Beehive finish

We're just back from our local Christmas fireworks and lights switch on. Most amusingly it turns out we were stood next to the green control box where the lighting engineer switches the lights on after the countdown :) It's almost like being told that there's no such thing as Santa (we all know there is!), I always thought the lights went on by magic when some random celebrity pressed the plunger, what do I know, eh?! Anyway, that has absolutely nothing to do with today's project reveal so I'll get to the point... I finished Florence's quilt :) I broke out my limited free-motion skills in the form of a loop-da-loop type pattern over the majority of the quilt.

I left a few areas un-quilted (is that even a word?), for example, around the flowers as I'd raw edge applique'd them in place. It gives the quilt a lovely texture which should be nice and tactile for little fingers.

I love the way the quilting looks on the back of the quilt too.

I can't remember what line this backing fabric is from but I thought it was perfect for this little quilt as it picked out the orange, yellow and pink from the Briar Rose on the front. I self-bound as I didn't want the extra bulk around the edge of such a small quilt. You can see my amateur free-motion "skills" in this shot, my stitch length is anything but regular! Thankfully the Aurifil thread is very forgiving and doesn't snap every two seconds :)

Here's the finished quilt in all it's glory ;) It's been really difficult to capture it properly in photo form as usual! I'm really pleased with the end result though and I'm fairly sure it will be well received. I think it might be more of a wall-hanging than a snuggle under quilt as it is quite stiff with all the quilting.

 I do love a quick project! It's so satisfying to complete a quilt in less than a week :) I hope you all have a good weekend. Catch you soon x

Busy Bee

I've started work on a special quilt for one of my best friend's new baby, Florence. Florence was born while I was on bed rest following my op so I had to content myself with sketching out a plan for the quilt. My sketching is awful, I am no artist! I'm not even showing you the sketch it's that bad but thankfully I am quite good with fabric ;) I bought a fat quarter stack of Briar Rose from Justine at Simply Solids earlier this year and this project was perfect for it! Hopefully you can tell that it's supposed to be a beehive, if not just humour me :) I strip pieced the beehive then appliqued it the solid.

I added some flowers that I cut with my Go!Baby...

...then got busy with some sky writing. Excuse the  dodgy quality photo, it was getting dark again. I felt most pleased with myself for the fussy cut bee and the sky writing was passable although it does look a little like the bee might have been out on the tiles before doing it ;) 

So, tomorrow I hope to finish this baby quilt in daylight so I can get some nice photos before I send it to it's new home. Catch you soon x

Sneaky Stars

I'm really excited to share with you a project that I've been working on for a collaboration with Justine at Simply Solids. Let me introduce the Sneaky Stars quilt.

I'm really thrilled with how this pattern has turned out. I've been working on it for quite a few months so it kind of feels like my baby. It's a super quick quilt to piece and I really hope that I'll see versions of it popping up on blogs/flickr when the pattern is released ;)

Justine will be selling kits for this in time for Festival of Quilts. I'll update you when the kits go live :) This version of the quilt will be available to view on Justine's stand at Festival of Quilts. For those of you who won't be there here are a few more pics of it.

I wanted the solids to do all the talking so I did some very simple echo quilting in white and a rather lovely blue, variegated 12wt Aurifil. I wasn't sure if it would be possible to machine sew with the 12 wt but it went through with no problems :)

The improv pieced backing really shows the star quilting up beautifully, even if I do say so myself :)

I've also made 2 other versions of the pattern so you can see how versatile the design is. First up is a baby quilt that I made for Amanda's little man. I used Noteworthy by Sweetwater and a natural Moda crossweave. Excuse the rather uninspiring picture.

Here are some close-ups so you can see the pretty fabric:

The cross-weave made this little quilt really snuggly, just what a new baby needed :) You've already seen a sneaky peek at the other version that I made. I thought it was about time I made hubby a quilt so I put this one together for his birthday in June.

I dug out the perle thread for the quilting on this one. There are 3 different colours but it's difficult to capture them properly with the camera. Either way it stands out beautifully on the black solid. 

So there you have it. The Sneaky Stars quilt kit coming soon to now available at Simply Solids! I'd better crack on with writing the pattern now ;) Stay cool this weekend. Catch you soon x

Blogger's quilt festival - Heather Ross baby quilt

I've got another entry for Amy's Blogger's Quilt Festival. This time it's in the Baby quilt category. If you're a new visitor to the blog you can find the back story for my Heather Ross baby quilt here. If you like what you see we'd love you to come back soon :) If you're a regular reader it's not been too long since I started this little quilt for our new nephew so I'm sure you'll be impressed that I got it done so quickly! 

I didn't have a firm plan in mind for this quilt other than wanting it to be a kind of eye-spy quilt but if I did have a plan it would have looked exactly as it does ;) Our nephew's parents don't own a tv and they are a very musical family so I'm sure they will find plenty of things to sing about when this quilt is in use.

Starting point for the quilt

These prints by Heather Ross are perfect for fussy cutting! I framed a few little pieces with solids but really the prints sing all on their own.

When it came to quilting I didn't want anything too fussy so I just did some organic(otherwise known as wonky) straight lines in a neutral Aurifil thread. I used this chirpy print from Ikea for the back. It's a home decor weight fabric that will stand up to outdoor picnics much more readily than the quilting cotton.

This juicy orange pezzy print from American Jane made the perfect choice for binding.

So there we have it, one very cute (even if I say so myself) baby quilt measuring approximately 43"x 45".  I'm really hoping the recipients will love it as much as I do! Thanks for taking a look, don't forget to check out all the other quilts in the baby quilt category. Catch you soon x