It may be cold outside.......

............but it's warm indoors, especially if you have a quilt you are working on!

I should have been doing some more quilting on my Kaleidoscope quilt this week as it is lovely and warm with a wool wadding, but I haven't even got it out! It's been a busy week with a trip to Worcestershire for some photography and of course the snow which has meant son's school has closed early twice this week.

We had snow in the east on Monday. It wasn't too bad, but it has been really cold all week. However the frost on the trees and bushes in the garden has been wonderful

(For some reason wherever I post the last image.....it never gets shown the right way round, even though I have rotated and saved it the right way up!)

Then there was more snow yesterday but worse in the west this time. We maybe got about an inch of snow. It was enough to bring all the birds in the garden, which is pretty cool seeing as we never get birds in our little garden. An especially new visitor was this cute wagtail, who was obviously cold as he kept on lifting one foot off the ground

So what sewing have I done this week? Mainly I've been putting together a sashing row and been joining row C onto my SBS quilt. I really need to find a virtual design wall so that I can insert the images of each block in it. Maybe that will be my task today?!

I have also been sidetracked a little with the scrappy tripalong that is doing the rounds in Blogland, thanks mainly due to Katy at I'm a Ginger Monkey. Katy has a serious addiction to this! The original tutorial is at Quiltville. I have been fairly restrained so far and only made two blocks, but I can hear it calling to me!

The trouble is, I'm also thinking how cool it would look if I cut a strip from each of my red and white prints.........

My plan this weekend is to add the borders to the new layer cake quilt I have been working on........assuming I can resist the lure of the scrappy tripalong.......

Humble

I've been trying to find the time to sit and write a 2012 review for the last few days, having read Lily's Quilts post on 1 January. But so far all I have done is feel very humble and almost inadequate compared to all the other bloggers who have linked their blogs to the post, either for Fresh Sewing Day or the Small Blog Meet.

I only have one FINISHED quilt to show for 2012!

This is it!

My layer cake quilt that I made for British Patchwork & Quilting.

Otherwise all I have made is quilt tops..........plenty of them! And all of them tops to display fabrics, so I'm not particularly attached to any of them.

 

And then I become addicted to pre-cuts using Hoffman Bali Pops, Snaps and Crackers. This one is a really quick one using a pack of 5" squares (Snaps) and a strip pack (Pops), both in Tiramisu. I think I will actually quilt this one!

I have made a couple of other quilt tops using pre-cuts, but they are kind of secret at the moment as I'm thinking about turning them into patterns..............once I have quilted them!!

And that's about it!

As I said........humble is the word x

Still Stitching.......and smiling!

Christmas has been and gone and so has 2012 (nearly). I think I might have said a year ago how hard I find Christmas now that I am on my own, but on the other hand it does make you realise it's all about the children. So you put your misgivings etc to one side and you get together with your families and the kids have a great time opening presents together and the general excitement of the day. Well that's what happened in my family anyway.

 

This past year I have tried to be more productive in my quilt-making and I think that's true to some extent. I definitely make more quilts to display my fabrics, although I never have the time to quilt them.........which reminds me I need to get back to my machine quilting!

 

There is one thing for certain............I have developed an addiction for pre-cuts! I love Bali Pops and now they are available in 5" and 10" squares too there are even more design possibilites. The hardest part is actually opening the packet and even now it takes me a while to do it, but I have played with all of them this year and am thinking I might turn my designs into patterns...........once I have quilted the quilts I've made of course!

 

So what does 2013 hold? I think I need to concentrate on using my time more productively (ie stay off Facebook etc) and work on my own quilts as well as display quilts.

Getting ahead of myself, I've already picked up the Sylvia's Bridal Sampler quilts again and have almost completed row C on both quilts, I have a couple of red and white quilts to make and then there is my Kaleidoscope quilt that I need to keep working on.

 

Wow that sounds a lot already!!

 

Best get on with it then............

Free Motion Project Quiltalong

So here it is! My first attempt at free motion quilting.

I am following the Free Motion Quilting Project Quiltalong, just to give me some tips and guidance. This was created by Leah Day who originally started her blog to design a different type of free motion filler quilting for every day of the year; the Free Motion Quilting Project.
You can visit her blog here. It’s such a useful tool!
I've watched the first couple of videos and am running a little before I can walk by combining the two at the same time.....

As I started, it was a bit jagged and my stitches very short as I had trouble moving the quilt sandwich around. Started to wish I had waited and bought some grippy gloves or something. I was having problems even doing the simple 'U' shapes......

It all looks rather amateurish doesn't it? But hey everyone has to start somewhere!

The next image is of me jumping ahead a bit adding a few extra wiggles before I was any good at doing the basic U's.

I reached the bottom of my ‘quilt’ at this point. So started again at the top practising some simple U’s which were a bit better this time.

This last picture shows me being a bit more adventurous again before I was ready, but I think I can already see some progress!

I was able to move the quilt around a lot better at this stage too. I’ve put my little 1” x 6” ruler in the images so you can see the scale of  the quilting.

I have taken a break as I finished stitching the fabric square I had sandwiched together and thought I would do a quick blog post before going to get some more calico.
I’ve kept my pieces quite small not only to keep them manageable but also because I am using up some wadding scraps. The wadding is Hobbs Polydown which is a 2oz wadding. I will also play around with some thinner wadding like Hobbs 80/20.

The main thing, as Leah says, is to practice as practice makes perfect!

Here we go again......

Wow! How can it be that over two months have gone by since I last wrote a blog post? I really am going to have to try harder! It's not like they have to be long mega essays after all is it?

I have actually done very little sewing recently. I do actually intend to do some hand sewing every evening but somehow I manage to fritter away what free time I have without even holding a needle. Even if I try not to touch that big time sucker, aka my computer, I seem to be catching up on twitter on my phone instead.
I do like twitter at the moment though!

I have been playing with the new Bali Pops, Crackers and Snaps that I had in stock. One quilt top I want to keep under wraps a little as I might turn it into a pattern, I made that from an old Pop pack.

The other quilt I have created is so basic and likely already to have been made before so I don't mind sharing that, although most of the images for it are on my phone, so I have pinched one from there for now.

 

It's made with one Tiramisu Pop and one Tiramisu Snap which is a 5" square pack. When I made the quilt I used the left over Pop strips in the borders and thought I had enough bits left to mitre the corners......... but I didn't so I had to unpick one mega long seam and insert a couple more border bits and redo the border.
I was right to do so though and it would have bugged me if I had done straight border corners!

 

Ages ago I promised a picture of my completed layer cake quilt that I was making for the magazine. It was featured in the Sept 2012 issue and was also on the front cover. So here it is!

 

 

And I'm really excited to see it's being used in the publicity for the new Uttoxeter quilt show, the British Quilt & Stitch Village!

 

Happy happy!

I did some hand applique last night for the first time in ages. And it was so lovely I can't wait to get back to it this morning.

Its something I planned and first started years ago. It's been so long since I worked on this project, that I can't remember how long it has been! It must be at least two years if not more......

It all started possibly five years ago or more when I went to Hever Castle for the annual Quilters' Guild region's exhibition that is held there about this time of year. In one of the gardens there was a beautiful display of dahlias; so many colours and shapes. I was inspired! So I took lots of photos.

I then bought some of Heidi Stoll-Weber's wonderful dyed cotton sateens and my quilt design was born.

Working on my first block again last night, I fell in love with these fabrics all over again. They are so lovely to work with.

So here are a couple of pics of what I have done so far

For some reason Blogger has decided to rotate the second image!
It will go to a reddy pink in the centre with some yellow/orange detail on top.
Well that's the plan!

And right now I want to get back to it...............
 

I have done some sewing................honest!

It's been an incredibly busy couple of months. If I thought I was busy before, that was nothing compared to the last six weeks or so!
I have been wanting to post something for ages, but then life gets in the way and the moment has gone.

So not a lot of sewing has gone on.

I have made some quilt samples though! The first I am really pleased with and which uses fabrics from the Magic Garden collection from Blend Fabrics.

 

It went together really quickly, in a matter of hours!

Then I made what I feel is my first modern quilt! It uses the stripe from the Retro Mix collection from Robert Kaufman. It just needs some great straight line quilting...........

Next up was a delft inspired quilt featuring fabrics from the Dutch Cottage collection from Robert Kaufman. I'm really pleased with this one too. I love using stripes as sashings and bindings.

 

Wow! Looking at those quilts I feel like I have actually been quite productive! Maybe it's because I haven't done much hand sewing recently. I've just finished blocks C9 of our SBS quilts this evening so will post some pics soon.

Oh and I can now post a pic of the layer cake quilt I was working on seeing as it's on the front cover of P&Q magazine!