What a glorious Sydney day!

productivity is at an all time high

I have decided to straight line quilt my baby boy quilt, although I have broken the cardinal rule of not having excess wadding...... I'm trying to use up the bits I have. It will work! (fingers crossed)

If I had more wadding I would have circular quilted it, like the one below.

Circular quilting seems to gobble up the backing & wadding - so straight line quilting it had to be!

The next few days will see me sewing these fabric panels into cushions!

busting to get into these

and here we have the back of a special project I have been doing for The Fat Quarterly crew. Very excited about this one.

Thats me for today

Xx Siobhan

Another Baby boy Quilt

I'm trying to build up a stash of simple boy/ girl baby quilts for gift giving.

I riffled through my fabrics and came up with this combination for a boys quilt. 

I tried to stick with all similarly scaled dots/spots & added in the larger scaled spots for interest. The red fabric was for a pop of colour.

looking through my largish collection of fabric is a bit like looking through my wardrobe, I had a lot of "what was I thinking" when I bought that moments!

The idea for this little one partly came from Katie of Sew Katie Did, Katie has some fantastic ideas when it comes to half square triangles & her use of solids is amazing. 

I also saw some art at the London Tate Modern gallery last year that was very graphic and a similar style. This little book also caught my eye whilst I was at The Liberty of London store.

Inspiration for quilting patterns are everywhere

If you have a link to share with a similar quilt - please leave a link in the comments. Its nice to see what other ideas are out there.

I like the randomness of it & the bits of red

I'm quietly enjoying our new clean back area of the house, especially the wall of book shelves.

I didn't really take before pictures or blog the process of our little renovation, we have so much more to eventually do - like the bathroom laundry & kitchen.....

for now I'm happy with a lot of light and white walls. I've added in a small pic below for you to see a little of a before & after.

I'm still moving furniture around & looking out for a few bits and pieces to add.

It all takes time.

Anyway back to the quilt top....

I need to think about how to machine quilt it

Xx Siobhan

Baby Boy Quilt

I made an extremely quick quilt today 

I used half square triangles to create a zig zag pattern - easy piecing & very quick to come together

This quilt is for a new little boy born last weekend !

I wanted to mix my colours up a bit - I tend to play it safe and use lots of grey. 

I saw a little girl wearing a yellow & navy outfit yesterday and it sparked my interest. 

Navy blue & yellow makes me think of the 80's!? anyone else?

I used two Saffron Craig fabrics, then a mix of some solids that I had.

Hopefully it fits in nicely in its new home.

I usually go with a grey colour thread for my quilting, no matter the colour of the fabric.

Today I tried to match up threads with the fabrics, I wanted to do some fairly messy uneven quilting and didn't want the thread to stick out too much.

I went for a navy blue binding to frame it all and a spotty fabric for the back

not bad for a few hours work :)

Xx Siobhan

Liberty strips - Part one

You will notice that most of my quilts are simple piecing, I don't have the attention span or time for complicated piecing - I love the look of complicated works! I just don't have the patience in "me" at this stage of life. 

I have busy little kids around me who at times can be demanding.

On the other hand I love craft and I love creating 

I keep a few more difficult projects on the go, I have some paper piecing and I like to hand quilt - but these get put away a lot to make way for the quick satisfying achievable ones.

Patchwork and Quilting doesn't have to be tricky maths/ calculating and piecing all the time.

This quilt is destined to belong to a new baby girl that a friend is having very soon.

A baby quilt is a good example of something that should be simple.

If it's one that you intend the family to use then it is going to be washed a million times and thrown all over the place.

I still had some 3inch strips hanging around after making my Lovely Liberty quilt a while back, and I had been hanging onto them for just the right project.

I joined 15 strips together, I could have left it at that - but I wanted it to look a bit more bitsy and antique looking.I like a good scrappy quilt.

to give me the effect I was after I then cut the quilt top into 4 inch strips, as you can see below

mixed them up a bit, I use the rule of random - what ever ends up together was meant to be! I don't worry too much about the same fabric being in a row.

I then joined it all together again! 

now it looks a bit more scrappy!

This process took me about 1 1/2 hours,in between looking at my emails and chatting to my dad. Not bad for a baby quilt top.

The fabric is lovely - which is one of the reasons the simple pattern works. Later down the track I'll try it with some solids and we can compare? I still think it would look great, but I'm curious non the less.

My backing and wadding are ready, next I'll show you how I will quilt it.

Xx Siobhan

going in Circles

I bought a new Sewing machine !

It makes top quilting so much easier

I had this front made up ready for another large cushion front, changed my mind and its a baby rug now

I've been busting to do the circle top quilting for ages! so many people have been doing it very small example of people I have noticed would be Malka Dubrawsky & Denyse Schmidt, so many others on Flickr with fantastic work.

If you have a blog post or flickr picture on circular top quilting I would love to have a look (as I'm sure would everyone else)

Leave a link in the comments

so much fun & I think it adds a nice extra dimension to the quilt

Not sure how much longer this wall will be in the back of my house, Our renovations are starting to take shape

Take Care

Xx Siobhan 

Baby Quilts

I had a story this week in a local Sydney Magazine Northside about making quilts for Babies. 

I love making baby quilts. They are a manageable size for starters, I also like imagining the new life thats going to snuggle under it. 

I'm a bit of a sucker for babies in general.

Most people taking my classes are making baby quilts for family or friends, its a good introduction into the world of quilting & its a lovely keep sake. 

If you don't think you can manage a whole quilt (no matter how small) get together with some friends and do a block each? if you all chip in together - getting a baby quilt long arm machine quilted wont cost much at all. 

Your imagination is the limit

simple shapes, complicated pattern, vintage fabric, old dresses, applique, words

the list is endless 

here are some pictures of a few quilts  that are baby sized

this is the quilt that was featured in the Northside magazine story

& when they get a bit bigger and sleeping in big beds, it can still be simple! just twice the size

on another note, I have been busy printing up greeting cards out of my photo's

I'm hoping to have them all ready by the new year - If your a shop & interested give me a bell!

Take care

Xx Siobhan