Bec's Quilt {the back}

I found this vintage fabric in an op shop years ago (I think its intended for curtains maybe, because it is quite heavy, and has a more open weave than quilting cotton) and decided to use it as the basis of colours for the back of Bec's quilt.

So I basically pulled all my fabrics in colours that would look right at home in a baby's nappy and went from there!

Bec's Quilt {the front}

Recently I finished this quilt for my sister for her 40th birthday.  Its a little late, she's about to turn 41 - but better late than never, right?

Fishing for Geese: a baby quilt

When I first started making quilts I would see photos of gorgeous baby quilts that people had made and I would think "Wow, has this person ever spent any time with a baby? Don't they know that they poo, wee and vomit on EVERYTHING?"  Now I think, who cares - I'm not the one that has to wash it!  

The Morpheus Quilt

My brother, a deer farmer, recently got married.  This is the first family wedding since I started quilting so I was itching to make a quilt to give as a wedding gift.  I asked my brother who his all-time favourite stag was (Morpheus) and then designed the quilt based on a photo of that (now dead) stag.

Spot the flying geese

This is no generic, stylised stag's head.  This is a representation of an actual stag, one with a world record breaking set of antlers.  I wanted it to look like a stencil, and created a stencil based on a photograph.

Applique detail - ear and tag

The background is mostly 4" squares, with three points of interest provided by a plus block, some flying geese and a friendship star.  I wanted the background to be random, with no identifiable pattern.

When the quilt is on the bed the stag's head lies towards the foot of the bed.  It is quilted with horizontal wavy lines in the same manner as this and this.  The quilting caused me a lot of grief, with the amount of shifting that occurred.  I spent a considerable amount of time ripping out quilting, and then got to the point where I decided I'd spent enough time unpicking and that it was going to be gifted with more imperfections than I would have liked.

It was very well received and looks great in their bedroom.

Quilt Stats
Finished Size: approx 97" by 97"
Pattern:  Original design - raw edge machine applique stag's head on a low volume background
Fabric: Many, many different low volume prints (no solids), three red prints used for the applique. 
Binding: Mini Confetti dot in Scarlet by Dear Stella
Backing: Doe Wideback - Crisscross wideback in Graphite
Pieced and quilted by: me, on my domestic sewing machine.

This was my first time using 108" wide backing fabric, and I have to say I was disappointed.  I felt the fabric was very thin - is that normal for a backing fabric?  I had expected it to be the same quality as Kona, but it is much thinner.  Someone I follow on Instagram called it "lovely and soft", and I agree it is soft but for me that softness stems from the thinness of the fabric. Have you used 108" wide backing fabric before?  How did you find it?

Linking up to:

Needle n Thread Thursday 

Scrappy Wrapping: Scraps 101

Some scraps, brown paper, glue and a sewing machine led to these ...

These are project 14 of Scraps 101.

 

Linking up to:

Fabric Tuesday at Quilt Story

Building Blocks Doll quilt : Scraps 101

 

Is anyone else inspired by the colours of their kids' lego blocks?  A couple of lego towers Ruby had left lying on the carpet gave me the inspiration for a quilt so I thought I'd try it out using the brown bag technique. 

I took some of the small blocks, matched them to solid scraps from my scrap stash then put the lego blocks in a brown bag and drew them out at random to make two towers, one taller than the other.  I wanted the quilt towers to be the size of the real towers, so the scraps are quite small - they were 1 3/4 inch x 1 and 1/4 inch before piecing.  The background white is scrap pieces left over from Ruby's quilt.

Front and back have two towers, vertical towers on the front and horizontal on the back.  I quilted around the towers (front and back), then added quilted towers of varying length in the negative space.

Front (left) and Back (right)

Good view of the quilted towers

If I make one like this again I'd have more towers and have them stacked at angles like in the photo at the top of this post, to make it a bit more interesting.  This is project 5 of my Scraps 101 series.

Linking up to:

Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts

TGIFF
Can I Get a Whoop Whoop at Confessions of a Fabric Addict
Made By You Mondays at Skip To My Lou 

Old Sheet - New Placemat

There is still time to enter my DS Quilts fabric giveaway - so check it out if you haven't already.  These placemats inspired me to try some wavy line quilting.  I don't think I'll ever quilt in a straight line again.

Does this count as FMQ even though I used a walking foot???  This is my favourite old sheet from my ridiculously large vintage bed linen collection.  This week's favourite anyway.  The back is another sheet from the collection, which I think (sadly) is a polycotton.

I'm partway through making another one to match, complete with contrasting wavy line quilting - using general purpose thread, as I don't have any special quilting thread (yet). I used three colours on the top but the bobbin thread stayed white.  You can see little blips of coloured thread on the back so I'll be cautious about mixing colours in the future.

Linking up to:

Sew Cute Tuesday now hosted by Blossom Heart Quilts
Fabric Tuesday at Quilt Story
Thursday Threads at 627Handworks
I Quilt at Pretty Bobbins
Finish it Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts 

On Nanny's Lap

My Winter's Lane quilt is finished, it is a lap quilt for my mum so I've called this 'On Nanny's Lap'.   Despite some quilting bloopers, I love how it turned out and it's perfect for mum to use on her lap while reading in her special chair.  It is sparsely quilted, with a quasi-random grid of rectangles and squares.

The design is my own (front and back).  I took a charm pack of Winter's Lane, came up with a block layout that I liked, framed each block in a beige-grey then used a cream homespun for sashing and borders. The binding is from Ro Gregg's Lady in Red collection.

This is my first person sized completed quilt (Ruby's quilt is waiting patiently for me to piece a back for it). Here's what I learnt with this quilt:

• It's great having a wall big enough to layout out your design but Blu tack isn't the best option for sticking blocks on your wall - pulling the blocks off repeatedly pulled some of the patches out of shape.
• When quilting, it's actually rather tricky to sew perfectly straight with a walking foot.  A nano-second of inattention leads to wonky stitching.  
• Inspired by the success of my seam allowance guide, I used masking tape as my straight line quilting guide.  This worked fine so long as I didn't actually sew on the masking tape, because then it was tricky to remove all the bits that get left stuck under the stitching.
• When quilting, guide all three layers of the quilt together, don't nudge just the top layer under the needle when trying to stay straight - otherwise this happens on the back of the quilt:

• When using a walking foot, there seems to be an optimum speed - its neither too fast nor too slow but probably closer to too slow.  Annoying, the right speed for you and your machine is something you'll just have to figure out.
• Some quilters trim the back and batting before sewing the binding on, and some trim it after sewing the first side of the binding on.  Presumably there's pros and cons of each.
• Joining the start and end of your binding using a diagonal seam is soooo much trickier than tutorials make it out to be, especially if it's past your bedtime when you are trying to do it.  I unpicked it 6 times and just could not figure out how on earth my binding kept ended up twisted once joined.  So pleased with myself when I got it right on the 7th try - the photo I've pinned here was the key to getting it right, so thank you so much Red Pepper Quilts!
• While I was piecing the back I had a vision for how to quilt it - so when I was basting it I kept that vision in mind.  Turns out that vision was really just a billboard highlighting my inexperience because it would have meant turning the quilt 90 degrees many, many, many times.  So I unpicked a whole lot of quilting, while surreptitiously glancing over my shoulder worried the quilting police were heading my way - I mean, is that the done thing?  Do people unpick their quilting?  My vision also presented many questions for which I didn't know the answers, and was too lazy far too busy to bother surfing the net to find.  Questions such as - how do you stop and start quilting if you're not just going from one side to the other?  Do I backstitch?  I still don't know the answers to those questions.

Thanks for reading if you're still with me after all those bullet points!

Linking up to:

Needle & Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation

Thursday Threads at 627Handworks

Finish it up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts

Bloggers Quilt Festival at Amy's Creative Side

TGIFF hosted this week at Quilter in the Closet

Westie Taggie

Tag toys for two Westie boys*.  Bulldogs on the front, skull and cross bones on the back.

Linking up to:

- Fabric Tuesday at Quilt Story

* After reading the Wikipedia definition of a Westie, which isn't actually particularly pleasant if you're a Westie, I feel I should clarify that I use the term in a good-natured way.

Doll's cot quilt

Pepper-Mae recently had her first birthday so for her gift I made a quilt, pillow and sheets for a doll's cot I found secondhand about a year ago.  Being the elder sister Ruby is playing with it more than Pepper-Mae but at least it's being used.

I made the design up myself, which might sound impressive until you see it - it's very basic. This is my first finished quilt and it's made mostly from re-purposed vintage bed linen.

 

Linking up here:

Thank Goodness it's finished Friday at Blossom Heart Quilts

Wrapped

What I hate about Christmas is the mountains of waste - the packaging and wrapping - so this Christmas I'm making a real effort to cut down.  All my wrapping will either be reusable, recyclable or able to be thrown in the compost.  Also, I'm making most of our gifts so there won't be any plastic packaging.  Here some wrapping ideas:

Brown paper bags:

(the bunny is from llevo el invierno)

(stencil is from Stencil 101)

Drawstring bags instead of wrapping paper:

Plain brown paper stamped with some of our homemade stamps:

Seussy gifts

Some Suessy Christmas gifts for the littlies in our family this year, matching outfits - almost.  I appliqued some Dr Seuss fabric onto Onesies or T-Shirts, each little person gets a book or two that matches the character on their shirt.

Spreading the love

One of my nieces turned 3 recently and I thought I'd spread the stamp-love by making her some stamps.  I also thought she might like making some stamps of her own (or her mum might) so I put together a little 'make-it-yourself' kit with some wooden mounts and craft foam.