80th birthday quilt

Well, it's been a while since I made a quilt!  I've been sewing clothes, but not blogging them - I find them very difficult to photograph well.  A quilt, on the other hand, I love to take pictures of.



This one is a present for my mum, for her 80th birthday, which was last weekend.  I've managed to use up a great deal of stashed blue fabric making this (although there still seems to be a whole lot left...), and have only had to buy a metre of Kona white to complete the front.



For the back I needed to buy a three metre length (it's Dashwood Twist in teal), and of course the wadding (Dream Request).  Luckily I had some fabric that worked for the binding already (two prints which were similar enough I could mix them together).



I was rushing to finish this in the end, and finished stitching the binding down on the car journey south (I wasn't driving).
Here's the quilt on a chair Mike's just completed, it's the same design as this one.



Vicky xx

Cheerful rainbow quilt

A friend of my daughter's has had to have a pretty major operation, and I wanted to cheer her up when we visited.  So I dragged out a whole rainbow of fabric and my biggest pieces of wadding, and came up with the brightest quilt I could manage!

It needed to be made in less than a week, so had to be a straightforward design, and it had to not need anything I didn't already have lying around (although admittedly I do have quite a lot of stuff "lying around").  I decided on a rainbow, because it's always cheerful.  And to get in plenty of different fabrics and interest, I split each diamond into two triangles.

I cut the triangles last Saturday, and had them all stitched into squares by the end of Sunday.  Cut the background strips and had the quilt top finished by the end of Wednesday (when I may, or may not, have been working at home).  

Quilted Thursday afternoon, bound Thursday evening (in pale grey, by machine, no time for hand finishing on this one!).  Photographed in our garden on Friday morning, where there are loads of co-ordinating flowers at the moment, and delivered to the hospital by 11am the same morning!  It was very well received I am pleased to say.

This one's a win-win - a cheerful present and a really good use for some of that huge pile of fabric.  Can't see the difference in the pile of fabric though!

Vicky xx

Hexagons quilt

Well this one took a long time!  I love the colours, and hexagons are my favourite shape, so that doesn't matter.

It's based on Science Fair (Jaybird quilts), but I wanted use my left-over Kaffe Fasset shot cottons, which were all muted colours from a sample pack.  (I used all the bright colours in this star quilt). There are a few spotty prints mixed in there too.
I also chose my own size for the quilt - maybe the only thing I did the same as Science Fair is the construction method!

The negative space is a khaki chambray from Village Haberdashery in London, which may no longer be in stock.  The backing is a Kaffe shot cotton, possibly called Blueberry.

I quilted in straight lines about an inch apart on the negative space, to keep the quilt soft.  On each hexagon I quilted six radiating lines, and a circle at the edge.  This quilting is not so obvious on the front, but stands out nicely on the back.

Very pleased with the colour scheme on this one!  One final summery picture!

Zippy trippy three

This one was a Christmas present, which worked out really well.  Slightly smaller than Zippy Trippy and Zippy Trippy Two, to make it easier to get through the machine when stitching the central piece once the cardboard has been placed inside.



On the front is a bird which may (or may not) be a peacock, on a red background with quilted straight lines.



Inside, the usual clear pocket on one side, and on the other a whole load of pencil slots and a small pocket.  I was particularly pleased with my colour choices for this one, especially the red edge on the pencil slots!





Also, for this one I covered a small notebook to match, giving it a red spine.

Although there's a lot of work in these pencil cases, they are very satisfying to make.  As before, this is a modification of Anna Graham (Noodlehead)'s Road Trip pattern.  Love your pattern Anna!

Zippy trippy two

It was kind of inevitable - once one child had one, the other wanted one! So here's my second Zippy Trippy (based on Noodlehead's pattern).



This one has a denim outer, with (by request) a USB symbol on. Inside there's the same vinyl pocket as before, some pencil slots, and also some small pockets for memory sticks and calculator. The binding and pockets are made with some really cool circuit board fabric that I found.



Both Zippy Trippies are in regular use I'm pleased to say. They're a bit of a faff to make, especially sewing that last central piece in place once I've put cardboard in the front and back (I don't think the Noodlehead pattern uses this), but worth it. I'll never get tired of zipping that zip all the way round!



This might be the last one of these I make for a while. Seeing them being used makes it worth the effort of completing them, but they're still a whole lot of work! My next project is a pattern that's all my own....watch this space....

Summer Leaf on the cover!

Look what's on the cover of Quilty magazine's latest issue! Yes, it's Not Orange Peel! (cunningly re-named 'Summer Leaf' by Quilty magazine).

Bloggers Quilt Festival: starry night

This is my second entry in the Bloggers Quilt Festival, organised by Amy's Creative Side (thanks Amy, love your festival!).  I finished this quilt about a year ago, and called it Starry Night because that's what it reminded me of. It's entered in the Modern Quilt category of the festival.



I really wanted to make a quilt for each of my children before they got too old, so they'd be able to grow up with them. This one, for Thomas, started with a pack of charm squares of Kaffe Fassett's shot cottons. The full story of how I decided on stars on a grey background can be found in the original post about the quilt here.



My favourite thing about this quilt is that Thomas asked me to put the moon on the back, because the moon and stars obviously go together! He also asked for orange for the back, which is his favourite colour.  To quilt this one, I used a mixture of hand and machine stitching. I hand quilted from the centre to the points of each star, and around each one in silver, all in DMC perle cotton.  Then between the stars I added shooting star "swooshes" by machine.



Unfortunately I don't have a picture of the whole quilt at the moment but I'll try and get one in before the end of the festival!  I now have some pictures of the whole quilt! Enjoy!







Starry night quilt
Category: Modern quilts
Machine pieced
Hand and machine quilted

A hot mat for the kitchen

For a quick, quilty fix, I made a new mat for the kitchen last week.


This fish was inspired by the lovely drawings on Syko's blog.  (And by the way, the long gap since my last post is due to all my spare time being spent working on a quilt which will hopefully appear in a magazine later this year!)



I pieced together some scraps of leftover quilt batting for this mat, enough to make two layers. Then I sewed the fish onto a piece of linen layered onto one piece of batting, and quilted the backing fabric onto the second piece.



After, I cut both to the same size and sewed them right sides together. To finish, turn right side out, stitch opening closed, and topstitch. One mat, ready for a hot pan or dish in the kitchen - and washable!



These look like they would make good little presents - Mother's Day is coming up, and I have friends moving into a new house they're building soon, so I think I'll be making more.

P.S. If you use Instagram, I'm now on there - frosterleybazaar.

Orange peel

Just a quick post with picture of Not Orange Peel finally finished.  There was only just enough sunlight to get these pics...

First the whole quilt, showing how the stems (of varying lengths) and leaves are laid out:
 

Some quilting detail: the lines were machine quilted in expanding curves - marked out in washable pen


Along one side of the back, a rainbow stripe which uses one piece of every "leaf" fabric used on the front:


More quilting action:


And another part of the rainbow strip


I have to say it turned out looking really nice, and I'm very pleased with it.
Next quilt has hexagons on....

Not orange peel - quilted, finished, loved

At last, it's done!  I've finished machine quilting Not Orange Peel, and am really, really pleased with it!
Here are a few pics taken when I'd finished the quilting but before I'd trimmed and bound the edges.



The quilting pattern was inspired by a tree, with branches flowing and dividing organically. It starts in a bottom corner, and flows up and across the quilt, curving right back on itself at the bottom and the right edges. I quilted with Guterman 100% cotton, as I couldn't get to the quilt shop to get a big reel of anything like Aurifil.



Here's the back, which is my favourite Flea Market Fancy print, plus a rainbow border made from one piece of every colour I used on the front.






And here's the binding, ready to go on - lovely pale spots! (it's a print I used in the background of the front quite a bit)



To follow very soon - pics of the completed quilt (just as soon as I can get it away from my daughter's bed, it was made for her and she really loves it already - what more could I ask?)

Not orange peel - ready to quilt!

My quilt in progress, which I called Not Orange Peel in this post, is finally ready to quilt.  I think I started this one in mid-February, since when progress has been slow as I mused about how to join everything together, which way to press the seams, how big to make it, etc.



A few weeks ago I finished joining all my leaf blocks together after looking at them pinned to the wall for months on end, and then further delay trying to find the right colour for the stems (not to mention then starting to put the stems in, and deciding they needed pointy tops instead of flat tops....).  The random-ness of the stem lengths was important - at first I thought I could put in five full-length stems, but that didn't work; the quilt top needed to be broken up by having shorter stems so that the leaves, rather than the stems, were the main feature (thanks to my husband Mike for this inspiration!). Here's how it looked half-way through piecing, when I was starting to think about the stems:

So now it's basted and ready to go. Quilting will be by machine, in a sort-of tree-like pattern that flows from a bottom corner towards the top, spreading out as it goes. I'll be doing that on my little Elna machine, with a walking foot and a washable marker!

Starry night

Today I can finally show you pictures of a quilt I finished more than two months ago - but the weather's been so dull and cloudy it was impossible to get any proper pictures of it! And I wanted the photos of this quilt to do it justice, because I'm very pleased with how it turned out, as is the recipient-to-be, Thomas (aged 8).



This quilt features wonky stars made with Kaffe Fasset's shot cottons, with a background of Kona coal, a dense, dark grey.  I started off with a pack of shot cottons in 6-inch squares from Cottonpatch, then bought more of the colours I liked to make some bigger stars and to make the quilt backing.  By request, the back is orange! But actually this really works with the dark quilt top and its bright stars.  Also on the back I was asked to include the moon, which is appliqued.  The binding is in the same grey as the quilt top.





Here's the back - the orange is softer than it looks here.  As I had to join two pieces together, I put in a row off flying geese while I was at it. 

So finally today the weather was sunny. I photographed the quilt on a stone wall a short way from our house. It's alongside a public footpath so a few people passed as I was taking the pictures, but nobody asked any questions!

I've quilted this with a mix of hand and machine stitching. I stitched radiant lines by hand on the stars in a  colour to match each star, and went round each one in pale silvery grey.  Between the stars I used my machine to quilt "swooshes", as if these were shooting stars, using dark grey as a top thread and orange in the bobbin so that this machine quilting is more texture than pattern.



I'm so happy with this one, and so is Thomas. The only problem is he's having to wait before he can use it until I've finished Kitty's quilt! And that's another story you can read here..

Please leave me a comment and let me know what you think of this quilt - I'd like to know!
- Vicky x