Saturday 28 May 2011

It's done!

(Welcome if you are coming over from Amy's June sew and tell)



I know it's not for everyone but I love hand quilting and with a quilt as small as a Brit Quilt Swap quilt, it really doesn't take that long to finish a quilt. Added to which I personally find it less fiddly hand quilting small areas than stopping and starting when doing it by machine.


To get the straight radiating lines 'marked' on to the quilt top without actually marking the top, I use a hera marker.


I've had mine a while and as you can see, it looks like a blunt, small rotary cutter. The links I've given above to current hera markers look different but they still do the same job; namely making a temporary crease along which you can quilt. I'm not sure they'd work for more complicated designs but for simple straight marking and then hand quilting I think they can't be beaten.

All in all, despite a few points not quite 100% matching up, I'm really pleased with how this quilt has turned out...

...and I hope...


...my partner...(!)


...likes it too.


Meanwhile, I just have to decide who's name to write on the label ;-)

Wednesday 25 May 2011

The Brit Quilt Swap

For those of us living this side of the pond, Lynne set up the Brit Quilt Swap on Flickr.

I joined, I got a partner, I digested her likes and I came up with this:


I can't say what her likes are because that would give the game away:



Next stage is to hand-quilt it and then bind it in a lime green:


If you want to see what quilt envy looks like - take a peak at the Brit Quilt Swap group.

Saturday 21 May 2011

A post of two halves...

The first half is to announce the winner of my not-half-as-successful-as-I-had-been-hoping-attempt to raise funds for the relief effort in Japan. Mr Random Generator thingy said:




...who came out with the immortal words...


I sincerely thank those who were supportive enough to either donate or blog about it - I appreciate it but more importantly it has helped in its own extremely small way with the relief efforts in Japan.

I would like to say I was overwhelmed with the support I received from the online quilting community...

Thank you instead to:

(If I have missed anyone off this list, please let me know and I will be more than happy to add you)

The second half of this post is to tell you about the first Leila mentioned in the list above, rather than the second Leila!

Leila will be starting a 
BWS tips button

In her own words:

"On June 17th I am going to be kicking off the “We Can Do It! Skill Builder Sampler.” You can just call it the Skill Builder Sampler or SBS if you want. :)  Some of the recent blogland talk got me thinking about things that I want to try out in my quilting. I realized I was just a bit scared and nervous about trying new things. It is always easier to try something new with a friend and so I hope we can all work through this sampler quilt together.  Each month I will focus on a different quilting skill and provide tutorials for three 12 inch quilt blocks using the month's skill.  Some of the skills you might already have – please, leave any advice or additional tips in the comments for us – but I know there will be something for everyone to learn.

I have designed this sampler so that a beginning quilter can easily move from block to block and build their quilting skills. The beginning blocks will review basic skills and concepts that can be applied to any quilt. I will liberally reference other blogs and tutorials which have already described and explained the techniques and skills we will be learning."

She's also doing a giveaway of the new Denise Schmidt line from Joanns  and some Japanese fabrics.

So get on over there!









Friday 13 May 2011

The Bloggers Quilt Festival is here again

(Welcome if you are coming over from The Bloggers Quilt Festival).


Take one jelly-roll
OK, this one is for illustrative purposes only!


I am trying to work my way through my over-zealous jelly-roll purchasing period and so I started cutting up blocks into this shape:

Simple.

So I kept adding more and more:


Nice.

However, I think you can make nice even nicer when you turn a block on point and it just seems to come alive a bit more. Here is the same image but now on point:

Turning it on point though means there are four triangulated corners that need squaring off. I decided to use white at which point I discovered I had no white left in my stash.

So I used Kona Meringue with the random remaining jelly roll strips instead:


I started off hand-quilting the centre diamond shape before switching to the sewing machine to straight-line quilt the four cream triangles:


The back is a cream fabric I had had for a long time, spliced between some Kona Azure:


If you look closely you can see on the left where I haven't finished off the hand-quilting yet!

So this is my entry to the Bloggers Quilt Festival - make sure you go and see what everyone else is up to. I know I am!



And although one of Amy's rules is that you are not allowed to post giveaways in your blog post, can I just mention a quilt and jelly roll looking for a new home in my previous post to help the relief effort in Japan. Thank you!



Friday 6 May 2011

If...

If you were to visit this website...(or one of your choice that is going to help the ongoing relief efforts in Japan and you visited it any time from today onwards - I've since been told this website only appears to be working within the UK)

...and if you happened to make a donation of any amount that you were already intending to...


...and if you then happened to leave a comment on this blog post ...

...and if I happened to mention in passing that if you'd done that you could decide to leave a comment and if you decided to blog about it that would get you THREE comments total...

...and if this jelly-roll got lonely and decided...

...it had found a friend it wanted to be with...


...and if they in turn decided they'd like to live in a new home...


...and then if a little while later that Mr Random Generator thingy did something and I happened to ask one of you about your 'transaction reference'...

What would you do?




You have until Friday 20 May to decide...
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