Blogger's Quilt Festival Fall 2013 - Throw quilt

It's that time of year again. The big kids are off playing at Quilt Market while the little kids stay home and take part in the virtual Blogger's Quilt Festival hosted by the remarkable Amy. It's always fun to see fabulous quilts made by people that are new to me as well as my old favourites :) If you're new here, hello, we hope you'll find something that will make you want to come back again. If you're a regular you're welcome as always!

Apologies to regular readers who are probably sick to death of my Marcelle Medallion quilt but I just love it so decided to enter it into the Throw Quilt Category.

I couldn't resist jumping on the band wagon earlier this year. This quilt pushed me right out of my comfort zone and saw me wander from the safety of using a whole fabric line from one designer. I absolutely love the end result and it's fair to say that I'm a lot braver with my fabric choices now. Here's an in progress shot so you can see some of the fabrics a bit more clearly. Many of my favourite designer's are represented in this little lot.

I had fun hand quilting with a lime coloured perle 8 thread once I'd done some basic straight line quilting to stabilise the top and backing.

The finished quilt has been auditioned in various locations around the house; the landing,

on the bed...

and now resides on our bedroom wall.

I posted quite a lot during the making of this quilt so just search Marcelle Medallion in the search box at the top of the blog for more information if you're interested.

There are loads of fabulous entries in the throw quilt category so don't forget to check the others out! I'll be back tomorrow with another entry. Happy weekend to you all. Catch you soon x

Coo-eee

Long time no speak. Thank you all for your get well wishes! I'm slowly starting to recover following my surgery and 2 post-op infections. I'm not back to sewing on the machine yet but I have managed to do a bit of tapestry and hexie stitching so it's not all bad. My sick bed is rather welcoming so it's not a chore to spend time on it. Hubby hung my Marcelle Medallion for me last weekend :)

It's my turn to be Queen bee in the HipBees. I foolishly thought it would be less stressful to have the other bees sewing for me this month, knowing that I wouldn't be able to sew and not wanting to let anyone else down, what I didn't consider was the amount of work involved in putting the fabrics together for 11 people...anyway, 3 weeks after starting to put packages together they are finally ready for posting and will be on their way to the other HipBees tomorrow :)

I've asked the HipBees to make 8 small string blocks each for me so that I can finally finish a project that I started last year. Each package contains a lovely selection of Denyse Schmidt fabrics; Flea Market Fancy, Hope Valley, Florence and Shelburne Falls, some grey kona strips, a grey rectangle for writing their siggies and 8 -  5" squares of paper for use as foundation templates.

Half the bees will have predominantly red/pink/orange/brown fabrics with half as many blue/green/grey fabrics and the other half will have the opposite. Each bee member will make 4 straightforward string blocks like so...

...and 4 diagonal string blocks like so...

When the blocks come back to me I'll be constructing the larger finished blocks like so...

The centre of each block will house the siggie of the Bee member :) I'm really looking forward to this one being finished! I just know it's going to be another family favourite. 

I hope you all have a lovely weekend. Catch you soon x

Finished

I've finished a few projects this week. First up, I joined another bee, the Simply Solids: a modern Bee, and this is the first month I've had to make blocks for it. Patti asked for this winged square block, it was super quick to put together so I made 2.

 Then I got on and made this whirlygig for Karen's month in the HipBees.

So with my bee commitments out the way I got on and finished the Marcelle Medallion quilt! I think it is my most favourite quilt ever. I was all set to take some nice photos outside when the heaven's opened...grrr. Instead I just took some dodgy shots around the house.

On the sofa

 It's quite a big quilt, definitely a great size for snuggling under while scoffing chocolate :)

On the bannister

On the bed

 I machine quilted a few straight lines around the borders, enough to fix it in place and then set to it with some lime green perle thread.

 I bound it with a brush stroke print from Summersville and backed it with my go to favourite, Nummer, from Ikea.

 You can't beat a pretty folded quilt :)

I'm quite sad that this one is finished now, I think I might have to make another soon! Catch you soon x

Just popping in to say...

it is done! The Marcelle Medallion quilt top is all finished and waiting for me to fight with the batting and backing ;) I hope to get some better photos when the daylight returns but I was just so excited to show you what it looks like now. 

I totally underestimated the finished size, it practically fills the void in our upstairs landing. There's just about enough room to move around it when I'm sandwiching it. I absolutely love it as this stage :) I even think I like it enough to do some hand quilting! Catch you soon x

You know where you are with rectangles

Progress on the Marcelle Medallion quilt has been good this week owing to my close friendship with rectangles and squares ;) You know where you are with them and not a flying goose in sight!

 Now that I'm over the stress that was induced by the triangles and flying geese I can look at the quilt without swearing. I think this one might actually be one of my all time favourites!

 I'm on the cross border now and I'm really enjoying it :) Look at all that yummy fabric!

 One row of crosses done... three more to go. I love the way the cross hatch from Lu's Summersville range contains all that riot of colour in the centre :)

I've had really irritating tinnitus since Wednesday so I gave myself a break from thinking and made a mindless Scrappy trip block in Shelburne Falls offcuts left over from making Katy's cushion. I really love this range, it's got something for everyone! Both Shelburne Falls and Chicopee are so much better in real life than they are the computer screen. If you haven't seen them for yourself you can take my word for it ;)

Talking of Katy's cushion, I've entered it in Rachel's Shelburne Falls Contest. There are some fabulous entries over there so make sure you take a look :) Entries are open until Sunday evening so there's still time to enter yourself! I hope all is good where you are. Catch you soon x

If I never see another...

... flying geese block it will be too soon! In the last 5 days I have made 80 of the sodding things and I'm sick to the back teeth of them now! Rant over ;-) In their defense, they do look very pretty but they are so tedious to make. First up was this block for Rachel in the HipBees. Rachel entrusted us with some of her Liberty stash and asked us to make this Puss in the corner block. So that's 8 flying geese right off the bat.

Next up I got round to making the October block from the Fat Quarter Shop BOM. As I've mentioned before I'm rather behind on this one. I received the tenth block today and the one I'm showing you is only block number 5. It's a rather lovely block with another 8 flying geese, taking my total to 16.

The remainder of the flying geese blocks were for my Marcelle Medallion. Before I show you the flying geese I need to show you the other borders. I'm not giving you any close-ups as frankly my piecing is pretty dire. I'm definitely applying Sheila's 20mph rule to this one. The equilateral triangle border should have been a breeze but somehow it finished up too long to line up with the previous border, as I said shoddy piecing. I love the overall effect of the fabrics that I've used and if I don't stare at all the triangles that are missing their points or the ones that actually have four angles then I'm happy with it.

 The next border went on with no problem as there was minimal piecing involved :)

Then it was onto the dreaded flying geese, 64 of the buggers! Again the piecing is shocking, there are points missing all over the place and again the border ended up too long to match with the previous border but the fabrics make it so pretty that I need to give myself a break.  

I had intended to keep track of all the different fabrics that I used in this quilt but that went out the window fairly quickly. I know that I added Tula Pink and Anna Maria Horner to the mix but beyond that I'm past caring ;) I'm sure I won't hold a grudge against the flying geese for too long but I'm steering clear of them for at least a week! Hope all is good where you are. Catch you soon x

Jumping on the band wagon.

This is one band wagon that I just could not resist! I've seen lots of Marcelle Medallions popping up all over the internet and so I bought myself a copy of Liberty Love by Alexia Abegg for Mother's Day so that I could join in. I am determined to fight my usual safe mode of sticking to one collection per project for this one. It's going well so far!

So far I've included fabrics from 6 different designers in the central medallion. I'm going to try to keep count as I go along :) That's Patty Young, Melody Miller, Saffron Craig, Sweetwater, Sandi Henderson and Helen Dardik (I think...correct me if I'm wrong, it's the dot fabric).

The central medallion went together really quickly and I managed to get the first border on too. That's 2 more designers there...Pat Bravo and ???( not sure on the black and white fabric).

I'm very motivated to get this top finished after seeing Mandy's finished Marcelle Medallion in real life at Lynne's last week!! In other news, I attended the inaugral meeting of the East Midlands Modern Quilt Guild on Saturday thanks to Kerry. It was lovely to meet more mad sewing ladies in person, including Di, the HipBees Queen Bee!! Any lovely readers from the East Midlands area that fancy popping along to join in with other like-minded people can find out details in the flickr group. Hope you've all had a good weekend. Catch you soon x