PATCHWORK!

Random....

Not so random...

Love them both! Now, how to quilt them...

I have an idea for the second one.  The first one may end up with either straight lines or my old favourite - meandering! I love the look of straight line quilting but I find it so tedious.  I love how the quilts crinkle with the FMQ!  I don't think I'll get to either one of these before the weekend so I have a few more days to think about it!



TWO POSTS IN ONE DAY!!!

I spent about an hour and a half with a friend down at the beach this morning.  He's a talented photographer and I asked him if he would mind taking some pictures of my quilts for me (especially one I want to write a pattern for)!  He happily obliged and took about 60 pictures.  Here's a few...

Can you see the 'wild' bunny in the background of the first picture!

I absolutely love these pictures - the colours look amazing! I think it may be time for a new camera...

(BUCKET) QUILTING LIST

This quilt has been on my list for ages...

I've seen a few floating around on the Internet and ordered the pattern a couple of years ago. I love the look and feel of raw edge applique so I figured this quilt was right up my alley! I was a little intimidated at the thought of cutting out all those wedges and glueing them onto the muslin.  It actually didn't take me as long as I thought to cut them out.  Not sure I'm going to like the actual process of making this quilt, but I'll let you know!



BUILDING!!!

I think I have mentioned in the past that one of my favourite things about making quilts is building a fabric stack!  Having said that, I'm having a little trouble with this one...

After 5+ years of quilting, I've built quite a good stash (finally)!

This group contains a few prints that are quite busy so I wanted to add in some solids and smaller prints to calm things down.  I've been adding and eliminating for a few days and I think it's time to just get started! I do seem to gravitate to more girly fabric so in an effort to even things out I'm going to concentrate on boy quilts a little more.  These fabrics are destined for a simple patchwork quilt with some simple straight line quilting in a new design!



Better Late Than Never!

I've been meaning to post these pictures for a week! I got together with my multi-talented SIL to decorate Valentine's cookies! She whipped up a batch (a few batches, actually) of her famous sugar cookies and we spent a fun afternoon letting the creative juices flow.  Here's some of our creations!

I even finally got around to baking a red velvet cake...

I think it turned out pretty good!  The colour was perfect (I used two bottles of red food colouring as per the recipe)!  The texture was perfect - it was actually velvety! (Is that a real word?) Anyway, it was velvety and had a nice subtle chocolate flavour.  I made a vanilla buttercream frosting and it was perfect.  I will most definitely be making this again (and I only ended up with one red-stained fingertip)!

AT LEAST IT WASN'T MY FINGER (THIS TIME) !

After a near-miss a few years ago, I've trained myself to concentrate when I'm cutting fabric.  That being said, things happen!  (I have a 1/2" scar on the top of my right foot to prove it. After that little mishap, my wonderful SIL bought me this cutter which automatically retracts the blade.  I had left the blade exposed on my old cutter and it fell off the table and onto my foot. Note to self:  Don`t cut fabric with bare feet!)  Anyway, I`m a little hearbroken about this. This was my mom`s tape measure and every time I take it out of my sewing box I think of her.  I can still hear her saying, "It's not a toy" whenever we used it to play with the cat (amongst other things)!  She would have my head right now if she knew and I would have to sit through a lecture on paying attention to the task at hand!  Sorry, mom!

Now, on to more fun things!  To the three people who read my blog, you may remember from my previous post that I was going to give hand quilting a try. Well, I did, not very successfully!  I did take some pictures but unfortunately the memory card in my camera failed and I had to reformat it consequently losing all the pictures.  Fortunately, I had already downloaded most of them to my computer, but did lose the ones of my hand quilting efforts.  Unfortunately, I picked it out and am now in the process of machine quilting the little scottie quilt.  You will just have to take my word for it on this one.  I'm not ready to give up on hand quilting entirely.  I love the look of vintage quilts with hand quilting and envision making one for myself some day.

In the meantime, I have been working on turning this...



into this...

This is a girl's version of the freeform patchwork quilt I made a while ago.  I had listed it in my shop and it sold a few days ago!  Hopefully, this one will too (if that's where it ends up)! I'm really enjoying this method of piecing.  It's no secret that I HATE pins, and I didn't use one when piecing the entire top!  I'm not sure what I'm going to do for the back - I have a few things in mind. I'll be sure to post some pictures of the finished quilt. 



SOMETHING (REALLY) DIFFERENT!

When I first started quilting (about five or six years ago), I fell in love with all the vintage reproduction fabrics.  I took an applique workshop and made this sweet little quilt with Scottie dogs so I could practice my applique skills.  I wasn't sure how I wanted to quilt it, so I put it away with all my other UFOs (not that many)!  From time to time I would pull it out and think, Oh, this is so cute, I really should finish it, only to put it away again.  Well, about six months ago, I pulled it out again.  This time it was upgraded to a hanger on the back of a door and I even made a back for it. 

Here's a close-up of some of the Scotties!

Anyway, I've decided it's time to conquer my hand quilting fear and thought this would be the perfect project!  I think I have read probably a million (okay, maybe a dozen) tutorials on hand quilting.  Here's a picture of the basted quilt...

I'm wondering now if I used too many pins?  I'm worried about the layers shifting. I used all but about ten of my pins. I'm going to give it a try without a hoop or frame.  I'm going to keep the quilting fairly simple - just an outline of each dog and the inside of each square.  Wish me luck!  I'll post some pictures of my progress.  Maybe it's a good thing I used all my pins.  I need to get started on this or else I won't be able to baste any other quilts!