Kate's Quilt: A Colourful Journey

One of my oldest friends had her very first baby this summer. I've know her well for 14 years, and of her for longer. I've known her partner for close to 12 years. I didn't stop smiling for at least a week after I heard about the baby, and knew instantly I wanted to make a quilt. I emailed and asked if there was anything they would like or definitely wouldn't like (I definitely went overboard, I made a Pinterest board especially for their baby!), and I was told something colourful and maybe an applique animal. It took me from DC to Houston via Ireland, and Christmas to Easter, to finally come up with a design and fabrics I really loved. In the end simple lines and the rainbow won out! I was majorly inspired by two quilts: Dare to be Different by grapes and hearts; and Don't Worry Be Happy by Carina E-H.

My biggest challenge was deciding on what sort of applique animal to do, I considered owls for a long time, but was won back over to elephants because of the Eames elephant that I know has lived with these two for some years now. My drawing skills are all kinds of atrocious unless it involves a ruler, or a full on doodle, so I totally cheated when it came to drawing up the elephant applique. I bought a giant kid's sketchpad and drew a grid on it, then I found an outline of an elephant on the internet that I kind of liked and placed it over a grid in Adobe Illustrator (though I could have printed it and manually drawn a grid onto it either). Then I just copied from square to square in order to scale up the drawing to the size I needed for the quilt, about 20" x 20".

I made some changes as I went, my elephant has no tail because I wanted to hem it for longevity and I'm really terrible/new at applique and sharp turns and points for a tail were right out. I also made sure his trunk was upwards cos that looked happier to me! I think I got him attached to the backing with no puckers on the first try purely through luck, the sheet I used had a little bit of stretch to it and when I was halfway through I suddenly realised that this could all be about to go to pot. But it didn't, thankfully.

I also tried pin basting for the second time ever, and it went horrifically. Mostly because of the aforementioned stretch in the backing fabric, and a little bit because I need to buy a few more basting pins. So the first few lines of quilting had to be unpicked, then everything unbasted, re-basted with trusty spray and I was on my merry way again. I quilted diagonal lines, the spacing set by the square patchwork section, in a yellow thread. And really, it was very hard to send off by the end.

Don't freak out, some pins had been removed during quilting!

But we took it on a walk early one morning beforehand and had a lot of fun taking photos with it in the Houston sun! If I could change on thing, I would make the binding satin. I searched all the local fabric shops here but I couldn't find a navy satin that was the right colour. They were all too blue, and not dark enough, and the ones that matched had glitter in. So that was just a no. Someday I'll make a baby quilt with a sating binding, and that one will be next to impossible to give away!

Quilt Stats

Size: 42" x 45"

Pattern: My own

Top: Free Spirit Designer Solids

Binding: Kona Solid

Backing: Super soft old white sheet

Batting: Warm & Natural

Linking up, for the first time in a long time, to TGIFF over at Quilt Matters today!

Rainy Day Finish - Spectrum!

Tropical storm Andrea has made it impossible to take pictures outside today. But last night I finished sewing the binding onto what I'm now calling my Spectrum quilt.

I started Spectrum back in March when I was in DC for ten days. I took the leftovers of Paul's Rainbow Skittles quilt and just played around, ending up with a courthouse step layout.

Here it is, half way through quilting.

For some reason I decided it reminded me a bit of refracted light through a prism (from above I guess!). So I decided that it would be nice to quilt lines emanating from opposite corners, spreading out like rays.

You can see it better on the reverse!

You can also see that I have some dragging and puckers. The quilt isn't washed yet and I think they're all small enough so you won't see it once it has shrunk a little. But because I got a little bit of money for my birthday last month I treated myself to a walking foot and a quilting foot for my machine this week!! Yay! Hopefully, once I get the hang of using them my quilting will look much better.

Here's a fancy angle close-up of the quilting and the binding (it's slightly out of focus, it's not your eyes!). I used the Pac-Man fabric I bought for Paul to bind this quilt. In fact he won't let me talk about giving this one away. He's a lot more keen on it than I am. I mostly enjoyed making it from nothing and for nothing. No pressure and total freedom to do what I want. But I find the colours kind of overwhelming on the front on such a small quilt!

It's the picture and not your eyes that are fuzzy!!
(oh and yes, that's a giant transformer on the shelf.)

Though I do think that if you made one out of just one colour and white, and varied the shading of the colour then you could end up with a cool 3D pyramid effect... potentially!

Finally here's one of the fully finished front.

Quilt stats
Size: 40½" by 36½"
Quilt Top Fabric: Jelly Rolls of Moda Marbles in citrus and Bella White
Quilt Back Fabric: Ikea sheet and leftover squares from top
Binding: Pac-Man ghosts

Linking up to Crazy Mom Quilts for finish it up Friday!!

Have a fun weekend :)

Blogger's Quilt Festival: Rainbow Skittle Quilt

Find out more here!!

So I only discovered the Blogger's Quilt Festival last week from Gemma's post over on Pretty Bobbins. It looks like a really fun event and one I want to dip my toes in, so I can learn more about it. I do know that it's on twice a year to coincide with the Quilt Markets and run excellently by Amy at Amy's Creative Side.

I'm entering two of my favourite quilts so far. This post is about Paul's Rainbow Skittle Quilt, which was first posted about here! When looking back on that post I realised that I didn't have very good photos of it all finished. It was packed up to go back to America with Paul too quickly for that, plus it's really dark and wet in Ireland in January. So we went out and took some more this morning!!

A year ago, now, I bought a jelly roll of Moda Marbles in citrus. The colours in there are exactly the kind Paul absolutely loves. But then making it into a quilt dropped down to the bottom of my priorities. Once we decided to get married around Christmas, I knew it would be the perfect wedding gift for Paul. So I got my ass in gear and bought a white jelly roll, and began sewing the colours and white into pairs.

Once I had the big long strips made, I cut them all into squares. Then by rotating each square, which were half white and half a colour, I laid out a design (not before agonising through several). All it took then was lots of aligning seams and pinning and sewing. But once I got a few squares together the happiness of the colours really carried me through the repetitiveness!

The hardest part was keeping it secret from Paul and off the blog. I made an embroidered label for the back, from a picture drawn by Britta who has a blog about her awesome art here. But I just realised that I haven't put mine or Paul's name or the date on the back, so I think that will be my evening handstitching this week.

Originally I wanted to quilt around each of the zig-zags with the machine, in thread the colour of the pieced zig-zag. Creating coloured outlines of zig-zags on the back of the quilt. However, about 10 minutes after starting that (and two weeks sourcing all the right coloured threads) I knew it was not going to work on my home machine the way I imagined. So instead I moved to my embroidery threads and hand-tied the quilt. One knot for ever corner of each zig-zag! All in matching colours.

This was the 4th quilt I made, and the first I planned out by myself instead of using a pattern. I found using Adobe Illustrator really useful for auditioning layouts.

Quilt Measurements: 62¼" x 61½"

Special Techniques: Hand-tying and embroidered label.

Quilted by: Me!

Materials: Moda Marbles in Citrus jelly roll, Moda Bella White jelly roll, Michael Miller Rainbow Stripe for binding, white sheet for backing, Warm and Natural batting, and assorted embroidery threads.

Entered into the ROYGBIV category.

Thank you so much for coming to visit me! I hope you're enjoying the blogger's quilt festival as much as I am :)

Leftover Fun in DC

Disclaimer: some of these photos are from my phone, but to be fair the light is better in DC than in Ireland - so maybe it equalises?!?

I'm back in Ireland. For six weeks of organisation, then the states for the forseeable future will be my home-base. While I was over in DC for the last two weeks I planned on making an Anna Maria Horner figure of 8 scarf. I started but didn't finish. It's very pretty though so I will.

I'm thinking, once I get the technique down, this will be my go-to gift for the ladies in my life!

Other than the scarf, there were no plans. I moved a lot of fabric over. Anything I knew I wouldn't get around to using before the summer. I was feeling a bit overwhelmed with all things crafty (including blogging) so I decided that I'd just play with leftovers from various quilts. Making nothing larger than crib size (which are eminently store-able and easy to give as gifts right now, I'm at the age when all around me are breeding like rabbits).

I started with the leftover blocks from the Rainbow Skittle Quilt. I laid them out on the couch and just rearranged, and rearranged, and rearranged. I took over two-thirds of the couch for two straight days. And I felt really motivated to go for it. So I did. And this happened:

Rainbow Log Cabin Quilt (so inspired...)

I have no pictures of the backing, which is solid lime green with a ladder of coloured rungs in the centre. I didn't get to basting this one. It has no definite recipient, though Paul has said it is staying put with us for as long as possible. I have two possible ideas for who I can give it to, but they'll need to produce something small enough to use it!

Feeling that that quilt top was too linear. I decided to dive into the scraps from Freya's Quilt. All Apple of My Eye from Riley Blake, all different sizes, lengths, shapes. I loved it. But halfway through I knew who this one had to go to; so only this one small peek!!

Sorry 'bout the fuzzy.

This one I pieced, basted and quilted in two days. I love improv. I need to do more. Though right now, I have more structured tops to make. I'm thinking of dubbing this year, the year of learning quilty things, and next year will be a lot more self-indulgent. So it gives me carte blanche to try out tutorials, patterns, and the like to learn and practise techniques. But next year, 2014, is (in my head) going to be all out crazy things from my brain-pan.

Then, having gifted the last quilt in my head, I thought of another person in need of a quilt. And as my friends (who are all quite tech-savvy) possibly might maybe visit here occasionally this is another one I can't shout about. But I can tell you that this line has some really amazing geometric blender-type prints. I kinda want to use only them in something:

Oink-A-Doodle-Moo!!

So, for a couple of weeks where I promised myself a break from anything sewing related so I could stop feeling pressured to sew, it turns out that I also sew for fun and relaxation. I'm in deep, and I love it.

Hopefully once I'm through the jetlag and unpacking, I will be back to sharing slightly more regularly! There's lots to get done and finished in the next 6 weeks, so they can stay in Ireland forever.

:)

ooh, forgot in my excitement of posting! Linking up to Work In Progress Wednesday over at Freshly Pieced!!

My Very Favourite Finish...

(...so far, anyway!)

So, Paul loves colour. Big time. When I saw a jelly roll of Moda Marbles in Citrus last April I knew he would love anything made with those colours! They were like a bag of skittles. Hence, the name of the finished quilt - Paul's Rainbow Skittles Quilt...

When I started, I spent a long time coming up with different ways I could combine the marbles jelly roll with a white jelly roll and design a quilt top. I came up with all sorts of ideas, and along the way discovered that Paul likes geometric and predictable. No utterly random mixes or coloured lines that start to disintegrate or collapse away across the quilt! I had started putting the blocks together (on the computer) into what I referred to as St. Brigid's Crosses (but which probably has a proper block name, that I don't know).

I had even planned quilting around each coloured cross in matching thread, giving a rainbow of outline crosses on the quilt back!

Paul liked it. My parents saw swastikas. I mentioned it to Paul, he saw them too... Not good. And once you see them, they're hard to un-see! So I asked on Twitter, and the lovely Sarah Lawson replied to say she loved the layout and I should go for it! So tempted! But the swastika see-ers around me won in the end. Plus it gave me the opportunity to go in a brand new direction, with all of Paul's requirements in mind, and keep the new design a total secret. Sold!!

Bloggy people have been doing lots of things with chevrons, and invariably I adore them all. I decided a rainbow of zig-zags would look great, and having to line all those pieces up would be a great next challenge for me. In the start I hated pinning things, full on groan and grumble and sigh and strop (I'm 30 - can you tell?) hate. But then I took a dressmaking course and we pinned everything. It forced me through the hate, out the other side, into acceptance. Not love, but acceptance of the need for pinning. Zig-zags would test my resolve!

First I sewed every coloured strip to a white strip. Then I cut them all into squares - this was the most tedious part, by far!

The happy colours helped too!

Once you get through that, each time you sew something together you see the zig-zag forming, and it's lovely. Really satisfying.

Plus, and this will sound corny, but it was lovely to sit down and sew something that I knew Paul would bring back to the States without me and use. Handling it and working with it, taking time over every seam, was filling the quilt up with me (and probably also filling it up with my hair - it falls out all the time).

It was really hard to keep this a secret. I loved it so much. I have a lot of pictures. This was the quilt top in the midst of basting:

I had made a similar plan for quilting this top. Tracing each zig-zag in a matching thread so it would stand out on the white quilt back. I went around and collected all the thread colours I needed. I began with the hardest one, the red in the centre. I got three or four steps into zig-zag. It went horribly. Really horribly. I've never found it so hard to make a straight line straight. This is something I need to figure out.

But I didn't have time before Christmas and the wedding. I had to have it done so I could hide it away from Paul while he was visiting too! So I sat down for two hours with the seam ripper and pulled out my disastrous attempt. I have no pictures, but it is imprinted in my mind. And I decided that I'd try this hand-tying lark I've seen other people blog about and mention... I've a solid collection of embroidery thread colours. And so I set to work. I put a knot in at ever corner of ever zig-zag.

The finished back. Rainbow of threads - I'm guessing, though I don't know that I've left the threads too long? They washed ok though.

Paul had chosen the fabric for the binding himself. More rainbow :) I also made a label for the quilt, though I wanted it to be something special and unique. I was a bit bold, I did a google image search for robot love and traced one of my findings... I'm telling myself it's ok cos I'm not selling it on or profiting from it in anyway... Yeah, I guess. Intellectual property is a weird area. But an important one! I then embroidered over the top of the tracing, adding colour with the threads. I have since done a more comprehensive search, and after trawling through sites in Turkish and Spanish, Britta is the brilliant mind who conceived and drew Robot Love!! You totally need to check out her work :) And the robots are Leroy and Janice!

I love it! They're almost too cute.

Here's a picture of the finished bound quilt,

And here it is all wrapped up and ready to go home!

This is definitely my favourite finish so far. So I'm linking up to Richard and Tanya Quilts and Confessions of A Fabric Addict - because this is definitely my favourite whoop whoop!! And to TGIFF at the Celtic Thistle and to Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts - cos why not, and I love this quilt so much I just want to share :)

A change of plans...

After everyone in my house telling me that the first thing they saw when they looked at my quilt plan was swastikas I got a bit worried. I said as much yesterday. So I posted the plan to Twitter to see if people agreed. One person (Sara at SewSweetness) didn't agree (yay - she was on my side!), but in the end I decided it's better to be safe than sorry with swastikas (especially as my planned quilting may have only highlighted their presence!).

The swastikas are in white - I still like the overall appearance of jumbled yet ordered colour in this design... Oh, quilt front on the left, and planned quilting for the back on the right.

So I re-designed. And I love it! So much it's a secret from the quilt-getter now, and this will be the last picture I post until after they have it.

Aren't the Moda Citrus Marbles just delicious!? (The Fat Quarter Shop has 25% off everything till next Thursday with the discount code 'jingle'!)

I do really love my new plan. But, I think I'm going to have to play with jumbled up colours and geometric shapes at some point, and the leftover cuts from making this quilt may turn out to be perfect... Maybe playing with something like Jeni B's (from In Color Order) Arithmetic Quilt?

Something to ponder in the New Year! Now to get back to the 5 quilts I've to finish this year.

A x

Paul's Rainbow Skittle Quilt - a work in progress

Today I'm working on these:

They're a Moda Marbles Jelly Roll (in citrus) fused with a Moda Bella Snow Jelly Roll.

The last few days has seen these big long strips cut into hundreds of little squares, way more than I need for the quilt I have planned. I think the extras may become another quilt, maybe a crib size...

Squares!

But that's part of the problem - I've no idea how big the current quilt I'm working on will turn out. I don't trust my self-drawn out plans enough, yet. So, before I buy the batting, I need to make the quilt top and measure! Hopefully by tomorrow evening I'll know for sure how big this quilt is.

The quilt is a gift, though the plans have already been given the go ahead by the giftee (important, as I hadn't realised how much he liked order and straight lines and no quirkily placed 'wrong' squares). Maybe I'll go free rein on the leftovers :)

The second problem, and one we'll just have to wait and see what it looks like when pieced, is that while I've designed a series of St Brigid's Cross-like blocks, the white comes together in adjacent blocks to create swastikas.... eep! As I said the design has been given the go-ahead from on high, but once it's pieced I'll have to see how noticeable this is! It's not for show or for selling though, just personal use - maybe it won't matter...??

Stay tuned, we'll have another look tomorrow night!