WIP Wednesday: minis galore!

I've actually had my first finish for the year - and two more very near finishes this week. So its been a good de-stress week. I wasn't actually stressed precisely (I knew I had plenty of time to get them done) but didn't like the feeling of lots of projects with deadlines, and none of them done.

My finish was my Name Game swap mini quilt - I sent it today so I still can't show the name but this is it (please ignore my highly technical method of covering the name :p)

I really struggled with what to do for this one - my swap partner is into very country-style quilting (WAY out of my comfort zone!) so I was clueless as to what to do. I don't think I've mentioned that I'm doing the Curves Class over at Stitched in Colour? Well I am (uh, obviously now!) and the scalloped applique part was one of the projects from our first week - modified from a cushion into a smaller panel on my mini quilt. I used my Freebird by Momo fabrics (pretty, but not really my thing... the remaining ones might be a destash giveaway soon...), and actually quilted the name onto the mini. I wrote up how I did it - so you can check out my tutorial if you like (it may give away the name pretty well - but I'm positive she doesn't read my blog anyway!) It's not something I would usually make, but its a pretty little quilt.

I've made a fair bit of headway on my For the Love of Solids project as well. It's fully pieced and mostly quilted.

I was going to hand-quilt the entire thing - but at about 30" x 18" it was going to take forever (I'm VERY slow at hand-quilting!) so I've machine quilted around some of the stars, and I've started hand quilting the rest. Still not sure, but I think it will be a sewing machine cover rather than mini quilt.

I've made another swoon block as well - five down, four to go. I'm kind of enjoying the sporadic-ness of making these blocks, but another part of me wants to buckle down and get them done - I can't wait to see how they all look together.

I put together another mini quilt as well - which I am in the process of hand stitching the binding on. I'm doing the 4x5 bee, and I've chosen to make snail trail blocks. One of our hive members has asked for rainbow colours with dark grey, so these blocks were an experiment to see if it worked (plus its going to be a present for my mum).

Stats for this week:

Finished: 1 - yay!!
New projects: 2

In progress:
Swoon - another block done

No progress:
* High seas
* Pop garden
* Fandango
* Commissioned quilts (2) - waiting on fabric

Hope everyone has had a great week - I'm linking up to WIP Wednesday over at Freshly Pieced

xx Jess

WIP Wednesday: Stars in my eyes

After last week's stuck-in-bed sickness I am really, really glad to have my sewing mojo back. I tried on Sunday but still felt really flat, so it's been nice over the last couple of days to feel well enough to get some things done.

I finished my third Swoon block. This is all three of what I have so far:

I'm pretty happy with how they're going, although there have been a couple of great threads on working with large-scale prints which would have been brilliant to have read before making the centre block... I might possibly redo the big points, but I'll wait and see. I don't hate it, but it bugs me that the stripes don't align in all of them...

I've also started working on my partner's item for For the Love of Solids swap. I'm hoping she'll like it - she's a bit of a silent partner, so I'm working with what's in her mosaic and form. Here's what I have so far:

She asked for stars and her mosaic had similar colours to these (teals and purples, and wine-reds) so hopefully she'll like it. I'm (obviously) using the Sparkle Punch quilt along as inspiration - but I've made my squares 2.5" instead of 3.5" so I can fit more into the space I need to fill. At this stage I'm thinking a sewing machine cover, and I think I'll hand-quilt around the stars... It's a bit over half-way there size-wise.

WIP stats:

* New projects: 1
* Finished: 0
* In progress: 8 (I think...)

I'm linking up to WIP Wednesday and Fabric Tuesday

xx Jess

My first Swoon block

Unless you've been living under a rock for the last week, you're probably aware that Katy is holding a Swoon QAL over at her blog I'm a Ginger Monkey. I tried to resist. I really did. I lasted all of three days infact, before I caved and bought the pattern. 

So yesterday I spent a ridiculous amount of time sorting through my stash trying to come up with 18 fabrics that worked well together. I failed miserably - mainly because I was just choosing fabrics that I love, but that really didn't work well together. So I packed them all away, and then for some reason thought 'perhaps my tufted tweets would work?'. 

Cue manic pulling out of fabric again, finding a few coordinating other prints and laying them out on my bed. I came up with a plan I was happy with very quickly (forgetting how much time I had wasted with my previous stash fondling) and cut and started sewing my first block last night. Forgive the terrible photo - there's a lot of tufted tweets (I managed to get a piece of all except for couches in purple, and seats in sorbet), some Mingle by Monaluna, squiggly flowers by Saffron Craig, eggs by Momo, and lots of Kona solids in coordinating colours (not sure which ones exactly and I'm too lazy to get out my colour card :) )

Here is block one in all its glory (night time photo so not the greatest sorry!):

This one took me hours (like about 6 with cutting time). I'm hoping I get a bit faster at them, but it was so rewarding to have it work pretty much perfectly (not all the points line up but they're close enough!) I'm not sure how square it is either - but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. 

I'm trying to decide whether to make a couple more this weekend (my other half has kindly donated sewing time tomorrow - yay!) or whether to finish the High Seas quilt top.... or maybe both if I don't sleep?

xx Jess