Blue triangles - a single bed quilt for Claudia

I can't for the life of me seem to come up with decent names for my quilts! So 'blue triangles' it is I'm afraid.

I did finish this one a while ago, but have been away on holidays for a month (and suffered from phd - post holiday depression) so it's taken me a while to get back on the blog. Had to give myself a swift kick up the proverbial.

So, to the quilt, my little girl recently moved into her big girl bed (a king single), and while I've made quilts for her bed previously, I thought a special new one would ease the transition into the new bed (any excuse for a new quilting project!). She loves blue, so I pulled out all my blues and scraps (and some that just have blue in them) and cut my own 5 inch charm squares. I had a couple of packets of pre-cut white charm squares (handy), and I'll admit, all those half square triangles did take quite a while, and yep, got pretty tedious towards the end! Plus I decided to trim every single one, which is really not like me to be that fussy, but I really wanted this one to be perfect (it's not, but it's about as good as it gets for me!).

It's about 80 inches x 57 inches, not as big as a single doona, but it sits perfectly on top. One of these days I'll take a photo of it in her actual bed.

The quilting is just simple straight lines and diagonals.

The backing is mainly Sarah Jane pinwheels, I used some of the leftover HST's to make a zigzag strip, and paired it with some natural linen and a strip of Jay Cyn for Birch Fabric's organic line, also bound it with this fabric, I love the look of the coral with the blues and white. Coral is my new favourite colour (last week it was yellow….). I do love the back, I'm always glad when I put in a bit of effort and do a pieced back.

The transition into the bed wasn't nearly as painful as I imagined! thanks to the quilt, I'm sure.

In other news, I am soon to be the proud owner of a Bernina 550QE, I don't know much about it admittedly, but I do know it has a stitch length regulator, and I cannot WAIT to try my hand at free motion quilting. Stay tuned!

Rachel's wedding quilt - wonky log cabins

Ok, I finished this one a while ago but I don't know where the time goes, I just haven't gotten around to writing a blog post! slack!!! Sometimes too, I have such limited 'free' time that when I do get some, I hit the sewing machine! I'm hoping one day the blog will write itself....

This quilt was made for my lovely cousin Rachel for her wedding present, I can't claim all the credit, it was a collaboration with my sister (she is my 'sewing guru'), we worked out the design and colour scheme together, raided our fabric collections and split the fabric, and we each made 15 wonky log cabin blocks each. I added the sashing, it's just a plain cotton calico. Each block was 10.5 inches finished, sashing 2 inches wide, and the finished quilt is about 60 inches x 70 inches.

Looks pretty great on our bed! This made me really wish I could keep it....Claudia liked it too.

The back is a plain solid with a strip of leftover scraps.

We had it machine quilted by a pro, it was the first time I've EVER had a quilt quilted by someone else, it was just too big for my machine. I do love the finish, although it does mean the detail of the fabrics don't stand out as much, if you know what I mean. What I also loved about it was not having to baste, hurrah!

I also did a sneaky little embroidery, the date of the wedding (yes, over a month ago!!!):

I hope she and her new husband love it. The thing I absolutely love about quilts is that they are potential heirlooms, if you look after them, they'll last forever. There's a lot of love in this quilt. xx

Girl on a swing mini-quilt

At last at last, something to blog about!! Sorry about the huge gap in posts, I packed the sewing machine away for a while so I could focus on a few other long neglected jobs at home (such as cleaning out my daughter's wardrobe, selling some stuff on ebay, etc etc). But boy did I miss that machine, and it's now back where it belongs, in the middle of the dining table surrounded by sewing crap necessities.

A while back I bought a darning foot on ebay so I could try out a bit of free-motion sewing, well, turns out the ebay foot was dodgy so I bought a proper Janome one. So glad I did. This could possibly be my favourite item I've made ever (did that even make sense??):

It's something I've wanted to make for ages, using Aneela Hoey's briliant tutorial here. It was easier than I thought, and so much fun doing all that free motion stitching and embroidery, I think I'm breaking out of my "must be perfect" shell. The imperfections are what makes it so perfect.

Here's a close-up of my swinging girl:

Not sure what to do with it though, I don't think it's actually a quilt in the making, I might stick it in a white Ikea frame and find a spot on the wall somewhere.