{quilt} while you're ahead

56/2011 ** table runner **

My sister moved into a new flat.

New house, new job, new town.  Can't be easy. 

Especially when you're surrounded by boxes.  When you can't empty the boxes because your bookcase is not up yet and you can't put your bookcase up because there's no room to do that with all the boxes around. (Yeah, you figure that one out please)

Anyway, her kitchen table is my old studying desk, rescued by her from some garage or other.  I chose it.  It's old.  And one day I'd like to find a way to bring it here.  In the meantime it's surrounded by boxes in my sister's new flat.

Sigh.

So you see, they both deserved something new.

These lovely fabric have been in the stash for a while and they're soft and pretty and I know they will go well with my sister's things.  Once they're out of the boxes that is!!

The runner is modelled here by my coffee table... but Sis, it's on its way to you already!

53/2011 ** quilted pillow **

Girls like No 2.  He's handsome and likes to put on a good show for them... (god help me in a few years time).  As a consequence he often gets invited to girls' birthday party.  He pretends to mind, but we all know he doesn't.

This fact allows me to indulge in sessions of unashamedly pink quilting and sewing, and let's face it, I don't get many of those around here!

This pillow will be handed over this afternoon

to a sweet sweet girl (who's also in my knitting club at school).

I'm just hoping No 2 will behave himself at dinner surrounded by pretty ladies in party mood.

As if.

(All the fabric came from my stash, the front is quilted on some thin wadding to give it more body.  The back has an envelope closure) (The stash appears untouched still, I swear it's self-generating; I've been of a fabric diet since ... forever...)

50/2011 ** hexagon quilt **

or more likely pillow... or place mat...

I'm not sure where I'm going with this... a part from the ironing board that is...

It's a bit premature to call it a quilt, but this is meant to be a quilting blog and before you call my bluff I'd like to reassure you that a little bit of crafting has happened behind the scene.

A little hexagon at a time...

We're back home and enjoying the weather and the last few days of the holidays.

See you in a while.

44/2011

I have a bad shoulder.  It hurts.

Something to do with my tendons and too much knitting/crochet etc.  So guess what?  No more knitting and crochet for me for a while.

It's hard not to do anything.  I find watching tv without keeping my hands busy especially frustrating!  I'm so close to finishing a cardigan too... 

Aaaargh.

The only thing I've been able to do is the only thing I can't show you.  I was asked by Sew Hip to design a small baby quilt and it's almost ready to post to them... Exciting but, again, frustrating I am not able to share!!  I'll let you know when it'll be published, at the moment I don't know either.

One thing I've let myself do - slowly and not too much of - is a little bit of hand sewing:

Hexagons and English piecing have been on my list for a while and it's been fun rummaging through my stash of scraps.  

Hand sewing is a totally different ballgame though.  Extremely satisfying and frustratingly slow at the same time. (Or maybe it's just me).

I love the portability of the project too even if it does require a lot of preparation beforehand! 

Will I create a huge piece? probably not (but who knows).

On a totally different subject I finished reading Andrea Levy's "the long song".  Beautiful.  I totally recommend it.  Beautifully written, at times funny, excruciatingly sad, brutal, tender...

Tomorrow is the day of my test - keep your fingers crossed for me.

29/2011 ** tiny mat **

The boys are back in school.  

Phew.

I whizzed around all morning re-building the house and trying to make it look like it'd been take over by  squatters.  We haven't had the most relaxing of half-term weeks.  Illness, bad weather, cranky children. It wasn't brilliant.

After a few hours I sat down at my desk and knew that for my sanity's sake and everybody else around me later on this afternoon, I had to do something.  Make something. Sew something.  Anything.

A little mat was born.

For no particular reason.

And I feel better already.

 

11/2011 ** place mats 2, 3 and 4 **

The 2011 place mats are almost done.

I've let the children choose their main fabric and listened to their creative direction... always a risk (never work with children or animals...).  Let's just say I had to put the brakes on certain fabric combinations... scary stuff.

No 3 chose the football fabric

and I decided to include his name.  I've been toying with the idea of letters/text for ages and I think there's more mileage in it.   Random loops are fun and quick.

No 1 wanted a grown up mat.  He chose the stripes (old Amy Butler) and I added the denim (cut out of an outgrown pair of jeans...).  

It needed the red border to bump it up a bit.  Dense quilted lines finished it off.  He's happy.

No 2 went for the guitar fabric (a perfect example of cool fabric for boys, if only there were more out there!) and unusually for him let me do what I wanted. (Let's just say that he knows what he wants and how to get it...)

I had fun with this one.  Me and the 'blue/green scrap box.  

All the men of the house are sorted.  

Me next.

6/2011 ** placemat 1 **

Every January I like to make new placemats for the family.  We use them everyday and they get washed every couple of days so in 12 months they get pretty battered. I should just throw the old ones away but I'm strangely attached to the things I make and end up keeping them 'just in case'. (a.k.a. hoardness desease)

Anyway, the first placemat was claimed by Mr M. 

Some scraps, some favourite fabrics, some sort of log cabin design and abstract patchwork.

(I keep 'not' buying fabric and the stash is not getting any smaller... sigh) (No 3 always 'keeps not doing something... I love it when he says that...)

I had originally started this for me.

Perfect for my pink coffee cup.  

***

Hey, stop a second what you're doing and listen... can you hear it?

Yeah, me neither.  Nothing.  No sound.  Not even the radio.  

Apparently it's called silence.  

The boys are at school you see... I forgot what it sounded like.

Shhh...

* 144 * ** basket weave quilt **

Ok so the fog has lifted.  Two children have made it back to school - reluctantly, it has to be said - and one is at home but on the mend. I feel much better too, all the medication of yesterday has kicked the virus into touch and although I regret not having bought Kleenex shares I can cope.

Phew.

I can show you a new quilt for the boys now. 

Moving on... one of my end of year (and why not?) resolution is trying to use up as much of my current 'stock' as possible, be it wool (more of this to come) or fabric... and let me tell you, there's plenty of both in this little room!

This tied perfectly with the desire to make the boys a laptop quilt each and finally throw away those ghastly fleecy blanket they have had since they were little... horrible synthetic things.... shudder.  I dove inside my stash (not as figuratively a maneuver as you think) and found a couple of rolls of cotton from IKEA... I then dug-out of my wadding box (full of smallish pieces I'm unable of throw away) and got to work.

I had never 'quilted-as-you-go' before and it worked out ok.  The fabric had printed stripes so I places a square of wadding on a square of fabric (1/4 bigger all around) and quilted along the printed lines.  I then spray basted the fabric for the reverse onto the already quilted front and re-quilted in the ditch along all the squares in a grid.  Hope this make sense..

I tried to keep the 'mostly blue' squares going vertically and the 'mostly green' horizantal... the orange square was a last minute whim and it's my favourite one.  The boys have complained about the two pink strips (horror!! pink!!) but they have to get to more in touch with their feminine side so that's ok!

Orange border...

And a good hot wash and dry.  

No 2 has claimed it already so that's a compliment, no?

* 140 *

Randomness.

I'm still alive.  Not frozen but almost.  We haven't really had much snow either.  Just below zero temperatures that have caused Lilli-the-hound to sit on a radiator as soon as she comes in from her walk.

She looks a bit peaky but her paws are probably frozen solid.  The choice is arctic cold walk or sauna bed in the lounge... it's tough being a dog in this day and age.

And it's not easy to be a dog owner these days either.  I've been living in England for almost 20 years and have never been so cold.  Ever.

And busy.  Life busy.  School Christmas production, Christmas preparations - do you know there are only 17 sleeps till the big day?  Isn't it scary?

Our tree is up:

and we have regular fights every morning for whose turn is it to turn them on...

but they're so pretty... I love twinkly lights... in fact I might turn them on myself tomorrow!

And lastly, work to the lastest quilt is proceeding, even if a little slow paced:

Funny how the borders don't ever sew themselves on...

* 119 * ** No 2's new quilt **

There is no point in waiting for the right time to photograph this quilt, the weather or the circumstances never seem perfect so you'll just have to use your imagination a little...

... especially because it's upside down.  It might not look that way to you but it does to me because I've been working on this baby for ages, because I've been losing sleep on the apparent random placing of the blocks, because I've changed my mind a thousand times and especially because I don't like how the first dark blue block up there is shaped like the letter 'e'.  So if you wouldn't mind turning your screen upside down for a moment...

See? better right?  The purple block is much better as an anchor to the whole thing at the bottom...

I should call this the 'ran-out' quilt.

I have so much fabric in my studio I was convinced I had more than enough to do exactly what was in my head.

Turned out I didn't.  Single beds are deceptively large.  Or maybe in my mind my children should still be baby in cots....mmmhhh

Anyway, first I realised I had to be very very careful with the gorgeous Oakshotts solids.  No slish-slash cutting here.  I still ran out of them.

Then I realised I didn't have enough green to do the whole front background... I had bought this in Savannah, Ga during my last holiday and had no idea which shade of Kona green it was (lime perhaps?).

THEN, after I opted for the dark navy blue (also bought in the same place) I ran out of that too and had to go to Ikea and buy a blue single flat sheet in the hope to do the whole back.

BUT NO!!!

So the back is a  mosaic of every scrap of green/blue/solids left over.  It's ok, I like it.  And no I didn't photograph it because today my brain has gone for a holiday and left no contact details, sorry.

No 2's room is very small and hard to photograph his bed without showing the appalling condition of his floor.  (see yesterday's post for clues...)

This quilt however is so 'him' I'm really really happy with it.

And now he should be happy too because he's been bothering me for days about wanting to use it!

I quilted loops all over it.  Green threads over the green part and blue thread over the blue.  It was hard to quilt such a big thing on my Bernina, and on many an occasion I wished I had some sort of stitch regulator (some stitches are loooooonger than others!), but all in all I'm totally psyched with how it came out.

(I wished it was easier to capture its real colours!)

Now, the proof is in how quickly it will attract the rascal into bed in the evening...