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

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

Charmed prints quilt top

I have been sewing this one madly to catch up with the Charmed Prints QAL and I managed to get it sewn together and put the border on today. I'm really happy with how it looks (despite the pinwheel blocks being a bit off centre and small - but they look ok-ish)

I think my sister will like it for her baby boy... I hope she does anyway!

Happy stitching,
Jess

WIP Wednesday: Charmed Prints QAL

I am thoroughly sick of pink! I decided to split my Children at Play blocks into two groups and make two quilts (a baby sized, and a larger single-bedish sized) - I finished the larger one a few days ago and made a matching pillowcase (blog post here). I have quilted one of the doll quilts and its ready for binding - but being typical me, I have started another project before finishing it off... plus I really needed a break from all that pink!

Last night I chose my fabrics and cut my charms for my Charmed Prints QAL quilt - and started making my feature blocks. I am making it for my 8 week old nephew for his first Christmas, so I've deliberately used boyish sorts of colours. I've decided to make a baby sized quilt (with 36 squares) - and I've made two of each of the feature blocks:

 Some of these photos are shocking - they actually are all pretty square (but need a bit more pressing so they sit flat). I've really enjoyed making them and have a few more sampler-type quilts in mind for my next few projects as I really need some practice with piecing triangles. They all worked reasonably well, except for the pinwheel ones - despite a few efforts they still only measure 4 1/2" instead of 5", so I will pop a narrow border around them before sewing them into the sashing. I have run out of white Kona for the sashing too - so instead of 2 1/2" between each of the square, I'm going with 1 1/2" (I have lots of strips I cut for a project that never happened...) - which will only cut the size down by 5" in each direction so it should still work ok.

This is all my charms laid out ready to sew together:

There's a bit of tufted tweets, some Pop Garden, Saffron Craig, Robots, urban zoologie and the feature squares have a bit of Denise Schmidt fabric I picked up at Spotlight (they are so cool! I wish I had grabbed some more!)

I've decided to do the Summer Sampler QAL (a bit late I know, but I love the look of the blocks!) and I have plans to do a Japanese-style block sampler quilt - and I'll be posting a tutorial for each block as I go if anyone would like to join me? Possibly my first QAL...

No Progress:
*1001 peeps quilt
* Pop garden quilt
* Fandango quilt
* Doll quilts

This weeks stats:

Completed: 1
New projects: 1
In progress: 8

Happy stitching!
Jess