Made it!

Last Xmas present done!

A finish in time for Christmas

Sisters Square Dance, about 100 x 100".   Quilted in the ditch, with an hand quilted cross in the centre of each block- pattern and setting inspiration  from Bonnie Hunter.  Phew! The recipients are not expecting it!

Allietare week three

A quick post for the Allietare linky party on Bonnie' blog this week: I am about half way through the four patches. 

Still working on finishing two doubles for Christmas, so a little behind.

Allietare!

 

 I just had to try some parts for Bonnie Hunter's Allietare Mystery  part two.

 There was a bit of fiddling to get my seams accurate, as I am using a fine Aurfil thread, not my usual all purpose cream cotton. 

I have gone for sea themed blues instead of red, from light to mid blue. They go with the grey constant. As this grey constant is quite light, I have kept my neutrals light. 

My blacks are grey-black and I have chosen mid- yellows.

I may take some of the lighter ones out. 

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Last night I got most of the way round the binding on Sisters Square Dance: I had to unpick and re-attach in a couple of places as the backing was caught up.

I have to hide all the ends from ditch quilting and hand-quilt a small motif in the centre of each star block to stabilise it.  It shouldn't take long, has to be done for Christmas.! (;@|

I'm also layering another quilt, more in the ditch sewing for speed, that has to be done by Christmas too!  Play was interrupted by the grand-pup at the weekend, he approved of the backing fabric, insisted on trying it out for comfort! 

 Link up here for Alletare part two, to see others progress.

I won!

I have had a sumo contest with this beast and my 440, quilting in the ditch, 100  x 100".  Too big to do any free motion, so I had to go for stitching round the dark star borders in the ditch. Still hard work turning the quilt round!

 

Sisters Square Dance

Checking the back to see if I missed any ......all OK. 

I used this thread, it was very good, no breakages. 

One final round of ditch stitch on the border.......

Binding on. I feel a film coming on this afternoon.....

This is some of the work I have been doing in the last three months, in an effort to tidy and consolidate:

Enough of these for two king size projects, one of which will be combined with geese, all prepped and ready to go after Xmas.

170 scrappy Box Kite blocks, enough for two quilts. 

A few more of these to add to the stock

And a couple of hundred four patches  from a box of 2" random squares I found.

All the crumbs string pieced to make hexies, I have about two hundred to trim down.

Some random hexie and teeny diamond paper piecing whilst out and about 

Clue one of Bonnie Hunters mystery done,  'Allietare'. Cutting for clue two tomorrow. 

And I pieced the backing for nine quilt tops that are ready to go!

It's been a while

I have been too busy sewing to bother with the blog, very remiss of me. 

'Sisters Square Dance' is under the needle this week, a Christmas gift, no pressure! it is over 100" square, so the only way to stitch it on my Bernina 440 is in the ditch, and that is a sumo match!  I will have to hand stitch a little in the centre of each star to stablise the whole thing. 

Back to work!

Done

Two finishes this week!

Single, for a gift

Double, for a gift

More exhumations

I tackled another tub of unidentifieds.........

33 blocks left from Sisters Square Dance top (not yet quilted).

Sisters Square Dance

May be enough for a lap quilt?

77 moth blocks from Moth in a Window. Oh dear.  

I made 3 small charity quilts from the leftover blocks that had sashings on as well! All not yet quilted.

 

Kiss in the Corner

Six of these at 12 1/2" square from Kiss in the Corner. plus one crib charity quilt......and ..........

45 of these three patches!  

And stupidly I did not take a picture of the  finished hand quilted Kiss in the Corner before I gave it away! 

I found the strips I had pieced for Bow Ties and put them together today: I only needed 7 of the 10 I made to complete the bed topper at 66 x 84". 

I am happy with it at this size with no borders (it's for ME!).  616 bows and 3, 696 pieces!

But. 

I have enough left to make an even bigger quilt!

Recent excavations have brought my issue into focus, I don't plan properly and end up with too much stuff made!  

Meanwhile, more box kites-

these are so ugly I truly love them, no one else that has seen them does, another one for me!

I also made the decision on the filler triangles for the next leader and ender, Garlic Knots, at the bottom of the picture. I thought I had the perfect fabric, but it was really UGLY when I tried it out!  Then I found this blue and white, enough variation not to be a solid but it has movement.  Because I used white sheeting as the background, whichever way I laid out the blocks there was a glaring  white area in that corner, it needed something. Problem solved.

I am going to shelve this now it has been kitted up and decisions are made and use the bow ties I found as leader-enders with the box kite project, to get the second top put together!

There are going to be so many huge quilts to try and stuff under the tiny space of  my Bernina this winter, I probably wont need to put the heating on  as I will be swamped in them for weeks as I wrestle them through!

Good job I bought two full rolls of batting! 

I am going to count the quilts that have to be machine quilted next week......

Linking for quilterinthecloset.blogspot.co.uk Building blocks Tuesday
and
WIP Wednesday  http://www.freshlypieced.com

A little more alignment

 I am gradually organising the boxes of random stuff that have accumulated. The blue two patches have been sewn as leader-enders into another two dozen 9 patches to join the rest.

 These 3" finished four patches left from Moth in Window have been bagged up and put in the 'potential' category box.

 The backings cupboard is organised. 

The crumb bin was 1/3 full of 2" offcuts from kitting geese and Garlic Knots, so I pieced these into 10 1/2" strips for the Crumb Quilt Project: whilst everything in the bin is the same width, it makes it  an easy job.

 Lots more triangles chain pieced for Box Kite, and some of them pressed

Yesterdays blocks...............

 

 Kitting up the 2" pre cut orange and browns for garlic knots:  I need to make a dent in these  2" squares as they are not moving.  I may add different colours.

 

I am using good quality recycled soft white sheeting for the background, again in an attempt to use up things that are sitting about. Soft, soft, soft!

I made four blocks to play with the arrangement: however I laid it out  there was a big white area, so i found some snipped triangle corners and played-half a flying goose on the long strip (not the final colour for the diamond!) Better.

Odds and ends

Still finding little stashes of random bits-today's find was a bag of blue two patches that must have been left from making  250 nine patches some time ago-I am using them as leader-enders to make nine patches to add to the stack whilst making more box kite blocks. 

I need 99  of these 9" finished blocks to make a quilt with no borders or sashing inserts.

 Today's hoard:

 I have watched all of Bonnie's Quiltcam archives from the last year in recent weeks whilst I have been sewing.  Time to go back to the beginning now!

A boring jobs next: I have to draw diagonal lines on the goosey squares I have been cutting to go with the pinwheel blocks; also lots of sets of box kite triangle pairs to press.

Purging the greens and planning a new learning curve

 I have made 395 green/brown pinwheels for two projects from the pre-cuts.

 There were a lot of two patches and four patches over from The Big Green One. 

 The four patches were dubious, so I made them into 240 six patches, I have a plan for these. 

 I made 347 4 patches from the remaining two patches, with greens that are better matched in each block, to be put by for a future project TBC.

A lot of the two patches have been hand sewn,  I took them on holiday about 5 years ago!  It made for very easy seam spinning of 395 sets.

I used some of the very odd four patches, (here the centre blocks are really brown and yellow!) to make scrappy nine patches to join the pile of over 100 I have already.

Thirty seven of these made, you can't really tell they contain a green/neutral four patch.







I have  chain sewn sets of triangles  for Box Kite, to be pressed:  I  made 14  blocks so far.  I really like this block. The top centre one doesn't fit with the others as the blue is too pale. There will be enough for at least two quilts, so I can sort them into tone block types when they are all done.

I also did a few Perkiomen Daydreams blocks.  I will be pressing the ones I have to check the accuracy (it's difficult to determine without a press as they finish at 1"). If I am not happy  I will abandon this project. I can't work out why my pinwheel accuracy is almost always spot on, but simple squares seem wonky.  This is Bonnie's  block and its perfect! 





I have been investigating one block wonder quilts. They are not a difficult to construct as I thought, helpful videos found on Youtube.    Bruce Seeds's Flickr page shows some informative pictures about fabric choices.



I found these in my stash, good quality fabrics bought at silly sale prices as backing.










I also bought  several metres in the sale from Lady Sew and Sew ( UK), one of my favorite online shops, of this Makower fabric that I think will do well, lots of colour and shape variation. Don't know about the size of the print yet, as it hasn't arrived!

I stashed some ideas on my Pinterest page too.