Beagle quilts

After Australia Day last year, a shop was giving away their excess australian car flags. I grabbed quite a few of them and drove down to the dog park with 16 flags flapping in the breeze, as a joke for a friend who poo poos the event. DH was convinced I would be pulled over by the police for causing a traffic hazard.

After some hilarity at the park, I drove home, pondering what to do with the flags. Make a quilt for the non-lovers of the Aussie flag! So I squared up the Made in Taiwan flags and sewed them together with the intent to end up with a rectangle of slippery flagness.. I then had to come up with something less slippery for the back. But of course, it had to be a eureka flag. I sewed together a semblance of the anti establishment Aussie flag and then quilted it and bound it.

 

Here it is in all it's stinkyness, having been slept on by two smelly beagles. Holding it up for the photos, I nearly collapsed from the odour de doge.

I participated in the 2012 FMQ challenge and had made a quilt from a layer cake, supplemented by white fabric. I decided to finish quilting the remaining blocks and giving it to the beagle owners so their dogs would have one each. I suspect it's not very warm as sections of it are quilted so heavily. So I pulled my finger out on Sunday and quilted the borders and bound it. Into the washing machine and it is now covering a snoring beagle.

Here it is, being coveted by my dog.

And used by its new owner.

 

Stash sorting

My stash is now tidy.  I've spent 2 1/2 hours folding it and sorting it into colours.  I know many of you have huge stashes, but mine is small.
Yes, that is a shoebox that my blue fabric is in.  These two photos are my entire stash.  Not even one large plastic storage box.   I used most of these for my double spiderweb quilt.  I am tired now.  I don't know how people with large stashes manage refolding it all.  My shoulder is sore.  Goodnight.

TGIFF

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The spiderweb quilt is in the process of being quilted, but I'm not all that happy with my quilting - I haven't done any for some weeks and am having trouble moving the quilt, even though my machine is flat in a table, I use a supreme slider and I had gloves on. I think the flannelette backing might be helping it to stick.

Anyway, I decided to make a cushion for the sofa for when I'm using the quilt when it gets cold soon. I made the June lemoyne star block on the Craftsy 2013 block of the month. It is a 19 inch block, so makes a good sized cushion.

I finished stitching on the binding on the train on the way home. My star points aren't perfect, but that should go with the quilt.

Im linking up with TGIF friday at hhttp://quiltmatters.blogspot.ca/2013/06/tgiff-hard-core.html

The back, with the quilt being quilted

 

Not quite a finish and not quite Friday

This weekend is a long one, thanks to the Queen's birthday (which isn't actually in June).In between getting ready for people to come over for dinner on Saturday, I finally sewed all the blocks together, completing the last one about half an hour before they arrived. The piecing ended up being pretty wonky, given the number of angles and all the bulky seams. There are over 2,500 pieces in this quit, which currently measures 73 x 84 inches. Not big enough for a bed, but plenty big enough for the sofa in the coming winter. I'm using wool batting and flannelette for the back, to make sure its nice and warm.Today, I sewed the backing together and spray basted the quilt - using 505 basing spray which I bought when I went to a little quilt show a couple of weeks ago. I have tried using the Birch basting spray several times and have always been disappointed, having to pin baste the quilt top.The 505 worked really well and today, I stitched in the ditch of each of the blocks. I'm linking up to http://richardquilts.blogspot.com as I've finished the top, basting and SID!I didn't want to put a border on this baby - it would look too organised - so i sewed a scant 1/4ish around the edges of the quilt. This is in an attempt to stop crazy bias edge distortions when I quilt.

Colour detail

More colour

I wasn't sure about this combination, but now I like it

For some reason, my camera doesn't like to take clear pictures of this quilt, and distorts the colours - maybe there are so many it gets confused. The colours in the blocks above are reasonably true to life.Any suggestions on how to quilt this one, now I have done the utility stitching? I was thinking of spiderwebs, but that might be a little obvious.

 

So close, and yet so far

Linking up with WIP Wednesday at http://www.freshlypieced.com/2013/06/wip-wednesday-chevron-love.html. Tonight, the last two kites were pieced!

 

Most of the spiderweb quilt top is now in one piece, other than the bottom row and right hand side column of the blocks.

 

This started as planned geometric piecing, but has ended up being crazy geometric. I can't wait to get the top finished, quilted and in use. I am very happy with this top, even the mismatching seams, as it is bright and energetic.

 

Shrinking violet

Thirty of the blocks are now joined together.

When I first laid out this quilt, I thought I had cut too many spiderwebs. I was wrong.

This was my initial layout.

I thought that 3 large webs wide and 3.5 high would be big enough.

After sewing the many, many, many seams, here is the revised layout. You can see how much the middle section has shrunk, from all those seam allowances. It will now be 3.5 large webs wide and 4 high, so I have to make another 5 or so half webs and lots more kites.

The quilt has shrunk, but I don't think its a shrinking violet, more of a loud, brash gerbera. This was never meant to be a quiet, peaceful quilt.

 

 

Because everything is on the bias, my piecing the sections together has not gone as well as I first planned, however I don't mind. I like the overall effect and don't think that the jagged joins really spoil the look - since when were spiderwebs perfect anyway!

 

The top is becoming very heavy- this should be a very warm sofa or bed quilt - depends on how big I end up making it. I don't think this quilt will want any fancy quilting - It's far too busy for that.

 

Bloggers' festival

I started a quilt for a work colleague who decided to move back to Darwin. She really wanted my version of Kentuckii Botannica, but that was for someone else and has already been given, so I decided to make something in the same colours, but different. I won't make the same quilts again. As I didn't have too much time, I decided to make an improv star quilt, with lots of negative space for what I enjoy - the quilting!

All pieced and basted

The only thing I had decided was that all the stars should be in the process of moving, so I quilted the main stars with trails. After that, I used fillers to complete the middle section of the quilt.

Detail of some of the middle.

after that, I then decided to quilt each of the four elements in each corner of the quilt - fire (sun)' water, wind and the earth, represented by plants.

I am linking up to http://amyscreativeside.com/category/bloggers-quilt-festival/
And am entering the home machine quilting and throw quilt categories? I hope you enjoy these pictures.