Tester Block

After searching around for layer cake quilts yesterday and seeing these two quilts on the Moda Bake Shop site here and here, I decided to make a tester block.

My brain is fried at the moment and I just needed something physical and tangible to see and hang up before I made my decision.  I dug out some ugly brown fabric from the scrap box and came up with this 12.5" block.  The larger sqaures represent quarters of my 10" layer cake squares.

I don't think I want to chop my lovely fabric this small, maybe just into halves or quarters for the busier patterns and I'll leave the lovely animal prints whole.  Another issue I have is that my layer cake only has 16 squares, I won it in a giveaway, the layer cake quilts I've seen seem to have way more squares, so perhaps I have half a cake!  This means I'll have to think about stretching it out, make it go further...  Should I introduce some squares of solids in coordinating colours or dip into another fabric line and mix it up?

I have these bee & butterfly prints in my stash, the lighter ones coordinate well but i'm not sure about the darker ones (although they do look darker in the photo than in the flesh).

Now what should I do with this ugly tester block? Do you make tester blocks? What do you do with them afterwards?

Linking up with the Anything Goes party, Fabric Tuesday & Freemotion by the River.

Sunday Stash & Decisions

To be honest there is not much stashing going on, I have fabrics piled up waiting to be cut for several projects but whilst out getting more Minky so that I can make lots of these little baby blankies ...

... I picked up these 2 FQ's.

I've been waiting to get my hands on some bug jars for ages, I have 2 boys so fabrics like this are perfect for them, and the keyboard print was just too irresistible! It has lots of texting abbreviations on each key like;
T+ think positive and
Zup what's up?
So it is in fact educational!!! Lol!

The making of many Minky blankies means no quilting this week, I just can't decide which quilt to start next and I still am not in the mood for the Super Mario blocks...
The planned HST's and garden fence blocks both require me to order some Kona snow and although I'm dying to make a spring quilt with this gorgeous Laurie Wisbrun Modern Whimsy layer cake I just can't settle on a quilt design to make the most of it. Does anyone have any ideas?  Have you made a quilt from a layer cake? 

I  just love the lambs, swans and bunnies and really don't want to chop them too small...

Linking up with Sunday Stash at Finding Fifth and the Lets Get Acquainted linky party over at Simply Miss Leulla

Meet my Machines

Stacey over at The Tilted Quilt and Erin from Sew at Home Mummy have teamed up to bring us the Meet My Machine blog hop.  For a whole week some fabulous quilters are going to share all of the details about their sewing machines and Stacey is also hosting a linky party so that we can share a post about our machines too.



So here are mine.

For Christmas 2010 my hubby got me this beautiful old Singer machine from ebay.  It dates back to 1895!  Sadly separated from it's original table and put on this wooden plinth in the 1940-50's.



We researched the type of table it should have been on and this is the picture we found.


And then several months later look what I found at a car boot sale!  It's morbidly but aptly called a coffin top.



I have a treadle in my conservatory that dates back to around the same time, but it has a marble top not the original wooden table top, maybe one day I'll find a way of uniting the three pieces - you never know.  In the meantime the machine nestles in the dining room windowsill so that it is out of the way of prying little people, but it also gives me a focus in the window other than my neighbours fence which is the only view out of that particular window!

That same Christmas night in the evening when we were all sitting around discussing sewing, or rather learning to, hubby gave me his credit card and told me to get online and order a brand new machine so that I could have a machine with a manual and learn to sew properly! What a gem he is!  Not knowing I was heading for quilting I purchased this Toyota machine which has lots of stitch options that I'll probably never use, but it did come with a quarter inch piecing foot and I was also able to purchase a Toyota walking foot aswell.  She serves me well.


Back in May 2011 my friends mum was kind enough to let me give this little beauty a new home.


It works, came with spare belts and has a cute little extending leaf on the end.  The tabletop flips over leaving the machine kind of tucked underneath and a flat surface on the top.  The wood needs a little TLC, it has obviously been well used and could do with rubbing down and revarnishing.

 

Right now the machine part is folded away and the tabletop is covered in storage boxes full of fabric so we can't even see the poor thing at the moment...

And if I could buy any machine I wanted?  Well I saw this little cutie in one of the other ladies sewing rooms and had to google it. 



Designed by a Quilter, for Quilters the HQ Sweet Sixteen Sit-Down Quilting Machine is a high-functioning long-arm system designed to provide a professional machine for the home studio. It is a straight-stitch machine for free-motion quilting, but can also be used for free-motion embroidery.

It sounds fabulous right?!?

Thanks for letting me share my machines and their stories with you.

Happy Sewing :o)

Fluffgate

After two quilts, several minky ribbon blankies and 7 Super Mario quilt blocks I figured it was time to give the little lady some TLC.

It's a bit fluffy under there but not too bad. Who out there saw Susan's picture yesterday? Go on, have a look under your plate...

 

Happy Monday! xx

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 :-)