So happy with myself right now!

My Central Park Sampler Quilt is finished! *happy dance*

 

You know me, i'm a plodder, quilt finishes aren't a weekly or even monthly occurrence, and these blocks have been hanging around my dining room walls for what seems like forever, so it's great to see them where they were destined to be.

After making the first block back in June 2011 when I joined Leila's Skills Builder Sampler QAL and then picking out blocks from other sampler QAL's and from around the blogosphere I finally had the number I needed.

This quilt has been a bit of a journey, some of the earlier blocks were a little baggy and undersized which reflects my quilting ability at the time and rather than redo them I decided to work with it and size them up so that they are a reminder of how far I've come, see the thin white inserts on the blocks above and below. Cheesy I know but this quilt was about learning, practising, and honing the skills and I think it has achieved that!

After making Bella's Quillow I knew I wanted to make a couple to double up as cushions for our sofa, so that's exactly what I did, and why I needed those last 2 extra blocks!

I chose my favourite blocks for the outer visible cushion sides, the granny block which was a bit small got sized up with these trees - this print makes me so happy! Is there a fabric that makes you happy just to look at it?

I used my bargain £2.25 red oversized check duvet cover from Asda for the backing, and the great thing is that I still have half of it left to utilise again another day!

As previously encountered with making quillows as per this tutorial I found that less is more where the quilting is concerned, so I have very simply highlighted some of the square and triangle designs in the blocks.

This quilt also represented a first in spray basting for me, the contruction is such that you baste the quilt top to the batting and then place the quilt back right side down over the quilt top and sew nearly all the way around the edges and then turn it through (no binding! yay!) so pinning is a pain because they all end up on the inside!  I was nervous of ruining my lovely fabrics or gumming up my needle but it worked pretty well and I only used 1 can!

The quilt measures 43"x57" and folded into the Quillow it is 16" square.

And now while it's washing and crinkling I shall be offering some well earned TLC to my machine; clean, oil, new needle, replace that rotary blade and then onto another project from the WIP pile or something new? :-)

I'm showing off at the following linky parties:
Link a finish Friday
Can I get a whoop whoop
Lets Get Acquainted
Fabric Tuesday
Linky Tuesday at Freemotion by the River
Create & Share - The Trendy Treehouse
Made By Me at Jaqs Studio
We Did It! Wednesday at Sew Much Ado

P.S. If you'd like to follow me in more of a pictorial way with less of the rambling you can also find me on Facebook, my page is Quilty Creations and on Instagram as Kazwee
Thanks :-)

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...

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)