Charmed prints quilt finished (and some Christmas photos)

I am REALLY happy with how this quilt turned out. But I can safely say it will be a LONG while before I pebble quilt this sized area again - my arm muscles are only just recovering! It ended up taking around ten hours to do the quilting. It was totally worth it I think, but still it's going to have to be something that either needs it or is WAY smaller to make me want to do it again...

This is how the quilting turned out:

I decided not to go for all-the-same-sized pebbles as I really wasn't sure if I'd be able to keep them the same, so  they do range a bit in size. This is a view of the back - I did a really simple pieced back (Ice Frappe Kona, with a strip of I heart robots toward the bottom).

This is how I quilted the border - I FMQ'd around the circle shapes on the pearl bracelet fabric.

And finally, the whole thing (an inside shot as these were all taken on Christmas morning before I wrapped it - nothing like a last minute finish - well, 10:30 pm on Christmas Eve...)

Lastly I couldn't resist posting some Christmas day pics of my lovely little peeps.
The big boy here is my little guy and the small person is my nephew (who loves his quilt by the way - he rolled over on it for the first time on Boxing day :) )

This is my adorable little girl:

And my biggest boy (sitting on my daughter's Santa present):

And finally a plum-tuckered out small person enjoying her Christmas quilt:

I'm so happy to have these finished and gifted - I'm now adding to my WIP pile again and starting another project. I received Lizzy House's five magical projects book (well, bought it for myself :p) and am starting High Seas.

happy stitching, 

Jess

Bloggers Choice Fat Quarter Bundle

This was hard. Like, really hard. So many beautiful fabrics to choose from over at the Fat Quarter Shop - and I really didn't look through the whole shop I kind of chose my favorite designers/manufacturers. The colours I've chosen are a little outside my usual choices, but I love green, grey and purple so I'm pretty happy with what I ended up with (I think I had about 40 in my picasa album initially, and then whittled it down to these). 


I started with Ruby Star Spring and worked from there.

1. Ruby Star Spring Purple Bee and Lace Stripe Yardage SKU# JG-56100-102A, 2. Hyperreal Garden Flamingo Labyrinth Yardage SKU# HG-7409, 3. Nature Elements Moonbeam Yardage SKU# NE-108, 4. Oval Elements Chartreuse Yardage SKU# OE-907, 5. Pure Elements Cabernet Solid Yardage SKU# PE-400, 6. Pure Elements Verve Violet Solid Yardage SKU# PE-401, 7. Girls World Vibe Magenta Carrie Yardage SKU# PWJP058-MAGEN, 8. Taza Neutral Ribbon Damask Yardage SKU# PWDF110-NEUTR, 9. Heirloom Amethyst Blockade Blossom Yardage SKU# JD48-AMETH, 10. Oval Elements Crocus Yardage SKU# OE-908, 11. Prince Charming Olive Dew Drop Yardage SKU# TP12-OLIVE, 12. Garden District 54" Wide Green Cakewalk Yardage SKU# SAHB001-GREEN, 13. Heirloom Chrysanthemum Chrysanthemum Yardage SKU# JD51-CHRYS, 14. Heirloom Blush Opal Yardage SKU# JD52-BLUSH, 15. Pure Elements Burnt Orange Solid Yardage SKU# PE-406

Another gift finished...

I am so glad I finished this one today - it means I've only got my pebble quilting (and border quilting, and binding?!) to go on my charmed prints quilt, and then I've finished my gift making... hopefully in time for the actual gift giving day. I am starting to doubt this a bit, but my other half has promised me as much time as I need tomorrow to get them done, so it should all be good. I hope.

This is my sister's present (who doesn't read my blog so it's safe to post this before I give it to her).

I used Elizabeth Hartman's Margaret bag pattern - and it is a great pattern. Straight forward to follow, and it works really well. I would totally recommend using a walking foot for sewing the lining to the exterior though - there are LOTS of layers to get through where the closing strap is and even with my walking foot, my machine struggled to sew through all the layers. It's probably a good idea to take more time placing the interlining than I did - it wasn't perfectly centred and so I had to sew through it when stitching the front and back together (rather than have it just inside the seam lines). Not a big problem though - you can't tell at all once it's all sewn together.

The fabric I used is Light Bright by Alexander Henry, and the lining is Kona black. I made the pockets from the exterior fabric, just to make it easier to find where they are (black on black may have been a bit invisible...) The button is a fabric-covered one in the same fabric as the exterior of the bag.

This is the cross-body version of the Margaret bag, and it really is the perfect fit - the bag sits right near my hip (so I'm hoping it fits my sister as well - she's a bit taller than me). It's quite a roomy bag - so I think it will be good for carting all the extra baby-paraphernalia required for a small baby as well as the normal wallet, keys, phone etc.

Off to pebble quilt,

Happy stitching,
Jess

Name Game Swap

Anorina of Samelia's Mum fame is hosting a really fun mini quilt swap early next year.

Here are some of the swap basics:

It will be an international swap and is based on the idea of making a mini quilt for your swap partner, using their name / blog name in the quilt.

The size is up to you, but it should be bigger than a mug rug. I think work on a minimum of 9” x 12”

It will be a blind swap which means that you won’t know who will make your mini quilt, until it’s delivered by your lovely postal service.

Leave a comment here on this blog post if you would like to join. 

Sign up is open until 15 January 2012. Head over to Anorina's blog for more details - but I am totally excited about this swap - and a little nervous, since I have never 'written' on a quilt. But I'm always up for adding to my skill set, so it should be fun!

1001 Peeps - a finished quilt (yay!!)

I am ridiculously proud of this quilt. I absolutely LOVE Lizzy House's fabrics, and 1001 Peeps is no exception - and it leant itself perfectly to this pattern. The pattern is Fussy Framed Fairytales by Kate Conklin, and it was really fun to make. I love the fact that it wastes virtually NO fabric, and the floating squares border is really cool.

I actually deviated a little from the pattern - I started with 10" squares rather than 10.5" squares, which is why my floating squares aren't quite set in the right spots at the corners - although I think they still look okay. Apart from 1001 peeps, I used Kona solids in blush, hibiscus, petal and PFD. I quilted it all over using an echo shell pattern - time consuming compared to stippling (it took about 10 hours to quilt), but I love the result. And the texture of the quilt is amazing. 

The binding is Kona blush, and it's machine stitched at back and front. Finished size is about 50" x 65" (approximately - haven't measured it properly yet...)

So I have my first finished Christmas present ready to wrap - 5 sleeps to go, four more gifts to finish off (panicking much?)

Jess

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

Giveaway Winner!

Thanks to everyone who entered my giveaway. The random number generated was 32, so the lucky winner is Tina, who said:

I'm a huge fan of 1950s-mid 1960s... the silhouette is so flattering on "asset gifted" ladies!


Congratulations Tina, I will be contacting you by email so you can get on with choosing your patterns!