The Agony and the Ecstacy

I haven't posted in over a week - I've been in blogging limbo land.  But I do have good reason. 

 

Sadly, the agony part of this title relates to my daughter, who, just after I took the photos that are about to follow, fell backwards her chair, strapped into her booster seat, and cracked her head open on the side of the kitchen unit.  Thankfully she is fine, but it did require a trip to the hosptial in the ambulance and a few stitches and very large doses of TLC.  As you can imagine, all thoughts of quilts and blogging went right out of the window for some time afterwards!

So moving on,  the 'ecstacy' part of my title is a finished quilt- a cot sized quilt for my friend Sarah (who is giving it to her friend who is about to have a baby.) 

Here is a little collage:

The fabrics were chosen by Sarah and sent to me in the post, and she decided on the design and helped me decide on how to hand quilt it. 

Here are a few more photos so that you can see it in more detail.



If you look closely you can just about see my quilted star

 

 

 



It's nice to have another project finished, and I can't wait to give it to Sarah when I see her next month (yay!)


I also have another finish to share with you but I think I shall save that for another post ;-)

A Happy Finish

Ed Emberly Happy Drawing Quilt - done! 

The quilt top had been lurking in my craft cupboard for a couple of months, waiting to be quilted, but I delayed because I had been pondering the best way to quilt it.  I wanted to machine quilt it, and I considered vertical lines, diagonal lines, horizontal lines, you name it..  And then I came across the wonderful blog and gorgeous quilts of Deux Petites Souris through the Plum and June bloghop and knew that wavy line quilting was the way to go.  The perfect accompaniment to those squiggly blocks.

I was a bit nervous to just 'freestyle' it , so I drew on wavy lines as I went with my air erasable pen, and it worked a treat.  I was able to roughly follow the lines without having to worry that I was going off course. 

For the backing, I used the left overs of the squiggly prints, making it nice and bright and colourful.

This quilt is a lot more modern in style compared with other quilts that I have made, and I just love the animal prints.  I'm still trying to decide which is my favourite!  In fact I think I love them all and how they all work together.

If it hadn't been for life (and children) getting in the way, this would have been quite a quick quilt to put together.  It was a lot of fun working with animal fabrics, and great to try out new skills. 

In other news, we had a great time with friends watching the Opening Ceremony.  We even had some home made decorations (courtesy of my daughter) and some bunting that I made for the Royal Wedding to get us in the mood.

Wasn't it an amazing ceremony!  Did you see it?  What did you think?

PS - I am now linked to Flickr, check out all my quilts and coursework samples by clicking on the 'my flickr' tab at the top :-)

Fresh Sewing Day and Small Blog Meet

If your'e not careful, you'll blink and miss 2012, it's whizzing by!  Here we are in July already!  A special month for us, as our daughter turns 3 next week and it's also our 5th wedding anniversary on the same day :-)  Not to mention the start of the Olympics and my father's 60th birthday.

But before I look ahead to July, it's time to take stock of what I have achieved in June, as part of Lynne from Lily's Quilts

After a wonderful holiday in France, I have managed 2 finishes this month, which are...

Walk in the Woods Cot Quilt

and...

Little Kukla Dolls Cot Quilt

I am currently working on some Flower Fairy Bunting for a very special birthday party, which I will finish and share with you soon. And  I need to quilt and bind my Ed Emberly Happy Drawing Quilt as soon as I get around to ordering more wadding.  Once 3rd birthday preparations and celebrations are out of the way, I also hope to resume my much neglected City and Guilds coursework; I have some exciting ideas in my head, I just need to put them on paper (and fabric)! 

Also linking up with:

So hello and welcome if you are new to my blog, it's lovely to meet you and I hope you enjoy looking at my work.

And I am very excited, I'm going to be hosting my very first giveaway soon...and it's a big one!

More details to follow next week.

Watch this space!

Fancy a Walk in the Woods?

Here it is at last, my finished Walk in the Woods cot quilt.  

It's just a simple charm square quilt, with stitch in the ditch machine quilting, as I wanted the adorable little characters to speak for themselves;

And the back is a co-ordinating red and pink.

It looked so pretty hanging in my garden...

I wanted to leave it there.  But that wouldn't be sensible. So I just took one last photo...

I hope you like it as much as I enjoyed making it!

Introducing the Kukla Dolls

Ok, so it has taken me longer to blog about my most recent quilt than it has taken to make it.  Mainly because I have been waiting for an opportunity to get outside and photograph it, and trust me, waiting for a sunny day has taken a long time!  But here we are at last, mid June, and thankfully the sun seems to have resumed service. 

So anyway, I would like to introduce you to the Little Kukla Dolls.  Aren't they cute?!

And I rather like the pairs of little love birds on the back too;

I wanted to make another cot sized quilt that was a complete departure from the usual colours I would go for (ie. girly pink, florals, blues, purples etc.) and so it was a nice change and a lot of fun using such vibrant colours.  I loved doing the bright orange hand quilting too.  Yes, I hand quilted the whole thing with diagonal lines; I must have too much time on my hands!  But I really like the effect so I think it was worth the time investment. 

My C and G coursework is having to take a back seat for a month, as I am making lots of preparations for a certain little girl's 3rd birthday party - A Flower Fairies Tea Party to be precise.  Flower Fairies fabric arrived on my doorstep last week, and it's crying out to be made into bunting.  I am going to make lots of other bits and bobs too, not necessarily sewing related, but you will have to wait until after the big day to see them ;-)

I have another busy week ahead, which might just include worshiping the elusive sun when it shines.  I hope the sun is shining for you too. x

A Little Charm Quilt

Last week the gorgeous fabrics that I ordered came through the letter box.  It was a bundle of fat quarters of Walk in the Woods by Aneela Hoey.  They were wrapped so beautifully, and were just so enticing,   I couldn't stop thinking about what I was going to do with them.

But then it got to Friday, and after several evenings of studying, I couldn't help myself.  I just had to make something with them there and then.  Nothing complicted, just something quick and simple, so on Friday evening I came up with this...

As you can see it's just the quilt top, and it's still to be quilted, backed and binded, but I do feel rather pleased with myself.  It was a late night though, and I paid the price the next day with a throbing headache!

I had hoped to post about it earlier, but I was keen to get an outdoor picture.  I can honestly say it hasn't stopped raining here in Jersey all weekend, so today (Monday afternoon) was literally my first opportunity.  But as you can see, the sky is still grey and the temperatures far too low!

As per usual I have run out of fabric.  I have ordered a co-ordinating piece of fabric for the backing and some more wadding, and as soon as they arrive I shall get going.  I am thinking simple machine quilting, in the ditch and also 1 cm either side.  I can't help feeling that these gorgeous fabrics need to speak for themselves.  I just adore the little girl that is Little Red Riding Hood and I don't want any fancy quilting to take away from her. 

I have also made good progress with my coursework.  Last week, I managed work on module 5 nearly every night and managed to:

• research 'form' and put a set of notes together
• research my chosen artist - sculptor Phillip King (very interesting) and finalise my notes
• start researching the history of quiliting, for a seperate file I have to put together on quilting techniques

Lots more to go but a good start. 

In other news - I am going out tonight!!!  First time this year!!!  So no feeding the baby/sewing/designing/creating/blogging for me tonight, just eating, drinking, socialising and hopefully having fun!! 

Siblings Together Cards

It really was a weekend of finishes, because not only did I finish William's quilt, I also managed to finish off 100 cards for the Siblings Together Charity.  (Click here for my original blog post, to find out what it's all about).   And here they are;

And I have now put William's quilt in his bedroom, and  couldn't resist an 'in situ' photo, particularly as it matches rather nicely with his rug;

So that's two projects ticked off the list.  Next, back to business and full steam ahead with module 5.  There is quite a lot of research and paperwork involved, so I won't have any lovely makey things to post about in the coming weeks.  But I do have some items in my back catalogue of projects that I haven't blogged about, so I might include a picture or two of them, in case your'e interested.  Hopefully!

William's Quilt

I have been going on about it for what seems like months, and sewing it for what feels like even longer, and here it is at long last, my quilt for William!

The design is based on a pattern from the blog Flossie Teacakes.  It is just a simple design; I wanted something that was quick to piece together and that didn't require too much brain power, as it has mainly been constructed of an evening, between 9 and midnight, when little William has finally gone to sleep. 

It's machine pieced and hand quilted using no. 8 perle cotton thread, and as per suggestion from my lovely friend Juile, I have included some...

which breaks up the slightly less imaginative...

 I am really pleased with it, it's always nice to have another project finished and under the belt.  I think William likes it too but he is not allowed near it for fear of dribbling/being sick on it. 

It will just have to look pretty in his bedroom for now!