WIP Wednesday - Leap Day Edition!

Happy Leap Day everyone, I'm pleased to annouce a finish this week in the form of my Sherbet Pips Quillow.

I really love it and can't wait to make another! The tutorial I followed can be found at A Cuppa and a Catch Up if you'd also like to give it a try. I've started cutting the boys old t shirts for their memory quilt (which I'm thinking of making into a quillow also!)

I've been making some of these for orders this week - this funds my fabric habit!

No progress this week on the;
Solids Diamond Quilt
Central Park 4 Patch - binding
Black and White King Size Bed Quilt
Dresden Plate
Kaleidoscope
Skills Builder Sampler

Finishes this week: 1
New Projects this week: 1
In Progress: 7

I'm linking up with Lee over at Freshly Pieced for todays post.
 

Name Change???

So I was thinking... I can't really call myself a novice quilter forever, perhaps i should change the blog name. I was going to keep the Ramblings... and add 'Mostly Quilty' But my facebook page is called Quilty Creations - perhaps I should rename the blog the same to tie everything together? Perhaps the change is a good idea while I don't have too many followers... I'm obviously optimisitic of raising the number in the future! ha ha Comments and thoughts welcome. xx

Sherbet Pips Quillow

It's official, I'm in love with Bella's finished Christening Gift Quillow! I now see absolutely no reason why all quilts should not have the hidden cushion pocket and fold away so fabulously!

I followed the tutorial over at A Cuppa and a Catch Up, so if i refer to particular 'steps' you may get clarification from there!

Here is the back of the cushion panel (I'll be refering back to this block later!)

And this is the front, which gets quilted in step 2.

It was a gloriously sunny day today, to such an extent that the pictures even have glare! My photographic skills really are terrible - sorry!

I devised my own block design so that Bella would be able to appreciate the fun prints, each block was 16" square.

Please excuse my barren wasteland of a garden!

And for the back I have repurposed a pretty Debenhams duvet cover.

The quilting is a bit neanderthol with a wonky squares design, because...

The construction of the quillow in this instance is such that you baste your quilt top and batting together and cut to size. You then cut your backing fabric to the same size, pin right sides together with your quilt top, sew around the edge leaving a turning hole, turn it through and then stitch round the edge again, closing the turning hole as you go.

Now this threw up an issue for me, even though I went back over my pin basting to attach the backing fabric before quilting the three layers together I found that my backing was still baggy in places. I was going to straight line quilt along the white sashing lengths and widths of the blocks but ended up with fabric excesses, so had to tear it out and go with a 'less is more' kind of approach, hence the wonky squares, which has allowed me to fix all the layers in place without it being glaringly obvious that there is too much fabric in a couple of places!

Also, if you are using a block design that requires the correct orientation - I wouldn't want my little scooting children upside down now would I ?!? - make sure that your 'top middle' quilt top block is attached to the 'front cushion panel block' as shown below. I did it this way by shere fluke, then considered it might be wrong, read and re-read all the instructions, had a fiddle with the blocks and realised i had it right! Phew!

Lastly, I am left with 2 blocks that have no quilting. The one pictured above which is attached to the cushion front block, and also the cushion back block which was my very first picture above. Because these three blocks are sandwiched and stitched together during the construction of the quilt top, by the time the quilting process begins you cannot machine quilt them. My hand sewing is atrocious and I haven't attempted hand quilting yet, so for this quillow they will remain as they are but I am plannng on making another quillow with my Tufted Tweets that will be mine - ALL MINE! - so perhaps I'll experiment how to get around this issue then.

If any of you have made quillows in a different way please let me know, i'd be really interested to hear about it.

P.S. I'm linking up with Making Monday Marvelous for this post...

More fabric!!!

After my trip to The Eternal Maker there should be absolutely no more fabric purchases for a while but... Oopppss... It was on sale, and one of the Central Park prints i'm missing - so a justified purchase on 2 counts right?

The hack n slash way in which it was cut would make me think twice about buying smaller pieces from that online store though...

WIP Wednesday

Finally on my table is a diamonds quilt I saw over at Lindsay Sews last year

I'm still to finish the binding on my Central Park 4 Patch

And I need to get out the wadding for the Sherbert Pips Quillow as there is a deadline for this one!

There's my king sized black and white bed quilt to be quilted and bound.
There's the ongoing skills builder sampler - for which I'm way behind...
I have a flimsy dresden plate that I'm too scared to do the corners for!

Hmmm, more WIP than remembered!

Finishes this week: 0
New Projects this week: 1
In Progress: 6 (7*)

* am I supposed to count the Kaleidoscope that is languishing in a drawer somewhere in disgust! All the triangles are cut but my templates were wrong - much salvaging required, and patience!

I'm linking up with Lee over at Freshly Pieced for this WIP Wednesday.

Retail Therapy of the Fabric Kind

...Heaven
I've been saving my pennies and treated myself to a visit to The Eternal Maker today. It started out well, I'd made a list, on which was a fat quarter stack of Little Apples

and some yellow and grey fabrics for a quilt i'm planning

and, um, some stuff that wasn't on the list...

Half moon modern, jelly beans, echino... ooopps

And then I came home to the washing machine pumping out all over the floor! The water went across the utility room floor, through the understairs cupboard and found it's way out on my sitting room carpet. NOT happy... except with my sparkly new fabrics!

It's not rocket science!

There are only 12 blocks and I still managed to do this... I had to take myself off and have a word!

WIP Wednesday #12

Well it's half term, the kids are demanding - to eat all the time, to go out.. don't they know I've got sewing to do? Needless to say, since the Saturday Night Sew In there has only been about an hour of sewing done but I have finished all the 14 blocks now for the Pips Quillow for Bella.

I had a minor panic attack when laying the blocks out that I was one short, then remembered I have one hanging on the sewing room wall downstairs.

I haven't pressed the last bits of sashing or trimmed the blocks yet, I just poured my second glass of wine and so for the sake of my husband's sanity and my own personal safety I will not be going near a hot iron or cutting tools this evening!

Then to pick my 2 favourite blocks which will be the front and back of the cushion part of the quillow...

For those who didn't see my last post the tutorial for the quillow can be found at A Cuppa and a Catchup.

I'm linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced for this WIP Wednesday :o)

Saturday Night Sew In

Our best friends have finally arranged to have their daughter christened, Bella is 7 years old but mum is Spanish Catholic so I'm surprised they got away with not doing it for so long! In March we'll be flying over to Spain for the weekend for said christening and hubby is going to be Godfather!

So instead of cutting into my Tufted Tweets for my long awaited quillow, i've cut into my fat quarter stack of Sherbert Pips to make one for Bella as a christening gift.

Daniel, my 4 year old took this pic of me cutting - bless him! Not a very flattering one but hey ho!

This is the block I'm using, the tutorial i'm following requires 14 blocks in total and can be found at A Cuppa and a Catch up.

Sorry for the poor picture quality it was dark and taken on my phone! I haven't got a fancy linky widget but if you'd like to share what you've been up to tonight then please leave a comment and maybe even a link :o)

iphone pouch

I've been drooling over all your pouch making recently - you know who you are! I saw this on flikr and it linked to a tutorial - yay!

Now I've never made anything remotely pouch-like before and I'm pretty pleased with my first attempts.

The left one is for me, made with one of the scraps the lovely 'Flying Blind' sent me as part of a Pay It Forward package, the other one is for my mum who is raising money like a demon for Breast Cancer Care - the pink ribbon fabric started out as a pair of pyjama bottoms which we made bunting out of and now this too.

Nah nah ne nah nah!

No I'm not impersonating a fire engine! I'm doing that very annoying 'look what i've won' noise!!!!!!

The very lovely and super talented Laurie Wisbrun was having a giveaway of her new Modern Whimsy line and I won!!! I'm no #86!!! I'm very excited. My package came in super quick time from the States and also included the Bejeweled pattern by Amanda Murphy.

The prints are so spring-like with lambs, rabbits, swans... but they'll have to wait as my next project will be to finally cut into my FQ stack of Laurie's Tufted Tweets.

And whilst we're on the subject of lovely and super talented ladies, Lily's Quilts is hosting the Small Blog Meet at the moment, so if like me you have fewer than 50 followers why not hop over there and link up, take a look at some other small blogs and make some new friends!