Updates

Ok, I have a confession to make. I haven’t gotten very far with my HST Solids Quilt. Actually since my last post I haven’t gotten anywhere at all with it. It’s still sitting there on the top shelf, nicely folded together with its pretty damask gray backing.

Like I said earlier, I think it’s the thought of quilting diagonal lines which is scaring the pants off of me. So I do the next best thing in such circumstances –  procrastinate! Ehehee.

I did, however, attempted to a little modification on my Fairy Tale Friends Quilt. Remember I had some reservations about the white spaces? Coincidently I also had a suggestion from Omong Mak Long  (Hello Mak Long! Thanks for visiting all the way from Dallas! And thanks for your comment [yours too MamaD!] – I will definitely keep that in mind the next time I mess up a quilt top). Anyway, what I did for this quilt was just make a bunch of little yoyos which I then sewed into the middle of the white blocks. It’s not much, but any little bit helps. 

Oh, and I also added a colourful border to jazz it up. What you think?

Those spots are yoyos! Here, take a closer look:

Cutesy!

Yes, I'm yet another crooked photo...

Now all I need is to do is find some suitable backing fabric and then I can start quilting yippee! Which could mean (if I don’t find anything suitable in my stash) some fabric shopping – double yippee! Or not? I don’t know about you, but often times when I go fabric shopping for a specific project I end up with a bundle of everything else BUT what I’d been originally looking for. Whoopsies.

May has been a terrible blogging month for me. I haven’t even been checking my email let alone post anything. Part of the reason I think is that I haven’t been very good at taking photos of my projects, and you know I loathe to post without pictures. So, I’m thinking I might do a post every day until the end of the month, just to challenge myself a little. Hihihi. Let’s see how I do. Of course this may mean a lot of crappy phone photos, but most of my photos are crappy to begin with anyway, so what the heck.

See you tomorrow!

Uninspired?

And we are well into May!  It's madness how time just flies by - especially the older you get ... eek! Yes, so on that rather sombre note, on we go with all things fabric, haha!

Let's see. My sewing seems to have been done in fits and bursts lately. I'll be sewing for a couple of days, then a week will go by without the machine even being on. And then, there'll be another couple of days of me sewing like a demented woman.

I have actually finished my solids quilt top, so that's a big yippee-doo! to me :-)

Here's a couple of rather awful photos, sorry! 

I've got the backing fabric all picked out and pieced for a while now (I chose a really sweet grey damask print from Riley Blake), but I've not started with the quilting yet. I think I'm secretly avoiding it, because I really don't know how I should quilt it. Any ideas? It seems to call out for straight line quilting, but you know what my straight line quilting is like most days - and this will need diagonal lines too - so I'm pretty much terrified!

I've also started another charm pack quilt. I used a pack of Fairy Tale Friends - a line I've been hoarding from a couple of years ago.

I used a lot of teal for this one - co-ordinating squares with HSTs.

This is the top finished - but I'm not exactly thrilled about it. Too much dead (white) space

What to do?

As you can see, inspiration much needed hereabouts.

Hope everyone else's creative juices are flowing better :-)

Happiness is...

... when all your points line up :-)

Hope everyone had a happy weekend!

Scrappy Trip Around The World

Finished!!!

I can tell you, I'm SO excited about this. Are you ready for photos?

A grand total of 1296,  2-inch squares.

I had a hard time trying to photograph all of it without having someone hold it up. And I couldn't take the shots outside, as it's been raining a lot. So the best I could do was drape it over the sofa:

Then I needed a model for some perspective, so I grabbed the nearest thing that was passing by:

"I'm not Milo!"

A closer shot of some of the squares:

I think I made the right choice for the backing too - a sea of calm to balance the happy chaos of the scraps on the front. You can also just make out the swirly quilting on the back:

Making this quilt was truly a labour of love. If you asked me if I would attempt another one, I wouldn't say yes. I would say DEFINITELY yes!

Happy quilting, and have a great week ahead :-)

UFO Progress

I know I've started a new solids quilt, but a few days ago decided to tackle my Scrappy Trip Around The World.

So armed with determination I hunkered down and got to quilting.

This quilt measures 6 feet square, so there was a LOT of upper arm muscle involved!

Also a lot of quilting sessions involved. I remember complaining marvelling at how long it was taking to quilt this.

Is was my first time quilting swirls on a real quilt, so I had little swirls, big swirls, uneven swirls, eliptical swirls, 'is-this-supposed-to-be-a-swirl?' swirl...

And then to my great delight, I came to my last swirl.

Squaring up:

For the binding, I went with a solid navy blue, to even out the scrappiness of it all.

By this time I was keen to finish it off quickly, and considered machine binding it, but then a movie came on the telly, so I got comfortable on the sofa with my needle and thread :-)

I'm down to the last few feet of stitches, and then I'll have a finish to show - yay! But before I go I just have to share this next photo. It was taken after quilting, when I had lain it down on the floor for inspection. Milo sauntered in to inspect and immediately made himself at home :-)

Milo approved!

Have a great weekend!

Solids Quilt Progress - A Worldless Post

Trimming

Piecing

Layout

Floral Patchwork, A New Project and A UFO

It's been a busy start to the month. April kicked off on a high note for me - I think I've been bit by the sewing bug! I've managed to squeeze in time in the sewing room every day, sometimes half and hour, sometimes a couple of hours... so I've a few things to show :-)

You may remember that some months ago I pulled out some floral prints from my stash.

I was wanting to make an all floral patchwork quilt.

The squares were cut in bits and pieces - a little here and a little there.

I finally got around to piecing them all together:-

130 4" squares in total.

Soon to be basted and quilted :-)

And then I decided that I wanted to make a solids quilt. So out came my collection of solids...

... not so much choice, but perhaps just enough variety?

I made a start anyway, hee! 

And finally I picked up some backing fabric from Ikea:

This one is for my Scrappy Trip Around the World from waaaaay back when, which I finally got basted.

Let's see how long this bug sticks around :-)

Have a great week ahead everyone!