Monday, 29 December 2014

2015 Finish-Along - Q1 sponsors and prizes

Hello lovely readers.  I hope you had a great Christmas with family and friends.  With the end of the year rapidly approaching, it's a great time to take stock from 2014 and plan for 2015.  To help with that, I'm very excited to announce the generous sponsors and awesome prizes for Q1 of the 2015 Finish-Along.


Fat Quarter Shop is providing a $75 gift voucher.


Rachael from imagine gnats is providing a $30 gift voucher.


Sara from Sew Sweetness is providing 3 patterns of the winner's choice.


Melissa from Sew Bittersweet Designs is providing 3 patterns of the winner's choice.


Becca from sew me a song is providing a $25 gift voucher.


Green Fairy Quilts is providing a $25 gift voucher.


Mad About Patchwork is providing a $30 gift voucher.


Juliet from Tartankiwi is providing 3 patterns of the winner's choice.


Fabricworm is providing a $30 gift voucher.


Alex from Aurifil is providing four prizes - 2 large thread sets and 2 small thread sets.


Alyce from Blossom Heart Quilts is providing a copy of her Bright Sky quilt pattern.


The team at Make Modern are providing a copy of the current issue of their magazine for two winners.


 Danielle and Jeanette from Polka Dot Tea are providing a lovely prize which is yet to be confirmed.


Donna from Donna's Quilt Studio is providing a bundle - the specific fabrics to be included are to be confirmed closer to the time.


Rhonda from Quilter in the Gap is providing a surprise prize.

On the Windy Side

And finally, I will be providing a copy of each of my self-published patterns to a winner (full disclosure - at the moment there is only the one!).

I hope those prizes are getting you excited for Q1 of the 2015 Finish-Along.  If you're playing along with the 2014 FAL, don't forget to link your Q4 finishes up at Katy's blog (The Littlest Thistle) between 31 December 2014 and 6 January 2015.  

Then, get your thinking cap on, take a deep breath, and pull out all those WIPs you absolutely must get done in 2015!  You can link your proposed finish list here between 7 January and 17 January - HEAPS of time even if you're on holiday!

2015 FAL at On the Windy Side

2015 FAL at On the Windy Side

As usual, you can find all the detail for the 2015 Finish-Along on my 2015 Finish-Along page.

I've been asked a couple of questions a few times and I thought I'd share them here in case others are wondering:

Q: Do I need to have a blog / flickr / instagram to join in the Finish-Along?

A: You need to have an online place to load your list of proposed finishes at the start of each quarter, and show each finish at the end of each quarter.  The online place needs to be public so I can see it.  Most people use a blog, or flickr, or this year you can link up using instagram as well (see Rhonda's tutorial on how to link up using instagram for the details).  If you use a photo sharing site that's not flickr, that would work as well (as long as your photos are viewable by the public).

Q: How do I sign up for the Finish-Along?

A: To sign up, all you need to do is link up a blog post / flickr photo / instagram photo listing the WIPs you plan to finish in the next quarter of the year.  The dates when link-ups are available are set out on the 2015 Finish-Along page.  You don't need to sign up for the whole year - you can pick and choose which quarters to participate in if you want!  At the end of the quarter, link up each finish separately.

Ok - that's enough for now I think.  If anyone else has any questions, please let me know.  In the meantime, I'm off to make my WIP list.  I'm a bit scared!

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Saturday, 27 December 2014

Caturday Wisdom #100

It's the size of the box it comes in that really counts. Tiny Kitten

Hope everyone received some cardboard boxes of various sizes to enjoy this week! If not, hope you enjoyed a bit of a summer or winter break. 
Ralph and Ivy have been vetting a small child for the position of belly-rubber, they're not sure about him yet though. It's possible they think he's a large cat, unfamiliar as they are with small humans.

The tiny fluffbutt above was picked up by a friend of ours who works in animal welfare. It's so sweet! 

Friday, 26 December 2014

Hadley Quilt

I finished stitching down the binding on my Hadley quilt a couple of weeks ago.

 Hadley Quilt

If you've been following the progress of this quilt, you've probably seen the front already (in this post). I'm really happy with how the front turned out - basically, for each row, I stacked five fat quarters and sliced them into four fairly even strips, creating improv curves as I did so.  I then trimmed the resulting blocks into nice even squares.  This trimming process left me with quite a few offcuts, which I used on the other side.

Hadley Quilt

For this side, I really wanted to push the retro vibe I was getting from the Hadley prints.  At first I thought I would just set the pieced strips in the cream background fabric, but they didn't look quite right so I ended up framing them with a teal shot cotton.  Technically, this side is the back but I think I like it just as much as the front (and maybe more...).

Hadley Quilt

All that negative space meant that getting the quilting right was important.  This is a pretty big quilt (70" by 84") so I wasn't that keen to tackle it myself.  Instead, Sue Burnett quilted it for me using a digital pattern we found together.  I think the figure eight design is very characteristic of Denyse Schmidt's quilts and I thought it was right just with her fabrics.

Hadley Quilt

For binding, I used the same teal shot cotton that I used to frame the strips on the back.  It's a Kaffe Fassett shot cotton and super soft.  I don't know if I would want to use it for ultra precise piecing, but it makes the most lovely, almost silky, binding, and is a delight to hand stitch through.

Hadley Quilt

Finally, I thought I should include a photo of my quilt holder for these photos.  My youngest brother held this quilt up on his own (I made another quilt the exact same size recently, and my friend Lyndy and I could barely hold it up for photos working together - 84" is 7'!).  I think he is pointing at a speck of dust he wanted me to pick off the quilt.

Quilt Stats 
Pattern: my own improv-ish design
Finished Size: 70" by 84"  
Fabric: Hadley Fat Quarter bundle designed by Denyse Schmidt for Free Spirit Fabrics
Backing: I think it is Michael Miller Cotton Couture in Soft White
Binding: Kaffe Fassett Shot Cotton in Jade
Pieced by: me
Quilted by: Sue Burnett

I will be linking up at finish it up Friday at crazy mom quilts.

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Thursday, 25 December 2014

Merry Christmas!


This year I thought it would be nice to do a bit of a Christmas family photo for the blog.


It went really well...


Merry Christmas from all of us at On the Windy Side (Adrianne, Jennifer, Ralph and Ivy)!  We hope you have a lovely relaxing, laughter-filled break with friends and family.  Ralph also hopes you get to eat a lot of ham.

No cats were harmed in the taking of this photo (but some cats were annoyed and many cat treats were eaten).

Saturday, 20 December 2014

Caturday Wisdom #99

Watch what you eat. Watch it very carefully. Ivy

I'm so sad that this photo is slightly blurry, you really need daylight to capture these quick little cats. 
Ivy is the most catlike of her and Ralph in a lot of ways but her food preferences are not one of them. Ralph's favourite food is any meat (tinned tuna/steak/mince/tenderloins/sausages/bacon/ham) and he will eat dairy if it's going (yogurt/milk/cream) - what you would expect from a cat. 
Ivy's favourites, as far as we can tell, are eggs, toast crumbs and coffee. She will sometimes eat meat though she takes so long investigating it and flinging it around with her claws that Ralph often gets in first, but she will reliably sit by your plate if you are eating a boiled egg, and will run off with the shell if you're not looking, she cleans up toast crumbs and will stick her head right in my empty mug to lick up the remaining drop of my morning coffee.
Anyone else have a pet with odd food favourites? 

Saturday, 13 December 2014

Caturday Wisdom #98

Views are overrated, a room with a spew is what you really want. Ralph 

The thought process that dictates which very precise spot on the floor a cat will choose to sit on is a complete mystery to me, but I guess I never get the urge that Ralph and Ivy do to undertake a thorough investigation into the smell of someone's feet or mouth either. In this photo I am sitting on the couch so Ralph is just staring at the base of it/my legs. Obviously.

Christmas came early this week for Adrianne when Ralph did a large vomit in her sewing room for her to clean up (he's fine, he just overdid it on the cat biscuits, greedy-guts). When Ivy heard the noise she came bounding down the hallway to see/smell/eat because she is a garbage cat.

I guess what I'm saying is cats are pretty gross and weird. And I'm sorry if you were eating. And for my obnoxious shoe-sock combo.

Friday, 12 December 2014

2015 Pantone Colour of the Year: Marsala

You may have seen that Pantone release the 2015 Colour of the Year last week.  It's called Marsala and was a bit of a surprise, I think.  You can read Pantone's take on it and see their pretty pictures here.


The above is the official swatch from Pantone's website.  Below, I created a couple of samples using the CMYK and RGB values that Pantone provide.  Interestingly, the colours turned out quite different depending on whether I used the CMYK or RGB values - CMYK is on the left and RGB is on the right.  I'm sure someone who knows more about colours can explain why!


Marsala has not been getting a lot of love, from what I can tell.  I have to agree that it's not necessarily an immediately appealing colour (and I found this article, which you should not read if you are even vaguely easily offended, quite amusing).  That said, I think Marsala has a lot of potential, especially if you are willing to apply a reasonably liberal interpretation of what fabrics are Marsala coloured...

Marsala fabric pull 

After raiding my stash and my friend Anne's stash, this is the pull of fabrics I came up with for Marsala.  You can see I've used the actual colour as a starting point and pushed my choices out into the more purple shades and the more orange shades to cover quite a range of warm red/browns.

I've numbered my picks, but you'll have to forgive me because pulling from stash means I don't necessarily know what all these fabrics are!  

Starting with the purple solid at the top and working clockwise, they are 1. Unknown solid, 2. Anna Maria Horner - Innocent Crush - Turn of Events in Plum, 3. Anna Maria Horner - Good Folks - Filigree in Plum, 4. Kathy Doughty - A Wandering Mind - Flowering Vine in Rose, 5. Kathy Doughty - A Wandering Mind - Scribble Strip in Rust, 6. Kathy Doughty - A Wandering Mind - Flowering Vine in Rust, 7. Tula Pink - Fox Field - Serpentine in Sunrise, 8. Kona Cotton in Sienna, 9. Unknown Kaffe Fassett, 10. Kona Cotton in Paprika, 11. Unknown, 12. Kaffe Fassett stripe, 13. Anna Maria Horner - Pretty Potent - Family Unit in Cherry, 14. Unknown, 15. Anna Maria Horner - Honor Roll - Balancing Act in Carmel, 16. Unknown Kaffe Fassett, 17. Amy Butler - Alchemy - Queen Ann's Butterflies in Ruby, 18. Kaffe Fassett  - Persian Vase in Brown, 19. Anna Maria Horner - Field Study - Specimen in Raspberry, 20. Unknown Kaffe Fassett, 21. Anna Maria Horner - Loulouthi - Clippings in Glow, 22. Denyse Schmidt - Flea Market Fancy (reprint) - Fizzy Dot in Red, 23. Juliana Horner, 24. Unknown solid, 25. Unknown solid, 26. Unknown solid, 27. Art Gallery Fabrics - Modernology, 28. Suzuko Koseki - Postmodern in Brown, 29. Nancy Gere - Fredricksburg C. 1895, 30. Unknown scrap, 31. Lecien - Eternal Graduation, 32. Alison Glass - X and Plus in Adobe.

Marsala fabric pull 

Here are some closer shots of the different coloured sections.

Marsala fabric pull 

There are a lot of really nice fabrics in here.  I spied a few fabrics at a local quilt shop that were pretty close in colour to Marsala but a bit blah - I left them on the shelf because I decided I had enough really nice ones instead.

Marsala fabric pull 

The colour combination that sprang immediately to mind when I saw Marsala was adding in some icy silver grey and cool blue/aqua for a crisp and kind of retro feeling.

Marsala fabric pull 

I'm pretty happy with this quick pull, created by adding some of my Marsala picks to greys and pale blues pulled from stash.  I definitely think it takes Marsala to a place that's a bit more fresh and modern.

Marsala fabric pull

Anyway, however you feel about Marsala, I hope that's given you something to think about.  If you're looking for some more inspiration, Latifah Saafir of Latifah Saafir Studios did a great post about why she loves the Pantone Colour of the Year.  My 2014 Pantone Colour of the Year Quilt Challenge co-host Anne from Play Crafts has also posted about Marsala and I really love the different palettes she came up with.

Speaking of the Pantone Colour of the Year Challenge, Anne from Play Crafts and I will be co-hosting a challenge again in 2015, and we will have more details for you soon!

So, what do you think? Love it, hate it, think it could grow on you?

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Wednesday, 10 December 2014

WIP Wednesday

I got my Hadley quilt back from the long-arm quilter this weekend, so this is a nearly finished WIP (but a WIP all the same).  Since I used Denyse Schmidt fabric to make a Denyse Schmidt-esque quilt, I decided it needed to be quilted a la Denyse Schmidt as well, with that figure eight design she uses on a lot of her quilts.

Hadley quilt 

I am completely and utterly in love with the quilting.  It was done by Sue Burnett using a digital quilting pattern and it turned out even better than I expected.

Hadley quilt 

I really wanted to make this quilt double sided, and as much as I like the front, I really can't wait to reveal the "back", which I haven't shown yet.  The quilting in cream thread looks particularly nice on the cream fabric I used on the back.

Hadley quilt

Now I just need finish binding this quilt and then find the perfect place to photograph it!

I'm linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced:

WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced

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By the way, if you're looking for my giveaway, it is here and still open!

Tuesday, 9 December 2014

SewMamaSew Giveaway Day!

It's that time of year again - when we all go mad about giveaways as part of SewMamaSew's giveaway day.


If you're new to On the Windy Side - welcome!  I'm Adrianne, I'm an enthusiastic quilter and I've been blogging here for about two and a half years.  I've been working away on quilts, bags, and even some garments this year - you can check out my finished projects here.  I also love a good tutorial and have built up a bit of a collection here.  Next year is an exciting year - I'm hosting the 2015 Finish Along which is a super fun way to help you get motivated to finish up those works in progress!

These are a few of my particular favourite finishes from this year:

Echino quilt

Garden for Birds 2

Untitled

S is for Spurple

For this giveaway, I'm shopping with one of my wonderful sponsors, Sew Me a Song, and offering this Suzuko Koseki fat eighth bundle.  This is exactly the kind of prize I would like to win, so I hope you're excited about it too.  This is not a sponsored giveaway, but since it's open internationally I figured it would probably work out better for the goodies to ship from the States than from New Zealand (which is far away from pretty much everywhere!). 


To enter the giveaway, simply leave a comment - any comment.

You can get an optional extra entry for each of the following (just leave an extra comment on this post for each that applies):

 - following my blog (through google friend connect or a feed reader like Bloglovin' or Feedly); and
 - liking my Facebook page; and
 - following me on instagram (I'm there as @adrianneonthewindyside).

This giveaway is open to everyone (including international participants), but if I can't contact you, you can't win.  If you are a no-reply blogger, please leave your email address in the comment.  If you're not sure whether you're a no-reply blogger, check out my tutorial on how to stop being a no-reply blogger by clicking on the button below.

How to stop being a no-reply blogger

The giveaway will stay open until around 6 pm Monday 15 December 2014 (New Zealand Time), and I will use the random number generator at random.org to pick a winner then.

By the way, I normally do my best to reply to comments, but giveaway day is a little crazy! Know that I will be reading and appreciating all your comments though.

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