Pillow Talk Swap 10 {Finished}

My partner's cushion for the Pillow Talk Swap round 10 is done! It will be winging off to it's new home (along with a few yummy scraps) later in the week. 

The cushion/pillow top is made using four Schoenrock Cross blocks, following Leila's fab tutorial. I used a lot of Flea Market Fancy by Denyse Schmidt, a bit of Simply Colour and a lot of Architextures (the greens and background fabrics). 

I decided to quilt it fairly simply (since there is so much going on in the patchwork). I've densely free motion quilted straight lines in the background areas, radiating out from the points, and echo quilted just inside the edges of the green areas. This has made the 'flowers' pop really nicely.

The back is more FMF, with a covered zip closure (using the great tutorial on Sew Mama Sew - it works brilliantly every time).

 I'm really happy with how this turned out - I'm now just hoping my partner love it as much as I do :o)

The rest of the week is bee blocks and some secret sewing ;o)

xx Jess

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

Emma's Quilt

I'm really excited to show you my finished Windsor Lane baby quilt today (I'm jumping the gun a bit - it still hasn't been given so if you're looking at this Libby, LOOK AWAY NOW). I'm so bad at naming quilts, this one is simply 'Emma's Quilt'. 

There were a few dramas with the quilting on this one. I got really stuck with how to quilt the outer background fabric, and deliberated for nearly a week about how to do it. Baby Emma was born on Sunday - so Monday I decided to just go for it and get it finished. I got this far:

And then realised it was just completely wrong. I hated it. So I unpicked it. If you've ever unquilted anything you will understand how much I hated it to go through the pain of picking out quilting. Those echo shells only took about half an hour to do. Unpicking? Four hours. Ugh.

I need to trust my instincts more - my initial thought was to do straight lines radiating out in the background areas. So that's what I did second time around - and although I'm not 100% convinced it's right it looks a thousand times better than the shells. It was so much fun to FMQ straight(ish) lines (let's call them organic ;o) ) I'm not sure why, but the texture seems quite different from doing it with my walking foot and it was so nice not to have to stop and turn the quilt! I'll definitely be trying it again.

So, a few obligatory quilty close ups :o) The centre pink star is quilted using light pink Aurifil 50wt, and the remainder is quilted using soft white Aurifil 50wt (as opposed to bright white). The background fabric is Kona PFD (which is somewhere between Kona snow and Kona white) - and the quilting blends flawlessly.

All the quilting is free hand FMQ - apart from the circles which I drew freehand with dissolvable marker first. If I do something like this again I'm going to invest in some circle templates ;o)

The prints I used in the top are all from the gorgeous Windsor Lane line by Bunny Hill Designs for Moda - not at all my usual taste, but perfect for the new mum. The back is from another Bunny Hill range - it's a script print from their Ooh La La line (this photo is sideways - the script actually does run in the right direction ;o) ). I really love how the quilting looks on the back.

Especially that centre flower. It makes me happy :oD

For the binding, I went to one of our local quilt shops (one I'd never been to). I was pleasantly surprised how many modern designers they stock (Lotta and Denyse!!) - and they women who own it are just lovely. I took the quilt with me and the ladies in the shop helped me choose the binding. It wasn't until I got home and looked at the selvedge that I realised it's another Bunny Hill fabric - this time from their Lily and Will collection. So by accident it's a completely Bunny Hill quilt :o) Just as an aside, I'm also quite thrilled - they've invited me to hang some of my quilts in the shop! The quilt shop ladies encouraged me to go for bias binding, and I'm glad I took their advice - I really love the way it turned out. This was my first time cutting my binding on the bias and it worked pretty well (I used this tutorial).

All the photos above were taken before I'd washed it - it's now washed and I plan to take some post-wash photos tomorrow (it is soooo soft and crinkly and I think I love it even more now it's washed!). I've also made a pillow/cushion to go with the quilt (again, photos tomorrow!)

Quilt Stats:

Quilt Design: by me (based on the traditional  Dutch Rose block, with a variation on the centre star)
Size: 40" x 40"
Fabric: Windsor Lane by Bunny Hill Designs for Moda, Kona PFD
Thread: Auriful 50wt in soft white and light pink (for piecing and quilting)
Quilted: by myself on my Bernina.

Phew! If you're still reading, thank you for making through all my waffling! Just as an aside, I'm going to be doing a couple of giveaways in the next few weeks (Sew Mama Sew Giveaway Day and the Quilting Gallery blog hop) so make sure you check back - they're going to be pretty awesome!

xx Jess

Finn's Quilt - a Finish!

I am so happy to have finally finished this quilt. I actually started this one back in March, intending to enter it into the Festival of HSTs - but then decided to enter Outfoxed on the High Seas instead. So it sat as a pile of squares for months. I put the top together earlier this month, quilted it and then had a major binding fail. Following that, I had a bit of a tantrum, and kind of ignored it for a few weeks (in my defence I was waiting on some black Kona to arrive to make the new binding ;o) ). And then yesterday I bit the bullet and put the binding on. And it took all of an hour - a lesson to me to get these quick jobs done and not let them drag on forever while a nearly 8 year old harasses me daily about when his quilt will be done...

So. Some pretty pictures! First of all, I am SO glad I took off the green binding and rebound it in black - it looks so, so much better.

It's quilted using 50wt Aurifil thread, in straight lines following the zig-zag pattern - 1" apart in the coloured section, and alternating 1" with 1/4" spacing in the black (my favorite part, actually!). The black is still covered in batting fluff - I think next time I'll use grey or black batting when making a quilt with this much black. I'm not sure I'll ever get all the fluff off.

 Quilts are so much easier to pose than children ;o)

For the back, I used a huge piece of Bright Light (I think that's what it's called) by Alexander Henry that was sitting in my 'backing' stash. It is a great back for a boy quilt - and it's such gorgeous quality fabric! I used white 50wt Aurifil in the bobbin, and it's blended in really well, so you only really see the texture of the quilting from the back.

Quilt Stats:
* Quilt measures about 52" x 70"
* Designed, pieced and quilted by me.

xx Jess

Sushi!

If you've been following me for a while, you may remember some peeks of the Sushi quilt I made (pattern testing for Sonja of Artisania). Well, the pattern is now done and available in Sonja's pattern shop, and I can reveal my quilt in full at last :o)

If you haven't seen her work before, Sonja is an absolute master of paper pieced pattern designs. She designs some really, really cool stuff (example: a quilt entirely made of paper pieced Converse shoes? yes please!) I went into this pattern as a total paper piecing novice - as in I had done zero paper piecing before this. I was a little dubious about my ability to do it, but shouldn't have been. Sonja's tutorials and instructions are brilliant, and made the whole process so clear and easy.

Probably my favorite part of my quilt is the teapot. I used a lot of Melody Miller fabrics in the quilt top, and love how they give it a bit of texture.

I also love the udon bowl and tea cup. It's a bit hard to see the quilting in these shots but I only quilted the background and left the paper pieced bits unquilted. And yes, that is my (awful) handstitching around the white rice (and on several of the sushi pieces).

 I used my new favorite (and super easy) FMQ motif - echo shells. Takes a bit longer than stippling, but I love the texture it gives, and it is nearly as quick as stippling - and it's easy to do in and around tricky shapes.  I normally use organic bamboo batting (similar weight and drape to cotton batting), but I knew this quilt was destined to be a wall quilt as opposed to a bed quilt, so I used a piece of polyester batting someone had given me. The loft is much, much higher than what I'm used to and it works really well in this quilt. The quilting has given the background a wonderful puffy texture, and the sushi, teapot and bowl kind of 'pop' out from the background.

The quilt in all it's glory:

The inner border is quilted 1/4" away from both edges, the pieced border is unquilted, and then the outer border is quilted 1/4" away from the inside edge - so all the borders are a bit puffy too. The pieced border is almost exclusively Melody Miller fabrics (apart from the pearl bracelet and the empire weave). 

 I really, really enjoyed making this quilt - it was a fun, low stress project and it's destined to be a wall quilt in our kitchen.

x Jess

Outfoxed on the High Seas - A Finished Quilt

I am so, so happy to have finished this quilt. I made the quilt top back in January this year and then had a major brain freeze when it came to working out how to quilt it. After my sewing mojo issues last week I needed a finish to perk myself up a bit - so I picked up my High Seas quilt and did some sketching to work out how I was going to quilt it.

Three days of some pretty hardcore night time quilting (plus most of today thanks to my Mum looking after the smallest child) it's done. Quilted, bound and finished :o)

The pattern I used for this quilt is High Seas by Lizzy House, from her 5 Magical Projects book (all using 1001 Peeps). I used a bunch of different fabrics when making it, including lots of Outfoxed (in the blue/coral colourway), Denyse Schmidt, various Kona Solids, and some Amy Butler. The pattern did call for a border, but I decided not to - I like the way the waves appear to continue off the sides of the quilt.

I decided to try something different (for me) for the quilting on this one. I quilted the light spirals in a feather type motif, and the dark ones with a pointy flower just in the centre, with no quilting out in the 'arms'. It's not perfect by any means, but overall it looks really effective I think.

Apologies for the numerous quilting shots, I'm just a proud mama of this baby ;o)

I'm happy to say this quilt has been claimed by my 5 year old son (yes, the same one who declared last week he didn't want a quilt). Despite the pink in it, he loves the spiral pattern and has spent this afternoon snuggled under it :oD

Quilt Stats:

Design: High Seas by Lizzy House
Fabric: Outfoxed, Kona solids, Denyse Schmidt, Amy Butler
Size: 54" x 63"
Quilted by myself using cream Aurifil 50wt thread

I am entering this into the Festival of HSTs over at Canoe Ridge Creations (its nearly all comprised of HSTs of various sizes)

xx Jess

Rainbow Snail Trail Mini Finished!

I finished most of this quilt back in February, and had half-stitched the binding down and then it languished unfinished on top of our piano with all the other mini quilts waiting to be hung somewhere (yes, we are very lazy in this household ;o) ). I took me about an hour last night to finish stitching the binding (whilst watching a couple of episodes of Spaced - so excited they are replaying this series!) Cue photos.

Despite the miserable, grey day today, this one was a good little model and behaved itself perfectly for the photos.

A couple on my favorite bush in our garden (such a great colour!)

I quilted this one in the grey areas in straight lines following the edge of the rainbow trails, spacing the lines about 1/4" apart.

Quilt Stats:
Design: my own, using snail trail blocks
Fabric: a range of rainbow scraps (including Lizzy House, Denyse Schmidt, Jenean Morrison, Joel Dewberry) Kona Coal, Kona medium grey
Size: 24" x 24"

This quilt is about 90% HSTs, so I'm entering it into the Festival of HSTs over at Canoe Ridge Creations. Stay tuned for entry number 2 later today!!

xx Jess

Finishes at last!

Woohoo! Finally finished these commissioned quilts! I'm really happy with how they've turned out - now just the gut-wrenching wait till my customer receives them, and I find out whether she likes them...

I apologise in advance for the truly awful photos - grey miserable rainy day yesterday and today has meant no good photo opportunities. So they're inside shots.

Firstly, pillowcases (there are two of these, identical) - it has been folded overnight, hence the really bad crease lines in it... They came out really well. I used this tutorial again for them. It is such a straight forward tutorial, and you end up with a really great pillowcase at the end :o)

Quilt number 1 (plus a small person trying to help hold it up! May have had something to do with the whining from the person holding up the quilt ;o) )

Quilt number 2. Upside down now that I look at it...

And a bit of a close up of the pretty stripy binding - I really, really love striped bindings, and this pink/white stripe just pulled these quilts together perfectly.

Each of these measures about 82" x 58". I did take some photos on our queen sized bed this morning (just because it was such a grey, rainy day and I needed to get photos to my customer) and they pretty much covered the mattress. But then we got sun this afternoon, so I did manage to get some outside (much better) photos.

So big sigh of relief these are finally done - now I can start the next batch of projects :o)

xx Jess

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

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

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