The birdcage

I finally finished the quilt that I gave a sneak peek of earlier.  This quilt is made of scraps and nine-patch blocks left over from the quilt I made as a wedding present.

I didn't have enough nine-patch blocks to make anything decent sized, so I decided to slice them up into quarter square triangles and mix them up with the light fabric.  Also, I had never pieced triangles before and scraps seemed like a good place to start.

Really, this quilt is just the result of me playing around with fabric.  Once I had finished the central part, I decided to add the plain narrow border, and then the border of the bird fabric (part of the Nest line by Valori Wells) which was a feature fabric in the original quilt.  I really wanted to use this fabric in large pieces so that the design was shown to its full potential.

Once the top was finished, it sat in my cupboard for over a year before I was ready to quilt it.  This is the first quilt I basted, and the first quilt I started quilting.  I stitched in the ditch around the blocks in the centre of the quilt, and on the diagonal.  Then I had to work out what to do with the border.  I needed to do something straight-line, and decided to quilt straight lines from the inner border to the edge of the quilt, spaced about 1 cm apart.  It took ages, and is the reason why I got a whole other quilt basted and quilted before I finished quilting this one.  The border quilting alone took me about eight hours in front of the machine (not all in one go, obviously).  However, I am really happy with the way it turned out.  Close up, all the quilting lines in the borders make it look a bit like the birds are behind bars - hence the title to this post.

The back looks cool too.  The striped fabric is from Spotlight.  I am quite a fan of stripes for the back of a quilt - is anyone else with me on this?

This quilt is an awkward size, about 50 inches square.  A bit big for a baby quilt, and too small to sleep under.  Nevermind, I will keep it, since it is my first quilting attempt.  Do other people like to keep their "firsts"?  Since this was a keeper quilt, I hand stitched the binding.

Granny squares are go

I put the top for my granny squares quilt together last weekend, and put the backing together and basted it at the same time.  I really wanted to do a quilting pattern that would bring the sashing and borders together so that they appear to be a single solid piece of fabric, while making the granny squares really stand out.  Time for some free-motion quilting.

I had done a bit of free-motion quilting practice on scrap sandwiches before, with limited success.  This was my first "proper" FMQ project and I was quite nervous to start.  The quilting is definitely not perfect, but once I got my sewing machine set up on the dining room table and my quilting (aka light weight gardening) gloves on, it went quite well.  The fact that I used white thread on white fabric helps hide the wonky bits.

I used a large meander type pattern to fill in the negative space but didn't do any quilting on the coloured parts of the quilt (that is why there are still basting pins there).  I will stitch these in the ditch to give the quilt a bit more structural integrity.  I never realised how quick FMQ would be - it only took me a couple of hours to do the whole quilt.  I expect that the straight-line quilting will take me at least as long.

This is the backing fabric - I wanted to use something bright and cheerful that generally went with the fabrics on the front, but that wouldn't show through in the white negative space (for example, I have found that when backing a light coloured quilt with bright red backing fabric, the colour can make it look a bit pink on the front).  This is a large rose print fabric from Lecien's Flower Sugar range.

It has the Ivy seal of approval.

Blue and cream checkerboard

Finally, an update to the man quilt post I put up a while ago.  This is the finished quilt in its entirety.

When I first started quilting, my Mum recommended that I read a few chapters of The Art of Classic Quiltmaking by Harriet Hargrave and Sharyn Craig.  When my boyfriend T said he wanted to make a quilt, I made him read the same few chapters.  His quilt is based on a pattern in the book, which I scaled up so that he could make a full sized quilt without too many tiny pieces.

All fabrics were sourced from local quilting shops.  The dark fabrics are japanese indigo quilting cottons.  The medium blues are random quilting cottons, and the cream is actually quite an interesting slightly textured fabric with light brown and blue stitches in it.

The backing fabric is rather lovely, and reflects T's love of chillies.  The quilt is bound in the same fabric.  The quilting was again done by Sue Burnett on her long-arm machine, in T's design.

My contribution (other than the teaching) is a matching pillow in the same fabrics and pattern, scaled down.

This was a good way to use up some of the scraps and "reject" blocks that didn't make it into the final quilt.

The quilt and pillow together.  Teaching someone totally new to quilting was quite an interesting experience.  T did very well on the cutting and sewing side of things, and put the quilt together well and very quickly.  The part he found most difficult was choosing the fabrics - I think it was a bit of an exercise in frustration for him.  He obviously enjoyed the experience overall though, because this is not the last quilt he has made.

Nearly finished and some favourite fabrics

I am hand-stitching the binding to the back of this quilt, and it is very nearly finished.  You can catch a glimpse of the binding clip in this photo below.

This quilt is made from scraps and left-over blocks from a quilt that I made as a wedding present.  The fabric above (from Valori Wells' Nest line) was the inspiration for all the other fabrics and colours in the original quilt.

The wedding quilt was only the second quilt I made, but I ended up with some fabrics that I think will be long-term favourites - like the blue fabric from Anna Maria Horner's Good Folks line above.  If I could easily get more of this, I would.  As it is, I do still have some scraps left but mostly binding strips (2.25 inches wide) and squares for the nine patches used in the original quilt.

I also love this herringbone print from Joel Dewberry's Modern Meadow line.  I have it in a couple of other colours for other projects but I am tempted just to buy some in each colour just in case.  Will post pictures of the entire quilt when it is finished.

Fandango quilt

A follow up to the sneak peek a couple of weeks ago.  I bought a number of fat quarters of Kate Spain's Fandango line for Moda off TradeMe last year, and started putting them together into a quilt early this year.  The white sashing is a white on white print from Spotlight - I was not quite ready to go the whole hog and use a true solid.  You can tell by the granny squares that I have moved on...

Because there are quite a few different colours in the various print fabrics, I wanted to keep both the block design and sashing nice and simple.  Chunky squares surrounded by a (mostly) contrasting border keeps things pretty simple.

Initially, I wanted to quilt this myself, even though it is quite large, at approximately 82 inches square.  I even got as far as basting the whole thing.  However, I really wanted denser quilting in the white areas and minimal quilting in the blocks.  I have done a tiny bit of free-motion quilting, but really need more practise and this was not the quilt for that.

In the end, I had the quilt long-arm quilted by Sue Burnett with a light feather design in the sashing and a heavier feather design in the border.  The inner square of the block is stitched in the ditch to keep everything stable.  I have used Sue's long-arm quilting services before - she lives very locally to me and is fantastic.  I will definitely go back if I have other projects that I think would benefit from long-arm quilting.

The quilt is backed with a striped fabric I picked up at Spotlight.  I think it works really well with the colours in the Fandango line.  It is bound with all those fat quarter strips I cut up.  Because this quilt is so large, and I have other projects on the go, I decided to finish the binding by machine rather than by hand, using this tutorial from Red Pepper Quilts.

Overall, I am really happy with how this quilt turned out.  I am particularly happy that I decided to go with the feather pattern for the quilting - I think it really brings the quilt together.

Linking up with the Kate Spain Blog Hop at Blossom Heart Quilts:

 

A sneak peek

I have a finished quilt but no photos yet.  I had it long-arm quilted and got it back this weekend. So I was forced into a task I was not much looking forward to.

I used Fandango by Kate Spain for Moda to make this quilt.  However, I didn't have any yardage - only fat quarters.  Therefore, since I wanted the binding to match, I had to make the binding out of fat quarters as well.  SO. MANY. BIAS. SEAMS. By some miracle, none of them ended up on a corner when I bound the quilt.

You can see another shot of the binding pieces all stacked up behind Ralph,

Ralph and his sister Ivy love "helping" me quilt.  They usually like to test fabric by rolling all over it, to make sure it is nice and soft.

Binding is sooo tempting for little cats.

All the Grannies

I was sick last week and had several days off work.  I cranked up the heater and camped out in the lounge with the Olympic Games and my sewing machine.

I had a quilt to bind, but was feeling too low on energy to try and wrangle binding onto it.  So, instead, I worked on my granny squares.

There are a lot of small pieces in each granny square, and a lot of seams.  Because I was working with charm packs, and wanted to keep these scrappy, I didn't really have the option of strip piecing these (although, if I made them again, I would be tempted to follow this method).  In other circumstances, the time consuming nature of this project might have driven me a bit batty.

I have cut quite a few of the sashing strips I will need to put this quilt together.  I have made them quite wide so the coloured granny squares will look like they're floating.  Now to trim all 25...

Grannying along

Made a few more granny squares. Would have liked to do more but I have been busy at work lately. Never mind, grannies aren't usually known for their speed.

Blue baby rainbow

I wanted to make a fresh, modern, baby quilt for a colleague who is pregnant with her first baby.  I did not want to include novelty fabrics with trucks, cars, or sports references.   Rita's Indian Summer Quilt provided the inspiration.

This quilt uses fabric from a number of ranges.  I love the raindrop fabric on the back and used for the binding which is from Tula Pink's Prince Charming collection.

Also included are a number of other fabrics from Tula Pink's Prince Charming range, some blenders from Riley Blake, a Michael Miller check, one of the Floral Elements fabrics from Art Gallery Fabrics, a couple of prints from Valori Wells' Nest collection which I had left over from another quilt, and an indigo japanese quilting cotton.

I cut the fabrics into 8.5 inch long strips ranging in width from 2 inches to 3.5 inches.

  

Simple straight line quilting randomly spaced in a turquoise thread that blends with some fabrics and stands out against others completes the look.

Modern meets traditional

This is the first quilt I pieced, basted, quilted and bound myself.

I had two charm packs of Oasis by 3 Sisters for Moda and combined them to make this quilt and a scrappy chevron quilt top using half-square triangles.

I do like the fabric, even though it is not terribly modern.  Although the top is simple patchwork, it is quite busy, so I wanted to keep the backing and binding simple.

To up the modern factor, I decided to use solids - the quilt is backed in a white cotton fabric that I bought on special at Spotlight and it is bound with FreeSpirit Designer Solid in Sand Dune which I bought online from Hawthorne Threads.

I stitched in the ditch and then diagonally in every second diagonal row.  I like the pattern it makes on the back.

This quilt does not have an intended home, so it will either be sold or wait until the right recipient comes along.

Granny squares

Made some granny squares following this tutorial from Blue Elephant Stitches.

I am using a couple of charm packs of Moda's Rose Parade and trying to keep it a bit scrappy by using different prints in the same colour for each ring.

Not thrilled with how the bottom one turned out, but maybe it will add to the scrappiness of the final quilt.  Two down, 23 to go.