Garden for Birds 2

Oh my goodness, I finished a quilt!  It feels like a very long time since I had a finished quilt to share with you, and I've been missing the feeling that comes with finishing something.

Anyway, a bit of history.  This quilt originally started out as a quick design sketch (yep, I am really great at drawing...).

And then I made the first version, for a friend's baby, in kind of similar colours to the original design (although a number of things changed).

This latest version uses a completely different colour palette (inspired by this quilt which my friend Anne has been working on) and the design has changed yet again.  I've been working slowly on this quilt for a while (you can see my WIP post from early June here) but this weekend I really needed to get it finished.

 

I'm teaching this quilt over a series of classes at Nancy's Embroidery, so I simplified some of the elements to make it more suitable for beginners.  I also added a greater variety of blocks to cover a variety of different skills.

 

I really had fun with this version - for example, those gingko leaves are reverse appliqué.  I cut the light part out of the fabric, put the green fabric behind, and machine blanket stitched it in place.  The two tone binding was a last minute choice - I really wanted quite a plain binding to calm the quilt down slightly, but I still wanted enough contrast so you could actually see the binding.  The light/dark split was the obvious solution (the light grey looks solid, but is actually the grey crosshatch from Architextures).

One thing that I was not very happy with in the last version of this quilt was the quilting.  Ultimately I didn't feel like it improved the quilt, and kind of only added to the chaos.  For this version, I really wanted to avoid that and went with a simple crosshatch pattern for the quilting.  I love how a crosshatch adds instant softness to a quilt, and in this case it totally does not distract from the piecing and appliqué.

I found a couple of garden themed fabrics in my stash that were just perfect for the backing.  I especially love that green fabric - I wish I'd bought more (and may have to hunt more out!).

So this quilt will be hanging out at Nancy's for the next couple of weeks, before I take it off to be entered in the Capital Quilters' exhibition.  Wellingtonians, if you'd like to make your own version, I believe there are still places in the class and you can get all the details on the Nancy's website.  I think it will be a fairly challenging class for a beginner, but if you come ready and keen to learn, you will learn a lot.

Quilt Stats
Pattern: my Garden for Birds pattern
Finished Size: approx 36" by 42"

Fabric: many

Backing: Petunia in Pink from Little Azalea by Dena Fishbein, Field Day in Green by Josephine Kimberling for Blend Fabrics

Binding: Kona cotton in Steel, Architextures grey crosshatch

Pieced and quilted by: me

I'll be linking up with finish it up friday at crazy mom quilts.

Sour Candy Cushion

I made this cushion for round 8 of the X-Factor Pillow Swap. The premise of this swap is that each round, you make a cushion based around a theme, and send a photo to the group admin, who posts it to the group (so you don't know who made which cushion). After the deadline for entries has passed, everyone ranks the entries in order of preference, and the person whose cushion got the most votes gets their first choice, the person whose cushion got the second most votes gets their first choice (if it's still available), and so on.

The theme for this round was log cabins and text. After the last round, which was low volume, I wanted to do something really different, despite the temptation to use a low volume text fabric.

For my cushion, I used the black text print from Carolyn Friedlander's Architextures lines with a handful of prints from Alison Glass's Lucky Penny collection. I really like how the colours of the Lucky Penny fabrics are slightly clashy and how they really pop against the black text print. The design is super simple - instead of making a log cabin in the traditional way, I simply made four quarter log cabins, by starting with a central square and then only adding "logs" to two of the sides. Since these blocks weren't too big, I simply pieced them, but if you wanted greater accuracy, foundation paper piecing would work brilliantly (but more slowly).

For the quilting, I did simple straight line cross hatch grid - it gives lovely texture to the cushion without distracting from the piecing. I used Aurifil 50 weight thread in colour #1246 - a very dark charcol grey, and as usual, I was delighted with how it just blended into the top. I don't know if anyone else has had this experience, but sometimes I find very dark black or grey threads to have a different texture to lighter threads, and sometimes they seem to tangle more easily. Not so in this case, which made hand stitching the binding down with the same Aurifil thread a dream.

The back of the cushion is made using a drill fabric from Spotlight, designed by Austrlian designers Prints Charming. It's such a fun print - I wish I made more of it! Of course, I used my covered zipper cushion back

method - it really is speedy and nice and neat. I posted my cushion off to my partner this afternoon - I hope she likes it!

If you go down to the woods today (a baby quilt)

A colleague of mine is expecting his first child soon.  He and his wife haven't found out the baby's gender, so something suitable for a boy or a girl was called for.

 

The top of this baby quilt is possibly the quickest quilt top I've ever made (mainly because it is made up of only eight pieces of fabric!).  I really wanted to use the awesome Kokka cheater print featuring bears and bunnies and other woodland creatures - preferably without cutting it up too much.  Apart from just liking it as a big piece, it is also a slightly heavier linen/cotton blend, and I didn't want too many seams which might end up being bulky.  

 

Really, how cute is this fabric?  I haven't seen it around too much, but Stitchbird has it in another colour way.

 

Since the top was so simple, I decided to do something a little bit special for the quilting - woodgrain!  I learned this technique in Angela Walters' Craftsy class, and have been wanting to try it ever since.  It's not the easiest design to do on a domestic machine though, because you need to move the quilt around a lot, rather than working on a small area at a time.

 

That said, I am really pleased with how the woodgrain quilting came out, and it was easier than I thought it would be.

 

I had a little bit of the feature fabric left over, so I used it to make a label.  Sometimes simple is best.

By the way, these photos are taken after the quilt was washed and dried (on the line, not in a dryer).  I didn't pre-wash any of the fabrics (including the linen blends used on both the front and the back) and the quilt crinkled up just the right amount (phew!).  I did give it a light press to get out the crease from hanging, but that didn't take the crinkle out (and nor would I want it to!).

I took these photos around 6pm - you can see that it is well and truly still light, but the sun was starting to go down, and in trying to get a nice tree-filled background for my shot I ended up capturing the sunlight instead.

I'm thinking this kind quilt might be my new go-to baby gift for when I don't have a lot of time.  You only need a half yard of your feature fabric and then a few co-ordinating fabrics, and it's so speedy to put together.  I did mine all from stash, and even if you don't have an insaneextensive stash like me, I bet you could too!  It's so simple that it almost doesn't need instructions, but would anyone be interested in a tutorial on how I put mine together?
 

Quilt Stats
Finished Size: approx 36" by 45"

Fabric: various

Backing: Essex Yarn Dyed Linen in Flax

Binding: Skinny Plaid in Blue from Laura Gunn's Cosmos collection

Pieced and quilted by: me

Linking up with finish it up friday at crazy mom quilts and Sew Cute Tuesday at Blossom Heart Quilts.