Super Mario Quilt {Finish}

Thanks so much for all your words of encouragement yesterday. It must have worked, because I'm happy to say that today's marathon quilting effort (complete with extremely sore arms) paid off. Mario is done - a day early! Which means I can make some attempt to get the house sorted tomorrow before the chaos of ten small children arriving on Sunday :o)

I am so relieved he's finished - I had visions of finishing up the binding in the early hours of Saturday morning (thanks Susan!). But it went fairly smoothly today, so it's all good.

For the design of the quilt, I used the block Angela designed for her Mario QAL - but scaled it up to 3.5" squares. I actually strip pieced it in the end rather than using squares, so it came together pretty quickly, without too many seams to match. With the borders added, he's finished up at about 65" square - perfect snuggling size for my soon to be 6 year old little boy!

Please excuse the black seeds I accidentally knocked onto the quilt - didn't notice until I was looking through the photos tonight!

I'm really pleased with how Mario has turned out. He's fairly extensively quilted (aside from the borders) with various FMQ designs. Straight lines and pebbles for the most part, although I decided to try a maze-ish kind of design in the background, which I think looks pretty cool. It's not perfect (and I nearly stopped a short way into it) but overall I think it's effective if you don't look too closely at some bits. Normally I quilt myself into corners and have to stop and start - but surprisingly with this design I only did it once. My little boy has been asking for a maze quilt for a while, so I think he'll enjoy tracing his way through this one :o)

I worked entirely from stash on this one (aside from the backing). The solids are all Kona cotton, apart from the brown for the shoes, which is a shot cotton (I think?). I ran out of the background fabric part way through (I thought the yard I had would be enough - whoops!), so I've used two different kona aqua fabrics (Ice Frappe and another - not completely sure which one!) If I'd had more time I probably would have ordered a bit more of the Ice Frappe, but I think it looks okay anyway :o)

The quilting is all Aurifil 50wt, matched as closely as possible to the fabric. My recent win came very much in handy for the red, dark blue (Kona Ocean) and yellow buttons. I'm beginning to acquire a stash of Aurifil that challenges my fabric. Ok, maybe not quite, but I have thread in just about every colour I'll ever need ;o)

I think my favorite part is his ear :o)

And the back is perfection - confirmed by master 8 (who incidentally thinks it is a very cool quilt, and has asked for Luigi for his bed. So I think I've done well!) I would have liked to use the same red as the border for the binding, but I ran out. I ended up using a print from Tufted Tweets by Laurie Wisbrun, which works quite well and is in keeping with the white/red spotty mushroom theme on the back.

Needs to be washed still, but I can't wait to pop this on the birthday boy's bed while he's asleep tomorrow night - I really hope it's all he dreamed it would be.

xx Jess

Linking up to Le Challenge

A Lovely Year of Finishes

and the Finish Along 2013

Panic sewing

**Architextures Giveaway post here**

I've made a fair bit of headway on the quilting of Mario over the last couple of days (thanks to Mum looking after the smallest one yesterday).

I'm keeping it fairly simple - mostly FMQ'd straight lines, with some wavy lines on the skin part, and pebbles for his hair. I'm definitely a FMQ straight line convert - I love not having to turn the quilt. Oh, and you can see a peek of the backing at the bottom of the photo - perfect or what? There might have been a small squeal in the shop when I found it - and there was just enough left on the bolt. It was meant to be!!

Slightly panicky about getting it finished by Saturday - and the little man has requested that I go down and put it on his bed while he's asleep on Friday night, so he can wake up snuggled under it on his birthday :o). So really, not much time to finish it up - and there's a lot of quilting left to do. Just as well Thursday is my child-free day - hoping my arms are up to an all-day quilting marathon.

Wish me luck?

xx Jess

Linking up to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced.

Confession

You might remember my self-imposed fabric ban that was part of my new years sewing resolutions? It's been really, really hard (I think my fabric buying problem could actually be classified as an addiction...), but I've been doing well until a couple of weeks ago. I've been using lots and lots of my Architextures prints (from Sew Me A Song) in quite a few different projects, especially the lower volume neutral prints. And got a bit panicky that I was starting to run out of a few of them (is it just me that does that with fabric?).

So I ordered some more from Sew Fresh Fabrics and they arrived yesterday. Low volume awesomeness.

All yard cuts, so I won't be running out any time soon - and I snuck a yard of the Button Up print from Little Apples in as well ;o)

I'm hoping I won't fall off the wagon again for a while :o)

Sewing wise, I'm making great progress on Super Mario - the rows are all pieced, I just need to finish sewing them all together. It's looking fairly good in terms of getting it done before next Saturday, thankfully. He's around 52" square at the moment, and I'm trying to decide on borders at the moment (I have enough black and red so I'll probably go with one or both of those.)

Hope everyone has had a great week!

xx Jess

April Goal {A lovely year of finishes}

So far this year, my intentions of having a year of finishes has been a big fat fail. I'm hoping that will change from now on though - starting with April. I'm hoping Q2 of the FAL will also be a bit more fruitful than Q1...

My middle child turns 6 on the 13th of April - and when I was asking him the other day what he'd like for his birthday his response was 'a Mario Skylanders Ninjago quilt'. My heart melted just slightly when he said this - although it was closely followed by panic (not sure I'm up to a Mario/Skylanders/Ninjago mashup quilt). Once I'd talked him down to choosing just one (Mario) though, things were looking achievable. 

So, I've pulled a stack of solids and I have a plan to make a big-ish Mario (I think it'll be around 60" square). Oh, and a Bowser cushion apparently. We'll see how that goes.

Given the fact that I have a deadline on this one, I'm pretty sure it's a safe goal for April in the Lovely Year of Finishes :o)

xx Jess