Snowballs, Snowmen and other quilts

 

 

Here I am again with lots of pictures of quilts and fabric bits

 

 

This is a long term piecing project that I had fun with.  Its called Snowballs and Snowmen, well because they are snowball blocks and I used Snowmen Gatherings fabric from Primitive Gatherings.  

This fabric was all the blues and tans through to white.  It has cute snowmen and snowflakes and wintery stuff that I don't get where I live in Australia. Insert sad face here.

 I threw in the reds to add a bit of pop.  I just love this angle and the red scattered through out.  This again is a largish quilt top at 74" x 90".   Snowballs and Snowmen is now sitting in the "to be quilted" pile.

 

 These beautiful wattle trees are in full flower all over the place in my streets.  This was a couple of weeks ago and the trees are now weighed down with the blooms and the bees.

Another top I have finished of late is this Metro Hoops by Sew Kind of Wonderful.  I have it quilted but sorry no photo at the moment.  I am teaching this quilt on Saturday at The Patchwork Angel.  I just love this one too.  The colours are so bright and fresh. 

 

I wanted to make another Metro Hoops but was stuck for inspiration.  So off I went to the shops and found this display at Bed Bath and Table. Shop displays are always a good source of colour inspiration.

 

 

And here are the colours I chose to  use.  This top is coming along nicely.  With this Metro Hoops I have used one fabric for the Hoops instead of strip sets.  Its looking good.

A few weeks ago, Jenny of Sew So Crazy and I went to a trunk show put on by A Piece of Cloth.  I cam home with this quilt top, like I need another quilt top or another quilt with 60 degree pieces in it.

 But I could not help myself.  It is from around the 1940's.

 The top is pieced from hexagons, diamonds and jewel shapes

 The colours are vibrant and cute.  The yellow background is very sunny and sweet.

 look at this fun print

There is hand and machine piecing throughout the top. And as this picture will also show you is that some of that piecing is not as accurate as it could be.  With this is mind I am working through whether to leave it as is and quilt it or undo some of the machine piecing and work out some of the excess fabric.  I know I can't unpick the hand stitching, that has to stay.

 

So that is about all that has been happening here with my quilting.  We have lots going on with the kids activities over the next few weeks, why does everything seem to happen in a short time frame with sports and school stuff.

 

anyway, I hope to have some hand sewing to show you next time.

 

Keep stitching

Chevron and Swoon Quilting

 

These cool Chevrons belong to Barb.  Barb talked about wanting the chevrons to continue out into the borders and then the rest was up to me.

 

 



 

This quilt is huge.  The outer borders alone are 14" wide.

 

 

These are all the threads I used along the way. 

 

 The pictures have a blue tinge to  them from the afternoon light.

 I tried to edit this one to show the quilting a little better, but I don't think I should play around with them again....

 this is the original.  The top and bottom borders have a row of chevrons created with quilting, the same as the coloured chevrons and then straight lines out to the edge.

 The colours used are just lovely.  The fabric is from a Moda range called Bluebird Park by Kate & Birdie Paper Co.

 Another photo I played with.  Straight line along the Chevrons...

  and curls in the backgrounds. The same quilting that is in the chevrons and background are extended out into the side borders. The chevrons are made with Half Square Triangles. Simple but effective.

 

 Here is the back showing some of the quilting.

 

There was a lot of marking done before I could even start the quilting, but so worth it.

 The grey is looking mauve in this picture.  The colours are just lovely and fresh against the white background.

 I loved this quilt and so did Barb.  She is very happy with how it has turned out.  So happy that Barb called me several hours after picking it up to let me know that the quilt was just perfect on the bed at home.

The past week I also got to quilt a Swoon quilt for Wendy.  I love this quilt, along with many many other quilters in the world.

 Set up ready to go

Wendy asked for Baptist Fans, they are just the perfect  thing for this quilt, just like the original

 Photos again taken in the backyard in the afternoon, so the light is not perfect

 Wendy used Scrumptious by  Bonnie and Camille.  Love this fabric as well.

 

It was very hard to hand these two quilts back to their owners, sometimes my job is not fun.

 

And I have been doing some hand piecing at night, trying to get some more quilts finished to quilt top stage.  I still have more pieces to put together, but it does go together quickly, this part anyway.

 

 

 

 

At the End of the Day

I got most of what I wanted or was on my Wish List for the day done.  I knew not all of it would be where I had hoped because there will always be other things that come along and slow you down.

So here is where I started just to recap

The yellow quilt was so very close to together at the start of the day.  Now here it is all together.  This is a Christmas gift, so far I am on track to have it done by then. 

 

I just love it.  The pattern is called Star Blossoms by Kim Brackett from her book called Scrap Basket Beauties by Martingale books.  The orginal has 12 blocks mine is 16 blocks and measures 65 x65.  It was super easy and quick to make.  Next is to quilt it.

I did get the bundles of fabric cut, not as far as I had hoped but I was getting tired at the end of the day and thought it was better not to cut them, just in case I stuff it up.  These are for Metro Hoops quilt by Sew Kind of Wonderful.  I am teaching this on August 16th at The Patchwork Angel. There is already a sample in the shop, this one will be a little different. It will also be bigger than the pattern size also.

And I got the borders pieced for the Fat Quarter Shop 2013 Mystery Quilt. Many Flying Geese units pieced and then sewn into the border strips.  Very happy with them, the border strips are the length I need to fit my quilt top.

So there you go.  I had tried to load these pictures last week but something wouldn't work right to make it happen.  Most probably it was user error.  Anyway here they are for you to enjoy

Keep stitching

Fiona

Ready set

Go

Home alone this morning. 

Have this pile to work on ..... And laundry and food shopping

Lone Star Class

Last Saturday I taught the second part of  the Lone Star quilt at The Patchwork Angel.  The girls all had their 8 star points pieced.  We had started piecing these in the first class.  So this last class was sewing the background to the star points then sewing the star together.

I was very excited to see the Lone Stars come together.  And when they did the results were beautiful.

Here they are,

Vicki's purple pansy's and gold

Deb's shades of blue

Kathryn's blues, greens and yellow

 

Jenny made hers in Christmas colours and prints

Gail used purple batiks with blue and hot pink mixed in

Bridget had an Aboringal print as a focus and great tone on tones to highlight

Deb has greens and a great aqua

 

 I love teaching this class, every one has a different set of fabrics and creates a different feel to all the others.  So if you are thinking about making a Lone Star quilt I will be teaching this again in October and November this year at The Patchwork Angel.  I would love to see your interpretation of this stunning quilt.

 

 

 



White Wedding Hexagons

I finished the hexagons, yayyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!!!

This is a close up of the piecing....

 

I started basting my hexagons at the same time my son started Kart racing.  This was something to do while in car and to also help with my anxiety with my son racing around a track at great speeds.  So two and half years later I am done piecing.

 

I have used Civil War Reproduction fabrics for the pieced diamonds and many random Shirtings, from white backgrounds to tans,  for the neutral sashings 

 

this is a big quilt, 114" x 91", it does not fit in my camera screen,

These are 1" hexagons and I have no idea or want to know, how many I have pieced into this top.  I do have heaps of leftovers that have just been put away with my hexagon papers, not to be touched for maybe a year or two.  I am kind of  done with hexagons.  I have started another EPP project for Karting road trips, the papers have a 45 degree angle this time.

It looks different from this angle.  I just love this quilt and hope to get it quilted one day now, just trying to find the perfect backing......  I am counting this as a finish though.



I hope you like it also.