Finished Top

I've been working on Thomas's quilt, and yesterday I pieced all the squares into 6 strips to form the central panel. Today, I've sewed it into this:



The observant among you might notice that it differs slightly from the plan. When I was assembling the strips, I seem not to have managed to put the squares together to make a railfence. I'm calling it Crocodile Whirlpool.

Now to do more crafting before going to Wrapped In Wool's birthday crafty shenanigans, and more sewing is planned for tomorrow, including teaching Mr Wonderfuls how to sew cravats.

Happy Bank Holiday Weekend!

Eye Spy... Something that makes me Happy

I'm playing along with Eye Spy Sunday hosted by Cindy of Bug and Pop, and this week's theme, courtesy of Iris and Lily is 'Something that Makes Me Happy'

I spent part of this morning folding my tiny quilting fat quarter collection using Kootoyoo's instructions, and the little happy pile looked so beautiful:



I've got some colour family groups, with possible quilts/projects in mind for these:



1. Amy Butler Midwest Modern (IIRC) - all these are long quarter yards so I'll probably pick up a few more co-ordinating prints and do something like the stacked coins with them.

2. Moon & coordinating prints - no idea what I want to do with these, I think I need a few more coordinating blues first.

3. Pink & Greens - I want to pick up some more co-ordinating small scale prints with these and do a star block or two with them. The one at the back is a long quarter, the other 3 are FQs.

4. Kaffe Fasset Floral - Got this one free on my last Cotton Patch shopping spree, no plan as yet!

5. Liberty print - I was given this print in a Craftster swap about 4 years ago, and I've been hoarding it until I can learn to sew clothes to fit my figure and then I'm going to sew it into a blouse. I've got a metre of it, so I think I'm going to have to find a lightweight black cotton to pair it with to make up the yardage. Kootoyoo's folding method also works with lightweight fabric (lighter than quilters cotton) up to a metre, and with quilters cotton up to half a metre.

6. Lovely flowery pink FQ - my sister bought this FQ about 4 years ago, wanting to make something for her (now eldest) daughter Chloë. She realised that she was unlikely to be able to, and gave it to me, so I am waiting until I find the perfect project for her to use it.

I love the pure, happy potential of a stack of beautiful fabric, and I've really enjoyed neatly folding it all. I've also been using the folding round a quilters ruler method for the yardage that I bought.

Does anyone have any suggestions of good ways to fold the long quarters?

Another thing making me happy this week is the mittens I finished knitting:



They are knitted from the beautifully soft and warm Mirasol Miski, baby llama fibre. They have a gap across the palm for sticking your fingers out of to get out your train pass or press the Pelican crossing buttons. The end of the thumb is open to help with that, but you can tuck it into the palm if it gets cold. I've called them 'Treat' because they were such a happy, easy knit - more pics here.

They're knit on 2 4mm circs, and are a quick easy knit. A friend will be testing the pattern for me, and then I'll have it available for download.

I'm off to have some home made lemon and ginger ice cream.

A Change of Plan

After a visit to Cotton Patch, I appear to have totally changed the fabrics for the quilt. Mr Wonderfuls came with me, because he has a good eye for colour, and helped me choose the fabrics. We've gone for a subtle crocodile theme, hopefully something that is still little boy friendly but will grow older with him.

This is the final plan:


The backing will be turquoise, and I'm going to stitch the centre in the ditch, and probably do a wave pattern on the bubble borders, if I can get that looking good.



The fabric on the left is the backing.

What do you think?

Quilt Plan

I've made quilts for both Chloë & Emma's birthdays, which they love- they go with the girls whenever they stay away from home. It is Thomas' 2nd birthday this year, so it is his turn to have an Aunty Quilt. Both of the girls quilts were late, and I don't want TJ's to be. His birthday is in August, so I'm buying the fabric today, and making it when I go on holiday in a couple of months time.



This is my plan for Thomas' quilt. I'm very lucky that the wonderful Cotton Patch is just down the road from me, so I get to go to the shop and choose my fabrics. I may not use the ones I picked for the mockup, as I'm sure there'll be lots of exciting possibilities once I get to the shop. I found picking fabrics for this quilt harder than for the girls - so many quilt fabrics are either pink/girly colours, or floral. I don't really want a kiddy print one so my choices are a bit more limited. I'm sure I'll be fine when I get there and am surrounded by lovely fabrics

I like making these mockups - I do them in paint using the pictures of the fabrics from the Cotton Patch website, and it helps me see whether my borders are balanced, etc. I know this is a simple Railfence block, but it's new to me, so I wanted to practice.

On My Desk This Week...

This week I've been practicing free motion machine quilting, ready to do Chloe's quilt. I started by practicing on a couple of sandwiches made from left over cotton fabric from previous projects. I've also got a little blanket on the go for Thomas which started as a practice for digitising, so I've quilted that:

My quilting is slowly getting better - hopefully you can see in the bottom 3 images how my attempt at stippling is getting closer together, with less loops. I think it'll take a lot more before I'm confident.

Here are the sites I've found very helpful:

• Sew Inspired - Free Motion Machine Quilting Tutorial
  
• Anyone Can Quilt - Machine Quilting 101
  
• Patsy Thompson Designs - lots of ideas for quilting designs, often beyond my current skill level, but nice to aspire to!
• Dioramarama - Longarm quilting - I don't have a longarm, but some nice examples of patterns
  
• Diane Gaudynski - good close up stippling picture
  
• Crazy Mom Quilts - Free Motion Quilting
  
• Quiltmaker - loads of good tips

I thought I'd also show you my favourite shelf in my study:
On it I have a lot of lovely old books (affectionately termed "Collage fodder") and gorgeous old OS maps - I love looking over them at the place names and contour lines (which my attempt at echo quilting, above, reminds me of).

In front of the books, I have my wind up 'alarm clock' which plays "London Bridge is Falling Down", two tiny conkers, two lovely pebbles smoothed by the sea which I picked up at Black Rock Sands, and a little wobbly headed turtle which always makes me smile.

I had hoped to post some pictures of the Birmingham Botanical Gardens, as I swapped my desk for a walk round with the camera this lunch time, but I'm still editing the pics and it is getting late!

More desk posts here.

On My Desk This Week...

I've been working on the activities for module 2 of my Creative Sketchbooks course, which has involved playing with watercolour paints and salt:

I've also been working on a birthday quilt for my soon-to-be-4 year old niece, Chloe. It is in lots of bright colours, and tonight I've been appliquéing the flowers on to it. Soon they'll be joined by happy singing birds and butterflies:
I thought I'd also share my work desk with you, so here's a photo of it at lunchtime today, hence the knitting - sadly I don't get to knit during working hours.My knitting bag is the owl one made for me by my friend Daina, and it always makes me smile.

So, that's 2 of my 3 desks! My 3rd one is the PC desk, next to the craft desk, and it's enough of a mess that it is a good thing I have a keyboard shelf, as that means I can write this post!

Go check out Kirsty's post to see more desks!