Blogger's Quilt Festival Spring 2013 - Retro Flowers

If you're visiting from The Blogger's Quilt Festival, welcome to my little corner of quilt-blog land. I started quilting nearly two years ago, and have very quickly become completely obsessed with making quilts. I love participating in the Quilt Festival - it's such a great way to find new-to-me blogs.

Apologies to my regular readers for making you look at this one again, but my entry into the Home Machine Quilted Quilt category is my Retro Flowers quilt I finished earlier this month.

Quilt Stats:
Pattern - Retro Flowers by The Sometimes Crafter.
Fabric - Good Folks by Anna Maria Horner, with Kona PFD for the background.
Quilted - by me on my Bernina, using Aurifil 50wt in colour 2021.
Size - 60" square.

This quilt began back in April last year as part of the Retro Flowers QAL, so it's spent a lot of time languishing in a plastic tub while I worked on other projects, only being pulled out occasionally for a bit of piecing or trimming. But then a few weeks ago I pulled it out determined to finish it, and I'm so glad I did! I love it! It probably helps that Good Folks is the prettiest fabric line ever ;o) I learnt a huge amount while making it too, which is always a huge bonus.

It was my first foray into curved piecing and my first time trying some pretty epic custom quilting on a project - free-form feathers around the borders and triple stitched lines around all the flowers and feathers (inspired by the amazingly talented Lisa, one of my quilty heroes).

This quilt is entirely pieced and quilted with Aurifil 50wt in colour 2021 (my go-to thread). I really love the fabrics I used in the flowers, so I decided to go all-out on the quilting and try some new-to-me motifs. I started by stitching in the ditch around each petal, and then echo quilting about 1/4" away around the petals. I then quilting the feathers around the borders. It was then a process of stitching the triple stitch between each of the flowers, and around the feathers on the borders. It's hard to see in the photos, but each of those straight lines is actually three lines of stitching placed very close together. It gives the most wonderful corduroy-like texture. Most of the lines were done free hand, without marking - although I did mark some reference lines in some of the longer sections on the border.

I used a lot of thread on this quilt - it's a 60" square quilt and I think I went through about 12 bobbins (and nearly an entire 1000m spool of thread). The quilting took around 25 hours (althought it was worth every minute.) Despite the amount of quilting, it still has a wonderful drape.

When I stitched the feathers around the border I left a gap on two of the sides - I think these spots are probably my favorite of the whole quilt.

The back is also mostly Good Folks. The main piece (Small Gathering) is such a large scale print, it works really well as a quilt back. I actually like the back as much as the front, even if I didn't centre it very well ;o)

The quilting has shown up beautifully on the back. I have to say I'm a bit in love with the hand stitched binding too - I think I might be a convert.

Although it's only fairly small, this quilt now sits on the top of our bed, and makes me smile each and every time I walk into the bedroom :o)

I hope you enjoy the rest of the Festival - I'm looking forward to perusing all the entries this time around!

xx Jess

Therapeutic sewing

We're coming to the end of two weeks of school holidays. Two weeks in which my boys have been fighting (with each other and myself) a lot of the time. I hate admitting this, but I'm actually looking forward to them going back to school (and I feel like a really bad mum for saying it). I love my kids beyond compare, but their behavior can be a pain in the butt sometimes. On a less whingey note, I had an unexpected child free day yesterday thanks to Grandparents, and spent a good five hours quilting my Retro Flowers. Not surprisingly I felt a LOT better by the time they came home ;o)

                                   

I'm pretty sure my kids think it's a dance floor ;o)

And it's done! I couldn't be happier with how it's turned out. I've cut my binding (same colour as the background) and I'm hoping to get it sewn on tonight. I don't think I can wait another two weeks (till the Blogger's Quilt Festival starts) for the reveal, so I'm hoping to get the photos done over the weekend and do my ta-dah post next week :o) 

I had a wee bit of gorgeous post arrive today as well - my first month's fabric and pattern for the Amitie BOM. Even better than I was expecting - I will definitely be visiting Amitie in person next time I'm in Melbourne (which might be a while, considering it involves a plane trip...)

Lastly, Catilin at I Don't Do Dishes is having a sale for the entire month of May to celebrate her first year anniversary of opening her shop. Enter coupon code ONEYEAR at checkout and receive 15% off your order. 

She has lots of new goodies in stock - Simple Marks Summer by Malka Dubrawsky

She also has Angela Walter's Right Angle Panel in stock - just in case you wanted to take part in the Make It Right challenge Art Gallery Fabrics is running at the moment (there are some amazing prizes on offer!)

Hoping to be back in a few days with the big reveal :o)

xx Jess

Linking up with Leah at the Free Motion Project.

Flamboyant feathers

For the first time, I'm linking up with Leah today. I'm going to bombard you with more quilting-in-progress (last one before the final reveal, I promise). It's turning into quite an epic quilting adventure, but I'm extremely pleased with the results. I've done a bit more triple stitching. Love how it looks!

I got a wee bit bored after a while, so I decided to start the borders. It's such a pretty quilt I decided to try some free-form feathers around the border. I have done feathers before (on this quilt) but these are way more fun, and I'm much happier with how they're coming out. The first one was awful, and got ripped out - but I learnt from my mistakes (make sure the curves in the foundation line are really gentle!) and the others have come out really well.

 I've decided to continue the triple stitch behind the feathers (as you can see from the tiny section I've done). I'm hoping to get the quilting finished in the next week or so - but we'll see how it goes. I've been quilting for a few hours each night and it's still got a long way to go!

Hope everyone has an awesome weekend.

xx Jess

My new secret (quilting) weapon

Since I started free motion quilting, I've read about various tools and gadgets that make the job easier, but up until recently I haven't used anything to aid my quilting. Recently though we were at our local hardware store in the gardening section, and I noticed some fairly cheap gardening gloves that were really flexible and had great grip, so I got a pair intending to use them when quilting. They sat unused for a few months, but then I thought I'd try them out for quilting my Retro Flowers quilt.

I am so glad I did - the make it so much easier to grip the quilt and move it smoothly when quilting. Problem is, my little girl loves them too, and keeps running off with them (so they're currently missing!) They've been such a help with quilting Retro Flowers - I'm stitching in the ditch around each petal, and then echoing about 1/4" away, which has required a lot of control (and time and patience!!). So far so good (apart from the first one, which will be ripped and redone - it's extremely wonky). I'm going to leave the petals un-quilted so they really pop.

For the areas in between the flowers, I've decided to use a quilting idea I've been admiring for a long time, which is a trademark of the fabulously talented Lisa (seriously check out her blog - she quilted the Best in Show at Quiltcon). It's called triple stitch (as the name suggests, three straight lines of stitching really close together) - time consuming, but I just totally adore the texture it gives. It kind of looks and feels like really chunky corduroy. Since it's fairly small areas, I'm doing it by eye (following the central seam for the first stitch lines) - I'd love to do it over a larger area, but would definitely be marking first.

I've quilted around about 3/4 of the flowers, and only done the one triple stitch area so far, but I'm really loving how it looks :o)

Hope everyone is having a great week!

xx Jess

Temptation

There are a couple of QALs that have caught my eye in the last couple of weeks - both of which are slow paced (which means I can hopefully do them as well as work on my FAL list), and a bit of a challenge.

Firstly is the Steam Punk QAL, being organised by Amy and Jeannette. Steam Punk is an amazing pattern designed by Jen Kingwell of Amitie Textiles - and it is just stunning. My pattern arrived today - and I've ordered templates as well from Sunset Seams. I have absolutely no idea what fabric I'll use for it, and I have a feeling I will do a block here and there when I have time. There is a really great Flickr group set up for this pattern if you're interested in joining, lots of helpful hints and some seriously beautiful blocks popping up.

The other one I'm super excited about is the Tula Pink 'City Sampler' Sew Along being hosted by Sara of Sew Sweetness. I pre-ordered the book a while ago, and I'm eagerly awaiting it's arrival. I spent a bit of time yesterday picking through my *cough* sizeable Tula stash - I'm thinking something along the lines of the cover quilt (rainbow goodness). I'll probably add in a few others as needed, I'm a bit short on purples and oranges. I do have a few spare FQs of Nest fabrics (I've double up in a few cases) so there might be a Tula giveaway in the near future ;o)

And I bit the bullet and pieced my Retro Flowers together last night. Thanks so much for all your feedback, and ideas on how to balance the values and colours. There were some really interesting tips on techniques for looking at value distribution - I might collate them all into a post if anyone is interested? I ended up going with layout 3, with a few swap-arounds.

I think I could have played around with the layout for weeks and never really been completely happy with it. It's interesting how different it looks taken in decent light - the darker ones no longer look too dark relative to the others. I think it's reasonably balanced, and I'm fairly happy with it. I'm hoping to get the borders on, and the back pieced over the next few nights and get moving with the quilting. We've just started school holidays for a couple of weeks, so I won't be getting a whole lot of sewing time - but I'm busting to get this baby done :o)

I hope everyone has a great weekend!

xx Jess

Playing with flowers

Since I finished off Mario last week, I've been on a bit of a finishing things high, so I pulled out my Retro Flowers plastic tub and got working on them again. There wasn't quite as much work involved as I'd thought - no trimming or curves left to do, just piecing the petals for the last seven flowers. And now they're done!

They're on the design wall right now, and I'm playing with layouts. I'm going with the standard 4x4 layout with a border - I just need to decide how to arrange the flowers. I'm thinking the lower layout at this stage - but I think I'll keep playing with it over the next few days until I'm completely happy. 

My design wall isn't well lit, so these photos really don't do the fabric justice - this is my absolute all time favourite collection ever. Anna Maria Horner is a genius with colour. I'm not convinced this quilt was the best way to use some of the prints (they'd be better used less cut up) but I do have more of each print, so there will be another Good Folks quilt on the horizon when I decide what to do with it. Regardless, I'm completely besotted now I've pieced all the flowers. 

I've given myself a deadline for this one - I'd like to get it finished for the Blogger's Quilt Festival in May (so roughly four weeks). It's not going to be huge (60" x 60") so I think I should manage it!

xx Jess

Linking up with Lee