DQS#11 - Recieved from Rita!

It is the exciting time of the DQS#11, the receiving! Mine should arrive at it's new home any day now, but look what arrived at my house yesterday! An absolute beauty from the amazingly talented Rita from Red Pepper Quilts! "Ohhh, that's very you" the husband commented when I showed him excitedly. Yes, bright colours on a crisp white background with a strippy binding, very me! Thank you Rita!

I had to pinch myself. Look at the back!

And wait there is more! She knitted me this sweet little shawl. Even though Grace is modeling it in this photo, she will not be wearing it! We have a fancy school social event on Saturday night, guess what I am wearing over my little black dress?

And I took down a quilt I had made for the last round of the swap and replaced it with Rita's masterpiece for all to see that come in the house. Thanks again Rita. I feel very lucky to have a Red Pepper Quilt in my house.

DQS#11 Finished!

While watching the finale of a certain reality TV cooking show last night, I finally got around to sewing on the label for mt dolls quilt for DQS#11.

It's all finished! It measures 17 inches square exactly. Lucky, as the rules were 18 inches and under. I used a polka dot binding from some material my sister sent up last month. I know my partner likes polka dots!

The quilting was quite simple in the end. With the smaller tulips just a square around them and then a square around the outer.

And the same with the larger flowers as well as around the largest petal. Thought I would do it in white rather than a red or yellow so it added some contrast. My partner indicated that they do not require a hanger as discussed here. So that solves that problem for me!

DQS#11 - Top Finished!

I have sewn all the blocks together for the DQS#11. I'm pleased with it. I am going to quilt it simply, around the outer of each block and inside the larger petal in the four bigger blocks. I think that will be enough.

I'm a bit stuck how to sew the hanger in the binding though. From the start I always imagined it would be displayed on point as in the photo at the start of the post. But now I am thinking, how can I sew a pocket in for it to hang that way? It would have to be pinned on the wall. So do I go no hanger or sew one on the side like normal so it hangs like the above photo, which doesn't look that bad I suppose. Any thoughts dear blog reader?

Tulip Progress.

I have made two more tulip blocks for the flickr DQS. With spots this time. This measures 4 inches.

And I have made 5 of these size blocks. The tulip here measure's 2 inches. So that makes a total of 9 blocks meaning I am 3 blocks in front of the swaps minimum of 6! Now too trim them all down and sew them together.

DQS#11 - Plan B!

Hello plan B! I love this! Perfect!! It measures just under 5 inches down the sides, 6 inches from right point to left point. I took the inspiration from here. My google searches for "flower paper pieced block", "rose paper pieced block" or "tulip paper pieced block" all drew up blanks. Is there another name for this? It was quicker for me to draw up my own pattern in Quark and wolah, here is the first block. I'm thinking four.....

DSQ#11 - The Doubts!

It is a good idea to do test blocks first isn't it? So then you can see how crap your idea is. How crap you are at lining up points even though its paper pieced and everything is supposed to line up for you?

And if you do three test blocks then you might get better as you go? Maybe?? Maybe not! These are appalling! Being so tiny their faults scream at you, look at me! I'm way out!! So back to the idea board I go.....

DQS#11 - The Beginning!

It's that time again, Dolls Quilt Swap #11! Back to our roots for this round. We have taken the size back to between 9 x 9 to 18 x 18 inches, actual doll quilt size! No art quilts this round and it must have a minimum of at least 6 pieced blocks. So with those thoughts in mind I stumbled across the block crossed canoes. I drew this layout in Quark to get an idea of how I can play around with the colours.

I've pulled some fabric and its time to just get sewing now I think and see if this is going the direction I want it to!