The Nieces' Christmas Quilts

All three are finally finished, have borders and are waiting quilting - so that is FIVE, yes FIVE quilts to be finished. EEK!
I am going to concentrate on getting the three Girl's Quilts done first - my two boys may have to wait till the New Year for theirs. lol

Can't believe that I finished the first one in September! Since then I dropped and broke my poor 40+ yr old machine. Thank goodness for ebay! We have also had all the usual childhood coughs and colds (and lack of sleep that goes with) that you get at this time of the year.

The first Post is here.

All the quilts use the same fabric and the patterns are from the Jelly Roll Inspirations book (with a few minor changes)

This one is "Pandora's Box"
For the centre squares I used my scrapes so each square is made up of 4 fabrics - not 2 as in the book. The border is some lovely shiny, lightweight denim/chambray that I bought from FabricLand with the intention of making myself a dress with. Luckily I accidently bought too much (looked at the yardage not the meterage) So I had just enough spare!

I forgot to take some close ups - but in a couple of the centre squares, There are some squares with the initial "B" on. I used some handkerchiefs that I picked up at a car boot back in the summer.

This one is on my earlier blog post
This one is called friendship braid in the book, but I actually used these instructions from The Moda Bakeshop. It isn't very clear in the photo, but I alternated colours in the rows. Purple/pink one side and Blue/Green/yellow on the other. I really tried to make sure that the strips were random but still managed to get clusters of the same fabrics together lol!. See if you can spot them!
This would be a great beginners first quilt - you literally are just sewing two strips together, like you would with a normal patchwork, but the results are much more forgiving! It doesn't show if you sewing is wonky or if your patches don't match up properly.


The middle border is made up of all my left overs. I had some wonky blocks from the other quilts so I cut them up too (that is why there are some diagonal strips).

I really want to have a go at free-motion quilting with these. Some nice Heart, Butterfly or swirls. But I am abit nervous about getting started now!

I ordered my wadding (decided on cotton in the end) from ASDing, as they sold extra wide (120 inch width) wadding by the metre. I can fit two quilts in the width, so need a lot less than if I bought the standard 90inch. I am very impressed with them. I ordered on the weekend, had an email Monday to say my order had been dispatched and despite the snowy weather, it arrived Wednesday!!!

So now I have no excuse for not cracking on! If you con't hear from me for a while - you know where I am lol!

The Little Man's Quilt

I would of liked to have left this alone - with no borders but the finished size was too small.

I had been umming & urring over what to do with it, trying various fabrics that I had to hand. Then I found this lovely car border fabric in my local quilting shop. (I had only gone in to buy some thread as it is the only place locally that I can still buy Guttermans since JL stopped selling it)

I think it finishes it off a treat! It was quite expensive - so I just bought enough to go along the longer sides so I couldn't mitre the corners. I have some other wider pieces with a landscape print on them left over. I may use them to make some pillowcases/cushions. I have got a plain red cotton for the binding on this one (and possibly The Little Fella's).

To quilt this one, I am going to "echo quilt" along the zig-zags, possibly in yellow thread, maybe red.

I have posted about this quilt earlier on my blog

The Little Fella's Quilt

This is the quilt I started on my Beginners Quilting Class at Tikki London. You can find my earlier post HERE. It finally has borders and is waiting to be quilted. I think I will quilt this one on the diagonal.

Hmm I am rubbish at the technical stuff -my photo is upside down and portrait.

Finally an update - but where to start!

OK lets start with this - a little gift I made for a friend in Germany.
It is a Nappy (Diaper) Pouch. I used the tutorial from the Noodlehead Blog. The only thing I changed was the strap. On the Blog she uses tape for the fastening strap, I didnt have any so made one from fabric. The fabric is from the Emergancy Bundles I bought from Fabric Rehab back in the summer.

I filled it with a wipes case and lots of little sachets and tester size bottles of baby toiletries. I hope it got there, as they haven't emailed me to say it arrived yet!

Hello peeps...

I am still here! Just been a bit busy lately.

The boys have bad coughs & colds. Although they always go down at night with no problems, one or the other has woken themselves up with their coughing. So then I have to go in & try to settle them before the other boy is woken up. That is usally when I am in the middle of my sewing! The Little Fella has been really suffering in particular and not sleeping well at all so I am often up a couple of times in the night. So some nights I have just vegged out in front of the TV with The Husband.

I have almost finished one more quilt however and have started another one. I am using two more patterns from my Jelly Roll quilts, "Pandora's Box" and "Friendship Braid" in the same fabrics as my last one.

I have also been job hunting so have had my CV to do as well as various searches online & applications. There is just not much out there for me at the moment. I have joined an agency and I am now just waiting for all my checks and references. So should be working again soon.

Hope your Christmas projects are coming along nicely!

My Best make so far...

Whilst browsing (avoiding the housework lol) through some of my favourite blogs, I came across a sew-a-long that Noodlehead was taking part in on The Train To Crazy Blog. The Little Cap Pattern looked perfect for my two little boys, so I ordered up the pdf from Etsy seller Leila & Ben.

The Little Man wanted an orange Giraffe on his so I used some orange from my FabricRehab emergency bundle. I then bought some cheap cord in Fabricland and used an (CB) Ikea quilt cover for the lining, which had an animal print on cotton flannel, so it will be nice & warm.

It came together so easily and from start to finish it took me around 2 hrs to make!!!!

The giraffe was my first attempt at raw-edge applique and was much easier than anticipated to do.
I am really pleased with how he turned out, but the Little Man complained that the Giraffe should be on the front of the hat and not the side!!! Luckily for him the hat is a bit small so The Little Fella will be wearing it. And I can make him another, slightly bigger one with the giraffe on the front lol!!!!

Where is the love????

First Christmas pressie (nearly) finished! Just waiting for my quilting class at Tikki London, this Saturday. Then I might actually get the three quilt tops that I have now completed, quilted up!

I set myself a budget of £30 for all the fabric and extras that I would need for three quilts. For the backing I managed to buy 2 double sized flat flannel sheets and a duvet cover at a car boot for £4 the lot.
The fabric for the quilt has come from some bundles that I bought from here, some vintage pillowcases and fabric pieces from the carboot and a couple of cottons from Fabricland. The fabric I have used for the border was my best ever bargain - I must of got around 6-7 meters of good quality 100% cotton fabric for only £1!!!!! Just have the wadding to buy now (ebay me thinks??)I used a pattern from this book called "Garden Trellis" This is the example from the book,
The instructions were easy to follow and the pattern was fairly straightforward and quick to put together.

However,
I found it very hard to seperate my random fabrics into lights & darks.
I was meant to make 8 blocks with every 4 strips but I often only cut 7 - not sure if it was my fabric or my cutting??
All my blocks turned out wonky - I dont know if it was my cutting, stitching, pressing or a combination of all them lol!!!! I was tempted to trim them, but then decided to work with them as the strips were cut on the diagonal they were quite stretchy.
When it came to putting the blocks together, I did not like how the quilt looked. So I put the blocks into pairs and that worked much better.
It took me ages to decide on the final layout- I had to avoid the same fabrics touching & spread out the dominant colours. I finally decided on a layout but couldn't find the camera, so left the blocks laid out on the front room floor for the night. In the morning I got up before the kids, and relaid the blocks out on my bed, thinking that they would be safe. However, whilst sorting breakfast out, I got that hmmm feeling when all is too quite, and found the little fella on the middle of my bed with patchwork blocks strewn all over the floor!!!!

So I have not found this quilt as much fun as the others and still not sure if I like it or not! but it is finished!!!!!!