Lots of freedom

Pillow lava: free motion quilted border, 1/2 way round.  Pink variegated thread.

And a bit of freeforming, to make a cushion cover........

Second finish 2015

Second finish of the year, charity quilt for Portage, around 40 x 40"

Quick work

I have to be quick, I have lots to do by March. 

Lengthened stitch,  number 4 on my Bernina, walking foot, sewn in green and white variegated thread  on random diagonal lines to match the colour movement of the patches: charity quilt for Portage, West Sussex.  I quilted across the border too as the thread blends with the fabric, so no sewing ends in!  Awaiting binding.  I'll use this stitch again.

Large  'single', lots of ends to sew on this one. The picture is from the layering process at work.  I will heavily free motion quilt the purple border. 

Quilted with King Tutt variegated thread, hides the wobbles nicely!  Not the best quilting, but this was the largest thing I have stuffed under the machine so far-by the end I had the hang of it!  Like the King Tutt thread a lot, but its pricey!

The reverse thread was Guttermann variegated pink, blends nicely with the fabric and picks up the directional pattern.   LOVE this backing fabric.

Now off to Leah Days site to choose a pattern for the border quilting, and cut some binding. .

Use it up.

Hmm. Literally hundreds of sewn up green/neutral four patches found in the reorganisation. Not the nicest of colours. What to do? Go to Bonnie Hunter: More Adventures with leaders and enders on Kindle. 

The four patches were leftovers from 'the big green one'  that I'm piecing, from the blocks that I have made up already.  I will do 'four patch x' from the book, here on the right to use up those green/neutral four patches: well, about half-thats 280, with at least that many left!! 

I found the other fabrics in the stash for 'four patch x', I just need oranges for the accent colour, these will probably be scrappy.  That pale one is really yellow. with teeny white spots, it will be the background fabric.

Does this count as distraction? Yup. I'll keep my mind on those flimsies that need quilting.  I layered one of the charity quilts today. I'll layer one every evening this week, ready to go at the weekend.

Then got distracted!  I have been looking around for a house quilt design for a while now with lots archived on this pinterest board.   

I played in the scrap bin, which had some larger shirt pieces in.

In the far distant future I'll dig out some tree and sky fabric, do a bit of decorative machine stitching and quilt cloud formations on these for a charity quilt. A bit too much attention needed to whiz it together now. 

The background is good quality twice recycled white cotton sheeting, formerly hotel bedding (they bought it as rags for the factory where I used to work) .  Yes, I fished them out of the bins at the end of the day, washed them a couple of times, good as new. Now being used in charity quilts.  Now that's frugal!

I don't think I will be using this free-range design for the one I will make for myself, though it was great for using up those shirt scraps.

A finish!

Charity quilt, about 40 x 40".  Apple backing to keep the doctor away!  I love the way the quilting turned out on this, though there were lots of ends to sew in.   As the border was narrow, I didn't quilt it.I did the quilting with the walking foot, and still I have three small tucks in the back. A record of my inexperience.

 I pulled another UFO off the shelf, this is for son number two. It's been hanging about for around a year.  This is the sample of the layout I made to show him: as soon as I got it out I saw all the mistakes!!.  Now disassembled, ready for second round.

Bow tie surplus (understatement!)

Well. I had started to sew some of the bow ties together for my quilt. I just powered away, as you do.

I had thought I had too many for one quilt. I was right. I have made strips enough for 2  quilts at 60 x 72". 560 bow ties in each.  One of these is for me, another a gift.  Here are the strips hanging over the door.






I sewed a few pairs the wrong way round: I have a baby quilt to do in the summer, problem solved, I sewed a few more, now all I have to do is add a plain border to bring it up to cot size.  I don't know the sex of the baby yet, so I threw everything in there!





Leftovers: enough for another 5' x 6', or a fancy border for another quilt. I knew I had overdone it, but really!

Outed.

OK, time to come clean, I'm a serial piecer. 

I sit at the machine and tune out the world. I have done this for several years and the result is I'm not yet a competent machine quilter! As I'm not so good (yet) I go on to the next piecing job.  

This is the year I get good.  I have 11 more small charity quilts to do, these will be practice before I try and stuff a king size quilt under my machine.  In addition to the flimsies below, I have four  more in progress and enough nine patches probably for another three.  And three  four English paper pieced ones on the go.

Thats 22 plus those below............MUFFLED help!

SO, NO NEW STARTERS UNTIL I HAVE DONE THESE.

However many great ideas I have (a lot).

Bow ties

I spent the afternoon powering through
bow ties, they go fast, but yet again, I think I have done enough for two doubles!!  I realised I have overdone the black, so I'm putting them aside now for use in another project as a feature or edging.   Watching Bonnie on Quiltcam archive as I work. 

Still in the groove

 I am a novice machine quilter.  This morning, doing this lap size (for a friends sister who runs a charity for children with learning difficulties) I have learnt a lot-about stitch length, the wisdom of using pins instead of safety pins (ouch!) to sandwich, rolling the quilt properly, how the walking foot works.    And I keep telling myself that children are not the quilt police!  One down, eight to go!  Binding on next.

In the last few days sewing binge since I have a new sewing room, everything I have done has been for someone else, so last night I sewed some bow ties together for MY quilt. I have over 1000 pieced and ready to be assembled, they finish at 3 inches. This is the layout I have decided on. Most of the knot sections are a different colour to the bows: I had all the squares cut and lots of 1 1/12" strips in the bin, so I used those for the knots. I am pleased with my accuracy on these, they are going together well considering they were pieced over several months.

Dedicated space.

Yipppppeeee!  I now have a dedicated sewing room, though in true quilter fashion, its too small, even though it's the biggest bedroom in the house!  In the reorganisation, I found lots of orphan blocks that I have sewn up for Linus, just to get them out of the way.   Now I'm webbing a double, that was ready to go, Dancing Sisters Choice. 

Sisters Choice blocks, this will be a gift.

 

Orphan red moth in a window blocks, with orphan four patch centre strip-all of this was either assembled or pre-cut. Easy!  I just had to cut an outer border.

 

 

Mauve moth blocks, with pre-sewn mini moth centre, border was all that needed cutting.

 There are another three moth Linus quilt tops assembled, in various colours.

Four orphan spiderweb blocks: I tried out the seagull background fabric and it didn't pop enough. I like the juxtaposition of the seagulls with their distant dinosaur relatives on the inner border. Outer blue border was leftover from another project.

Orphan twisted nine patch blocks, Linus size!

I now have seven tops ready to be quilted for Linus. 

I have a few of these done, about 40 of 400 or so, for Perkiomen daydreams. I am really trying to do this as a Leader-Ender project.

So far, so good...

A few quick pics, I want to keep up the momentum!

And the next handquilted project will be...........

The rainbow hexie: these are old pictures, it is in a more advanced state of completion now.

I'm moving my machine to a bedroom, then I will be working on machine quilting

four charity quilts.  

A lot to finish this year, last year I did very little sewing

The learning curve-a finish!!

1/ Take a picture of the finished quilt before you give it away!  This post will have to make do with old pictures from the making of 'Kiss in the Corner, until I can get a picture from the recipients.

This quilt went everywhere, including on holiday to the Premier Inn. It was my first full size double and my first hand quilted project.

2/ Start small when you are a novice!  Especially with hand quilting, it became overwhelming!

3/ I learnt why hand quilting is done in long lines, mostly. I spent a lot of time wrestling it in circles, as each of those white patches on the twisted nine patch block has two hearts on! And I quilted in each of those small blue areas (I need not have) and the brown squares. Total overkill, but it has a very unique quilting design, as the hearts are all random shapes and sizes and the quilting of the brown patches was governed by the fabric pattern of each.

Making the top was relatively quick, all with fabrics from the stash.

That was the idea, of course, as it was a last minute wedding gift for my sons friend (he was best man at his friends wedding). I was contributing the work and he paid some of the cost.

4/ For me, this is a big lesson, don't tell the recipients something is on the way. I'm a terrible 'finisher' always starting something new, so many ideas, so little time.  It' 3 1/2 years late!!  The SHAME!!! 

This is the closest picture I have to what it looks like now, minus borders. I chose a busy backing, as the quilting was an unknown entity and I didn't know what it would look like. That was a GOOD choice!

Here is a picture with the borders- I didn't quilt the border, controversial! There are small hearts printed all over it so it ties in nicely with the quilting. 

For the binding, I used navy blue, with a backing fabric crumb catcher, I'm really pleased with how that looks.  Sewing the binding down only took a couple of evenings, so it went off with my so yesterday to give to his friends just before Christmas.  Phew!