Quilts for Weddings and Babies..

A long time ago, before we were even dating, my husband and I moved into a share house with another one of our really good friends, Bryden. He has been friends with both of us, independently, for a long time (I met the boys when I was 15) but I generally think of him as my husband's best friend (although sometimes I refer to him as "our" best friend). Bryden has been like a brother to us over the years, with both of our families considering him part of the family too. He was there in the waiting room when we had baby #1, and before he met Carley, I spent many a night making sure he ate "real food" (because an iced coffee and a Mars bar is not really my idea of an acceptable daily meal!).

After dating a number of ladies that weren't quite the right fit, he met the lovely Carley. It wasn't long before they moved in together, and over the next 5 years they adopted a lorikeet and an eclectus parrot, bought a house, adopted another lorikeet and finally got engaged at our wedding. (Naturally Bryden was our Best Man.. and with our blessing he surprised Carley with a proposal at the end of his speech!) For their wedding present I decided to make them a quilt, and I asked Carley to choose some fabric that she liked. Being a girl after my own heart, she fell in love with Kate Spain's Cuzco line (it's those peacocks!) and chose the Hidden Stars pattern from my copy of Layer Cake, Jelly Roll & Charm Quilts by Pam & Nicky Lintott. 

The completed quilt top, ready to baste.

 Carley's favourite colour is orange, and I found the perfect homespun at my local Spotlight store in their Organic Cottons section. There's nothing shy or quiet about this quilt!

I decided to emphasise the stars by hand quilting (also my first time hand quilting..) them using a variegated 12wt Aurifil thread #4648. I also machine quilted in a large cross hatch between the stars using 28wt Aurifil #2150 on the front, and 50wt Aurifil #2130 on the back. The stitching is virtually invisible, but you can see the outline on the back.

 The quilt in backed with a smooth lemon yellow minkee with white spots. It's super snuggly and warm. I did learn a few things about working with minkee though.. 1. Pin basting didn't work for me. I had to unpick all of the quilting I'd done (and I thought I was nearly finished the machine quilting part too.. I was devastated!). 2. Spray basting plus pin basting works a treat.. that sucker didn't move or pucker or pleat again!

I bound the quilt with the same orange homespun, and machine bound it using Aurifil 50wt #1133. I machine embroidered a label and then hand stitched it to the back of the quilt using the 12wt variegated thread. I them popped it in the wash with a couple of colour catchers just to make sure the colours didn't run, and it was good to go!

If you look closely you can see the stars on the back

Ready for wrapping!

The bride and groom

The wedding was beautiful. Bryden's mum was the celebrant who officiated the wedding, and it was held in her gorgeous garden. The weather was perfect for the ceremony, although it rained all through the reception! Thank goodness for portable gazebos and carports! I'm very pleased to say that they were thrilled with their quilt, and took it on their honeymoon with them. I hope it brings them many years of warmth and comfort.

I was also asked by one of my good friends, Linda to make a baby quilt for a friend of hers who was expecting her first baby. Linda is very crafty, but has never jumped into the quilting pool (yet!). I happened to have a charm pack of Deb Strain's "Meadow Friends" that was perfect for whipping up a quick baby quilt. We kept it simple with white sashing and binding. I backed it with a Denyse Schmidt print I had in my stash, and then straight line quilted it 1/4" out from the charm squares.

It was very well received at the baby shower, and I've since received photos of the beautiful baby enjoying her first sleep at home, wrapped in the quilt. It warms my heart to see these quilts being put to good use :) I'm also ready and waiting for my husband to gift the blue and white quilt from my previous post (well, 2 posts ago) to his friend, and then my quilty heart will be full of joy ;) I think those will be my 3 final 2012 quilt finishes, but I've got a couple more lined up for early 2013 :)

Quilt Club Australia Handmade Swap Reveal!

Photo Courtesy of Caz @ The Accidental Quilter

Caz and Kristy from the Quilt Club Australia group recently coordinated the inaugural QCA Handmade Swap. For the last couple of months we've all been secretly working on our swap projects and posting the occasional sneak peek in the QCA Handmade Swap facebook page.. but the time has come and projects are being received left, right and centre! 

My secret swap partner was coordinator Caz herself.. who said she would like a doll quilt or a table runner, and loved "Aqua, Teal, Red, Grey, Purple, Orange (not all necessarily together, lol)". As far as stalking goes, Caz and I are both part of the QCA Craftsy BOM Support Group so I already knew that after doing our April hexy blocks that she had fallen in love with EPP... and she'd presioulsy mentioned on her blog that she was making a quilt for herself using Kate Spain's "Good Fortune". Well hello! Good Fortune pretty much ticks off all those colours (except red) AND I just happened to have a bag of GF scraps from Kate Spain herself..

So I prepared myself a little take along pack (I'm not quite as organised as Caz, I haven't gotten around to making myself a Zakka sewing kit for my EPP... still using a ziplock bag!) to take to the markets with me so that I could be productive during the quiet moments.

As you can see, there were enough quiet moments for me to pin and baste almost all my hexagons... infact there was enough time to baste them all, but my poor little needle clearly couldn't take the pressure and snapped in half with only 2 hexies left to baste! (insert swearing here - that will teach me not to carry a spare needle!)

Once I got home, found a new needle and basted the last 2 hexies I divided them out into orange/purple and then played around until I got them in an order that I liked before whip stitching them together. I knew that I wanted to put them on a grey background, and as luck would have it I had just enough left over from when I'd made my bee blocks.

Naturally I appliqued them onto the grey using my sewing machine! But how to quilt it? My hexies were mirror imaged, so I couldn't echo the zig zag because it would clash in the middle, and I didn't really think an all over FMQ design would suit... luckily Phillipa provided me with some inspiration. The week before she'd made her sister a table runner for her birthday and she'd quilted it using a wavy stitch that her machine offers (sooooo need a new machine! Mine only has 21 stitches, and for a start, buttonhole is NOT one of them!).. anyway, she very kindly let me use her machine to quilt my table runner using the same wavy stitch. I wanted it to be fairly organic in that aside from drawing a line down the middle of the table runner to mark the centre point, I just eyeballed the distance between lines and didn't worry about whether the waves were matchy matchy. I didn't want to quilt over the hexies, which I think was definitely the right move.

I cut some 2.5" strips from my GF scraps to make binding, and made a little label for my table runner using Daisy my embroidery machine (I remembered to applique that onto the backing - using Phillipa's buttonhole stitch - before I quilted it) and voila! It was complete!

I forgot to take any pictures of it all laid out nicely before I sent it off to Caz because I was trying to go with the whole sneak peek thing, but luckily for me when Caz received it she took some gorgeous photos of it and said I could share them with you all!

Photo Courtesy of Caz @ The Accidental Quilter

I am pleased to say that Caz was very happy with her table runner, and plans to use it on her dressing table to complement her Good Fortune quilt - how perfect was that?! I'm so happy with the way it turned out, and even more thrilled that Caz really likes her gift.

Meanwhile, I'm waiting ever so patiently for my postman to bring me my very own surprise gift.. stay tuned!

Sharing in each other's Good Fortune..

So I had this idea late last year about making some mug rugs for my girlfriends using a charm pack of "Good Fortune" by Kate Spain. Originally it was supposed to be part of their Christmas presents, but I ran out of time. But I still really wanted to make them.. it all came out of this silly little "Chinese moneybags" meme-y type thing that went around, where you added up your age, plus the last year you were born (dropping the 19) and it would add up to 111. So at playgroup one day we all sat around and worked it out.. and it worked.. eg. I just turned 30, and I was born in '81... 30+81=111. We also worked out that for our kids, theirs all worked out to 11.. eg Blossom was 3 & born in '08 - 3+8=11. Amusing, yes? So I decided that if I made us all mug rugs out of a single charm pack of "Good Fortune" we could "share in each other's Good Fortune". Completely corny, I know - but that's me!

So I made up a whole pile of disappearing 9 patch blocks using my good fortune charms and came up with:

Kym's, Linda's, Phillipa's & Belinda's, basted and ready to quilt.

 They're completely double sided, and each mug rug uses 3 disappearing 9 patch blocks. Once I've finished them all I might even post a tutorial for you, incase anyone is interested in making their own!

Kym's & Phillipa's, side #1

Kym's and Phillipa's, side #2

Because I only had a charm pack I had to go out and buy some generic fabric for binding from Spotlight - which of course Kate Spain picked up on straight away when I sent her some pics on twitter! Oops! Next time I'll have to plan in advance and buy yardage to match. I've finished 2 mug rugs (and given them to Kym & Phillipa), with Linda's & Belinda's quilted and ready to bind.. and mine still needs to be quilted & bound. It was surprisingly hard to give them away, because I just love this fabric! So to ease the pain I purchased a Fat Eighth bundle from Quiltjane's Want it, Need it, Quilt store.. I'm definitely making a throw quilt for my couch out of that.. and I'll have the mug rug to match!

Linking up this week with Freshly Pieced WIP Wednesday..

Poppies, parcels and progress..

It's been a pretty crazy week, but honestly I won't bore you with the details! Instead I'll share with you some photos that I took of flowers in my mother-in-law's garden, my order that arrived from Quiltjane, and some of the progress that I made on my Harry Potter quilt and my Christmas table runner..

 My mother-in-law used to have a garden filled with these beautiful pink mop-head poppies. When my husband and I were first dating I used to love going to their house when the poppies were out because they were just gorgeous and divine and beautiful. When we moved up into the hills 4 years ago my MIL gave me some of her poppy seedlings to plant in my garden. Every single one was plain red single layer poppies. Infact, every single poppy either of us has grown in the last 4 years has been red. We figured that the poppies must have reverted or something because my MIL had never had red poppies. And I was sad because I thought I'd never again see those beautiful pink mop-head poppies... and then on Wednesday, what did I see???? There was one little pink poppy amongst the red! Oh happy day!

 That doesn't mean that I don't like the red ones though, don't get me wrong.. there's just something kinda special about those pink ones, you know?

 And Cosmos.. I love cosmos. A couple of years ago I had them flowering profusely in my garden in shades of pink.. light, dark, in between! This year my winter grasses have taken over my garden and I've given up hope of anything being visible in there. But one, single plant has also come up in my MIL's garden.. doesn't it just look cheerful? I know I have some seeds saved somewhere.. when we move in I might scatter some more seeds and see what happens!

 My package from Quiltjane's Want it, Need it, Quilt! store came yesterday! Woohoo! Look at all that fabricy goodness. I must say that I was surprised by how much MORE I loved Kate Spain's Good Fortune in real life than I did online! I think I'll be buying more of that once I lift my fabric buying moratorium. I also can't wait to play with my Grace layer cake.... I think I have the perfect pattern picked out.

And isn't Jane a sweetie? She sent me a teeny tiny 2.5" square baby charm pack of Antique Fair. I love it!

 When I finally got around to doing some "real work" I cut some tumbler blocks out of my black backing fabric and then cut them in half so I can put them at either end of my tumbler rows. This way they will square up nicely and it will be easier to do the horizontal sashing. Unfortunately my MIL broke her ironing board(!!!) so I can't press my seams until Monday (Well, I suppose that's not strictly true, but it's a good excuse to move onto another part of my project!).

All my rows chained together (when I added the 1/2 tumblers to each end)

 And while I was chain piecing, I finished stage 1 of the Christmas table runner piecing..

I was clearing out the kids drawers the other day, putting aside all the clothes they've outgrown to keep or send to Good Sammy's (thrift shop).. but at the last minute I pulled out all the flannelette pyjamas. I think I might upcycle them into a snuggle rug. Maybe even try out a rag quilt. If I unpick all the seams I can then send them through my Accuquilt GO! and turn them into squares and half square triangles. I just loved my babies toddling around in their flannel pjs, and if I turn them into a quilt they can be used for sleepovers etc and I can enjoy them all over again. Is that a crazy idea?

Moda Pre-cut Fabric Binge

Incase I hadn't spent enough on fabric recently, I've been pondering some of the pre-cuts in Quiltjane's online store for about 3 weeks. After much thought and money juggling I reached the conclusion that I *really needed* the following items:

2x Ruby Charm Packs, Bonnie & Camille for Moda

I plan to use these to make the super easy Charm Quilt mentioned in my last post. I just love the cheery combination of blues and reds.

Buttercup Layer Cake, Fig Tree & Co for Moda

This is the layer cake that started it all. It was on sale for $25! And it was the LAST ONE. I don't know what I'll do with it yet, but I just HAD TO HAVE IT. I love this range. I also love Fig Tree & Co's Butterscotch & Roses and Strawberry Fields ranges too.

Rouenneries Deux Charm Pack, French General for Moda

I fell in love with this range after seeing someone blog about a candle mat or a table centre or something done in this range.. but for the life of me I cannot remember where it was. Does anyone know the post I'm talking about? It was a semi-tutorial (divide into light & dark tones, cut strips, cut wedges, sew into a circle, add scallops to the outer edge & fussy cut cream circle motif for centre..) Please help me!! I know a charm pack isn't big enough, but I wish I'd bookmarked the post now.

Grace Layer Cake, 3 Sisters for Moda

I love the greens, reds and roses in this range. I'm not sure if I want to do something Christmassy or just something pretty to grace (haha) my afternoon tea table.. if I can ever find that pattern (mentioned just above) I might do that with this fabric.

Good Fortune Charm Pack, Kate Spain for Moda

I nearly went with this fabric for the Charm Square Quilt instead of Ruby, but I thought that I might make myself a bag or a table runner with this instead. I love the cool colours.

But now I need to declare a moratorium on fabric purchasing for a while. No more fabric until I have completed project items with the fabric I already have (and am waiting to receive). Seriously.

Super Easy Charm Square Quilt

I was looking at charm packs online and thought I'd go hunting for a pattern that would give me an idea of what I could do with a charm pack and how many I'd need when I came across this Charm Square Quilt pattern from Snippets of a Quilter. It only takes 2 charm packs to make, and while it looks fancy and complicated is super simple! Now all I need are 2 charm packs.. what a pity, means I'll just have to buy some more fabric ;) I'm currently tossing up between Ruby, by Bonnie & Camille for Moda or Good Fortune bby Kate Spain for Moda... it's so hard to choose just one!

Charm Square Quilt from Snippets of a Quilter

It would also be easy to adapt for the Accuquilt GO! as you could cut your own "charm squares" using either the 5" square on the Value die or the Go! 5" square die.