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Sunday 17 November 2013

47 hours

I'm heading off to Adelaide on Friday, to see my siblings. My nephew asked for a quilt for his sister's and his new dog, so I thought I'd whip something up. I had three orphan blocks from my niece's peacock quilt, so started off with those at 6.30 on Friday night. That night I made four "made fabric" blocks. They were really ugly and didn't work with the aqua 16 patch blocks. That wore me out, so I gave up for the night.

 

Inspiration hit the next day. Cut them up and use them for star points. I was off and running. After auditioning fabric from my stash, I decided to use a bright yellow/gold fabric for the background, as the stars were really ugly. At least the yellow was a distraction. The fabric on two sides of the quilt is flannelette - a fat quarters worth. All I had.

 

The back used the last remaining orphan block and I dragged out every bit of kiddie fabric in my stash, that I knew I wouldn't use for anything else. Turquoise and baby blue do not sit well together. Oh well, it's a dog quilt and it's only the back. The ugly back took me longer than the ugly front to piece. Go figure?

On Saturday afternoon, I basted the quilt using an old woollen blanket for the batting (the blue and cream thing above, which had to be sewn together again as it had torn). I SID one of the stars on the front, then finished quilting it today.

 

I quilted meandering flowers for Daisy, my niece's and nephew's dog, and included her name.

 
 

I quilted continuous curves in the 16 patch blocks.

Trimmed and ready for the binding.

 

 

The binding fabric was used as part of a block in my nephew's tumbling block quilt.

 

This quilt might be a bit fugly, but it contains fabric from both my niece's and nephew's quilts, so links Daisy's quilt with theirs. It finished at 53 x 36 inches, a good sized dog quilt. Now to take it to Adelaide in the hand luggage!

 
 
 
 
The front
 
 

the back - trust me, the colours look worse in real life.

 

the binding.

 

All in all, I finished the quilt at 5.30 pm on Sunday. The fastest ever for me. Now back to my niece' quilt.

 

 

Friday 1 November 2013

Bloggers quilt festival - double spiderweb

I made this quilt over four or five months this year and am entering it in the scrappy quilt section of Amy's quilt festival. http://amyscreativeside.com/2013/10/25/bloggers-quilt-festival-scrappy-quilts/. I have been buying other peoples scraps for earlier quilts but then saw a quilt with pieced kites some where in blog land.

It obsessed me. I took a month or so deciding on the pattern construction and then cut multiple strips from every fabric I had. They were all left hanging on coat hangers so I could decide what to put where. The construction took quite a while, particularly the pieced kites and I couldn't have finished the layout without a design board.

I have shown this quilt before but never took a finished picture. I bound it a couple of months ago and was using it even before I finished the quilting! Here it is, the double spiderweb.

I quilted each web with a web, but quilted each kite with a different quilting design.
The colours of the flannelette backing works well with the front.
Here it is, in it's rightful place. Some might think this is too busy, but I love it. So does my dog?
 I'm also entering Amy's competition to win a Baby Lock Melody, although I don't think it can be shipped to Australia :}  I'd love to have a good machine to be set up just for piecing, and leave my Janome for FMQ.