Scrappy Dresden Plate: A quilt in progress

Last month I started sewing some scrappy Dresden plates with the intention of making a quilt.  I really enjoyed making the plates and had good fun using the ruler I purchased.  I knew I wanted to turn them into a quilt but when I realised I would have to do some handsewing to make the middle of the plates my progress came to an abrupt halt.  I just don't like handsewing and instead began work on my rainbow quilt.

This week I've decided to resurrect this project and complete the very small amount of handsewing involved.  The handsewing was completed on an evening and the progress of this quilt has progressed as a result.  Yay!

I pinned the Dresden plates to a plain white fabric and then basted the whole of the quilt as usual.  To secure the plates I have quilted them with the walking foot to create a slightly thicker quilt sandwich.  I know others may have handsewn them to the white fabric but with my aversion to handsewing that was never going to happen!

I have just sewn lines where the fabric seams meet and I am sure they will keep the plates in place.  I have double sewn the points of the plates, which creates both a nice look but is also good at keeping everything secure.

As ever, I am quilting with my Aurifil threads.  White on the front and the most beautiful turquoise on the back, which matches the backing fabric perfectly.  The quilting I have done is creating a lovely flower-like pattern on the back of the quilt.

This project is now progressing at a pace, though I am now wondering whether I should add some smaller scrappy Dresden plates to the corners where there is currently a lot of white fabric.  Hopefully this will be finished this weekend.

Happy sewing everyone!

Rainbow Scrappy Quilt: A finished quilt

If you listen to the Chris Evans Breakfast show on BBC radio 2 you may have heard him invite people to share their Smug Zone stories.  I am definitely in the Smug Zone with this quilt because I am so pleased with how it has worked out.  This is definitely a quilt I am holding on to.

The backing fabric I've chosen is by Lewis and Irene and is called Without the Rain we wouldn't have Rainbows.  This is a gorgeous fabric in its own right, but I think it's perfect for this quilt on two levels; firstly, it has rainbows on it which is the theme of this quilt.  Secondly, the writing is in French and I love foreign languages, and as this quilt is staying with me, that feels rather apt.

I used lots of different coloured threads for the quilting, though they were all Aurifil.  I decided to make the most of the rainbow aspect and quilted in colour zones with matching threads.  I did not overly think the quilting.  I just decided to use the walking foot to follow the lines and sometimes just made a 90° turn as the squares met.  As a result lots of the quilting does resemble stairs, which I like because the backing has images of the Eiffel Tower.  I've been up the tower twice and on both occasions I remember there being a lot of stairs to climb.

After umming and ahhing about whether the pink squares belong in rainbow I decided to use a bright pink fabric for the binding.  I've decided that my rainbows definitely include pink and I think this particular pink goes beautifully next to all the different fabric colours.  The fabric is Dimples by Makower which they have in lots of different colours and which I think makes a beautiful binding choice.

Quilt Stats:

Finished dimensions: 41.5" x 62.5"
Number of 2½" squares: 520
Approximately 100 different fabrics included

I'm really pleased with the reception that this quilt has had both with friends and people online.  My next post will include a grid of where to place your own fabrics if you wish to make a similar quilt.

Back to my bestie

Anyone who reads my blog or spends time sewing and quilting with me will find out pretty quickly that my all time favourite fabric range is Wee Wander by Sarah Jane Studios.  I truly adore it!  It might be approaching two years since it was first introduced, but I still think it is as fresh as ever and I use my stash of these fabrics selectively.

In March I finished a quilt top which uses each of the fabrics in the range alongside white, and then I put it away for a while so that I could look forward to spending time with the fabrics again.  I know this sounds crazy, but think of me like Charlie in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory who nibbles a bit of his precious (and limited) chocolate in order to savour it.  This weekend I decided it was time to savour more time with this fabric and begin the quilting.

 As ever I am using my walking foot for the quilting.  Usually I use the seams to keep the quilting lines straight and this usually ends up being about a quarter inch from the seam.  This time I decided to quilt in that way but also close up to the seams as well.  I love the tram tracks look I created on the squares which are making up the sashing.

For the foundation pieced stars I wanted to emphasise the star shapes.  I have done this by quilting just inside and outside the seams.  I love the way in which this makes the shapes stand out and it also creates a nice texture.  As ever, I am quilting with Aurifil thread.  I opted for white throughout to add to the crisp feel of this quilt.

The backing is a fabric I've only recently discovered, Holly Hobbie by Spectrix in Pretty Flowers White.  I think it is ideal and has the right blues and a touch of green to match the front.

There is still plenty of quilting to be done, binding to add, ends to sew in.  But surely I can manage a Friday finish!

Today I'm linking up with Lily's Quilts.

Coming to the Party late

We may be heading towards the end of the month, but I have finally managed to work on something for Project Leasa's Precuts Party, where you sew precut bundles of fabric from stash.  So much effort went into my large Scrappy Squares Quilt (confession - I am still sewing in the threads) that I needed a quick project and decided to make some lovely Liberty pillowcases for our bedroom.

I don't own many precut bundles, in fact I owned just one; my friend bought me some 5" Liberty squares for Christmas so it had to be them that I worked with, though working with Liberty is never a hardship!  

For the pillowcases I wanted to stick to three main colours (pink, blue and purple) to match the bedroom.  That meant I had to reject some of the lovely 5" squares and supplement fabric from my stash.  I have been left with some lovely reds, greens, yellows and oranges, which I am going to work with next week.

I love how these have turned out.  I quilted squares using my walking foot and coordinating Aurifil threads.  The feel is just wonderful.

To make them even more luxurious I used Liberty fabric 'Nancy' on the back and quilted lines down the back at 3" intervals.  I finally got around to using my Clover Hera Marker to get lovely straight lines, and it worked a treat!

The only downside to these pillowcases is that they are almost too nice to use.  I think they will be ornamental.  My husband likes gardening and running and I'm not sure I want him to lay his head on them after he's been at the allotment or on a run.  But at least they look nice!

Sunday Stash #5

I have a couple of recent purchases to show off today.

The first was bought on Black Friday.  I watched people on the news getting into scuffles for a flat screen tv and wondered how people could work themselves into such a frenzy.  Then on my twitter feed I saw Eternal Maker's 15% off everything Black Friday deal and just had to join in.  This is an Aurifil Basics Collection and as many of the threads are so muted they can be used to quilt lots of different projects.  The pink you see was not in the original collection, but the lady phoned me to say they had sold out of one of the greys so she let me choose something else instead.  Baby pink is always going to be useful for me.  I've already made a start with one of the threads, but I know it will take me a while to use them all.

This rather large collection of Christmas fabrics is by Lynette Anderson and is called Candy Cane Angels.  I was pondering whether to buy these fabrics for a while and finally decided to take the plunge.  There are 25 fabrics in total and there is a fat eighth of each, which is enough to make a nice Christmas quilt, but not too much as to feel overwhelmed with Christmas fabrics.  These colours are so muted for me, but I think I can make something really cute with these and I think I am going to keep the colours in their three groups, though I have no other design ideas than that at the moment.

Enjoy Sunday!

Liberty Lifestyle Quilt - A finished quilt

I'm pleased that I have finished a quilt despite being back at work this week.  I'm also pleased with the quilt as a whole.  White is a favourite of mine at the moment and I think it works so beautifully with these Liberty Lifestyle Bloomsbury Gardens fabrics.  The white fabric here is what I call "white on white" because there is a white pattern on the top, which you sometimes see and sometimes don't.  It makes it a little less harsh and a little more interesting than plain white fabric.

The coloured squares I put together using the string piece method and then cut them at an angle.  It's a good and effective way of making the fabrics come in to close contact with one another.  The only difficulty is that because the fabrics are then cut on the bias there is some give when you are sewing the squares together and I think this explains why my piecing is not as accurate as I would otherwise have liked.  Oh well!  This quilt is not going to be sold or given away, and as I love the fabrics so much I can live with these imperfections.

It has been quilted using tramlines either side of the rows with the lime green Aurifil thread #1231 on the front.  I think it brings out the greens in the fabric which are ever present but never obtrusive.  On the back I used the turquoise thread #2810 which is a good match with the backing fabric.  I chose a very plain, but very tranquil, light blue fabric for the binding.  This colour does not figure exactly in the quilt but I think it harmonises with the blues and greens that are in many of the fabrics and are the centre of the flowers on the back.

This quilt is going in my spare bedroom to join another quilt and cushion using these fabrics.  I like the fact that there are some repetition of fabrics here but then suddenly new ones have been added to the mix.  I think as a trio of items they will look great together, but they are also each a little individual.

Thank you for visiting.

The Festival of Quilts

Yesterday was an amazing day!  I went with some friends to the NEC for The Festival of Quilts.  I went last year and loved it so I think it is now going to be a yearly pilgrimage.  I cannot possibly explain everything that I saw, bought or discussed; it was overwhelming, but I will mention some highlights.

I made some good fabric purchases (and have already begun working with some of them in a baby quilt today) but I am going to save them for a Sunday Stash post.  I didn't just buy fabric, however, as I treated myself to some lovely Aurifil thread.  I keep reading about Aurifil's great qualities so I am going to put it to the test.  This collection is called The Zingy Collection and I love the colours.  They will be brilliant for my projects because I love vibrant colours.  I was swayed by a small reduction in price, but I think they are great in any case.

I am really pleased with the gadgets I bought.  I went with the intention of visiting the Bloc-Loc stand because I keep reading about them and seeing the precision you can achieve with them.  I bought the Half Rectangle Triangle rulers and the Drunkard's Path rulers, which are two shapes which will be new to me, so I am really excited to get using these soon.  There was a great atmosphere at this stall and the lady demonstrated them really well.  I also bought a Clover Hera Chalkless Fabric Marker which I am going to use with my quilting, especially creating diagonal lines.

Inevitably I spent quite a bit of time at the different long-arm quilting specialists.  I would love one of these machines and  to become skilled at quilting using one.  They are serious purchases, though, due to the cost, space and time it takes to develop expertise, so (on this occasion) I did not come home with one.  Maybe in the future, but certainly not yet.

As I like to include a Friday Finish post on Crazy Mom Quilts, today I am showing a quilt I made a while ago, but which has not been on this blog before.  It's made from fabrics left over from other quilts and has four large log cabin blogs made using Rasterquick as well as then a small central one.  I like this quilt because I think the blue and green fabrics work well together and I like the figures from the Creative Thursday Just for Fun range.  I have backed it in a largely white fabric.  I like this quilt because I think it would work equally well for a baby boy or a baby girl.  This quilt was not made for any one in particular, so it is now for sale on my Etsy shop.  Hopefully someone will like it and make it theirs.

Thank you for stopping by.