What do you think?

Work is not enjoyable and DH has been a bit toey about my spending time sewing, so I've taken a craftsy course and have been making a needleturn appliqué bock which will become another cushion.

 

Even so, I finished the tumbling blocks quilt last night and will post it to my nephew today. I'm calling it optic.

The quilting is simple with straight lines for the dark and medium sides and a continuous swirl for the block tops.

I had to tie in the ends in over the course of a week..the three different sized stripes on the back of the quilt were painful on the eyes, hence the quilt name.

The binding is a black and white chevron, although once it has been cut on the bias, you'd never know. I also quilted the label information on the bottom of the quilt, so it's not too obvious. The quilt shrank several inches in the wash and ended up at 93.5 x 88 inches.

The quilt is waving goodbye before it heads off to Canberra.

 

So, back to my niece's peacock quilt. Twelve 16 patch blocks were made last week and this weekend I drew the peacock's body. I'm trying to work on the layout using the blocks I've made so far. The rest will either be long blades in the same fabrics, or pieced blades. I'm not sure that I like the 16 patch blocks.

maybe an option

Too busy

 

I might use this layout. What do you think?

I'm linking up to Sarah at http://confessionsofafabricaddict.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/can-i-get-whoop-whoop-its-little-things.html

Another finish!

The improv star quilt is finished - in plenty of time!  The binding went on today and here it is, still damp, hanging on the clothes line.  I was in a rush to wash it, as a large skink has now pooed on it twice and I managed to scorch the backing fabric when I put on the binding.

Thank heavens, both came out in the wash.

Pictures of each of the corners, and the middle, are below.

Sun/fire

Water

Wind/air

Earth/plants

Middle

There are two swathes of bubbles, each done in a different green.  I think of them as space dust.

I'm linking up with Leah Day's FMQ Friday finishes.

http://freemotionquilting.blogspot.com.au/2013/04/fmq-friday-closet-design-vs-quilting.html

Spiderweb and stars

I saw a lovely spiderweb quilt on-line, but can't find it again.  It is similar to the spiderweb quilt in the Material Obsession book that some people on line have made, but the kites are pieced in circles, similar to the spiderweb section.

I decided I would make a quilt in this style, so raided my fabrics (I only have one box of fabric :)) and have been cutting them up for a week.

Here is the start of the spiderwebs.  I am trying to achieve colourful and varied webs, with nothing to rest the eye on.  My design wall was put up tonight and is a flannel backed tablecloth.  I know that this won't last long, as sections of fabric have already fallen off!

Here are my messy scraps from these blocks.

 I'm not paper piecing the webs, but making them as strip sets and then cutting them.  This gets two different looking webs from one strip set - I'm really happy with how they are turning out.   The fabrics are being auditioned by hanging them off cheap old coat hangers under the house where I sew.  I'm not happy with all of them so am leaving them to hang for a few days until I decide.  Most of the fabric that I haven't used is green and I don't want to buy more fabric for this quilt - so somehow, I'm going to have to make the combinations work.

Some of these combinations are blah, or boring

The improv star quilt is about 2/3 of the way through the quilting - the dark mark is where a lizard pooed on the quilt while it was on the floor overnight.  GRRRR to the skink.  I've tried to wash it out, but will have to wait for the quilt to be finished before I can give it a good soak.  The other marks in the top left corner are just from water to removed the soluble marker in the outer circles.

I'm enjoying this quilting which is unstructured after the last couple of quilts I've made.

Prizes received and finishes achieved

My little prize packet of Aurifil threads arrived.  Lovely colours.  I also won a $50 voucher from the fat quarter shop, through the 2012 FMQ Challenge hosted by SewCalGal.  Sadly, postage to Australia has increased a lot, so I had to pay about another $20 to get a colour card for Kona cotton and two charm packs of Kaffe Fassett fabric.  All the prizes have lovely bright colours.

A couple of weeks ago, I finished my sister's quilt, a red and white double nine patch on point.  It's taken about five washes to try and get the dissolving thread out, and the lines from those stitches still show.  Hopefully a few more washes and they'll be completely gone.  My sister will be coming up for a visit in a couple of weeks, so I won't post it to her but wait to give it to her when she arrives.
Here it the back of the quilt, hanging on the clothes line.  Its the first sunny day we've had in a couple of months.

Here it is lying on the floor - the ripple in the side is only due to the clothes line.  The border is actually flat - hooray.

Border quilting

First alternate motif

Second alternate motif

On the train to work yesterday morning, I also finished hand sewing the binding to my mother-in-law's GMFG hexagon lap quilt.

I also started an improv star quilt as a present for someone.  It didn't take long to piece and I've started to quilt it in the last couple of days.  Progress to date.

December 2012 FMQ Challenge

Sad to say that this is the last of the challenges.  I still have the March one to do, which I'll have to make up as it wasn't available when I started the challenge in May.

Patsy Thompson was the tutor for December and the challenge focused on multiple borders and variations of feather designs in borders.  Given my time constraints, I decided to do the challenge on a lap quilt for my mother.  It was meant to be a Christmas present but I had to unpick too many times, so didn't finish it on the day.

I had a few hiccups with quilting the border, including sewing part of the back onto itself, which had me pulling out the stitches again.

As I wanted to make the quilt wider, I used wider borders along the length of the quilt, which meant I  had to use a different approach to the tutorial.  I started off with feather borders.  Given that the filler in the blocks were feathers as well, it started to look feather heavy.

The feather front

Feather back

My mother had asked for either roses or lilies in the quilting, I looked around the web for ideas and found an APQS video on quilting a rosebud shape freehand (these look a little rude!)  I also drew some stylised roses and transferred the to the quilt using the method taught by Don Linn.   Strangly, the blue marker doesn't want to wash out properly for some of the motifs but was fine if I simply drew a shape.  I wonder if there is a chemical in the netting I used, which reacts with the marker.  I think if I use this method in future, I will prewash the netting, just to make sure.

Rosebuds front

Rosebuds back

Because of the different end and side widths and the change in motifs, I finished with four different but related borders.  I'm pretty happy with the results, apart from the puckering on the back.  Not sure yet if this is due to the SID I did or the basting.  I used 100% wool batting for this quilt and love the puff it provides.

The back

The back again

Thanks again to SewCalGal and the expert tutors for these challenges.  My feathers have improved enormously and I really appreciate the value of drawing to instill some of the movements into your head and hands.

The rest of the first panel

Swirling flames

Trailing spirals

Pebbles

Stipple/meander

Paisley

Shadow waves (but it didn't work out like that)

The first panel completed :)

More FMQ blocks

More of my Fmq blocks

Echo Shell

Pumpkin Patch

Fern and Stem

H2O

Basic Spiral

Quilting (qayg) the quilt - part 1

I've been following Leah Day's tutorials on FMQ and decided to use some of her design ideas on this quilt and use a different design on most of the blocks..

Etch and Sketch (beetle details tba)

Trailing tears