Blogger's Quilt Festival - Larking Around

I'm joining in with Amy's Blogger's Quilt Festival after a friendly poke from Susan. If you're visiting our blog from the Festival for the first time then I hope you'll find something you like here enough to stop by again :) If you're a regular visitor you will already have seen some of the progress of the quilt I'm entering in the Throw Quilt Category. I'll quickly recap for you. I started this quilt in November 2011 but only finished it yesterday (hangs head in shame). I was so excited when I got the full fat quarter set of Lark by Amy Butler that I started cutting into it pretty much straight away. I had a thing for equilateral triangles at the time so it was a no-brainer that I would use them in this quilt which I named Larking Around.

For one reason or another I shelved it, after only constructing 2 rows of triangles, until July 2012 when I added 4 more rows of triangles. Then life got busy and it made it's way back into my rather large WIP box. Finally, last weekend I rescued it from the box and got the top finished and basted to the backing! When Susan told me that Blogger's Quilt Festival started today I cussed quite a bit (nothing new!) but was determined to get it finished so I could join in. So now for the details. I used Kona black solid for the background fabric and strips cut from fat quarters of Lark for the triangles and the border, then backed with one of the black and white prints from Lark. I pieced and machine quilted an echo around the central hexagon panel and the strippy border with Aurifil. 

I hand quilted the diamond shapes in between the hexagons with a vivid yellow perle cotton that doesn't show up very well in photos but looks gorgeous against the black in real life. 

I bound with a nice black and white print from Cocoon.

And that's it, after almost 2 years of procrastinating, a finished lap/throw quilt.

I love it! I hope you've enjoyed looking at it too :) 

The finished quilt is approx. 43" by 49" so the perfect size for keeping my legs warm while sewing in front of the telly. Right there I sound about 80 and I'm really not ;) Don't forget to check out all the other lovely quilts! Thanks for stopping by, catch you soon x

Busy, busy, busy

The silence here on the blog belies the amount of activity that has been going on in the sewing room. I thought it was about time I pulled my finger out and showed you some of the things I've been working on. It would be really rude of me not to introduce you to Jinny the Janome first though ;) She's a real beauty!

There are a gazillion stitches and new fangled presser feet to get my head around but it will be a lot of fun experimenting. I suspect I wont actually use her to the full extent of her capacity but I'm likely to have a more consistent seam allowance and much less cussing when quilting ;)

I've already tested that theory on my Larking Around quilt. I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that I started this quilt in 2011!! It's well on the way to being finished now though :)

I did some very light machine quilting using Jinny and had to take a shot of all that extra space to the right of the needle just to show off ;) I've started hand quilting in perle thread and hope to have a finished quilt to show you by the end of the week.

 I've joined yet another bee over on flickr. Each month we will make 4 Japanese x and + blocks from our stash to be sent out in pairs to 2 other bee members.

 I'm hoping this month's queen bees will be happy with my choices!

I've done this month's block for the Simply Solids Bee too. This one was also from stash. There's lots of Oakshotts in this so I'm hoping the May queen will love it!

I just need to find time to do a block for Sarah in the HipBees and then my bee commitments are behind me for the month. If you could see the length of my sewing to-do list you'd be sweating just as much as me! Lots of deadlines approaching, it would be so lovely not to need as much sleep as I do to function. Speaking of which, it is M.E awareness week again. Our lovely Jess has written another fabulous post to mark the occasion this year, please do pop by and read it if you haven't already. Catch you soon xx