#igminiswap

I haven't been swapping much this year, but when I saw heaps of my online quilting buddies signing up to the #igminiswap being run on instagram, I couldn't resist.  It's being run by Sandy aka @curly_boy1, and the mailing deadline for international participants (i.e., me) is coming up soon.

This is the mini quilt I've made for my partner.  I wanted to use some of the very special handprinted fabrics I got from Karen Lewis Textiles (formerly Blueberry Park).

This log cabin variation, which uses wide logs and narrow logs (which are half the width of the wide logs), is something I've been wanting to play with as well.  I know my partner likes a low volume background, so it seemed like the perfect way to let the hand printed fabrics shine.

Hopefully this doesn't give the game away, but my swap partner has some mad machine quilting skills, so I decided to take the complete opposite approach and hand quilt this mini.  I've been enjoying hand quilting a larger quilt but it's taking FOREVER, so it was nice to have a quicker hand quilting project!  I used Aurifil 12 weight thread in white (2024) and I love the effect.  I actually bought a box of assorted 12 weight threads (this one) because I see more hand quilting in my future.

I bought a cute "made with love" stamp from Typo a couple of months ago, and I've been waiting for the chance to use it.  I used permanent fabric ink with the stamp and then added my own name and my partner's name (edited out in these photos) with a fabric marker.  The hand-worked blanket stitch is kind of my label signature now.

I had a few scraps left over from cutting the logs for my mini quilt, so I decided to use them to make a cute little pouch to go with the mini.

I'm not sending the threads but they just looked so pretty with the colours of the pouch!

 

My partner can use this pouch for whatever she likes.  But, it does fit lots of threads!

 

As usual, I used the open wide pouch tutorial, but made a fairly random size (basically the size my scrappy panels came out) and didn't box the corners.  I quilted the pieced exterior to a scrap of batting to give the pouch a bit of body without having to use interfacing (I hate interfacing so much!).

I'm really happy with how this mini turned out, and I enjoyed making it.  I really hope my partner likes it!

Have you been making things to swap lately?

Quilt Stats 

Pattern: I think this is a traditional block, but I did the quilt math myself

Finished Size: 18" by 18"  

Fabric: various low volume fabrics, Pretty Potent Co-ordinating Solids Fat Quarter bundle, printed by Karen Lewis Textiles

Backing: Ephemera

Binding: Print from Lotta Jansdotter's Sylvia line

Pieced and quilted by: me

A Letter from Lotta Quilt - Finished!

I'm embarrassed to say that I've had this quilt top made from Lotta Jansdotter's gorgeous Glimma fabric (available here and here) sitting around, unfinished, since January.  January, people.  That's months and months ago and in the end it took me about 2 and a half hours to quilt it up.

I did have fun with the quilting.  I wanted to make sure the quilting emphasised the envelope design, and I used tiny pebbles to outline the "address window". 

Lots of different sized pebbles quilted in the envelope part make it feel like one of those padded envelopes.  I love imagining that there's a special treat inside.

To go with the envelope theme, I quilted mini envelopes in the border (totally inspired by this quilt).

All the quilting is done with Aurifil 50 weight thread (colour 2600).  Quilting this quilt was my first time using Aurifil (although I've since used Aurifil for my Blackberry Winter Blossom Quilt) and I had been saving it to use for quilting.  I will probably do a more complete review of Aurifil once I've spent a bit more time with it, but on an initial encounter, I'm quite smitten.  First, this colour is fantastic - it seems to go perfectly with all the fabrics in the quilt top and the backing.  Secondly, I can see why people say Aurifil is really good value for money.  This quilt made a much smaller dent in the spool than I was expecting (and we all know that pebble quilting uses HEAPS of thread), plus the bobbins seemed to last for a lot longer than usual.  Happy.

I think Nat's post about zigzags and chevrons influenced my choice of backing fabric, and I'm so glad it did, because I think this print from Cloud 9 Fabrics Simpatico collection is just right.

Quilt Stats
Pattern: my envelope quilt pattern

Finished Size: Approximately 30" by 40"

Fabric: Lotta Jansdotter's Glimma collection, Robert Kaufman Essex Yarn Dyed Linen in Black 

Backing: Chevron in Minty from Cloud 9 Fabrics Simpatico collection

Binding: Pearl Bracelet in HiHo Silver

Pieced and quilted by: me

Linking up with finish it up friday at crazy mom quilts.

This quilt is the sixth and final of my third quarter goals that I've finished.  Six out of eight ain't bad!  Link up now with Leanne at she can quilt as part of the 2013 Finish Along - the link up is open until 7 October, so you have a little time.

Tidbits from my weekend

I had a very nice weekend, which included a haircut, a quilt guild meeting, and lots of time sewing with my friends.

I had hoped to have this quilt finished to show you today but I'm still finishing the last of the binding.  It will be my last finish for the 2013 Finish Along.  Are you ready to link up your projects?

I also went shopping for fabric to make my Ruby Dress. I wasn't actually terribly successful on the dress fabric shopping, but this lovely knit caught my eye and I had to get a metre of it.  I think I'll just sew it up into a simple cowl, and it will make a lovely soft spring scarf.

A Letter from Lotta Quilt

In December, I was lucky enough to win a charm pack of Lotta Jansdotter's latest line, Glimma, from the lovely Becca from Bryan House Quilts.  Becca was really kind and sent it express, so it arrived just before Christmas.

Before I show you what I've done with this beautiful fabric, I wanted to share a bit of the design process, how it doesn't always go to plan, and how sometimes ideas come to me in the strangest ways!

Ever since I saw this envelope quilt and this envelope quilt from If She Sleeps...,  and this version by Hyacinth Quilt Designs, I've really wanted to make an envelope quilt.  I thought the little samples of Glimma might be just the thing, and I even mocked up a draft layout in TouchDraw.

Then I realised that I didn't want to set the prints on point, and that would mean cutting down the charms significantly.  Since I can't bear to waste fabric, and I really wanted to showcase these charms to their best advantage, I was stumped.

And then, the other day, I was blow-drying my hair (I told you ideas come to me at strange times) and watching out my bedroom window, and I saw a courier delivering a large envelope (not fabric, sadly). A lightbulb went off in my head - there are lots of different types of envelope.  What about a quilt showing the front of a large envelop, rather than the back of lots of small envelopes?

This simple little quilt took about an hour to whip up - I already had the text print (Memoir in White, from the Madrona Road collection by Violet Craft for Michael Miller) and the Yarn-Dyed Essex Linen in black in my stash.

I am not totally satisfied - I was too swept up with enthusiasm to pay a lot of attention to colour placement, and I think the "address" part would stand out more if I had surrounded it with some of the darker prints.  Never mind - I have an idea of how to improve this part with a quilting design.

I have to say, I thought I would love this collection, and I do.  I will definitely be buying yardage when it becomes available.  Quite a few other bloggers have been playing with Glimma too - check out these fabulous quilts from Fresh Lemons Quilts, Film in the Fridge, i'm a ginger monkey, During Quiet Time and Rossie.

So, I want to know, do you get quilt ideas at random times too?

Linking up with Plum and June (this week hosted by Heidi at Fabric Mutt),  Quilt Story's Fabric Tuesday, and Sew Cute Tuesday at Better Off Thread:

Glisten and glimmer

Check out what arrived in my mailbox a couple of days ago!

I was very excited to learn that I won a charm pack of Lotta Jansdotter's new collection, Glimma, from the lovely Becca from Bryan House Quilts, in her Sew, Mama, Sew! giveaway.

I am a big fan of Lotta Jansdotter's designs - I managed to snag quite a bit of Echo even though it was out of print by the time I discovered it.  Bella didn't do it for me as much as Echo, although I do love some of the prints.  But Glimma!  Well, there isn't a print in the collection that I don't love, and I really like the slightly sweeter, lighter colours.

Obviously, this is not the whole range of fabrics from the charm pack - I just tried to pick a representative selection to photograph.

I know it was hard for Becca to part with this charm pack (I would never have let it out of my hands), so thank you so much Becca!  I am very excited to work with this fabric, and I have a design in mind already.

Have you been lucky enough to win anything in the recent rounds of giveaways?  I actually won something else in another Sew, Mama, Sew! giveaway, and am eagerly awaiting its arrival all the way from Ireland.

In other news, in case you want to take a breather from the Christmas festivities, I have put together a few posts to take you through the Christmas to New Year period.  Tomorrow, I will be sharing a few links to things that I found interesting, useful or inspiring.  Then, starting on Boxing Day, I will be posting a new handmade Christmas gift every other day until New Year's Day.

Finally, if you are keen to be part of the Simply Solids bee (blogged about here), don't forget to sign up before 31 December.  Also, Erin at Sew at Home Mummy is running a Simply Solids FQ Swap - you don't have to be part of the bee to participate, sign ups run until 31 December, and you can find all the details here.

Phew - there are a lot of words in this post!  I have finished work for the year, so am now in relaxed mode.  Hope you are relaxing and gearing up for celebrations too!

Scrappy swap - a sneak peek

So, this is the handmade item I made for my partner in the Scrappy Swap.  It is a (gigantic) needle case with a little pocket for embroidery scissors.

It's not perfect - I interfaced the exterior (which I'm not showing until my partner has received it) but not the interior fabric, and I wish I had, to give it a bit more structure.  Never mind, it will fulfil its function of holding needles and scissors (and I easily fitted the fat quarter of scraps I am sending inside it as well).  I will send this off tomorrow.

I decided that this weekend would be less talk, more (sewing) action.  I ended up doing quite a lot of quilting (both straight line and free motion), with the result that a couple of ongoing projects are much closer to completion than they were last week.  Will update when I have photos.

What did you get up to this weekend?  Lots of time at the sewing machine?  Or was the weather too good where you are to be stuck inside?

Blogtoberfest - the last day

Phew!  We have reached the end of October, and I am very happy that I managed to meet my goal of posting every day for the month of October.  In fact, this post will be #36 for October - more than double the number of posts I had done previously!

I'm glad I decided to participate in this exercise - I found having a set goal (and an end in sight) really helpful.  I don't plan to continue posting every day.  I have, however, decided to set myself a few goals for the blog for the next few months:

• I would like to blog three times a week - I am thinking Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays.  If I have more to say, I will certainly blog more often, but otherwise, I think three days a week is manageable.

• I want to write a couple of tutorials.  One, a skills tutorial, for something I have done a lot of times and think maybe I have some tips that would be useful to others.  I know that seeing other bloggers' methods for doing things has helped me get started on projects I was otherwise intimidated by.  The other, a tutorial on how to make something I have designed myself, that doesn't require any special tools (other than the usual rotary cutter, mat, and straight ruler), and that uses fabric efficiently.  Yeah, gotta design that thing first...

• I have enjoyed getting to know more people out there in the quilt blogging world.  Thanks so much to everyone who has left me a comment - some of you feel like friends already (I think you know who you are).  I want to keep up with that, so will be looking to participate in more swaps, quilt-alongs, etc.  I am currently participating in the Scrappy Swap and am enjoying how active and positive the group is.

This is my selection of fabric for the handmade item for the Scrappy Swap.  I have started sewing, but I can't show what I have made yet, as it would totally give my partner away at this point.

Does anyone else set goals for their blog?  If you are happy to share, I would love to hear them.

Equilateral triangle quilt - coming together

I had a big push on this quilt over the long weekend, and got all the rows of triangles sewn together.  I have sewn 10 of the 14 rows together in two lots of five.  I will sew the other four rows, and the final three sections, together over the course of this week.

These photos are of one section of five rows, without pressing the seams between rows.

My incredibly sophisticated row marking system

It's a bit hard to tell before pressing, but I think the points on this have come out quite well given the number of bias edges.  I will do a little post about the ruler I used to cut the triangles, because I think it really helped with accuracy.

This quilt top should be finished by the weekend.  My plan is to get my brother to help choose the backing fabric (and to help me get some photos of the finished top).

Equilateral quilt - the design process

I have blogged before about the equilateral quilt I am making for my youngest brother here, and I wanted to share a bit of the design process that got me to the final mix of fabrics and layout.

First, my brother asked me if I would make him a quilt.  I'm not sure if he was totally serious, but I will leap at any excuse to make a quilt so I said yes.

Then, I had already bought an equilateral triangle ruler after seeing this post from Megan at Jaffa Quilts (another Kiwi quilt blogger, yay!), and thinking that an equilateral triangle quilt might not be as tricky as I had first thought.  So, I was looking for a reason to make an equilateral triangle quilt, and decided that this was a good opportunity.

Then, we talked about colours.  The colours in my brother's bedroom are grey, white, and touches of red, so we thought that those would be a good place to start.  Since he is 18, and won't be living at home in that room forever, I thought those colours would also work well in other settings and shouldn't date too much over time or become inappropriate as he gets older.

Next, I sat down at the computer with my brother, and showed him some pictures to gauge his enthusiasm for (1) an equilateral triangle quilt and (2) a quilt made with all solids.

The following three quilts are from Carson Converse's etsy shop, Carson Too.  Sadly, he doesn't seem to have any quilts for sale at the moment, but these were a good start to show what I meant by an all solid equilateral triangle quilt.

I couldn't hand on heart swear that we looked at this quilt, but I found it when I was searching google images for pictures for this post, and I think it is a stunning example of an equilateral triangle quilt made with a mix of solids and prints.  Not really the look I was going for for this quilt though.

Finally, I thought I would show my brother the famous triangle quilt made by Audrie at Blue is Bleu.  I know the triangles are not equilateral, but seriously, this quilt is stunning.  I wish I had the talent to put unexpected colours together like that.  My brother's comment - "I don't hate that".  Translation - that is pretty damn cool.

So anyway, I went home thinking that I would make a quilt using all solids, with crisp whites and greys, with a splash of red.  Audrie's quilt, with its mix of colours, was in the back of my mind though. 

After thinking about it for a couple of weeks, I eventually went to my stash and started pulling out all my white and grey solids.  When I put them together, it was looking a bit dull.  So I put back some of the darker greys, and pulled out a range of creams, taupes, tans, and light greys, and then found all the brown prints in my stash, and then a started grabbing a couple each of aquas, reds, and mustardy yellows.  Much better.  This is what I ended up with - 24 fabrics, in a mix of prints and solids.

The fact that I was able to pull so many fabrics from stash might give you an insight into the state of my stash (gulp!).  I did much prefer being able to make my selection at home rather than at a quilt shop or online (don't get the impression that I don't love shopping for fabric though).

I thought about consulting my brother about my fabric selection, but I decided not to.  I knew that if he didn't like it, I would be very happy keeping the quilt myself.  He seems to be happy with it though, and I put him to work laying out all of the cut triangles into a pleasing layout.  Although there is an eight year age gap between us, out of all our siblings (I have one sister and two brothers) we are probably the most similar in personality, and that came through when we were doing the layout - he was as keen to ensure even distribution of colours and value as I was.

I am still rather daunted at the thought of putting this quilt together, but can't wait to see it finished.

Has anyone else done a project like this, where someone else was involved in design decisions?  I am enjoying working a bit collaboratively, but it would be fair to say that I am seeking input and keeping control over ultimate design decisions.

Equilateral triangle quilt

I spent the weekend cutting triangles for this quilt for my youngest brother.  I laid out the triangles I had cut at my parents' place after our weekly family dinner to work out whether I had cut enough and hopefully make up a pile for each row so I could start putting the quilt together.

I worked out that I didn't have enough triangles (I cut approximately 270 and decided I will actually need about 360) and that more solids would be good.  So I didn't get to make piles to start stitching the rows, but it was progress nevertheless.

Apologies for the blurry photo - it is taken with an iphone under artificial light.  I am very happy with how the colours in this quilt are working, and looking forward to getting it underway.

Fabric aficionados will recognise many of the prints - a non-exhaustive list includes a couple from Lotta Jansdotter's "Echo" line, a couple of Joel Dewberry prints, from Modern Meadow and Aviary 2, some Martha Negley Feathers, a couple of the cross-hatch sketch prints from Timeless Treasures (in cream and red/orange), a couple of prints from Anna Maria Horner's latest collection, Field Study, a grey print from the Monsterz collection from Cloud 9, and a blue from the DS Quilts range I picked up a Spotlight.