Nautical quilt finish

From this...

...to this.

I tried to keep the quilting fairly simple and outlined a centre diamond shape right down the centre of the quilt.

And the back is just one piece of the same fabric

I hope the person who has paid me to make this for them (to give to someone as a birthday present)
likes it...

...as much as I have grown to like it.

And as it's a Monday and I have a finish, I am going to link this to {Sew} Modern Monday at Canoe Ridge Creations.

Sneaking in under the wire...

....for Amy's Bloggers Quilt Festival.

When I noticed on Monday that the Festival was on I had nothing new to show you.

However, there were two reasons to see if I could churn something out by today:

• Ella-Sofia born on 19 October and quiltless!
• I was the lucky winner of one of these:

It had been sat patiently to one side for a couple of weeks while life got in the way.

So on Monday evening I opened it up and cranked through a bunch of 2 1/2" squares. In retrospect I should have cranked through the 4" square that came on the same die for a quicker outcome.

And fast it does go. I didn't have any wastage to speak of that others have commented on and I only have two small slight concerns.

The deposit of yellow that appears on the roller (top of picture) and on the board that you crank it out onto. To me that means two things are making such close contact that something is rubbing off something and in the long term I'm not sure that is ideal. I'd be grateful to hear if anyone else has experienced this as well.

And the second thing is this:

This is the plastic mat that you put over your fabric and die before cranking it through the roller. I have made just one small baby quilt, moved the position of the plastic mat around as the instructions tell you to do but already the mat is quite significantly indented. Again, I'm not sure that bodes well for longevity of use.

However, in terms of speed and the ability it gives you to quickly cut potentially difficult shapes (I'm going to test the Drunkards Path die next) I think it is a winner.

Anyway, I didn't intend this to be a review of the Go! Baby. So what did I make?

You can click on it for a larger view if you like.

Once you've cut your squares they all go together perfectly (more perfectly than if I had been let loose with a rotary cutter and mat) and it sews up fairly quickly. The light is a bit pants this morning and doesn't show off (imo) the beautiful colours.

Again, please feel free to click on this one.

Quilting was just following either side of all the seams to make a grid pattern with my walking foot and stitch length set to 3.20 on my Bernina.

As it is a small(ish) baby quilt I was able to get away without having to piece the back and just used some fabric to hand.

It will hopefully be with Ella-Sofia this weekend when we pay our first visit.

As usual, I am now off to see what everyone else has been up to.

Productivity versus time

I assumed with ten days free from work, household responsibilities, in fact any sort of responsibility, my quilting productivity would soar to stratospheric never-before-seen levels.

This was my sum total.

I even had lots of blocks cut and ready to sew but didn't quite get to them.

So... I am back now to normal life with snatched odds and sods of free time.

By my inverse reckoning, that means a heightened level of quilting productivity is on the cards...

Do you sell your quilts?

Quilt making for me has always been about relaxing from real life, enjoying experimenting with new ideas with the end result being things to give away as gifts or to take part in a swap.

Quilt making for me has never, nor ever will be, about making quilts to sell. Then pressure steps into the equation and the whole point of quilting is to get away from pressure.

A few years ago my father 'volunteered' me to a lady he played bridge with, who was looking for someone to turn her 'lifelong collection of batiks' into a quilt. I wasn't wild about the idea but felt I had no alternative to say 'yes' if they were to remain happy bridge partners.

A couple of weeks later two big boxes arrived at my house...full of old clothes. What no one had told me was that this Malaysian lady's collection of 'batiks' was in fact her old saris and such like that she had worn over the years and the fabric required to make the quilt would be provided by cutting off all the cuffs, pleats, button holes, hemlines etc etc. The note with the boxes thanked me for my kindness and said she would be pleased to receive a 'super king size' quilt.

I won't go into how I felt at this point suffice to say I knew it was going to be a very simple pattern that I attempted. Many months later the requested quilt was completed and then came the awkward question of 'how much?' I had spent  hours and hours on the quilt but I just felt asking for what it would have cost if I had charged myself out at an hourly rate would have been so mind-numbingly huge, that I chickened out and asked her to 'pay me what you think it is worth.'

She sent a cheque but it was so far short of the mark that it made me realise that non-quilters really have no idea of the hours we actually spend creating something and that if I was going to do it again, it would most definitely not be a super-king size quilt and I'd only do it if I had control over the design and the fabrics. I also concluded you're not going to be taking early retirement just by making quilts so I will only make for others infrequently and when I do, whatever is spent on supplies, I will double for my time which I do realise is still well short of a quilts actual worth.

Fast forward to a month ago and a work colleague asked me if I would make a quilt for her to give to a friend with a 'nautical' feel.  I thought about it for a bit, memory sufficiently dulled by the batik experience and said yes. In my head, nautical was all about bits of driftwood, a beachy, laid back kind of feel and I thought I could achieve that. She thought that too but unfortunately she didn't think her friend would; she thought his idea of nautical would be:

and this:

I don't dislike them...but I don't really like them either.  So I needed to find a way to work with them to make them more modern and hopefully I have found it:

 

All I did was cut up 6 1/2" squares into half-square triangles, played around with the pattern and colour until I was happy with it and then sewed them all together.

I really like it now.

On with the quilting.

I got it wrong.

I was so convinced that the next Little Island baby to arrive (that I wanted to make a quilt for) was going to be a boy, that I sat back, secure in the knowledge that I had some boy quilts ready.

But it wasn't.

It was a girl.

And I had no suitable quilt to give and very little time to rustle one up.

Cue this book, packed full of really great quilt designs that don't take a zillion years to complete and all starting out with 2 1/2 inch strips so jelly roll suitable. I've sort of fallen out of love with jelly rolls because I don't like a matchy matchy looking quilt.  So, although I did use a few jelly roll strips, I also cut up some of my own scraps to get the required starting point of 2 1/2 inch width strips.

I decided to make the quilt featured on the cover and it really was quick and simple.

Just by cutting up varying widths of 2 1/2 inch strips you can end up with (imo) a fairly sophisticated looking quilt that looks more complicated than it really is.

With a few spare hours here and there you've got yourself a baby quilt ready to gift.

The back is just a sliver of Heather Ross Munki Munki set in to the middle(ish) {eyeballed it...didn't get a ruler on it} of the back.

Just needs a label and then it is all set to go.

Cushion/pillow cover swap

It's called The Pillow Talk {Swap} but in my part of the world it's a cushion cover.

Either way, I've finished mine for my partner and if I'm allowed to say so...I rather like it.

I've had a lovely, chatty partner which has allowed me to pick up lots of hints and tips along the way and I'd like to feel I really nailed this one.

Gratuitous selection of images now follows.

From time to time I see other makers commenting that they are going to find it hard to give away what they have made to their secret partner and I've thought: "How odd, you've made it to someone else's likes so how can it be hard to send it off to its new home."

I'm odd too then.

I've loved everything about this cushion cover; from the fabrics to the pattern to the end result.

I'm going to have a hard time giving this one away.

Words quilt finish

Many hours of hand quilting later I got to this:

Excuse smudge on lens which makes the pink bit look a bit smeary.

But I just didn't feel it was quilted enough.

So I carried on.

I still think you can transform a quilt so much by densely quilting it.

And then I think the point was reached where both myself and the quilt felt we had spent enough time together and we agreed to stop.

So I could move on to the next quilt.

Kona White with one triangle pieced into the back.

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