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.

Two Scrapisfaction Friday Finishes!

I have sewed and quilted like a demon this week and both finished projects are from scraps, my favourite thing of the moment!  I said I was going to sew a "scrapisfaction" project once a month, but at the moment all I work with are scraps, so that makes me feel like an overachiever!

First up is the quilt I started at the weekend.  I put together the remnants from other quilts and stitched them together.  I wanted to make something for a boy and was pleasantly surprised by the quilt I made because the fabrics seem to belong together.  There's definitely a theme with this quilt because the only images belong to transport, and in a bizarre twist for me, there are no critters on this quilt!  I backed it with some cotton from last week's Ikea trip and found a nice navy blue spot to finish off the quilt; I think it works well.

This quilt was quilted on the front with a red thread to complement the many reds in the quilt.  The back was quilted in a light grey, which blended nicely with the blue backing.

Once this quilt was finished I quickly started the next.  I don't know what came over me, but I decided to sort the scraps into colours and then started working on ideas.

I suddenly had a brainwave to make some large half square triangle slabs of fabric and then to put them together in an eight star formation (not unlike my recent tablemats).

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I am really thrilled with this quilt.  I love how the colours all stand out so clearly, although there are many different variations within each colour point.  I love the scale.  I think it looks wonderful laid on top of a bed.

I am pleased with the large amount of quilting I did to emphasise the star shape and I think the cute backing works well because it comprises the four colours I used on the front.  I used remnants from the transport quilt's backing for the binding, which made this quilt even more scrapisfying!  When I look at the scraps it's hard to imagine that you can create something so coherent from them.  It blows my mind!

Thank you for popping by.

Sunday Stash #3 and a quilt in progress

This is just a quick post to keep you up to date with the different projects I am currently working on.

First of all, here is a sneak preview of the fabrics I am using in a future baby quilt tutorial that will be published online.  I cannot contain my excitement!  The patterns and colours are dreamy and I will get to work with fabrics from one of my favourite ranges, Far Far Away by Heather Ross.  In the words of Forrest Gump "that's all I have to say about that" (for now.)

Yesterday I was incredibly industrious.  I cut 99 5" squares, pieced them to make a quilt top and then basted this, meaning today I am ready to quilt and bind.  I wanted to make another quilt from stash and scrap fabrics, and was determined it would be for a boy, because I am aware that I seem to make baby girl quilts more often.  There is a imbalance in my stash in favour of girly fabrics, so it was difficult to put these fabrics together.  I felt I was scraping the barrel at times, but it is looking alright in the end.  There are lots of transport related fabrics here, and I think the pirate fabric matches this as well because of the connection to ships (tenuous, I know!)

I'm just going to quilt some simple tramlines and then this will be a quick project.  Today should be a satisfying Sunday.

Thank you for popping by.

Circus Quilt - A finished quilt

 I know this is not the best quilt I've ever made.  There are a few glitches; some of the points are off, some of my quilting isn't straight and some of the small squares would have been nicer if I'd fussy cut them.  And yet, despite all its shortcomings, I'm pleased with this quilt.

This has been an improvised quilt because I did very little planning and drawing and only bought the solids late on Saturday afternoon.  I'm pleased that in a short period of time I managed to make something that looks like something that was long prepared and mulled over.

The backing I bought only on Tuesday.  I had intended to buy some monkey fabric but the lady at my local patchwork shop picked out the large spots and these were a no-brainer.  The boldness of the dots with a white background works really well against the boldness and deep saturation on the front of the quit.  The backing is Michael Miller # CX-5291 Diddly Dot (what a lovely name!) and I'm going to purchase some more soon because I think it is such a dependable and worthwhile fabric for both the front and back of quilts.  I can envisage using it again shortly.

I love variegated thread for quilting and I also love a coincidence.  This quilt is destined for Australia so the thread by YLI called Great Barrier Reef by Luana Rubin is a perfect match.  Obviously, I doubt the quilt will be used in any scuba diving but the Australia theme was enough for me to put an extra smile on my face during the quilting.

I've learned a two key things along the way here.  Firstly, good solids can make a great contribution when you have only a small number of novelty or picture fabrics.  Secondly, scrappy binding is a fun way to use up fabric which can also make the quilt a touch more interesting.  I will definitely be doing this again in the future.

Circus quilt - WIP

I really love making a quilt from small amounts of novelty or patterned fabric and combining it with largely plain or sold fabrics.  I think that this combination makes the novelty  fabric pop when this fabric may be the smallest component.

A lady at work has asked me to make a quilt for a grandson who will be born shortly.  I had some scraps of fabric I bought cheaply last year which I thought would be suitable for this project, but I knew there would not be enough to make an entire quilt.  I think the fabrics are from Timeless Treasures.  I made a quick dash to my local patchwork shop and decided three largely solid fabrics would work well here.

I cut the circus fabrics and some solids into 2 1/2 inch squares and then pieced them together into these squares.  I was quite random about how I did this so none of the pieced squares looks the same.

Then I decided to bulk the quilt out my bordering the pieced squares with the solids.  I really like how these look together.  I think the solids really make the circus fabrics much more interesting and exciting.  On there own, they didn't really wow me; now I really quite like them.

I have quite a bit of the solid fabrics left so I am going to make my first scrappy binding.  I want this to be a project with very little left over.  I've had a look at some scrappy bindings on pinterest and I think they can work beautifully, I think especially if the scraps are not too long.  Unfortunately neither of the two local fabric shops in Sheffield opens on Monday so I cannot finish this today.  I haven't chosen the backing yet so that will be a fun shopping decision on Tuesday.