Happy Holidays

This is the first Christmas Eve I've had to work in years so I'm all turned around on what day it is. Not to mention the crazy stormy weather we've been getting here leaving everything covered in ice. It really doesn't feel like Christmas is tomorrow, though I guess for our Aussie family it is already over. Craziness!

My resolution is to get back into quilting but with a teething toddler at home and a new job we shall see how that goes. Here's wishing you happy crafty times over the holidays and into the new year.

Happy Holidays!

Isn't it just

So I have been meaning to get back to the blog for some time now, but life just keeps getting in the way really.

First distraction: the lovely little Matilda Hazel Anne born nearly a year ago now on Halloween 2012. She made herself known every time I tried to sit down to sew by doing gymnastics on my bladder or practicing her goal kicks into my sides. I think it is safe to say she was not a fan of me sewing.
Now that she is a little mover she wants me to explore, climb, crawl, and dance with her instead of sewing. My plan is to get her into sewing early so we can do that together. {Maniacal Laugh}

Second distraction: my hubbie opened a southern BBQ food truck. The Big Smoke Food Truck. I knew it was coming I just didn't know how much time and energy it would suck from us to get things rolling. I think it was a bit of our own fault for wanting to do so much ourselves, but the end results made it worth it! A bonus of this was I ate like a southern queen, the downside was no time to sew.

Third distraction: at 4 months old Matilda took her first plane ride. We made the trek to Melbourne, Australia to see my hubbie's family and introduce her to the Aussie crew for a month. She was a trooper & charmed her way around the world. I think it helps when your baby is the youngest flying but the best behaved. The flight crews always loved her and would cluck over her throughout the flight. One of them even held her for me while i went to the loo. Amazing!

Fourth distraction: no plan, no motivation. This is completely my fault. I had the fabric, thread, rulers, machine, but no idea what I wanted to do. Actually no, too many things I wanted to do but no solid plan on how to do them.

Enter stage left - the amazingness that is Tula Pink's new book City Sampler 100 Modern Blocks. I fell in love. Hard. I knew it would get me out of my funk & back into my sewing room. So after digesting it cover to cover I made a plan & went to work. I am not great at remembering to take photos. I will have to learn to stop here & there and photograph what I'm doing. I made enough blocks to do a baby quilt for a friend and that was that. I am hooked on quilting again.

After that quilt got the juices flowing I stumbled on an old project I had on a shelf. Echino 1/2 yards just waiting for the Stained QAL I wanted to do so badly. I got to work figuring out the pieces since i was using directional fabric (would NOT do this again for that pattern!!) and ordered lovely linen for the sashing bits from the lovely Pam at Mad About Patchwork. She has the best shipping. It can get here in no time at all.

Anywho, I will make sure to get a few photos of this man quilt shortly. I'm calling it the Man Quilt since it is a quilt for my hubbie. He thinks it is about time we kept a quilt I made so voila.

Chevron Quilt

My little sister decided she wanted to make a quilt for one of her teachers, so I set out to try to find something simple she could tackle and fast enough to make that we could get it done in the 2 weeks notice she gave me (silly sister). We decided to keep costs down we'd do it in solids on the front and a solid piece of patterned fabric for the back.

She was inspired by a quilt she saw online in greys black white and yellow with scattered half triangles. It was beautiful but when we picked up the fabrics we forgot  picture and both of our goldfish memories forgot it needed 2 shades of grey. We came home with just yellow, off white 1 grey and black. The result wasn't great - too dark with either no contrast (the black & grey) or too much (the black & off white). It was a big pile of yuck on the design board and we had already sewn all of the blocks together. My sister went to work in a less than delighted mood that night and I kept at it trying to make it work. Then it hit me - I had seen a sweet pattern on Cluck Cluck Sew for a zig zag baby quilt that used up half square triangles, so maybe with a few tweak I could make something out of our mess.

I ran over to her shop and purchased the pattern - and was i lucky - she was having a half price sale one day only. i picked up 4 patterns while i was there (I'm a sucker for a sale) and within the hour was fixing up the quilt with this result (pre-quilted):

I echo quilted the zigs and zags and got it done just in the nick of time to machine sew on the scrappy binding using a decorative stitch and scrappy binding. Hew teacher loved it (she cried) and told her it was perfect for her baby's room as she was having a boy. I wasn't able to get any of pictures of the finished quilt myself so my sister took some on her iPhone before she wrapped it.

 

Mission complete. Mr Malcolm agreed.

Jasper Quilt

I just cast the last stitch on my nephew-to-be Jasper's quilt. It's not exactly what I pictured when I started, but I am happy with the result. Hopefully my sister likes it.

It is my second go at machine binding and I have to say it went much smoother this go around. I think next time I would cut the binding even wider - maybe even up to 3 inches just to give more wiggle room when stitching. Next up is a quick wash through the machine to get rid of any loose threads and copious amounts of cat fluff as Malcolm decided it was a nice place to snuggle up last night. Silly cat.
Please excuse the sad excuse for pictures of the quilt - photo booth on the laptop definitely has its limitations! 

 The front - I decided after finishing the top with the posts in that it wasn't what I liked so I had to unpick soooo many stitches, and redo all the rows. It was totally worth it though, because it looks way more modern without them.

 

I wanted to have a fully reversible quilt, so I pieced together a scrappy back using the solids from the front as well as the left over prints (in the center strip). I think I like the back better than the front just because it is so out there.

 

As much of a close up as photo booth would allow. I think the Greek key style quilting really worked on the front, and doesn't look too bad on the back. I was concerned when I first started that it would seem to random on the back, but I ended up liking the effect. It has shown me that my quilting skills need improvement, so I think I might make some quilted placemats to practice on. I do love the bamboo batting I picked up at Wilton Creek Fabrics. It seems to glide through better than the cotton stuff I had for my sampler quilt many moons ago.

Next up are napkins and coasters for little sister who is moving into her first apartment today. So exciting. As a bonus she is in school for esthetics - yeay to not paying ridiculous prices for waxing anymore. Hubbie has even donated his legs to her for waxing practice - now that will be an hilarious afternoon!!

Owlberta Pillow

I started this project ages ago cutting out the pieces, and it has sat in my craft closet ever since utterly forgotten. So when I found it the week before last I decided I should just finish it to see how it goes before tackling one as a gift. That way I can mess this one up and get all the mistakes out before making the next one. And let me tell you, boy were there were mistakes!

Firstly, I didn't really cut the shape out right for the ears - I think I'd like them pointy on the next one.
I also bodged the felt bit on when I should have taken more care, and probably should have hand sewed them on with matching colored embroidery floss. Lastly, I didn't take enough care on the bottom sewing and totally missed the inside fabric to the pocket - duh! I will cut that fabric larger next time to make sure it will all be securely sewn then cut off the excess. Oh well, it is one big learning curve. The next one I make will be more boy-ish as it might be a pressie for my nephew to come. Jasper should arrive late November early December and I can't wait.

One other thing I tried after reading something about alternative filling for pillows is use up my loads of tiny scraps. Although I can see where they are coming from that it does indeed stuff the pillow, it also makes for an incredibly dense and heavy pillow. So, for Jasper's pressie I think I'll stick to some sort of stuffing to keep it lighter, or make the owl pillow sized and add a zipper for easier clean up. So much experimenting to do!

I will try to get some closer pics of the details - my hubbie was helping me with the pictures before the camera battery died and we didn't get around to more pictures since. I'll be able to show the back of the pillow that has a pocket for a book.

All in all I am happy with the result and with these few tweaks and the lessons learned from the mistakes on this one I think I'm ready to tackle the next one as soon as I find some inspiring fabric. The purple fabric I used on the front made me think of feathers, and I used a coordinating owl print on the back which is what sparked this project, so I think an outing to the fabric shop may be in order.

Baby Quilt Bonanza - Part 2

The quilt is complete and off to Australia. The machine sewn binding worked decently, though I will need more practice as I still cannot sew in a straight line. All in all I am pretty happy with the end result and thrilled that I finished it in time to send it with my father-in-law instead of having to pay to ship it.
Here are some shots of the process I wasn't able to load before:

And here is the finished product:

Sorry the colours are a bit off from the afternoon sun coming in that day.
Here are some shots of the binding grey thread on front & blue on the back:

So, onto the next baby quilt. Luckily I have a longer time frame for this one so I'm going to tackle a tougher pattern I think. I'll try to post progress photos as I go.

Baby Quilt Bonanza - Part 1

After a marathon of sewing the quilt for my sister in-law is finished. I've quilted it, did the binding, and washed it to make sure there are no dyes left in it, or loose threads. Phew.

I must say that my husband was a trooper for taking care of the pets, and feeding me on Friday while I sewed all day - last day of vacation. So now the package is ready to be delivered to Melbourne in the coming weeks when my father-in-law goes back home after a whirlwind visit.

The front pre-binding. I used this pattern because I think it looks like stacks of books, and my brother and sister in-law have so many books at their house, or did when I visited in 2009. Perhaps some have gone to make room for the upcoming bubs, who knows. I think I'm going to call it 'Red Riding Hood' as that was my inspiration for the colours, and say 'to the bookworm to be' since I don't know what her name will be.

For the back I used selvedge to selvedge strips of the fabrics from the front. I think that make it more useful as a baby quilt to be totally reversible. I did straight-ish line quilting so it would look good on the top, but I don't think it looks too bad on the back. The one pre-planned aspect I did get right was to have these stripes facing the opposite to the 'books' on the front so there were seams lying on top of seams. For the spacing I just eyed the front of the quilt to try to make the lines look good against the 'books'. All in all I'm pretty happy with the results being this is my 2nd completed quilting project.

I will get some photos of the binding and the washed completed project up soon. I copied a technique I saw on an antique quilt in Perth where they had zigzag sewed the binding on. It looked so wonky & adorable I knew I had to try it. I won't lie - the binding did not go well as far as it being super equal all the way around. I cannot sew in a straight line to save my life. Hence all of the 'wonky' quilt patterns I like. I think more of the problem came from my squaring up not really being square, but who wants a cookie cutter quilt - right? This one has heaps of personality. Or so I keep telling myself.

Here is one of Crosby at the end of the day of sewing. One tired little guy.