Elephant and Spots: a finished quilt

I've taken a bit of a detour from my recent scrappy quilts to make this elephants and spots quilt for a friend's baby boy, but as I used fabrics which I've had in my stash for about a year I feel good about not making new purchases.

I started off making ten log cabin blocks but then I felt that it was just too similar to a recent quilt so  I then added the Battenberg blocks.  This means that I will be putting those four remaining log cabin blocks into another quilt soon, and there are still a lot of the elephant fabrics left to add to them as well.

For the quilting I kept it simple - tramlines.  They're just so speedy, but look good.  The binding is a red and white houndstooth, which I think goes really well with some of the elephant red and white check ears.  It goes nicely with the red dots on the backing.  I acquired this houndstooth fabric only this week.  A friend of a friend was getting rid of some fabrics (much of it scraps) and I took a lot of it off her hands (I'm good like that!)

Now I cannot wait to give it to my friend.  I meet her little boy on Sunday and I am really excited.  I hope she likes the gift.

Thanks for visiting.

A busy blogger

I have a lot to share on this post.  First of all I am proud to show you a tutorial I wrote featured on The Daily Stitch blog.  I made the table runner, table mats and coasters last month and really enjoyed the challenge and experience.  Annie from The Village Haberdashery took lovely photos and I'm really pleased with how my project looks.  I got a real buzz from seeing my handiwork on a different website from this one.  I'm making a baby quilt and tutorial for her blog again soon and I'm excited about that as well.





As I try to save money for the long arm quilter, this week I have worked on a project made entirely from scraps.  The only thing I had to buy this week was the wadding because the front is pieced from scraps and the backing I had in stash.  I know that it is ridiculous but when I work with scraps I feel that I am getting something for free.  All the fabrics on the front have been used in other projects, some of them in projects on here, so it feels great to have a by-product quilt.

A friend lent me a book this week, Sunday Morning Quilts, which has been a revelation.  There is a great section on making a slab of fabric and this is the technique I've used here in this baby boy play mat.  I'm really pleased that I joined colours together and also used scraps to make the binding as well.  The binding I did on the machine and is my best so far - I feel I am getting better at this.  It wasn't planned, but this would also work well as an "i spy" quilt and there are lots of possibilities for playing pairs.  This quilt is now on sale on Etsy here.

"Scrapisfaction" is how I am feeling about this.  I've decided to set myself a challenge each month of making a "scrapisfaction" project.  I think that using scraps makes you think harder about what you are doing but also makes you more creative as a result.  I, like every quilter on the planet, have a few scraps and I would rather make them useful than leave them languishing in bags and boxes, waiting to see the light of day.  What scrapisfaction project do you recommend I try next?

Thanks for popping by!

Give us a Clue: a finished quilt

I'm sorry in advance for the vagueness of this post.  I started this quilt after the Festival of Quilts and finally finished it this week.  I have mentioned it a couple of times but deliberately didn't post any photos because I had wanted to put together a tutorial for an online shop.  I made a pitch and earlier this week the shop owner gave me the green light to make the quilt and write a tutorial.  I am extremely excited, but I can't reveal the quilt here until it has been on her website.  I am going to show snapshots of the quilt, but I won't show it in its entirety, so please think of this quilt as a game of "Give us a Clue".

This quilt is going to a couple from work who are about to have a baby girl.  They have a couple of pet cats, so cat fabric had to make it into the quilt.  I really love this pink cat fabric, and am so pleased that I bought plenty of it in this and the other colour ways as well.  Far Far Away fabrics by Heather Ross also feature prominently.

The binding is my first effort at machine binding.  It's not perfect, but it is reasonable enough and was considerably quicker to complete.  I've seen a few blog posts and tutorials on this now, and everyone says that you get better with practice, so I will do just that.

I am so pleased with the backing fabric, which I will be buying more of because it is brilliant for baby quilts and bringing lots of colours together.  I also did a good job of keeping the edges straight.  To divert your attention from looking too closely at the quilt backing, you can see that my cat Brutus made a cameo appearance.  (Thanks Brutus!)
  

I hope you like my "Give us a Clue" quilt, despite not seeing it whole.  Trust me, it is nice.  In a while, when my second version is made and the tutorial written, no doubt I will be shouting from the rafters and showing plenty of more complete photos.

Thank you for stopping by.