2007 Quilt Review

Well its that time of the year again, Christmas is over, time to start thinking about what project to get stuck into next. Time to reflect over what one has made through the year. Last year it was these quilts here. This year, there is a few more....

Started out a busy January making the one above for a dear blogging buddy Cass's second daughter Lucy. I love this chicken print, very bright and vibrant.

Also in January, this one for the girls Family Day Care carer who was about to have her own baby. I am quite excitied as that was nearly a year ago and she is starting up her Family Day Care again which I can sent Milly to her again instead of the place she goes to once a week now.

Then in March I finished this one for another friend that had her second baby, a little boy named Hugo, cot sized. Terrible photo sorry. Old dodgy camera.

In May I finished another cot sized one for an online buddy who had her second baby. Used up quite a few blue scraps making this one!

And then in August I finally finished this one for another friend who had her second son, baby Elliott. One of my favorites this quilt. I was scared of using the white at first but I think it worked perfectly!

Also in August I finshed this Dissappearing 9 Patch quilt for another online buddy who had her fourth child, a boy after 3 girls, was just so happy for her to sew this one.

September saw the wrap up of a Raggedy Edges lap sized quilt.

October saw me finish Caitlin's quilt. One of the girls in my "real life" Mothers Group had her second child, a girl, little Caitlin.


November saw the unveiling of two dolls quilts as part of a swap organized with the EB Quilters. A fun swap!

December sent me into a spin, deciding to make two lap sized quilts as thank you presents for Grace's kindy teacher and her assistant. The above one was for the teacher, Mrs K.

And then this one for the assistant teacher which I pulled out all stops to finish in 19 days! Thank goodness for charm square packs and the stunning simplicity of Dissappearing 9 Patches!

Phew! I think that was all! While I was going through all my posts gathering these photos and working out when I had made them, I realized that a lot of my friends have had babies this year and not one of these quilts has stayed in my house! 2008 I am going to finish a single bed sized quilt for both of the girls and finally finish my own queen sized quilt. That is the goal for 2008!

Christmas Craft and Lights.

No WIP Wednesday today. Actually its on holidays till January next year. There is simply too much going on at the moment to sew! I feel like a slack blogger too. Daz is on holidays at the moment, so I have stepped into the full time working role at my work. Which at first seemed like a great idea but today was day 5 of 9 to 6 and I'm over it! Can't wait for Christmas just to have a break! Daz and the girls have been having a ball, every day I have come home to a trashed house and dirty faces, they are loving it! We took them last night to see some Christmas lights not too far from our place. This cul de sac has won the award for best Christmas Lights 4 years in a row! It was like peak hour traffic last night at 9pm, but the girls loved it!

Haven't really mentioned in here, but Grace has finished kindy. Last Thursday was her final day. Next year it will be full time pre primary, she is growing up and already looking foward to the "big kids school". She came home with lots of goodies, two huge scrap books of all the work she has done this year and a box of Christmas craft. She does love her craft! Hmmm, wonder where she gets that from!

My Christmas Swap from Leah

Look at all these lovely goodies that I recieved in the mail from Leah as part of the EB Sewing Girls Christmas Swap! Talk about spoilt! A copy of the wonderful Patchworking & Quilting mag, which I don't have! A cute pincushion, made by you Leah? Some lovely Christmas material, some sweet iron on transfers of little retro maids kinda like Holly Hobbie, a childhood favourite. A handstitched little Christmas hanging of a very trim Santa! I showed Grace and her comment was "Look at his small legs! Is that really Santa?" And lastly a very genourous 10 fat flats from Spotlight. You spoilt me with 10 Leah, lovely choice of colours too, right up my pallette alley! Thank you for everything and also thank you for organizing this swap too, great work!

Was thinking about all the swaps we have done this year. We have had the Valentines Day swap in February. The Kitchen Swap in April where I scored some lovely goodies from Cass. The Dress Up Swap in July from Kerry. Those are Milly's faourite shoes Kerry! And finally the Bag Swap in October from Bec. Such a great way to share with such a lovely group of ladies. Wonder what 2008 will hold for us in the world of sewing swaps?

WIP Wednesday - Week 48 - Santa Photo.

Okay, its not technically a sewing WIP, but still this is a WIP! It will take me 3 photos and about 6 visits to various Santa's around different shopping centres to get Matilda warmed up to the jolly man in red till I get a snap of her also on his knee! When this one was taken last week she was crouching behind the pram wailing "can we go home now!" Grace mean while walked up to him cool as a cucumber and asked for a Barbie motor home please! She has been wary of him too these last two years so it is lovely to share such a beautiful photo of her with Santa.

19 Day D9P finished!

I did it! The 19 day quilt challenge I set myself back here, finished! I think the fact that all my squares were already cut cut a huge chunk of time off. I was up too 12.30 last night finishing sewing on the label. I redid Mrs K's one from the last post, same image exactly, luckily it was still on the computer. I'm doing a different label technique now as on Saturday night we went to friend's for tea, the family who's little boy got this quilt. And I gave that to him in August and despite it not being washed, the label is all bubbling and cracking and peeling off from the fabric I had ironed it on! How embarrassing! I'm not too sure what went wrong as the labels I have done the same way at home here and have had for a few years are fine. But anyway, no more Tshirt transfer film for me, I am going the printable fabric way, using this here.

Anyway, slight ramble off the subject, sorry! Today was the last day of kindy for me. Grace's last day is on Thursday but Daz will be doing the kindy run as I'll be at work. Seems like this year has flown by, no more kindy runs till 2009 when Milly starts. Such a PITA when we started but one got used to it. So being the last day, decided to give the teacher and her assistant their quilts this morning. They didn't open it while I was there, popped it under the tree and said thank you and gave me a kiss as I thanked them for all their hard work. Drivng away I felt a tiny bit dissappointed that I wasn't there when they opened it. On one hand its nice to see the persons face when they recieve a quilt, on the other hand its kinda embarrassing all the gushing of "Wow did you make that?" from other people.

When Milly and I came back for the pick up, they had opened them and were all smiles and thank you's! Grace said they sat around the Christmas tree and Mrs K opened all her pressies and "when she opened mine, I had to go to the front and she gave me a big cuddle and said thank you and said she liked it very much". Awwwww!

Week 47 - WIP Wednesday - Mrs's K's quilt finished

Well its not technically a WIP, as this quilt is finished! I finished Mrs K's quilt last night. Which means I can sigh with relief, phew, only one more quilt to go before the end of term. I am pleased with this one. Not at all my usual colour palette but I like it. And without beating my own drum too much, I am chuffed that with each quilt I finish, my skill is a little better, not that many tucks where I haven't smoothed the fabric down! I took it up and showed Mum last week when I was still sewing down the binding, and started to show her the faults in it. She waved it off saying "If Mrs K isn't a quilter, she won't notice!"


I love the back too! Not only cause the quilting itself shows up nicely, but cause thats where the label is! How cool is this label? I got Grace to draw a picture of Mrs K, here she is in her garden with her pretty flowers (jumping for joy as the school year is nearly over I think!). I then photographed it, went into Photoshop and added the type, then printed it out on my usual tshirt transfer way and then blanket stitched it on. I used Joy's tip of vizeofixing it into place which worked well.

Now all I have to do is wrap it and get Grace to keep it a secret till we give it to her on Monday.

WIP Wednesday - Week 46 - Overlocking, Eye Candy and D9P ongoing...

Well my 19 day challenge continues. With now only 11 days to go. *ekkk!* I got this beautiful rusty red homespun for the border, photo here doesn't do it justice. Just gone for a simple 4.5 inch wide border. Have it all sandwiched up here and I started to quilt it after this shot was taken, going for the simple and quick approach of just quilting around each full square, I think that will work.

The lovely Leah asked about overlocking the edges of your quilt before binding, so this photo is just for you Leah! Just overlock as normal. I have ready a small zig zag stitch works too. Try it, let me know how you go!

I had some fat quarters arrive that I won off ebay too this week. 8 different prints from Valori Wells, a range called Sole. Just found out that she has a blog here. No idea what I'm going to sew with these goodies though, sure I'll be inspired soon enough!

My Friday with my D9P 19 day challenge!

Now that Mrs K's quilt is under control, just the binding to hand sew down and the label, thought I'd set myself one last challenge for the year and sew a quilt for the kindy teacher assistant! She does as much work as Mrs K, why shouldn't she get a nice present too? Last day of kindy is on the 13th of December, leaves me 19 days to finish this. Can I do it? If I pick an easy pattern should make the deadline, lets do a Disappearing 9 Patch!

So I started this afternoon. Laid all the squares out. There was 45 in this pack, but I've only used 36, might incorporate some in the border, see how I go. So even though I laid them out above, when I sewed them together, it looked nothing like the layout! Don't know how I went wrong there, blame it on the heat, it was a shocking 38C today here in Perth.

So now the fun bit, sewn up into 9 blocks, out comes the rotary blade, cut, cut, rotate, rotate and sew back together again! And wolah, the centre of a lap sized quilt. I purposefully didn't leave any yellow around the outside as I'll use that colour for the border. Unfortunately I don't have anything at all in my stash that would go with it, so I will just have to go to my local material shop on Monday for a look to see what I can find. :)

WIP Wednesday - Week 45 - Overlocking binding on Mrs K's and Rainbow Log cabins!

Well have had a rather prodcutive week, have two WIP's on the go at the moment. I have 95% finished the quilting on Mrs K's quilt and last night sewed the binding on. Decided to overlock my edges which was a tip picked up awhile back to hopefully make the binding lay a little bit flatter when its hand sewn down. It has been a bit funny working with these soft colours, at first I wasn't sure but now, well they have grown on me!

Since the weather is warming up here, Grace is sweltering under her doona, but I can't get it off her bed, oh the tears! So I have been inspired to get back into these log cabins. After all the dithering about the layout back here and here in June, I decided to go for the option on all the reds in the centre forming a cross. And am thinking a hot pink 3 or 4 inch boarder.....

And amungst all that, I still have found time to get some more material for the Humming Mini shop. Check out some new yummy prints here!

WIP Thursday - Week 44 - Sandwiching Mrs K's quilt

Another week has slipped by and once again my WIP Wednesday post is falling on a Thursday! Opps! Lately though each week that passes, reminds me that it is a week closer to school finishing, term 4 is only 9 weeks long! I have to get Mrs K's quilt done by the end of the term! So I picked a light lilac tone on tone boader and then sat down to sandwich it. I can't get my little bowl of pins out without Grace coming over to help. "Can I do it too Mummy? Nanny lets me!" So I let her pin away on the extra wadding bit at the side. I pondered if she was going to be a quilter earlier this week, I think so! As you can see by the tape, I'm going for just a straight diagonal quilting pattern, keeping it simple!

Cass's lovely bag!

Arrived home yesterday to a package on my doorstep, don't you just love it when that happens! And I was even more excitied when I realized it was from the lovely Cass! She has been running a Pay It Foward idea and my comment was selected as a gift to be paid foward. I must admit when I commented in her blog I didn't realize I was in the running, but lucky me now! I meet Cass through Essential Baby and have formed a strong friendship due to a love of sewing, fabric and having eldest daughters the same age. I'm going to Sydney in March and can't wait to meet her in real person! We are buddies on Facebook too and always score 97% alike in silly quizes like "Summer 2007 movies" and "Life's Priorities" so we are going to get along like a house on fire I'd say!

But back to my lovely bag! The print is just stunning, so me, colourful and bright but still with black in it. I love how she has positioned the birds on the front of each side, very clever! And I love the stripes inside and the little pockets! I immediately emptied my old bag and piled all my stuff in it, thank you Cass, its stunning, I love it!

And a photo of my two pirates! Today at Grace's kindy was Pirate Day, she has been waking every morning for the last two weeks asking me "Mum, is it pirate day at kindy today?" At last I could say yes it was! Doesn't she look cool? Milly had to get into the action with a bandana and a plastic sword too. Must say this year at kindy has been the best fun. Ahoy maties!

Congratulations Jules!

Mum belongs to a local quilting group which holds its meetings at a place called Liddlelow Homestead. They do other crafts there as well, like painting and pottery and this weekend was an open weekend for everyone to exhibit their work. So despite it being 35 degrees today, I left Daz at home mowning the lawns and bundled the girls in the car to go see "Nanny Chook" and her quilt! She always has a few projects on the go (who doesn't?) and this particular quilt she was usuing up her stash of Aboriginal prints. Every time I went to her place, she'd take me down to the sewing room to show it to me on the wall and well, Mum and I call a spade a spade, so I always said to her, hmmmmm, don't know about the prints Jules, like to layout though!

But good thing I'm not a judge then as it picked up a second prize! In what category I didn't ask! Naughty daughter am I! I snapped this shot of her and Grace in front of the quilt in question. Matilda was in the hallway refusing to be in the shot! Look how grown up Grace suddenly looks, hair in plaits and not wearing pink. Wonder if either of the girls will follow in Mum's and I's footsteps and take up quilting. Time will tell....

WIP Friday! Week 43 - Mrs K's layout....

Well after me dittering about with different layout possibilities the other week here, I ended up going back to my original plan of triangles the same print. Which leads us to the above quilt top..... I have 16 blocks of 2 triangles sewn together so am thinking that might be enough for a runner for the Kindy Teacher Assistant?! I am going to add a 3 or 4 inch boarder of just a plain colour, maybe the darker green in some of the leaves and then that is it, a simple lap quilt for Mrs K. Of course I don't have anything plain and suitable in my stash, not in pastel tones anyway, so on Monday after work before getting the girls from daycare, there are 3 fabric shops on the way home, I'm going to visit them all!

Doll Quilt Wrap Up

Well after 2 months of signing up and sewing, today was the big unwrap day for the EB Quilters of the 2007 Dolls Quilt Swap! 12 of us signed up, we all agreed to open on the same day for a bit of fun and I recieved Corrie who sent me this sweet quilt below. I love it! One figure is Grace and the other Milly! It is just so cute, I do have a weakness for wonky log cabins and Corrie's use of colour is perfect!


And she also enclosed a selection of yummy fabrics, thank you Corrie! The one on the very right, that's my favourite, definately inspiration for getting back into sewing the girls some summer twirly skirts.

And my swapee was Lily. I followed her guidelines of liking rasberry and lime green, well sort of... is pink rasberry? And I tried really hard to get it to a particular measurement, I'm an inch out on the top, but spot on across. So here is my effort, hope you like it Miss Romily!



And seeing as though it has been a focus on dolls quilts lately under the machine, I made this one for my neice Cate who was 5 on the weekend.

Happy 3rd Birthday Matilda

Miss Milly Moo was 3 yesterday! 3! Wow, such a big girl already. Doesn't seem like yesterday since I was writing this post last year. The below photo was taken minutes after her birth, a C section hence all the tubes hanging off me and the bewildered look on her face saying huh?? I was nice and cosy in there! Look at her perfect little toes though as she tries to kick me! Have always prided myself on my neat feet, no freaky long second toes for me and Milly!


And here she is 2 weeks later in that quilt that her Aunty Ad made her. Has bit of an old man's look on her face still. And below we have her 3 years later, all ready to attack those smarties on her cake! She is a joy to have in our lives. I still remember at my 20 week scan being told she was a girl and the nano second I had of this intense dissappointment that she was a girl instead of a boy, but it was a nano second and now I can not think of anything better than having 2 girls. :)

We had a great day yesterday. I asked her what she would like to do for the day and she said catch the train to the museum! So thats what we did, took along my Dad for back up support as the city with a 3 and a 4.5 year old solo? *shudder at the thought!* It was fun, we had a whirlwind visit to the museum, checked out the essentials, the frogs and the dinosaur. Lunch at Hungry Jacks for the girls, Japanese for me, Chinese for Dad. Went then and looked at one of the large department stores Christmas display and then it was time to catch the train home again. Happy 3rd birthday Matilda!

Charm Square Hell!

I thought using charm squares would be so easy! Just sew them together! Hmmmm, anything but! I am finding it difficult to come across a pleasing layout, this was supposed to be a quick whip it up quilt, 4 days later I am still messing around with layouts.....

This was my first one, based on the pattern mentioned in the last post. Although its Daz's pick, something about it wasn't quite right...

So I rearrarnged some more, but still thought nope! And so tried some pinwheels...

But I have done pinwheels already this year, doesn't quite work either. So rearranged some more...

Interesting this one! Purple is too strong though. So I left it for a few days and have just stuck this layout below up on the design wall.

I have enough to make another 4 blocks. So could be a posibility. Then when I showed Daz the photo's this was the one he liked the least! Arrgggg!!! I don't actually mind it, bit of rearranging and could be a winner. The only other idea I have is after posting all these photos, the first one, the original idea is growing on me again. Maybe try it with the triangles being the same print, I matched them with prints the same colour value, but seeing as though I have 2 of each triangle, that might work.... back to the design wall!

And then just cause Grace wanted to get in the shot.