Strippy Heart Wallhanging - a finish

Although there was a lot more chattering and catching up about our families and all things stitch related while we #threadsacrossthesea girls got together at the beginning of the month, there was a weeny bit of sewing happening too.  Hot off the back of my productive retreat weekend, I took my Strippy Heart Wallhanging along to our Saturday sew day at Judith's fabulous studio and finished the quilt off by stitching the binding down by hand and adding a little label for posterity.  So, happy with this little quilt.

Committee please note that I have one finish as promised!

Moda Love Layer Cake Prep

Um, yes, this is yet another quilt in preparation.  This one is going to be a Moda Love Layer Cake Quilt, though I'm making it from 7.5" squares and HSTs rather than 9.5" squares as the pattern and Layer Cakes lend themselves.  With a little border to prevent loss of the star points in my binding I should end up with a quilt measuring 60" square.

In defence of this new start and the Giant Star I showed you being prepped last week, I have a retreat weekend coming up and I really want to make these two quilts to donate to CT's pre-school/support groups so they can raise some money from them.  So, yet again I'm allowing common sense to be overruled and will hopefully come home from retreat with two quilt tops ready for basting.

This layout has been shuffled so many times I think my eyes may have lasting damage!  It has been tricky to get a balance but I think there's always going to be a glut of reds especially since the Little Ruby Layer Cake was a little shorter on green and pinks.  I'm now at the point where every move I try affects something else, so this is the layout for better or worse.

This will be my second reduced size Moda Love Layer Cake (first one here) - one day I will make a full sized version because it is such a fab pattern!

Strippy Heart Wallhanging

My forgotten projects find in late July uncovered this packed up wallhanging that I started some time back in the early months of this year.  I was inspired by the Strippy Heart Quilt I made for my friend and thought it might be nice to try a reduced size version as a wallhanging.

It could possibly be the insanity of working in scrappy 1.5" widths that resulted in it being tidied away and overlooked for a number of months, but I have been scrapping away at it and have made some progress since the pic above.

See?

Unlike the bigger quilt, I made this one piece by piece (the large quilt was made from rolls of fabric I'd stitched up - you need to see my post to understand what I mean).  I think it has meant for more overthinking the placement of each piece though, which was avoided by using the rolls method of the bigger quilt.  Perhaps, coupled with the fact that I have way less pink, navy and green B&C fabrics than the reds and aquas and I was trying to balance everything out - but, yes, I probably overthought it.  

So amid an explosion of B&C scraps I have made progress and my questionable sanity is relieved by how much I like the results.  Just need to keep a bit of momentum if I can so that I can get this flimsy ready for basting and quilting soon.

EPP Hexie Diamond Quilt update

These five EPP hexie diamonds, in all their Bonnie and Camille beauty, are the final few full diamonds for my four year old WIP.  These ones were made this summer and I enjoyed the peaceful, rhythmic stitching of them in the evenings of sometimes testing days.  Handstitches of any variety can be very soothing, I find.

So, this is what 23 EPP hexie diamonds look like - each one about 3 hrs worth of stitching (I'm not particularly speedy).  It doesn't really look like much, does it?

Hopefully, it looks a little more substantial all laid out like this.  What do you think?

There were several layout options considered for this quilt, and I have at different times had different preferences for which to choose.  Now, though I think I quite like the full scrappy patterning of the layout above.

Mind you, having sat down to doodle out how to finish this quilt, I think I might only be just about halfway through piecing for it!  As you can see, this current layout yields a quilt wider than it is long and I don't like it so much turned through 90 degrees. So, it needs lengthening and some kind of bordering and squaring off.  Only a gazillion more hexies to go then!

That said, I have high hopes for how nice it will look when it's done!

"Perfect Pairs" Heart Cushion

I had a bit of a struggle choosing a border fabric for my "Perfect Pairs" cushion.  I auditioned lots of fabrics from my B&C stash, whittled it down to four, had an inkling that I might go for green, but opened the debate to the IG community for thoughts.

The IG vote was reasonably fairly split between the red and the green options.  So I took these two pics and pondered it for a bit while I was having an afternoon of cutting and prep for various projects.  These pics got a 'green' vote from IG and ultimately, I agreed.  The red did work beautifully blending with the heart block panel, but I think I liked the fresh contrast offered by the green and that it stops the cushion becoming 'too pink' perhaps.

So, borders on, I layered up the batting and hand quilted with some lovely Aurifil 12 wt thread from Pretty Fabrics and Trims.

I kept things fairly simple by just echo stitching the hearts, stitching a little inner border on each of the nine squares, and another little outline just into the green border fabric.

Enough to be well quilted.  Not enough, I hope, to detract from the appliqué and beautiful fabrics which should be the stars of the show, I think.

I backed it with more B&C loveliness using my all time favourite hidden zipper cushion backing method by Just Jude. You can find the tutorial for it here (I always add a little lining piece too).

If you are eagle-eyed enough, you might notice that my cushion isn't quite filled properly and is a bit lumpy and bumpy.  Not having a filler of the correct size, I improvised by wrapping a quilt around a smaller filler - see?  

I was quite proud of that effort until I struggled for ten minutes to get it back out again without damaging the cushion!!

Anyway, enough blab.  Isn't she pretty?  Still have a hankering to do a whole quilt in these.

BUT I MUST RESIST.

Holiday Stitches

We've been away on our summer hols in Scotland for a few weeks and I took some simple hand sewing with me to pass the evenings in our holiday apartment and caravan.

I stitched up hexies for my hexie diamond project, but to intersperse the hexies with a wee something new and interesting, I decided to take some appliqué hearts to work on as well.

I've been SO tempted by Sarah Edgar's Perfect Pairs quilt since she first posted it to IG and her blog.  It's gorgeous!  I would dearly love to make a whole quilt one day and so I recently invested in the acrylic template from her shop.  It's a fab wee doofer with an inner heart shape and a quarter in outer heart which allows you to add on your seam allowance.  Sarah also designed the template with alignment lines and a centre hole for fussy cutting - genius!

For now, a whole quilt is out of the question, but nine little hearts to make a cushion panel seemed like a perfect holiday project.  I enjoyed every stitch of these pretties, and am very much looking forward to making up the cushion front, perhaps with a little hand quilting to finish.

Thanks to Sarah for the inspiration and the template to keep my hearts nice and standard.

So now that hols are over, normal chaotic services will resume - wish me sanity as I have 8 loads of washing to put through, I am running outside every hour to rescue my laundry from the rain and my tumble dryer is broken!!  Home sweet home.

Sometimes simple is all that's required

Well, that was an unexpected blip in transmission!  I hoped to be present here more regularly this year, but I think I'm trying to find rhythm where there is none really.  So I can do one of two things.  Either, I can be disappointed that it's not working and call it a day, or I can accept and enjoy what time there is to sew and share as and when it happens.

As you see, I made the sensible choice!

My B&C stash got smaller last year, but it's still overly healthy (if there is such a thing), so I need to continue its depletion into pretties!

First up, I was in the mood for something simple.  I had quite a few small pieces of various prints that wouldn't stretch to a whole block's worth of cutting, but would chop into charm squares pretty well. Fortuitously, Amy Smart posted this gorgeous baby quilt tutorial around the same time as my deliberations which reminded me of the beauty of simplicity, and how sometimes, that's all that's needed.  So I got cutting and laying out on the bedroom floor.

Some setting squares and stitching later, it looked like this.   Glorious scrapilicious flimsy!!

I kept the quilting simple too - just a quilting foot width either side of the seams, and hey presto! A pretty little lap quilt.

This isn't the picture of this quilt that I'd like to be sharing with you, but our weather has been so wet and miserable for end May/beginning June that I can't get it outside for a brighter shot. Come on, sunshine!!  Anyway, this is the picture I have and it kind of makes me wish I'd made the quilt a little bit bigger, even though small was always the plan.  It will be great on a single bed, I think.

Amazingly, this little lot has hardly made any difference to those fabric boxes at all.  Perhaps a project bag of some sort would make another dent.  Do you think my stash is secretly self-reproductive? ;-)

I hope you are all sewing up lovely treats for yourselves and others, too.

A Plump of Cushions

Did you know that the collective noun for a group of cushions is a "plump"?  Well, so says Google anyway.

Colours are a little faded looking in the grey February light. In real life they are much prettier.

I've recently been on a cushion making spree inspired by tidying up some fabric left overs from quilts, and just wanting to make something smaller and more quickly finished than my quilts that take years nowadays. After the 30's repro fabric cushion, I raided a big box of Bonnie and Camille leftovers that needed organising back into my stash or scrap boxes.  I pulled fabric for 3 new cushions.

I made another cushion to Sedef's Scandi Throw Pillow tutorial (again re-sizing to 18.5").  The frugal part of me is bothered just a wee bit by how much fabric is "wasted" from this design, but actually because the offcuts are quite sizeable it will be possible to get other cuts from them another time.

So, this one was basically a rinse and repeat of the previous cushion.

The next two cushions are by FAR my favourites from this "plump".  I've been keeping a pattern in mind for these for a very long time.  Both cushion panels were published by Judith of Just Jude Designs in Quilt Now Issue 15.  Judith refers to these as dissected blocks as the traditional blocks have been expanded by a little border insert.  I loved the patterns when I first saw them and am thrilled with the results after sewing them myself too!

There's the dissected courthouse steps cushion -

I need to buy new plump fillers to pooch this out better.

I love the aqua and pink fabric colour ways I chose for this and if I lived in an all female household I would have a living room just these colours!

However, seeing as there are men in the house, I chose a little of Bonnie and Camille's navy boats print from Daysail to nod their direction.  The dissected Granny block looks brilliant, and you'll see I snuck in the pink and aqua anyway ;-)

I had a little work to do resizing both of Judith's cushion panels from her originals which I think were for 22" cushion fillers, but which I needed to be 18".  Courthouse Steps was pretty straightforward but my on point calculations for the Granny block were a little bit out and the main block came out at just 14.5" when I stitched it up.  Then, I only had enough of the background fabric remaining to cut borders to bring it up to 17" square.  My maths let me down this time, but I'm sure an 18" filler will squish in rightly, in spite of that.

All of these cushions were backed following Judith's fab tutorial for a covered zipper backing which is very easily upscaled from her 16.5" cushion dimensions.  It's a great way also to use some of the larger scale prints from my B&C stash which I find can be a bit lost when chopped into small squares, unless you fussy cut and waste a lot of the background.

I loved making all of them, all for different reasons, but I am mostly thrilled that I didn't forget to go back to Judith's patterns which I noted as of interest a long time ago.  There were so worth making!!

I have more patterns from books and magazines that are on my "one day" list.  It would be good to see more of them brought to life soon.  I'll bet you all have some of those, too!

Scrap Vortex Finish

I have finally managed to bring all those scrap vortex bits (and their gazillion seams) together in a whole quilt top.  It was a bigger feat than I had anticipated and in spite of having enjoyed the 'leaders and enders' approach with which the quilt started, I have to admit I fell out of love with it a bit when it came to making all of those scrappy sections fit one another.  You wouldn't think it takes much, but when the scraps you're working with are quite wee, then any trimming can potentially render them unusable.  So, there's a bit more thinking and head scratching involved than perhaps I had energy for.

Nevertheless, I did get there and had a final flimsy measuring 54" x 61.5" , which isn't very big really but big enough for this one.  I even managed to reduce that B&C stash a bit more by adding a full B&C backing (IG destash 3m piece of Happy Go Lucky).

Don't panic over the falling out of love thing!  That was quickly rectified by some super quick wavy line quilting and a B&C red gingham binding (Vintage Picnic, I think) and now I'm all heart eyes for this scrapilicious little lap quilt.

Someone else likes it very much too - she's been using it as a mat to spin on!!

Strippy Heart Quilt - Flimsy Finish

The Strippy Heart Quilt is now all pieced and it's rather large.  Took both of my men standing on the lounge chairs to hold this one up.  Not boding well for the quilting wrangle!!  But, let's forget that for a minute - isn't it pretty?

Remember that little pile of 2.5" strips I started with and wondered if it'd be enough?  Well, I had plenty for the low volume with a little to spare, but was about 60" short on the coloured prints.  Not too bad and not a problem given my healthy B&C stash to supplement from ;-)

I could photograph this quilt top from many angles and still not get it's best vantage - think that's just down to its size.  Although, it's big, it's not the biggest I've ever made but at 76.5" x 84.5" it's still going to be a doozie to squish through the machine.

I got the top all basted and only then discovered that the backing I thought would fit, doesn't.  So need to sort that before I tackle the quilting - gives me time to get my brave pants on!!

I might just love this one a wee bit!  (But I say that about them all, don't I?)

Strippy Heart Quilt - progressing

A wee bit of progress on the Strippy Heart Quilt to show you -

The top 8 rows and the bottom 12 rows.  Honestly, I have no idea why I decided to work a bit from the top and then from the bottom up.  Doesn't seem like my logical self, but no matter.

You can see that this quilt is not difficult in the complex sense, but it does require close attention to your cutting lengths and being organised and labelling everything so the rows don't get mixed. 

I've been enjoying it.  It takes about half an hour each time I pick it up to get into a wee rhythm with the laying, deciding, cutting, and piecing but I'm getting there.  Mostly, I just let the fabrics sit randomly as they come off the roll but now and again it does need a wee tweak (turn the strip upside down, piece in another 2.5" width, or skip a bit) just to ensure that there aren't too many occurrences of the same fabric in the same area or touching.  It's not an exact science and I promise, I am being much more hands off than usual! ;-)

This section is rows 1 -20 - I think it's growing really well!!  I think there are just 10 more rows to piece before there's a flimsy but my little strip rolls of fabric are getting to look awfully small - I wonder will it stretch?

What would you say is the dominant colour of this quilt as you look at it so far?  When I had it laid out on the bed for the pic I was surprised by how green it looked, but on the actual photo here I think maybe it's the aqua, or maybe not. Perhaps it's actually reasonably well balanced and scrappy?  What do you see?

Strippy Heart Quilt - Making a Start

I'm back to show you where I'm heading with this little 'quilt in a pile' I showed you last time.

First off, I should tell you this quilt is totally inspired by a photo I came across on Pinterest a long time ago and has been floating around in my head ever since.  To give credit where it's due, the inspiration for this make is known as the Have a Heart quilt by J Michelle Watts and there is a jelly roll friendly downloadable pattern for it here.  Please do have a look if you're interested.

.

As you can see from my sketch above, my original plan was to make a similar quilt but in a much smaller size as a wallhanging for my living room.  I fattened up the shape of the heart a little, drafting on squared paper, and then blocked out a squared off outline to allow the quilt to be made from scrappy strips.  

Of course, I haven't actually had the time to make my lovely wallhanging yet, but now that I want to make a gift quilt, the drafted design is quite easy to upgrade to a more suitable quilt size.  The maths was not difficult but there was a LOT of counting those wee squares to multiply them up.  I like that sort of thing, so was very happy to do it myself, but if you don't you could always buy the original pattern.

The first thing to do was to get piecing all those scrappy strips of Bonnie and Camille fabrics together.  These will be the focus fabrics for my heart.

I just kept piecing pairs together, then pairs of pairs together and maybe a wee addition of a strip in a different colour to keep the same colours from meeting.  Not too much thinking, just kept stitching ...

 ... and repeated with the low volume fabric cuts which will be the quilt background,

rolling them up into a continuous piece as I went.  I didn't press my seams at all and still can't make up my mind if I should have done as I paired up the pieces.  It would have made it quicker when it came to measuring and cutting, but it was no big shakes to press out a length, then cut it to size after.

Here were my two continuous rolls when I'd finished piecing.  Still not convinced it looks enough for the whole quilt, but I guess time will tell if I did the calculations correctly!

The next stage is to work to my list of cutting sizes to make up each row of the quilt.   It takes a bit more concentration late at night than I was hoping for ;-) but I am quite excited at seeing how it will actually come together!