Little Wall Quilt

This has been hanging around for ages, quilted and with binding attached but not stitched down. It had no purpose, though, so it never was finished up. Finally, it found a purpose when I needed a quilt for an occasion, so it's done now - I attached some hanging mechanisms as well...

Another little quilt swap quilt

Now that the quilts are all assigned and have been mailed (and many received) in the latest round of the ALQS, I can show what I made for this round of the swap - a little blue and yellow geometric piece. 

It's always fun to play around with something a little different for these swaps...

Pink and yellow, with spirals

True to my word from yesterday, I have managed to get Lynn's quilt quilted today. After some dithering, I decided to quilt it quite simply with open spirals - I did considering doing something which worked in the individual flowers, but it was getting too complicated, so I reverted to an all-over design, using a pink and yellow variegated thread (of course!). Next step is to get it bound, but I didn't really feel like doing that today, so I did some piecing instead. There's still plenty of time to do the binding, anyway.

Stay at Home Robin 2 - quilted

Took the opportunity to quilt this today, spurred on by DH's classic request for a quilt for someone's leaving present - leaving next week. Frankly, it's a good thing I usually have a number of pieces lying around partly finished, so I can pull one out on occasions such as this. Anyway, I've quilted it up and will attach some binding tomorrow or Monday and then it will be ready to go.

Finished mini...

Finished and off in the post to Angela. Hoorah! Many thanks again to everyone who donated to my Walk for Life, whether you did it for the chance to win this little piece, or just because it's a good cause. I raised a total of £154.74, including some gift aid, which isn't bad at all.

Little Robin's Egg quilt

While digging through a basket of stuff in my sewing room, I found a small stack of 4" squares in browns and blues which I forgot I had made from a charm pack I had received - so I went ahead and sewed them together! The piece is intended for a blank space on the wall in Sarah & Olivia's room:



which has similar colours. I still have to quilt it, of course, but now that I've remembered its existence, perhaps it will get done soon!

Lost and Found...

Among the nice things I've had in the post this week (there are a number of them - more to be shown at some point!) was this lovely mini quilt, from Sophie. Quite a long time ago, Sophie was in one of my little quilt swaps (perhaps the first one) and was due to make a quilt for me, but then life got in the way - and during her big move from Michigan to Texas, the quilt got lost - she thought for good. Luckily, it came to light again while she was looking for something different she thought had been lost in her more recent move (within Texas) - and she finished it off and sent it along... Isn't it great? The little houses are 3" blocks, and they sit in a very dark blue background - I originally thought it was black, but it's not.

Anyway, I'm delighted she found it - partly because of course it's incredibly annoying to lose things - but mainly because I love it!

Noughts and Crosses

(well, just crosses, really)

Finished this little quilt last night (i.e. sewed the binding down) and have even, after a little juggling, found a place to hang it up inside. Now, what's next? (Yeah, I know, it should be to work on something already in progress, lol...)

A bit of quilting

So, here's the quilted article. Tomorrow I am going to attach a binding, which I will probably sew down on Monday at my quilt group. I think I'll use the blue fabric for binding, though it's possible that I might go with a scrappy brown. Will have to audition them, I guess. Then I just have to find a space somewhere on my walls (ha) to hang it!

Clamshell quilting

Started quilting this piece today - as I expected, I really like the pattern of the quilting with the design of the quilt. But then I like this quilting pattern on most anything, it's just time- and thread-consuming, so I don't use it on big pieces. At the moment, there's just one big clamshelly feather extending across the quilt - but I'll do more on it tomorrow - perhaps even finish, time permitting - it's not a big piece, after all...

X marks the spot

Here's a little top I made today - the plan was originally to use the V&A reproduction fabrics I bought, and I did use them a little, but in the end, I found myself going in another direction - the browns are from stash - they were 4.5" squares to start with; I sewed four of them together, then slashed those blocks up to insert the "X" strips - and those bits of fabric were from the V&A collection. I then trimmed the blocks to 8", so the finished top is about 22" square.

The design idea, I stole unashamedly from a lovely little quilt I own, which I got from Julie in a swap a while back. I love this quilt and have for a long time meant to make something using it (or rather, something more with the technique - I did make a little quilt as part of the BQL challenge using the idea).

I plan to quilt this fairly heavily, using a King Tut thread I have which I love (#944 - Karnak) which is brown and blue variegated. I've ordered another spool of it, just to be on the safe side, but I hope to be working on the quilting this weekend (tomorrow probably not so much as I am taking the kids swimming at a place with cool slides and whatnot, and running some errands) - I may use the clamshell pattern, which I think looks great on many designs. It's quite thread intensive, though, so it's not such a good one for larger pieces.

Spring/Pointy quilt

Not much done during the day today, which was spent largely mucking about and cleaning house, but this evening I did manage to get binding sewn down on a couple of small projects - the Spring mini quilt (also managed to add the flowers and faces, etc - did that this afternoon), which I think looks like good fun - I hope my partner will like it!



And finished binding this little art mini, which has been nearly done for ages, but the prairie points were putting me off doing the binding. I'm still not totally thrilled by the way they are finished on the back, but it looks ok - just seems a bit round-aboutish to me. Next time (not that I will ever use prarie points again) I will tuck the backing in and stitch it down before quilting, which will hopefully make things a bit better. [I have a feeling this is one of those things that no one else will even notice, but you know how it goes...] This little mini is going off to an old friend for no particular reason other than it seems like her kind of thing, once I get to the post office. Probably not tomorrow, as tomorrow will involve a lot of taking girls to one place and then another...

Spring! (I wish)

After a nice, leisurely start to the morning (I didn't get up that late, but I did spend a lot of time doing nothing, which was lovely), Alex and I had a trip to New Malden to do a few errands - Sarah not being home from her sleepover yet and Olivia choosing to stay home and sleep and/or use computer while still in pyjamas - and one of them was popping into our little local department store which has a Tardis* type haberdashery department. They don't have much fabric, but they do have what I needed, which was a couple of metres of black cotton - I am totally out of black, except scraps, and I use it in a lot of things, so I like to keep it on hand. It's not quite as nice quality as some quilting cotton, but it is 100 per cent cotton, it's less than 2 miles from my house, and it's £3/metre. 'Nuff said. Of course, in true Kate fashion, I have gone in for 2 metres of black cotton and come out with 2 metres of black cotton, 5 sheets of velum & other fancy paper, a small pack of designer paper, and two packs of brads (which were on sale).




After the errands I did come home and do some sewing (well, technically, I had lunch first, but whose counting). I put a binding on a little art quilt which I'll show later, once the binding is sewn down and then decided to work on something for a spring themed swap I am in.

This piece is another excellent example of one of the reasons I follow along with Sophie's Block Lotto - yes, it's fun to have the chance to win a lot of blocks with only making a few, but another great thing I often get from it is exposure to blocks I'd not normally make - or in this case, techniques I haven't tried before. The February lotto uses pieced words a la Tonya of Lazy Gal Quilting, and I'd never tried them before, although I've seen them lots of times. I made a few with a Valentine theme in anticipation of the lotto, which gave me a bit of a feel for the technique. So, when it came time to do a spring themed whatever, it suddenly occurred to me that I could piece the word "spring" as a starting point. Before I had done those blocks, I probably wouldn't have thought of it. And even if I had thought of it, I probably wouldn't have done it as it would have meant taking time to learn the technique and today I just wanted to get right into what I was doing.

So, anyway, I have pieced "spring" in different florals on a neutral floral background and then quilted in my favourite (for small pieces - this one is 10x22") clamshell quilting with a variegated thread. I have plans to embellish the piece with flower faces (not the big fat felt ones, though, as they are the wrong colourway) - more on this soon, I hope.

*For those who may not follow Dr Who and hence not have a clue what a Tardis is, the important characteristic is that it's much bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.

Borders On/Borders Off

This little top (about 20" square) is the result of today's work - it's from the strip roll I bought last weekend on my Hampton Court trip. It didn't take long to make - I just sewed some of the strips to some of the other strips, and then went from there. I also had a FQ of the brown fabric, so some larger size pieces were added as well. I then put some small borders on it, including a very scrappy one with the leftover strip sets - and promptly took them off again - really did NOT like the effect - just too busy and lost. It does need a border or two, though, so I will have to see what I can do - I do have some hand-dyed grey and black, which might actually work. And I may be able to re-use the strippy border if I get something a bit more solid there to break it up, first. Oh well, guess that's the way it goes sometimes!

Christmas Flower

Here's what I did today, in addition to making a few more homespun blocks. I had this block already, from a swap I was in. It's a lovely block - all the pieces are formed from folding the fabric, so it has a lot of texture to it. All I did was layer it up, quilt a few feathers down the sides, and hey presto, mini quilt.

Deja vu?

I promise this is not a recycled photo of the quilt I made for the Four Seasons Christmas swap - this is actually the second top (the blocks for which were made at the same time as those for the first), finally put together. I was beginning to think it wouldn't happen before Christmas this year - there's no guarantee it will be quilted by Christmas, of course, but at least it's getting closer.

Just as well I have this to show, though, as the other thing that I worked on, I can't show - my round for the Bloggers' Round Robin. The quilt top I worked on was Julie's, and it has an oriental theme, and I added some applique - and that's all I can say! Wish I could show all these pieces, as they are great to work on...

A couple more show and tell items tomorrow - two more recently received ATCs from my swap - I won't post them now, though, as it's unlikely I will get anything worked on tomorrow (though it's likely to be a much less busy week than this one was, so you never know) - and that way, there will be at least something to share!

Kiki's Grandmother

Here I was thinking I'd have nothing to show today as I didn't get a chance to do any work, when along came this lovely, lovely thing in the post. This is the quilt I got from Lenna's 12x12" swap, for which I made this piece. The one I was lucky enough to get was made by Kiki Finlayson in Oregon (no blog as far as I know) and features the most beautiful ribbon worked roses and well as using grungeboard swirls (I just bought some grungeboard shapes myself - not swirls - so it's nice to see some in action - perhaps it will inspire me to use the ones I have!) The photograph on the front is of her grandmother, who taughter her to knit and crochet - the quilt is in honour of her.

I was also thinking that I haven't showed any cross-stitch in a long time, so here's some of that. This is the second Easter Sampler I worked on this year - the first, I sent to Cathi; this one is for myself and is on a pale blue canvas and will be to keep. I know it's past Easter now, but I can show it next year. It's really early for next-year's Easter, lol. The colours in this one are brighter and stronger than the pastels I did the first one in - also, the rabbit is white rather than brown. I think both of them work, though.

I've not done so much cross-stitch lately - I had a couple of other hand-work things to work on - a binding, then sewing the labels on the back of the pineapple quilt (done now, hoorah). And marking some of the Sawtooth cat pieces onto foundation for piecing - so consequently, the cross-stitch has been put aside. I'll finish this one now and then, back to the birds. Might even manage to finish it on this go around.

Loads of stuff today

Look what I got in the post today - isn't this great? Now I realise some of you probably aren't as crazy about brown as I am, but even so I'm sure you'll admit this is a lovely piece - I've tried to show some of the quilting detail as well. The brown leaf quilt was made by Liliane, who was my partner for the Four Seasons Quilt Swap 5 (Monochromatic). Yes, I know, I'm a lucky person!

Today I put the border on the Contrary Wife quilt, and pieced the backing (the yellow stripe you see beneath the top in this photo). Now it needs to be pinned (perhaps tomorrow) and quilted (Easter Holidays). I also made several blocks for the April block lotto - but it's still in sneak peek stage until tomorrow, so I won't show them yet.

And tonight, I sewed down the binding on a couple of small pieces (and Olivia's teddy bear quilt, which is upstairs with the teddy bear), which I can now hang up somewhere. Where is the question, as wall space is something we're a bit short of around here most of the time - needless to say, I have already found a home for Lil's quilt.

Manipulating & stamping

Something fun today - I started playing with a fabric manipulation technique which was discussed on Fibre Art Traders - with this technique you put together squares of different sizes into a grid, which creates textures in the larger squares. Once I had the basic grid, I bordered it and then started adding to it - first thing I did was quilt it heavily (surprise, surprise) with some feathery fronds in a sage green, then gold and finally a blue metallic thread. Touch wood, neither of my metallic threads broke once during this process. I then added lots of buttons (see below for first stage), then other various sorts of embellishments. Technically, I suppose, I added the buttons before I added the blue metallic, but who's getting picky...




I think this piece will be for a swap I am doing on Creative Swaps - a 12"x12" (which is the size of this piece) Technique quilt swap - though you never know, I might change my mind. It does suit some of the suggestions of the swap - the size, of course, which is a requirement rather than a suggestion - to try a new technique, use mixed media and either recycle, use "found" objects or work from stash (which I did). Everything used is from my stash - few are true "found objects", but I didn't buy anything new. The pink and silver butterfly is a true found object - it came from some or other item of children's clothing that one of the girls was discarding - I of course grabbed it up. The square metal tag with the leaf on it came from a tag on a piece of clothing - they make really elaborate tags these days - this item, whatever it was, had several paper tags with this sort of charm attached at the top.


The other thing I did today was to work on the first lesson from an online (private) class I am doing on fabric stamping & painting. The lesson covered some stamping methods and transfer embossing, which is something I'd never done before. The class project was a pillow cover, but I didn't want to do that, so I just used some fabric and made a nice background. The piece on the left is a couple of trials where I wasn't partiuclarly happy with the results , but which I'm sure will be good for something. The piece on the right I like better, though I'm not crazy about it. Still, I can see it will make a nice background for ATCs, etc.

Triptych with rickrack

Didn't get a chance to do any sewing yesterday (not surprising for a Friday, where I am at school all day), but I did receive my triptych in the post from the Flickr swap. These three pieces are actually the same size, despite the appearances of the photo, and are about 10" square. My partner for this swap was Kay - hasn't she produced a nice set of scrappy quilties? Thanks, Kay.