Saving the best till last

I am finally finished hand quilting my Emperor's Wheel quilt and I feel a little lost.

For the past six months, when I've had some spare evening moments, I've stitched away at it.

I've straight line quilted it fairly densely, which has taken time but been completely worth it.

I am reliably informed the quilt is being held upside down - oops

It's given it a fantastic texture.

I originally blogged about the piecing of the quilt here which gives details of the pattern I purchased from Chris Jurd. It's been a brilliant pattern to just use up all those random scraps and will definitely be a family heirloom.

I just need to find something else now to do in spare evening moments.

A self-indulgent quilt

Self-indulgent in the sense that I just wanted to cut up as many Anna Maria Horner fabrics as possible.
And also because I just bought her latest fabric line, Fibs & Fables and was itching to cut into it.

I started by thinking I was going to follow a pattern in a booklet I'd bought to accompany the Triangler ruler so I duly strip pieced two fabrics with different values and started cutting.

But by the time I'd done a fair amount of cutting, I'd gone right off the idea of following a pattern and just decided to play around with the triangles and see what I cam up with.

Which is how I ended up thinking this might not be a bad idea.

Even by my broad standards, it felt just a little too distractingly chaotic.
Solids felt too hard and restrictive so I went with a linen text fabric I found.

And sewed it all up to make this.

Then it was back to more random cutting to make it a border.
Because I felt it needed one.

And then it just felt balanced and finished so it was on to quilting it.

It feels rich and moody and luxurious and eclectic and I LOVE it.

The back has the left over border strips because I never work out beforehand the amounts I'll need.
It's too restrictive.
I'd rather guesstimate and then use any leftovers on the back.

Oops...missed a couple of parallel quilting lines there

And that's it.
My last complete quilt finish for 2015.

I think.

Soy Amado's 72-75 and an update

Instagram is making me lax. I post the finished Soy Amado quilt there and tell myself when I have a bit more time, I'll blog it.

That hasn't happened so a condenses post on the last four quilts now follows.

No. 72 - taken on the south coast cliffs of Guernsey.

And the back.

No. 73.

And the back.

No. 74 arrived this week in the post as a completed quilt. There was no name or address identifying the UK sender so whoever you are, thank you.

There is no back picture...because I forgot to take one.

And finally, to bring it up-to-date, No. 75.

And I don't have a 'behind' photo for this one either - slacking on the job.

I've reached my goal of a quilt on every bed for the home in Mexico City so a big thank you to everyone who either sent whole quilts or the mountain of quilt blocks I have slowly worked my way through.

Now I have a new goal: a quilt on every bed for a children's home in Johannesburg, South Africa. So my post box is flapping wildly now in giddy expectation of anyone who would like to send me 12 1/2" quilted blocks. Please email me if you'd like to join in, for my postal address.

Thank you.

(Linking up to Finish It Up Friday)

A rainbow quilt finish

It's a mixture of phone and camera pictures but hopefully you get the gist.

First off the back.

All the backing and binding fabrics are from my stash - the binding is a Jinny Beyer pushing 20 years.

And I've had to alternate the pics from outside: (theoretically better light but tipping down with rain) to inside: dry.

The background to the Geese is just a selection of light turquoise/blu fabrics with either text or some tonal additions. I didn't want a solid as the background as I felt that was going to make it too stark.

A shot of rainbow colour in the depths of a wet and windy winter.

A rainbow quilt

I've never made a rainbow quilt before.
They just seem too ordered and not random enough for me.

I thought I'd have a go though.
Just because I thought I should.

Fabrics were picked.

And the decision to go with a Flying Geese block was made, with much cutting ensuing.

And much boringly essential trimming with the Bloc-Loc ruler.

I sewed one row up and then pondered my next move.

And then over the past couple of weeks, I've slowly, slowly added to it.

Until today, when 286 Flying Geese units later,  I was finally done.

I enjoyed making it but I think I am hankering after a quilt with slightly more wild fabrics now.

Linking up to Finish It Up Friday

Just need to decide what the pattern will look like and then cutting will commence.

Soy Amado No. 71

All the blocks came from one person in Australia, with the package containing a rather nice packet of Tim Tams.

In the interests of full disclosure, they didn't even make it as far as the biscuit tin.

I'm afraid it's not the best lighting for these pics as I went for the more aesthetically pleasing sunset shot instead.

It still makes for a lovely quilt though.

On a separate note, some people have said they can't read my ebook because they don't have a Kindle. You don't actually need one!
Just download the free Kindle app and then you can read ebooks on smartphones and tablets.

Thank you to everyone who already has. x

Soy Amado No. 70...And Other News

Soy Amado No. 70

With a beautiful, panoramic backdrop.

And the back.

Linking up to Finish It Up Friday

And in other news.

I wrote a book.

It's not about quilting - I felt there were enough books on the subject.

Instead, I felt the urge to write about something else.

It's available here.

The happy accident

A finished quilt and a quilt I only started making because I had a need to make something colourful after the colour-straight-jacket swap project I had worked on before this.

I find the quilts I enjoy making the most and ultimately end up keeping are the 'happy accident' quilts; those that come about through random fabric selection, no clear idea where I am going and just making it up as I go along.

For this quilt I like the haphazard placement of the fabrics with a slight nod to some form of order by making sure the leopard print formed a whole square...and the yellow fabric for the most part.

And the back is just a use-up of the leftover blocks, plus some random fabrics, so random I didn't quite have enough left on one side so had to use another fabric.

In my head that just lends to the overall scrappiness of the quilt - using up what I have to hand.

It is my new favourite quilt.

For the moment.

Soy Amado No.69

A beautiful sunny day so had to get out and about and get an 'on location' shot for you.

Believe it or not, I paid good money to the local camera shop to get that annoying piece of fluff removed...

...which clearly hasn't happened.

I need to check where this and the other quilts still needing to be made up, will he headed off to as I'm not sure if the children's home in Mexico City have sufficient.

And the back - almost as wild and wacky as the front.

As always, thanks for sending me blocks to make into these quilts.
I appreciate it.

Necessity is the mother of invention

I needed to make this quilt.

I needed a random colour explosion after the previous project.

I had absolutely no idea what kind of quilt I was going to make, other than it needed to be colourful and I pulled a lot of fabrics.

Once I pulled them I started cutting them up into 5" squares while I pondered what to do.

Then I started chain piecing them into pairs.

Then I sewed two pairs together to make a four patch.

After which, I placed two four patch sets together - right sides facing - and pinned on all the matching seams.
NOTE: You must be accurate pinning these matching seams together because this will form the centre point of the new blocks this method will create - four points will meet here.

Using a 1/4" seam allowance, I sewed round all four edges.

Next, I rotary cut across the diagonal, making sure I went exactly through the centre.
Or as exactly as you can get - it's more important you are exactly slicing through the beginning and the end points, as the centre point actually becomes the end of each block...you'll see later.

It helps if you have a rotating cutting mat so you can turn it round to do the opposite diagonal.

Either way, you are left with four of these.

Which when pressed open, become four of these.

Then it was really just a question of playing around with the blocks till I found something I liked.

Most of the different fabrics I left random but I did make sure I made the leopard print and some of the other blocks whole squares, just for more visual impact.

Linking up to Finish It Up Friday

Definitely feel I am back in my happy zone now.