Monday 19 December 2011

Leaving it till the last minute...

I know this is totally my fault, but I'm starting to freak out a little. As my four year old keeps reminding me, its only 6 sleeps till Christmas. And I have got SOOOOO much to get done before then. Yes, I should have started this stuff weeks ago, but I kept getting distracted by new projects... so my WIP pile is massive and I have a few things that are barely started that I need to get done for gift-giving.


Firstly my 1001 peeps quilt, which I have always intended to be for my daughter, needs to be finished off. I decided that this Christmas was the perfect time to give it to her. The quilt top was finished, so just needed quilting (which is done - yay!!!). After much deliberating on how to do it, I decided to do an 'echo shell' type of quilting. Which looks great. But took nearly 10 hours to do (I'm used to getting a baby sized quilt stippled in around 2-3 hours, so this was a shock!)




It's quilted all over in this way, which has given it a gorgeous texture and although it took a long time it was really easy to do, and has motivated me to move away from stippling to other FMQ styles. It's also made me realise how much I love the quilting process - it's really just like drawing on fabric with my sewing machine :)
So this one at least is nearly done - the binding is made, I just need to sew it on (machine all the way, baby!)

Second, my Charmed Prints QAL quilt for my nephew. I (perhaps stupidly) decided to pebble quilt this one, and I am glad I decided to - the texture is just amazing! But again, its going to take a LONG time to finish. I've done about 1/3 of it so far:

It's fun to do, but pretty thread-intensive (I've used about 3 bobbins so far, so I reckon it will be 9 or so by the time I finish - and the area I'm pebble quilting is only about 37" square!!!)

Next on my to-do-by-Sunday list is a bag for my sister (I'm using Elizabeth Hartman's Margaret Bag pattern - totally cute!) which is cut out and needs sewing up. Also a bottle-bag for each of my parents - this is the outside panel for one of them:


I'm photographing as I do this one, so it will probably be a tutorial at some stage :)

Hope you're Christmas gift making is going better than mine!

Happy (panic) stitching,
Jess

2 comments:

Michele said...

Six sleeps until Christmas! Yikes! I'd better get going! Lovely projects by the way :-)

rachel griffith said...

love both of the quilts - and the quilting looks great :)