Eithne's Retro Flowers

Hi all! Long time no see, on here! I've been slow on the old sewing front for the last couple of months, and set myself one big finish for Christmas. I started this quilt in summer 2013 after learning to sew curves.

The fabric is all Anna Maria Horner's Field Study, in one of the colour ways. It was bought over two years ago now a brief google of my email tells me! The solids were from Simply Solids stash club that I took part in last year, and I think they just happened to be the colours that had been sent out at the time I started the quilt! I'm starting to reach now, but I think that the background is Kona Butter.

Yes, that is leopard print binding :p

The pattern is Retro Flowers by the Sometimes Crafter. I bought it as part of the Curves Class I did with Rachel over at Stitched in Color.I adapted the layout a bit, so as there is a sort of central medallion to make the best use of the fabric amounts I had to hand. I love the finished product and the shapes of those petals! However, I've discovered that I detest following quilt patterns. Clothing patterns I love, I feel like I'm learning something new with every step, same with bag patterns. But I railed against following a quilt pattern.

I guess I can't tell if this is innate to me or particular to this pattern as it's the only proper pattern I've ever followed. My guess is that it's innate to me, but also that after a good long break I'll probably attempt some other unlucky pattern just to make sure... ;)

This is the photo that shows the truest colours.

I didn't measure the finished size, but it was 61" square before I quilted, but I basted badly and had to trim after quilting. So my guess is that it's now 59"-ish square. And, OH, the quilting! I started with a double grid around the blocks which was so boring to do and I nearly gave up and unpicked it and tried to FMQ my first ever quilt. But it was less than a week to my flight home and that was too much insanity even for me. So I stuck to my original plan, but once I'd added on the planned diagonal lines they looked kind of skimpy, so I started adding more. I probably could have kept going except for deadlines and flights and the need for binding...

Hodge podge backing which I ended up loving!

This quilt is for my sister. It's always been for her, before I even started. So every pin that stuck me, every curve I sewed, then unpicked and sewed again, every instruction I followed badly, they were all done with her in mind. I'm glad I followed some random pieces of advice I got early on and cut all my blocks in one go, mammoth task that it was, but I would have given up if I had to cut in between blocks. Those curves nearly got me. But they taught me in the end, I learned that for me no pins are the curvy way to go!

Eithne loves it! Yay! So much it actually got stuffed into her tiny little suitcase and brought straight back home after Christmas - it's not every Christmas my presents can claim that joy! I managed to snap a few pictures of it in daylight the day before she left, though I was still working on the label so she'll have to brave sewing that on herself. I don't have a good or daylight picture of that yet, so next time or instagram! Promise!

Happy New Year!!!

An Unfinish Saturday

But lots of other people finished their Deep in the Heart of Texas Roadtrip quilts and you should totally go check them out at Cristina's or Melissa's blogs, because they're gorgeous and who doesn't love a bit of weekend eye candy!

Northeast Texas, including Fort Worth, Dallas, and Tyler

I didn't finish mine, even with the linky extension that the ladies laid on this week. I think 2014 is shaping up to be my year of almosts, not quites, and where on earth did my motivation/productivity/day/week/month go. However, I have been enjoying myself making this quilt and that's a first in a little while and so I'm very grateful. This week I've taken my time laying out my squares, choosing colours, lining up seams (not that it's always obvious in the finish...), and even unpicking! Normally, I just say "it'll do!" and steam on. It's been lovely, very zen, I don't know where it's come from and so I'm not going to rush it out the door. Instead I'm relishing it a little, without frightening it away.

Northwest Texas, including Amarillo and Lubbock

I have the two northern quadrants completed. And most of the two southern ones on my make-shift design wall, it's not quite big enough to fit all of south Texas. Hardly surprising, it's a big state!

Western 2/3s of Southern Texas

I only have three of the 10 city blocks from the south made, El Paso, San Antonio, and Beaumont. The city bocks have been a revelation. Such a diverse array of techniques, some I'd never tried before. I'll admit to putting off starting a few out of fear, but I'd forgotten how amazing it feels to accomplish something new! It's been really great, though it hasn't reduced the amount of build up time I seem to need before I'll tackle a new technique. There's a lot of talking myself into things.

L-R: Beaumont, San Antonio, and El Paso

I'm loving how the two finished quadrants look beside each other, and I've decided that this quilt will live in our car and be our picnic blanket from here on out. Lori Whitlock's Lazy Day is just such a happy fabric collection, I'm really glad I used it here.

Northern Texas

I know it's been a while, the one quilt I've finished this summer is currently winging it's way over the Atlantic so hopefully I can post about it soon. And otherwise I've been starting lots of small projects, but completing none. My plan is to be back next week with a little round up of all the fabric bits that have been distracting me, then we can see what sticks over the next few months. And whether the last few months of 2014 will see me in a more finishing mood than up till now!

Cuzco Charm Crossing

In early July I shared the top of this quilt, and estimated that it would all be quilted and bound in a month. Well, it's been over 4 months since then and it's finally finished. Yay!!

Cold, clear, crisp Winter's day.

When I started quilting it I had plans of using bright pink and bright orange thread to do a double grid on the diagonal across the front. By the time I got to the end of making the grid in the pink thread I'd had enough, so I said done and started binding.

Phone pic, but love the binding all rolled up!!

Do you ever start a post and just not know the most coherent order to say things? That's me today, so I apologise if this is a little all over the shop.

The front of the quilt is Charm Crossing, a Moda Bake Shop recipe by Crafty Tammie. I was trying to figure out how to make a charm pack of Cuzco by Kate Spain into something big enough for me to keep and use when I came across the pattern. I have to say I found the making of the hourglass blocks horrifically boring, though Tammie does warn you and give you good ideas on how to make it more enjoyable! But now that the quilt is finished I actually wish I'd gone nuts and made it twice the size...

I love this quilt though. It's already keeping my toes warm on the bottom of my bed at night!

The backing is the solid colours recommended by Tammie to go with the quilt pattern. They're fabulously bold and vibrant. I made up strips at varying widths and then sewed them together like a jelly roll strip quilt for the backing. Adding in a few of the leftover Cuzco hourglasses - the leftover solid hourglasses are all grouped together in a wee bag, and waiting to be made into a baby quilt at some point in the future!

Then I took my leftovers and made scrappy binding!! I love scrappy binding.

I have to say I found the quilting on this really frustrating. The sewing machine here is really reliant on constant speed for regular stitches and even with a walking foot I found it hard to get this quilt going smoothly. It didn't help that my machine backs onto a wall, and that by deciding to make a diagonal grid I ended up with a long roll of quilt going through the machine.

I'm also trying out all-machine binding, as practice. I like to do it on baby quilts for security, and thought I'd practice on this quilt because I'm keeping it so it doesn't matter if there are lumps, bumps, and wobbles. I know it's practice, but I get quite frustrated when the result is a lot poorer than I'd like. However, Maureen Cracknell wrote a post this week which helped ease those frustrations a little, and I'm feeling slightly more upbeat now about practicing and improving.

One more for the road!

I've run out of things to say now, so this is probably a good place to leave it! Linking up with TGIFF over at Never Too Hot To Stitch and Finish it Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.

Cuzco Charm Crossing flimsy

I probably need to find a better name for this quilt, but I like the alliteration! So I already talked a bit about the start of making this quilt a couple of weeks ago. It's taken me longer than I expected to get the top finished. Tammie was not lying when she said that she carried the blocks around so she could square up on the go. But once you have the hourglasses made the rest of the quilt is quite fun. I loved laying out the squares into the Yankee Puzzle blocks, as you may have seen on instagram.

My triangles aren't perfect. Though I was surprised at how many turned out really well. I was a bit stupid, and I pressed all my seams flat as usual, but I think if I had followed Tammie's instructions to the letter (press to one side) then they would have 'locked' in place when I was doing the second sewing to get the hourglass blocks and the perfect points turn-out would have been almost 100%!

I found that the seams got bulky in places but it was all manageable. I have to say that I will be avoiding quilting too near the seams though. It did remind me of why I stopped paper piecing after one go. Does anyone have any tips for dealing with bulky seams that just don't want to travel through the presser foot? Would a walking foot help? I don't think the height of my foot is adjustable though I will get the instruction book out to check... I really want to make a go of some paper piecing but the thought of fighting with those seams just turns me back every time!

It even matches our fancy lights (gifted from the lovely Jan at Paul's work!)

Anyway, I really love this top. It's very cheery. Though the next two larger quilts that I have planned also have an all cream/white background. I think I'm going to have to make some all colour baby quilts to keep my brain 100% happy! Cuzco is so beautiful. I wish I had another charm pack of it to make a really simple patchwork top as well, I never get sick of the colours and patterns!

I've already planned out how I'll quilt this, with my new walking foot!!! Yay! I just have to make the backing now, which I'm going to strip piece and pop in the five leftover hourglasses. That's just the Cuzco hourglasses. I have enough solid hourglasses leftover to make a baby quilt - woop! Second quilt for free :)

Here's one final pic of the flimsy out in the wild:

Also knows as the patch of grass behind our apt block!

I'm a few days late for the Kate Spain party over at Blossom Heart Quilts, but you should totally go and check out the Kate Spain projects made during the blog hop in June! The linky is full of awesome.

I shall be linking this up to WIP Wednesday, hosted this week by Stacey from The Tilted Quilt, tomorrow when it opens! I reckon it will be at least a month before this baby gets quilted and bound. I'll pop up a picture of the back if I get it made today! (The back totally didn't happen yesterday, I got waylaid by another migraine.)

Yay for something finished!

WIP - Cuzco Charm Crossing Quilt

Hi! I got distracted over the weekend looking at the winners of the Blogger's Quilt Festival and the finalists of Stitched In Color's Festival of Strings and never did put up a Sew Fresh Day round up. But it was worth it for all the pretties I got to ogle instead!

Another exciting quilting happening began this week too! Alyce at Blossom Heart Quilts has organised a Kate Spain Blog Hop. There are loads of great bloggers scheduled to show off the lovely things they've made with any and all of Kate Spain's collections! Alyce kicked it off on Monday with a two-part interview with Kate herself. But it also involves two linky parties for things we've all been making with our Kate Spain fabric this month. Go check out the announcement page to read all the details!

This has been just the kick I needed to get started on a quilt I've had planned for at least six months now. I bought a charm pack of Cuzco last summer. I absolutely loved the fabric but couldn't afford yardage back then and had no idea what I would make if I did have the money. So I did my default-can't-live-without reaction and bought a charm pack.

Teamed with the bella solids recommended in the pattern! They
match so well :)

I need to work on my default reaction, because it's really hard to make a quilt with one charm pack. After a few months of searching on and off, I found the perfect quilt pattern. Tammie's (of craftytammie) Charm Crossing quilt at the Moda Bake Shop!

I have gotten started this week. I have not gone far, mostly because my brain was disengaged yesterday when I got all the fabric out.

Can you spot what I did wrong here?

As I sorted the charms out so as each coloured one had a white partner, I paired them with wrong sides facing... Cos it was prettier! God love my brain. Still though, they do look lovely!

Anyway, it meant that by the end of yesterday this was all that had happened.

Today I began my chain-stitching, and methodically fixing my mistake (though I get to ogle Cuzco again as I go - silver lining!!).

I can't wait to see the other Kate Spain projects that get linked up to this Blog Hop! And I'm really enjoying reading a little bit of Kate Spain every day too. This is a good start to the summer!

Oh, and there's a button to be grabbed too, if you decide to take part in all the awesome!!

And not to forget, but I'm linking up with Work in Progress Wednesday over at Freshly Pieced :)

Does anyone know how to make the WIP button be a link inside the blog? Like that one right there, just above this. I can make the ones in the sidebar be links, but am utterly lost if it's within a post!!

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 :)