Some Paper Piecing.

Over the years I've dabbled in paper piecing, and whilst I've been pleased with what I've made, the process has not always run smoothly, so when I saw that Craftsy were having a sale, and that one of the classes on offer was Mastering Foundation Paper Piecing by Carol Doak I thought it would be a great chance to pick up some tips.

The class was excellent. Carol is an enthusiastic teacher who knows her subject inside out. She gives many tips which help to make the process easier and accurate. Carol starts off by guiding the student through how to make a simple Bird of Paradise blocks and then progresses onto more complicated patterns..
I jumped straight in with the most complicated of the patterns, Mariner's Delight Compass. I was delighted with how it turned out and its now waiting to be quilted and turned into a mini wall hanging for my sewing room wall.

Something very exciting is happening in a few days time.
The six members of the Strip Bees quilting bee are all meeting up to spend the weekend at Jen's house where the big reveal of our quilt tops will take place.

Here's the strip I started with. It's now travelled from Suffolk to Hertfordshire, Kent, Wales, Jersey and Birmingham having patchwork strips added along the way. We haven't seen what the others have added apart from a few sneek peaks so it will be a complete surprise.

I'll be sure to take some photos and do a post next week about what we get up to.
Linking up with Sew Cute Tuesday at Blossom Heart Quilts.

Maria.

February Friendship X and plus swap.

It's the last Friday of the month so time to show the blocks I made for February's x and plus  friendship swap. 

Here are many of the blocks we've made so far. We agreed to send them in batches so I haven't received all Jane's blocks yet.

  Recently Sonia from Fabric and Flowers UK posted a photo on Instagram of some fabric she had left over from a project and wondered if anyone would like to buy it. My son is learning guitar and keyboard so I thought he would love a cushion made from it for his room. I'm pleased to say the cushion got a huge hug when I gave it to him and it's now in good use. I have more of the fabric left so more cushions to come, eventually.

Back soon with an adventure in paper piecing.

Maria

Friendship X and plus swap : January blocks.

The last Friday of the month has come and gone which means I should have shown this months blocks in the Friendship x and + swap.

In previous months myself and my swap partner Jane have chosen three colours from our palette from which to make our four blocks. 

As we've discovered that there are a possible 20 colour combinations from the 6 colours we've now decided to pick two 3 colour combinations each month in order that we can use as many of the combinations as possible in the quilt.

This month we chose:

Dark Green, Yellow, Red.

Navy, Light blue, Red.

 
I must just point out that the navy polka dot fabric looks lighter in the photo than it actually is. 

I'm now all set to start February's blocks.

If you'd like to see what fabulous blocks the other swap members have come up with the the Flickr group can be found here.

Christmas Trees Wall Hanging.

Last year I bought the book Modern Holiday by Amanda Murphy. I particularly liked the Holiday Forest pattern but it was rather large for what I was wanting. Luckily one day I was looking at one of my favourite quilting blogs, The Sewing Chick, and it's Author Tessa Marie had made a mini version which she achieved by using the templates at the size printed on the page rather than enlarging them as in the instructions in the book. The original quilt features a fabric strip top and bottom with some pretty appliqued snow flakes which although beautiful I decided not to include.

Unfortunately I didn't manage to finish it in time for Christmas but made sure I finished it now rather than leaving it until just before Christmas this year.

I went with fairly classic Christmas colours, all luckily from my stash.
 I'm now going to do that thing which I think most of us do which is to point out a couple of faults with it! If you look at the smallest trees they ended up with a variety of different sized trunks, I don't know how I managed that as they all came from the same template, but hey, they wouldn't all be exactly the same in nature either would they? The other problem is this quilt suffers from wavy edges disease but luckily it looks worse in the photo than in reality.

Now for the quilting. I recently purchased (in a sale of course) the Craftsy class "Free Motion Quilting a Sampler" by Leah Day. It's a great class where Leah demonstrates a variety of free motion quilting designs. What I like is Leah gives yous permission to cross over your quilting lines and uses travel stitching where you quilt over your quilting to reach the next area you want to quilt.
The large tree below uses the Paisley pattern from the class. I must admit I didn't practice the designs first but just went for it whilst repeatedly watching what Leah was doing in the video.    

The blue sashing uses Spiral Chain, again I watched the video a few times and then just went for it. I really enjoyed this design and can see myself using it again in the future.
The small trees use Pine Needles, rather appropriate I felt.

 

 

Overall I was pleased with the quilting and it was great to learn some new designs from the Craftsy class. I'm looking forward to trying out some new designs on future projects.
Linking up with I Quilt Thursdays at Pretty Bobbins

It's finished now son.

Way back in mid September of last year I wrote a post titled "Where's my quilt Mum?" about a quilt I was making for my son. The poor boy was wondering when it would be finished. At that point the top was pieced and it was waiting to be quilted. Well, being the quicker worker that I am,  nearly four months later it's finished and in use! I explain the block design I used here

It's difficult to get a decent photo when it's breezy and your quilt holders arms are aching waiting for it to blow into the right position.

 

 

 

 

 

I bought a lovely soft flannel for the back but surprise, surprise I didn't order enough so I added a panel of wonky cross blocks to make it big enough.

The breeze didn't drop long enough for this one and that's a shadow bottom left, not a dirty mark!

I did some straight line quilting as requested by my son, he didn't want anything more complicated. I did offer.

For those of you, who like me,  love to see quilts made from more girly colours here's a quilt top I made started during a recent sewing retreat. It's now in the queue to be finished. 

Bye for now,

Maria

Tulips Cushion.

Last year I made my Mum and Dad a bed quilt for Christmas and this year I thought it would be fun to make a cushion to go with it as a Christmas gift.

After spending a morning being my usual indecisive self scouring the internet and all my patchwork books looking for the perfect  pattern / block(s),  I eventually found a pattern which I immediately knew would be just right. It was a sweet paper pieced pattern by Kristy at Quite play which I purchased from her Craftsy store.

I only had a small amount of fabric left over from the original quilt (which can be seen in the background) so I used it for the border and used fabrics from my stash for the rest. 

It was a great pattern to make but I can't seem to get through a paper pieced pattern without making loads of really silly mistakes! I love the finished result though.

Linking up with Fresh Sewing Day at Lily's Quilts.

Bye for now,

Maria.

Friendship X and + swap. November, part two.

I've received Jane's November and December blocks for the Friendship + and x swap.

Aren't they fabulous? Here they are with the blocks I sent her, will be sending her soon. It's OK, she knows I'm sending them with the December blocks.

Here are both our sets of blocks together.

Our colours for December are yellow, blue and navy so have a completely different look to these. The two sets of blocks look great mixed up together.

As I explained in my last post there are a possible twenty colour combinations from our palette so for the remaining months of the swap we decided it would be fun to pick two colour combinations each month and make two blocks from each.

For January we've chosen:

red, blue, navy

blue, yellow, green.

HAPPY NEW YEAR.

Maria.