partner. I used the same design and fabric as on the pillow for the this cute needlebook. The sqares for the plus are only 1/2 square. That was challenging but enormous fun.

Let's hope she likes it.

 

 

 

I got a new quilt, I got a new quilt.....

Here it is my new quilt gifted to me by Reene from Nellies's Niceties.

And I couldn't me more happy about it. The posti arrived on Saturday morning at my doorstep and 5 min later I sent Reene a big thank you mail as I was and am so happy with my 'Colour Maze' quilt. It is obvious that Renee put in a lot of thought and research around my likes and dislikes and this has paid off a 100 %. The quilt has solids, bags of colour and straight line quilting, in short everything I love. And to top it she made me a little pincusion in a fantstic long shape that is so much more practical than the ones I usually make.

Great job Reene and thank you again.
I also would like to take the opportunity to thank the BRIT SWAP organisers, individual Mamas and of course the UeberMama. These things can be hit and miss but you Ladies ensured that participants had every opportunity to make a quilt for their secret partner that works and is loved. You made us do a mosaic with our favourite handmade things and fill us in a form with more information. That was really well organised.

Thank you.
P.S. What about a fancy zipper pouch swap next ?  I volunteer to help organising it.

One Brit Swap mini quilt done

So here is my finished Burgoyne Surround (aka 'Charlotte Sometimes') mini quilt all ready to be sent out to my swap partner at the end of the month. I hand quilted it and used the Echino print as a back fabric instead of the Lecien vinatge print. I think (hope) my Swap partner likes this better because there is a colour in their that is one of her favourites. I really enjoyed working with the old linen from my Grandmother. With every touch it gets softer though that does have its drawbacks as it stretches considerably while being worked on. Normally I don't pre-wash any fabric since the invention of colour catcher with the exception of linen. Linen has the naughty habit of shrinking unreasonably .

Gosh I do hope my Partner likes it but if not I don't mind if she sends it back :-). 

Anyway here are the pics

And no my friends the cherries are not included in the swap !! Just didn't have anything else handy to cover the name quickly.

Brit Swap - front finished

Hello there on this rainy Sunday morning. I was all ready to go for my weekly 10 k run when the heavens opened........ so I thought I wait a little and use the time to appliqué a few more circles on my Brit Swap mini quilt and as it so happens a couple of hours later it was still raining but all circles were attached.
Not good for the body and that very much needed run but good for the mini quilt. ( I could go in the rain but it is just to awful today......and that is a feeble excuse).

So have a look and let me know what you think. I am very pleased with how it turned out and I could easily keep this quilt to myself if my Swap partner doesn't like it. But I think we share a similar taste as there is nothing in my partner's mosaic that I don't like so I am quietly confident that the mini quilt will have a reasonable reception. You may remember that I somewhat adapted the 'Charlotte Sometimes' quilt pattern (read here ).

I am also auditioning for quilt back options and would very much love to hear your opinion and advice.
To the left of the image below is a wonderful Echino print and to the right a fantastic Lecien vintage inspired print.  What do you think ? Or something else altogether ?

Brit Swap - first steps

I have joined in the Brit Swap organized by Lynn and a few other "Mamas". This came about through the newly set-up Brit Quilt flickr group that you can find by clicking on the button to the right of my blog or simply by clicking here.

For this swap we are making a mini quilt for a secret partner somewhere in the range of 12 x 12 to 24 x 24 inches. What is great and thanks goes to the organizers is that everybody had to fill in a questionnaire with likes and dislikes and in addition each participant had to make a flickr mosaic showcasing their favourite and inspirational crafty things. Of course all in aid for the secret partner to get it right because there is nothing worse than receiving a gift that one really doesn't like. Everybody is putting in a lot of work and I think if you do that then you want to try and get it as right as possible and all the preparation of making mosaics and questionnaires really helps. Still a lot of pressure.......

After having brewed on my secret partners likes and dislikes for the best part of two weeks I came up with this design. This is inspired by the "Charlotte Sometimes" quilt from Sarah Fielke which is a quilt I will do one day as it has just the right amount of appliqué for my liking and it is pretty contemporary.  The "Charlotte Sometimes" quilt itself is inspired by a Burgoyne Surrounded quilt which is quite an old traditional quilt pattern but used in a modern way here.

This here is the fabric I am using. Yes you see right there is some batic in it but I think used sparingly it can be rather nice. I am planning to use it for the greenish/blueish circle in the drawing.
The other patterned fabric are all Kaffe Fassett and the base will be this gorgeous, gorgeous piece of rough old linen.

And this here is already the centre piece.

What do you think ?