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!

Amarillo, Deep in the Heart of Texas QAL & Giveaway

Hi all,

Welcome to thREDhead! I'm Aoife, and I'm from Ireland. I've been living in the US on and off now since 2011, and my husband and I moved to Texas at the start of this year. So far we've been loving it, how could we not with how welcoming and friendly everyone is down here! First things first, I'm sure you've no idea how to say my name, well there's a video on my About to page to help with that. No time for the video, it's like Eva, but with an 'f', 'eefa'. If you get a chance after the blocks and the giveaway and want to have a look around, then I recommend maybe having a look at my crazy English paper piecing attempt at a Farmer's Wife Quilt and the wedding quilt I made for Paul!!

So, Amarillo. It was established as a town in 1887 as a stop on the railroad they were building from Fort Worth to Denver City. Originally called Oneida, the name was changed to Amarillo (Spanish for yellow) because of the local yellow wildflowers that grew throughout! Amarillo is the largest city in the Panhandle, and what I think is particularly cool used to be the Helium Capital of the World.

There are three quilt shops in Amarillo. Quilted Bliss, Sisters' Scraps, and Pam's Quilting Corner! They all offer a good range of classes and fabrics, and are all a bit different from each other. They're all really lovely, and very ready to help with anything you might want. The Top of Texas Shop Hop is taking place in July and you can have a look at their newsletters for more details, but it looks like lots of fun and comes with prizes!

Other places on my wishlist to visit in Amarillo are Palo Duro Canyon - totally stunning piece of geology and nature! Texas' answer to the Grand Canyon, and the Lighthouse Rock is the inspiration for my second block option today. Stanley Marsh 3's crazy art installations around Amarillo would definitely also be worth a peep - like the Cadillac Ranch and the mock traffic signs all about town. Amarillo is also on Route 66, something I know my in-laws are planning on doing in the next two years! These are just my highlights, Amarillo has lots of museums, theatres, and restaurants too - enough to fill a holiday of any length!

As you may have guessed already, I've got two blocks for you to choose from today. First I designed a yellow rose block, as Amarillo means yellow in Spanish and Amarillo is apparently known as the Yellow Rose of Texas! However, lots of you took Colleen's Tyler block as the perfect opportunity for a yellow rose block. And I can't blame you - her block was so art deco and gorgeous! It didn't require much push from my brain as I'd completely fallen in love with the pictures of Lighthouse Rock in Palo Duro Canyon. So, you get to make a choice - rose or rock, paper piecing or traditional block!

First up, the Amarillo Rose Block! This one is paper pieced. I often find that whenever I go back to paper piece something I need a refresher on how to go about it, and in fact when I needed to learn how to paper piece this is the youtube tutorial that got me through! This is a pretty straight forward block, the same quadrant four times, just rotated to give a swirling effect. Here are some photos I took along my piecing journey as I made my block!

Your second option is the Amarillo Lighthouse Block! This one is pieced regularly, though you have the option to strip, crazy, or improv piece the fabric for the Lighthouse rock itself. In my block I strip pieced using orange and yellow fabrics, to give the illusion of layers within the rock (that's my inner geologist coming right out there!). The rest of the block is put together as strips, giving you the option to give the background sky a lovely ombré graded colour if you like. I've also gone for a 1970s/hipster-ish thin white photograph frame on the block. I thought it would be fun if it looked like a family holiday snap since this is a roadtrip after all! However, the instructions have options if you don't want to do that!

If you have problems with any of the instructions, or just any questions at any point then drop me a line. You can catch me here in the comments, or on instagram, or by email!

And last but not least, Aurifil has generously offered a pack of designer thread (like the one pictured), a thread color chart (want!), and then a sample pack (a 5 pack of different weight threads in the same color). Jeni Baker's thread is pictured here, but for the giveaway the designer thread is a mystery!!!

If you want to be in with a chance to win this awesome loot, then just leave a comment here - let me know where you live or where you're from, be it Texas or not, and where would be the first place you would want to bring someone who came to visit you!? Paul and I eventually want to do a belated honeymoon roadtrip ourselves in America, so this might get us some stops to add to it - but if you're not in America, we have the rest of our lives to get to you too!

The giveaway will close on Wednesday at 9pm CT, and I'll draw a winner from the commenters at random. If you're a no-reply blogger and I really can't find you, I'll draw again! Otherwise, good luck!!

UPDATE June 18th 9pm CT: giveaway is now closed to entries!

Emerging

I have been beating myself over the head for a few weeks now for not posting more often, for not sewing every day, for not having a finished project or even a started project to share with you. I thought last week would be the week when I would catch up with all my sewing and, of course, last week I was sick, then I got better, then the fire alarm on our 10ft ceiling decided to run out of battery and start to shriek at 130am, every 40 seconds, for the next twelve hours. Somehow Paul got back to sleep. I couldn't. So I decided to do something I've been putting off until I felt more caught up, on track, on top of everything. I started to do the Wardrobe Architect over at Coletterie.

Sleep deprived, grumpy, and with a stonking headache (considering there wasn't any alcohol involved) I realised last Friday that I need to let go, lighten up, and do things as I come to them and not force myself to do them to some crazy internal schedule that a clearly batshit dictator/drill sergeant came up with.

Something I put together on Polyvore, which I don't really understand
but do like quite a lot. I am looking forward to when Spring has sprung.

So I'm taking this week off. This is my week of fun, of whatever, and next week I'll add in little bits of more time-sensitive projects again. But in small doses, and with no invented hard deadlines.

So here's where I am. I finished the top of the Riley Blake Challenge, the night before the deadline. I still haven't finished the quilting. There are a lot of threads to bury (first time burying threads - how fancy!), and after forcing myself to work on only this for too many days in a row, until I started to actively avoid the machine (hello, awful daytime reality television) I have stopped. It is now pinned on a wall, until I mellow towards it again and return happily to bring it to a finish.

I will eventually show my inspiration and explanation behind this!

The one thing I have been doing is doodling, making quilt plans, loving them, hating them, colouring them in, and generally enjoying the possibilities. The other guilty pleasure has been pinterest - no required interaction, and lots of possibility.

On the cutting table this week, are some leftover Amy Butler WOF strips, the remaining x and + blocks waiting to be pieced, skull fabric I won almost a year ago paired with an AMH Pastry voile (bought before I knew what voile was), and a stack of solids to be cut up so I can practice my new-found appreciation for paper piecing with last years forgotten Lucky Stars blocks!

I don't know if it's clear, but my unused, almost 1 year-old,
darning foot is out - this week I shall try my hand at some FMQ!

I have a new needle in my machine, and new blade in my rotary cutter, and a new found enthusiasm for doing what ever the hell I please! If I wasn't six months or so late, I'd be joining Made with Moxie on her Selfish Sewing Week - here's to fresh starts :)