Zyggy's baby quilt

I've had this finished for a while, luckily as the baby boy recipient in question (baby Zyggy) is already 5 months old! Zyggy's mum, one of my oldest and dearest friends, thinks it is my best quilt EVER and it's currently her most favourite thing in her house (and she has a lot of nice things).

I'm not sure about that, but I do love it, and it's certainly a nice thing to hear!

I used Cluck Cluck Sew's Bizzy Kid pattern and it's a winner. A really excellent pattern for a baby boy. I found the two Suzanne Ultman, Critter Community fabrics (the birds and the forest) first and then built the rest of the fabrics from there, managed to use up a few stash fabrics....but lets be honest, not many!!! But now I've added to the stash with my leftovers, right!? so it's all good. I used some natural linen as well, gives the eyes somewhere to rest, and a bit more practical for a baby than white I think.

The backing is a quilt set from Ikea with graduating blue dots, the blues work well with the colours in the quilt top and give the quilt a bit of depth. The binding is a simple navy stripe.

But for me the biggest achievement on this quilt is the quilting. Yes, my first ever attempt at free motion machine quilting using the stitch length regulator on my new Bernina 550QE! I did an all over loose stipple design, I can't say it was easy and it did require a fair bit of muscle to manoeuvre the quilt. But the machine made it a whole lot easier than it would've otherwise been and I'm pretty pleased with the results for a first go. If you look closely (don't) you can see a few bumps but overall, its fine. Probably what I wouldn't do again is use a navy thread on the back with white on the front, the navy has come through to the front in a few places, but it's not terrible.

Another close friend has just had a baby boy, so the planned quilt for my mum for Christmas is on the backburner (Mother's Day maybe?) and I need to get started on a new boy quilt. Looking for inspiration....

Minty coral random strip quilt

I love making baby quilts!! definitely my favourite, you know they'll be well used and well loved, you can have a bit of fun with the prints and colours, and they're small enough that I don't get sick of them well before they're finished. And they're pretty easy to quilt on my fairly small Janome. Wins all round!

This one was a commission/gift (I traded the quilt for a month of house sitting! Good deal I think). It's going to a new baby girl. The colours were an easy choice, my two current favourites - mint and coral. And they look so good together.

I'd planned to do a simple strip quilt, but felt like a bit more of a challenge (and was inspired by this Film in the Fridge quilt), so I cut my fabrics into 2, 3 and 4 inch wide strips. Then I built the quilt as I went, you could make it a lot faster if you just sewed random bits together, but I wanted to make sure I had a good spread of prints and colours (not all that easy with a fairly limited colour palette like this). The finished quilt is about 40 inches by 40 inches.

I did simple straight line quilting. The fabrics include a few newbies and a few oldies. I found it REALLY hard to source fabrics in a true mint colour, most are more turquoise unfortunately. The Lizzy House butterfly fabric is the closest I could find, although it's hard to see in the photos. There's a couple of other Lizzy House prints, as well as Monsterz by Michele Brummer Everett for Cloud 9 (love these prints!), and a few stashed oldies such as prints from Moda Bliss, It's a Hoot and City Weekend. Also a few coordinating solids (some Kona, some Spotlight).

For the back I used a few leftover strips (I actually ended up with a LOT of leftovers, enough for another quilt!), some natural linen and mint solid. The binding is a fine stripe mint and white.

All bundled up and ready to go!

Archer's quilt

Our good friend's baby Archer arrived a few weeks ago, I had to wait til he arrived before I could get started on this quilt (wasn't sure if he'd be a she or a he!). So all the other WIP's went on hold for a while and this had my full attention for a couple of weeks.

I've made this pattern once before (one of my first quilts ever), using Cluck Cluck Sew's stack-n-whack  method (it's pretty quick and easy). For Archer's quilt I started with 8 inch squares, I cut 2.5 inches off each side to end up with 7 inch blocks. The finished quilt is about 52 inches x 45 inches.

The fabrics are a mix of prints, solids and cross hatches, some from the stash and some were in a bundle I bought from Fabricworm. There's a few Birch organics from the Circa 50 line, Children at Play by Sarah Jane (the red stripes and boys with kites), Flea Market Fancy grey seeds, and Alexander Henry Heath in grey (the cross hatch). There's a gorgeous grey linen robots print which I'm sure is something japanese, it was in the Fabricworm bundle and the main reason why I bought the bundle. The binding is just a navy stripe, pretty much my favourite type of binding. Machine quilted in a simple grid.

For the back I made some extra blocks, and used some more of the Children at Play boys with kites fabric. The grey cross hatch is cut from a quilt cover I bought from Ikea, it wasn't one of their cheapest quilt covers, but it's enormous, the cotton is soft and crisp, and it'll make quite a few quilt backs, without having to join fabric! magnificent.

I also tried, for the first time ever, machine stitching the binding. I always machine stitch it to the front, then hand stitch to the back. I've been nervous about machine stitching binding, I couldn't imagine how to do the mitred corners, but they were actually easy and I am so happy with how it worked out! I used a stitch in the ditch foot that I'd bought ages ago but never used, it helped enormously! It looks neat and will be pretty strong I think. I might still hand stitch really special quilts, but I think I might be hooked on this new method! You can see the front and back in the 2 photos below (and that adorable robot print).

I'm currently working on a quilt for Claudia's bed (blue triangles, she's obsessed with blue!), so will post that soon, I need to get cracking on it as my best friend's baby is due next Wednesday so as soon as he/she's born I'll have drop everything and get started on another baby quilt!

An oldie but a goodie - Heather Ross quilt

Remember this quilt? I've had it finished for a while now, but just never got around to taking good photos in good light, when the quilt isn't too crumpled, quite tricky!

I made this for Claudia, potentially for her bed later on, it's not exactly single bed size but I think it'll look pretty cute draped over the bed, and she really loves all the little pictures on it. And how soft is the Free Spirit Heather Ross fabric?? I just love it. I'm not really up with all the Heather Ross 'lines' but I think there's a mix of Munki Munki, Lightening Bugs, Mendocino, and a couple of bits of Denyse Schmidt's good ol Flea Market Fancy thrown in, I bought them all in bits and pieces and scrap packs from here and here, cut them up into squares, added a white border and voila! I didn't notice until I uploaded the photos, there are two dark squares in the bottom left corner. How did I not notice that before I sewed it all together??? oh well.

I'm sure you're thinking that I make a LOT of squares quilts. Well, it's true, I do. I've made trickier quilts in my time but I love the simplicity of squares, I love how it showcases the fabrics, and I also love the fast gratification of putting it together. But don't worry, I'm working on something a bit fancier, will post it soon hopefully.

A baby girl strip quilt....

for my best customer, thanks Anna!

I used a bit of this and that from the stash for this one, a fair bit of Tula Pink, a bit of It's a Hoot, a few Lecien basics, some Moda Bliss. Even a couple from Spotlight! gasp! Turned out well, probably a bit girly for my liking but my customer is happy! I wish the photo was better, it's a bit scrumpled after travelling with me to work this morning. oh well.

A couple of sneak previews

I've had this one finished for over a week but haven't had a chance to take a decent photo:

A job for this weekend!

And a QUIP (quilt in progress),  a strip baby quilt in pinks and aqua, my second commission for my best customer (thanks Anna!). Hoping to finish this one on the weekend too. That only leaves two other unfinished quilts! Apart from all the ones I've got planned in my head and fabrics purchased....but that's another story.

Really loving this one. I know I always say that! sometimes its so hard to part with quilts that I make for other people and I suspect this one might be the hardest.

My first commission! A baby boy quilt.

Excited to have finished my first commission! It's a baby boy quilt for a friend to give to a friend. I really love it. It's a strip quilt inspired by Film in the Fridge. I think I've definitely got a few more strip quilts in me, really quick to make and so effective. I did simple straight line quilting about 1/4 inch from each seam. The fabrics are a mix from the stash.

Oh yeah and I made another sneaky card for my sister for her birthday. Loving the balloons (over the bunting....)

Hand quilting

So this is a quilt I recently finished for my baby girl using repro 1930's fabrics. It's my first attempt at hand quilting. I was dubious and thought it'd take eons to quilt but have to say, I'm hooked. I love the way it looks and I loved having a project to work on during evening couch telly time. Felt so productive! But I think I'll stick to smallish quilts for hand quilting.

Cute huh! Could be my favourite quilt so far, weird because I started out hating it!