A quilt for Dad

After making my mum a wedding ring quilt I decided that I wanted to make my dad a quilt too.
I wanted it to be a secret but also wanted to have some of his input. So I decided to ask him what his favourite colours were. Below is a snippet of our text conversation:

What are your favourite colours -Atleast two -me
no response for a day so I re-texted
Hi Dad, what are your favourite colours? -me
Suddenly the one-way text conversation turns into a phone conversation
"Why do you want to know my favourite colours?" -dad
"I'm just planning something creative that you probably wont get for a year..."  -me
oh um.. green-dad
Green is good. Have you got another colour you like?...-me
White -dad
I like white!, oh and (little grunting noises) Blue... but that wouldn't go with green would it?... -dad
I think it will but you will have to wait and see :) -me
Ok, but you just do what you like.. those colours might look silly -dad


What do you think? Do these fabrics go together?

lil fox- my first paper piecing

Wow, I feel so proud of myself for finishing this little guy. You really need to be in a good mood to tackle paper piecing. I was flipping the fabric in all sorts of directions and having to unpick constantly after having a stressful week of planning a craft evening. Once I overcame a piece that I was stuck on for ages, the rest of it seemed to go quickly. Now I just need to tackle a hundred more paper piecing patterns and I will have the technique down. You can get this paper pattern here
I am not sure what I am going to do with the little fox now.. any ideas?

Bicycles, lions and Space post 3 - finished

I finished the Baby quilt earlier this week, I haven't put it away in the cupboard yet I cant stop looking at it :) Here are a couple of photos: The front

And the back- label close up

I decided to go with a plain solid blue binding so it didn't overpower the patterns on the front of the quilt and used the dark blue patterned fabric around my label to contrast with the patterned fabric backing. I am happy with how this quilt came out. Unfortunately my machine starting to break down whilst attaching the binding so most of that was completed by hand. I am on my way to the sewing machine hospital now .. Luckily the three needles that broke only managed to hit me in the chin. I am not sure what I have done to my poor little Janome.

Selling lemonade Summer fun

Here is my latest fabric design for a contest it is entitled Lemonade Summer Selling.

Bicycles, lions and space post 2

I started a quilt class at Stitchbird and over came my hesitation of cutting into my beautiful fabric stash.
I made four blocks in class and continued to cut the material and pin all the pieces ready to sew.

I created 30 blocks by the end of the week. Then organised their order.. Which I mucked up and had to re-do. I am sure the first layout was better too.  My fault I didn't take a photo! That should be the lesson from this post; Always take a photo of your quilt once you have organised the layout. I picked my pieces up in order, but managed to muck it up! After reorganising the layout I sewed them into their rows, time seemed to pass quickly. I finished the quilt top in two weeks!
Tuesday the 2nd I pinned the three layers of the quilt together (basted the quilt).

I then used a hera marker to mark where I was going to quilt, it is a great tool for marking where to sew. It never gets blunt and doesn't leave any marks on your fabric. So you don't have to worry that you may or may not be able to wash out any chalk/fabric marks. The hera marker creates crease lines in your fabric and yes it shows on the back too! although you do need to apply a bit of pressure.

 Next time I post I plan to have the quilt finalised...

My Hedgehog Fabric Collection

I have been creating hedgehog fabric! So exciting! Here is (most of) a page out of my sketch book. This is the most legible section.

Hope you like them :) Here is a small example of my designs

Bicycles, Lions and space - A new project

Just showing off the fabric I purchased for a new quilting project. I started making it this week.

 

 

Here is a better close up photo of the Cotton & Steel August Sarah Watts Monarch Cotton Navy fabric. I really didn't do it justice in the previous photo although the colours look faded here.. Argh it's really just to good to photograph..

Secret project until recently..

A secret project has been happening for just over a year now and I have just about finished the quilt top- hoping to finish it by next week. ( one row to go!). It has been a HUGE mission that I started in February 2014! When I attended a workshop entitled "Easiest Double Wedding Ring Quilt Ever!" taught by Kerry Glen at the Craft and quilt fair- Palmerston north.
-Instead of having solid curves I planned to sew different strips of fabric together

I was aiming to complete the quilt by November for my mothers wedding but I just didn't have enough time in the end, I blame my European holiday :) but to be honest, even without the distraction of a holiday I would have been really lucky to have a quilt top!

I didn't record down when I completed each step, however I will record down the stages and the dates that I do know.

1. I started organising, cutting and sewing my Moda fabric into rows of five (25 different fabric designs in total). Each fabric design was roughly cut into 2.7" strips.

2. I then started to cut out my curves.
On July the 27th- I completed cutting out all of the curves; 160 in total from the 5 sewn fabric sets.




3. I then purchased some plain grey cotton fabric to contrast with the floral prints and to make it more manly. Mums favourite colour is yellow so I purchased the yellow and orange fabric. I Started cutting out the grey, yellow and orange pieces.  I needed to cut 80 yellow and 80 orange triangles as well as 80 grey 9.5" squares.I even brought them into work and started to cut them up during lunch breaks.

4. On the 2nd of September I finished sewing the first row of the quilt, and on the 23rd I finished sewing the 2nd row.. This is where I continued to cut up my yellow, orange and grey pieces of fabric...
I knew that I was not going to make the wedding deadline so moved the due date to their first year anniversary -1st of November 2015.

5. I discovered that I did not have enough fabric so had to buy more...

6. Finally I brought more fabric in February (-for this quilt). Finished sewing the 3rd row and sewed the three rows together on the 28th of March 2015.

7. On the 2nd April 2015 I finished cutting all of the grey fabric pieces.

8. My mum and her husband dropped in to see me. Unfortunately the quilt was in my lounge so the secret was out :) at least they saw the top when it was close to completion.
In the future I don't think I will label my secret projects.. The label on the quilt "Mum and Dons wedding quilt" quickly gave the surprise away!

I will post a picture once the quilt front is finished :) Hopefully I will have it finished by next week...