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

Getting organised - holidays are over!

As the winter school holidays draw to a close  I'm planning my next term of activities & jobs that need doing.

This term I'll be offering two one day workshops at Calico & Ivy Balmain and the focus will be on Zig Zag Quilts!

Thursday 18th August 10am - 2pm

Thursday 1st Sept 10am - 2pm

Give Calico & Ivy a call to book in.

I'll also be teaching a beginners quilting course at Hobby Sew Top Ryde thursday evenings and Friday mornings.

If your unable to get to any of the classes, I'm starting a Lone Star quilt along soonish. I have started a flickr group for people to join and expect to be up and running with info in the next week.

Did I mention I'm going to London, Paris & Rome in October this year? 

any major Quilting things/ places info would be much appreciated or if you have a shop that would like a workshop/ class give me a bell.

More on that trip later

Xx Siobhan

Enough all-ready!

Mr Darcy's Zig Zag finished and Done :)

I've kinda overdone it with picturing this quilt! but this should be the last you see of Mr Darcy - finally with a back/Quilted and binding on.

I just love it soooo much. I love the actual zig zag and I love the loopy machine quilting, I even love the binding.

I have a habit of falling in love with each quilt I do - It's very hard to part with them

Quilt Back

Quilt Back

I made Mr Darcy double bed size - even though it's for a single bed, I like lot's of over hang.

So that's it for Mr Darcy.......
onto the next Quilt
Xx

It's raining again

Oh no it's raining again..........

So all you get is a indoor peak at the finished Mr Darcy's Zig Zag Quilt

I'm pretty happy with it, but need a bit of space to spread this double bed size baby out and snap some decent pics!

Xx

Pottering

Pottering along this week, which is nice :)
Weather is perfect - kids settled into school and all routine back in place after our 6 week summer break.
I've decided whilst I'm waiting on my big quilt tops to be machine quilted that I would make a cushion in matching material to the Zig Zag quilt (all the off cuts and scraps) and hand quilt it. It's been a while since I took it slow and made something little and everyone else seems to be making pillows/ cushion! so I had to aswell. This square is 80cm

I nearly went for Red thread but I wanted to match in with the Zig Zag quilt and it doesn't have any red in it - so maybe next pillow I'll get the red out :)

I narrowed it down to these three threads.

and this is what I'm doing with it, just randomly going around the inside of some squares. I'll keep going till it looks right......as usual no real plan - just going with the flow.

and this is the matching material in the Zig Zag Quilt.

almost - sort of - a bit..............

So you know the previous post with the long list of to-do's and the no more new quilt tops...............That didn't work out - Sort of.

To be fair I have knocked off a substantial part of the list, which is a relief !

Lots of backs made and finished and binding made and attached - so not too bad.

I was itching to try out a Union Jack style quilt for a single bed size and Voila ! here we have it. I made it extra big for a single bed or just snug for a double bed - I like to think the owners can keep it and maybe even use it on a big bed one day. I still have a bit of tweeking to do but it's getting there.

Xx

Zig Zag Done

Here we have the Final front of Mr Darcy's Zig Zag Quilt. I've always loved a good stripe or zig zag pattern - Missoni being one of my favourite designers.

Row 1  - Amy Butler temple Doors

Row 2  - Monaluna for Robert Kaufman Grey

Row 3  - ?

Row 4  - KeiKi Wee Woodland stripe Turquoise

Row 5  - Essentials by XLN fabrics Blue honeycomb

Row 6  - Jenavere Valori Woods Turquoise

Row 7  - Greenfield Hill Denyse Schmidt Blue

Row 8  - Kumasi Garden by Dena

Row 9  - Essentials by XLN fabrics grey honeycomb

Row 10 - Lizzy House Castle peeps

Row 11 - Kaffe Fassett shot jade cotton

Row 12 - ?

I uses 10inch squares cut in half for my triangle size. 

and of course the dog had to get in on the action

No 12 Unidentified Fabric - If you know what it is please let me know :)

No 3 Unidentified Fabric -

if you know what it is please let me know :)

now just have to figure out how to Quilt it?

small step

Yay for me! Just need to cut up a few more rows and nearly done. No more injuries today either.
Xx

Air Head

 A little progress (a little being an understatement!) My head is off with the fairies - too much sun possibly?
On another note - although still under the heading of my hazy brain, I dropped the rotary cutter and gave myself a substantial slice on the ankle. Thats definitely a first! I have suffered many finger and hand slices - But ankle ?

I've had a break from cutting fabric, but this is it so far. Only two or three more fabrics to go - I didn't want to risk any further injury.

This is the trunk of a very large tree near the beach we swim at - Does anyone else see an Alien? again could just be me...........

Xx