Dining room quilt.

I recently showed some fabric and blocks I was planning to make up into a wall hanging for my dining room, inspired by a tutorial on the wonderful Oh,Fransson!blog.
Before I had joined them into the quilt top a group of us from my sewing group met up for a session of fabric dying. The colours I chose went really well with the fabrics I was using for the quilt,

Here they are drying on the line.

Don't they just look fantastic ironed and piled up together?

Here they are with some of the quilt blocks.

I had planned to sash the blocks with a cream fabric and decided that the dyed fabrics would look great as a pieced inner border.

I'm not going to add an outer border but plan to make a pieced binding from the patterned fabrics.
Just got to decide how to quilt it now. Any suggestions?
Bye for now, Maria.

The birdies have landed!

Sorry to bore regular readers with this little quilt again. The little birdies have flown away and have now landed in their new home. Here they are with me just before they flew.

And here they are after they flew across the North Sea and landed in Holland with their new owner, my swap partner Marja. As you can see they have a lovely garden at their new home so if they get bored with their bright yellow surroundings they can fly into the lovely green garden. There's even another bird table for them to sit on. I wonder if Marja will leave some crumbs out for them!

Bye for now, Maria.

A new quilt started.

Since making the table runner I showed here I've been wanting to make a quilt in matching fabrics to hang on the dining room wall next to the side board on which table runner is displayed.

I ordered some more fabrics, all by Amy Butler, except the bottom one which is b y Heather Bailey.

I then had to decide on a pattern. I've seen lots of coin quilts on blogs and flickr lately and originally decided to make one but then I discovered a wonderful blog called Oh, Fransson! by Elizabeth Hartman. She makes some scrummy quilts using modern, square blocks sashed with mostly white linen and I decided this was the style to go for. Elizabeth sells some of her patterns on etsy but also has some free tutorials on her blog, they're definately worth a look.

I decided my quilt would consist of twelve blocks using six patterns with two blocks made from each pattern. Each block would contain two fabrics and I'm not sure how to describe this but the fabrics in each matching block would be placed in opposite positions in the blocks.

I've done six blocks so far. One is called Paint Box (top left and bottom right) and is from a tutorial on Oh Fransson! The other two blocks I designed myself.

I won't be sashing them with linen as I have some cream fabric to use up although I'm sure linen would look great. I'll show some more of the quilt as I go along.

I took this picture of a beautiful Aquilegia in my garden on a sunny morning last week. I just love the way it looks like it's lifting its face up to the sunshine.




Bye for now, Maria.

Birdy quilt off to its new owner!

At last I finished this quilt for the Doll Quilt Swap and it's in the mail heading off to its new owner. It was very difficult letting go of this one as it has taken many hours to make. It's been great fun to do but as I was making it I began to wonder whether it was rather a complicated design to do as a swap quilt. I wondered whether I must be mad to put all this work into something I am sending to a stranger, but I suppose that's the nature of doing these swaps. I am rather proud of it as I think it has turned out really well. I hope my partner likes it. I'm waiting for mine to arrive now.

The photo's don't look as good as they do on my computer. Does anyone else find that the quality of their photos diminish when they're loaded onto blogger?

I took these two pictures of Alchemilla Mollis in my graden with the morning dew drops sitting on the leaves. Don't the droplets of water look amazing?

Off to the gym now! Bye for now, Maria.

Spring swap parcels received.

We have just returned from spending time with friends in the beautiful Peak District of England and on my return I was excited to discover that my Spring Swap parcel was waiting for me. I had been lucky to have been partnered with Tami from bearypatch. She made me a beautiful project bag and needle case. I love the fabrics she has chosen. The bag comes complete with pockets all round the outside which are decorated with some exquisite blanket stitch applique butterflies and yoyo flowers with buttons in the middle. I have some new display shelves in my sewing room and the bag will take pride of place there when it's not in use.

Tami must have known that I need a needle case as I'm always loosing my needles. This is also decorated with yoyo flowers. I was also lucky to receive some pretty fat quarters which I'm sure will be used soon. Tami also sent some yummy chocolate. Huge thanks Tami for everything.

Many thanks to Linda for organising the swap, it's been great fun.

I can now show one of the items I made for the swap as my partner has received them. I say one of the items as I didn't take pictures of the others - woops!

My partner was Bonnie from Calamity Jane's Cottage. I made Bonnie her very own cottage (wall hanging!) with roses growing over it as I know she likes the cottagey style. I embroidered her blog name on it as it seemed to very appropriate. Bonnie has done a lovely blog post here about her gifts.

Bye for now, Maria

A new quilt and some gardening.

Have you ever had that feeling of excitement when you see something you'd like to make and decide that you just HAVE to do it NOW? Well I did the other day. I saw this tutorial for a fantastic value quilt by Katie who has a fabulous blog. As I have loads of fabric scraps I thought it would be the ideal quilt to make without buying any fabric.



It was one of thoses awful days when one minute the sun was out and the next it was blowing a gale and pouring with rain, I think there was even some hale too. I was feeling fed up as I had been planning a shopping trip to look for some little extras to put in with my spring swap. A spot of spontaneous quilt starting was just what I needed!


Here is the enoromous pile of fabrics I selected.


Here is the finished quilt. I quilted most of it using invisible thread in the ditch and then stitched a line through the dark sections in variagated thread. I didn't feel that in needed a border so just bound it in purple.



With the onset of spring I always feel hugely inspired to do some gardening. We've lived in this house for just over 2 years and you certainly wouldn't call the previous owner a keen gardener so we've been given an almost blank canvas to work with.

This picture is taken last year, it is an area at the bottom of the garden which I planned to make into a sitting area with a large raised bed at the back.




This is the same area, also last year after some work. Don't you just love the old wheel in the background!




Here it is again complete with the raised bed that my clever husband made this weekend. It looks rather large but I'm sure it will be fine when it's full of plants. The fun part now begins - filling it with plants. As you can see I've planted a few.




I recently discovered this beautiful gardening magazine which is full of absolutley stunning photographs of truely amazing gardens which are so inspiring. That sounds really gushing but I LOVE this magazine.






Bye for now, Maria

More Swap Peeking

My sewing time has been taken up with swap items recently so nothing new to show apart from the progress I've made with these. I've done some quilting and hand embroidery on this little gift I'm making for the spring swap. I hope it looks spring like.


The picture below shows some more of the Doll Quilt 6 quilt. Sorry but it looks a bit out of focus. It's actually more of a wall hanging than a doll quilt but I think a lot of the members use them as wall hangings. I've added some flying geese blocks and am in the process of making some foundation pieced trees. I haven't decided whether to make one more or two more trees. I thought the little birdies may like some trees to fly off too. Above the line of trees I plan to do another line of flying geese flying in the opposite directions to the first row.

Once I've finished the swaps and the Linus quilt I'm looking forward to making something for myself. I've recently bought some yummy fabrics from America which I've had delivered to my brother who lives in New York, he's coming home for a few days at Easter so he'll bring them with him. It saves on the postage costs and the fabrics are cheaper than here although with the exchange rate as it is it's not as cheap for us as it was.

Bye for now, Maria.