WIP Wednesday - the slow progress one!

We're still decorating the kitchen- turns out painting white over stained wood panelling takes a few coats, even with paint that has a primer included. 

Wood panelling at back that eats paint!

2 coats in, lots brighter but still not done!

I'm on the 3rd coat at the moment and it takes 6hrs between them so a little bit every day is slooooow progress.  Decorating is not like quilting where every stage is very satsifying.

From piecing a block to making a quilt top, basting the layers together, adding the quilting and the very last stitch in the binding - all the steps that make you feel good and productive.  Painting is more like knitting!  The sense of accomplishment comes at the end and in between is the bit that's done and the bit that's not done!

While the kitchen is topsy turvy, I've been knitting a few rows waiting for the paint to dry.  Funny how the hands want to be doing something crafty.  Projects I started ages ago but had left lying around, have finally had a bit of attention and while I am nowhere near finished any of these, I am making progress, slowly, kind of like the painting!

I managed a few more inches on the blue, 7 repeats of the lace pattern on the red and started a whole new project.

I love Debbie Bliss cashmerino aran and working with 6.5mm needles is making this one go fast!  Still, I hope to have the panelling finished by Friday and then onto the walls.

2 coats of Jasmine white and the brown is still showing through!

I'm loving the pale peacock colour but we've all agreed the Georgian cream goes better with our spray painted chairs & mosaic tiles.  Apple green is having a holiday for a while.  Don't worry I'll find a way to get that pale peacock in the kitchen somewhere!  Maybe Wilbur and Charly would like a new peacock coloured dog bowl?

I miss my sewing room!

Ever noticed how quilting seems to invade all aspects of your life?  We're in decorating mode at the moment and I've been pulling every paint chip & colour card from the shelves trying to decide on a warm cream/grey colour for the kitchen walls.  I even splurged on two magazines (Your Home and Your Style) for inspiration and had to laugh when I saw these.

The Home Dec magazines are calling it Geometric Pattern and picked some painted chevrons and print fabrics for cushions.  Maybe we should expand our quilting patterns to walls and furniture?  Still not going too crazy I've been spray painting chairs, chalk painting doors and adding pops of colour where I can while encouraging G to paint the ceilings so I can get on with the walls! 

 As I sew at our kitchen table this means everything has been moved into my end of the room so the ceilings can be painted and panelling undercoated (?).  Things are a mess and I miss my sewing machine!

Still it could be worse...

You might have seen on FB and IG : Wilbur killed our sofa !  Thankfully its not totally dead.

I whipped the covers off the sofa to wash them and laid the cushions down on my newly painted cubes. Feeling a bit neglected he decided to amuse himself and pulled a cushion up onto the sofa and tore into it.  Not the end of the world only a cushion insert, but in his zeal to kill the evil cushion he got sidetracked and took a few chunks out of the sofa too!

It was all my fault!   Well, maybe not all!  Forgetting to close the door to the living room and not paying him any heed, he decided to play.  As I was busy in the kitchen painting, listening to the sound of the washing machine and dryer going , he was having great fun.

As I walked back into the room, newly dried covers all ready to go, my hands went to my face and Oh and My managed to come out of my mouth and that was about it.  Speechless!

Well what are you going to do?  I got the camera.  Seeing that I was giving him my full attention he decided to show off and dived on the sofa a second time.  At least it was the ruined cushion this time and not the sofa itself he was ripping into,  so I took a few photos.

 But he got tired.  Killing evil cushions is hard work! 

I managed to get the sofa bits back in the covers and turned the lumpy one he chewed up upside down - think anyone will notice?

Hopefully normal quilty updates will resume after the weekend as I have Bee blocks to do and need my machine back! 

Happy weekend everybody!

Fairy Tale Swap–a finish!

Last week I showed you the extra handmade item for this swap, a project book from Aneela Hooey’s pattern.  Today I have the main swap item to share.  This is my Princess and the Pea mini-quilt called Wide Awake!

I signed up for the #SPDFairytaleswap on Instagram and the shipping date was last week so I’ve been paper piecing, making templates, trying out some fancy stitches on my new machine trying to make a Princess and the Pea mini in perspective!

My partner  loves bright, happy fabrics, no browns or muted colours so I chose some layer cake squares from Me and My Sister’s Hubba Hubba collection.  I designed the bed in EQ7 and foundation paper pieced the mattresses.

For the canopy, I drew it on blank paper following the lines of the mattresses and used the sides as templates to cut pieces.  I  backed the pieces with fusible web to iron in place and used fusible for the bed posts too.

I had the idea that while the Princess was trying to sleep on her collection of mattresses, a little dog would be curled up in his tiny bed snoring his head off!

I sketched out a dog based very much on Charly when she is all curled up and then used fabric backed with more fusible paper to put him and his bed together.  His name is Toby (Toby was our very first dog.  He was very snuggly and loved to curl up!)

To give the impression of the Princess being wide awake I had the idea of her counting sheep.  Funnily enough this month’s Love Patchwork & Quilting Magazine has a jumping sheep mini-quilt with templates so it was really easy to make the sheep!  When the universe gives you exactly what you are thinking of I think its called synchonicity!

I had intended to put in a dressing table and crown and a window with the night sky but it was getting a bit big and a bit fussy so I stopped at that and embellished the bed, to make it fit for Royalty instead!

I had fun using some of the speciality stitches to add hearts, stars and fancy scrolling to the bed to make it more like something you would find in a castle!

Finally a bit of quilting in the background.  I’m sorry now I didn’t quilt in some bricks or some straight lines.  I thought a large wiggle would melt into the background and not compete with the bed but I don’t really like the look of it, maybe the scale is too big?  Other than that I’m happy with how it came out and hope my swap partner likes it and the rest of the swap package!

I found this Little Red riding hood fabric on LoveFabric.ie and just had to buy him.  Claire thought he was cool but a little creepy!  I agree and I really like the way he is licking his lips! 

So this lot is winging its way across the Atlantic at the moment.   It was a great idea for a swap and I had great fun making for it.  Linking up to the Friday Finishes!

WIP: Q2/Q3 Finish-A-Long

Well I completely missed linking up my finishes this quarter which is a shame as I had a few this time around!  Probably my best quarter yet!  Very easy to lose track of things when you are making swap deadlines, bee blocks & the flaky internet connection, that's been with us all this past week, has meant I couldn't get online too much.  Behind on my blog reading and link up,  seems that watching Doctor Who on Netflix, while sewing all day Saturday uses up a bit of bandwidth!

Still, in lieu of the finish link up, I thought I’d be accountable here and set my FAL goals for the next quarter! 

• Nerds craft it better swap  - Finished!  Made a Hazel ala Orphan Black cushion, a storage box + a notebook cover for my partner!
  

  
• SPD Fairy Tale swap:  - Finished!  I wrote about the project book here last week (fox and bunny!) but will write more about the mini Princess and the Pea  here this Friday
  

  
• MQI exhibition in June - Modern Irish Bee 2014 quilt and Triangle-A-Long both Finished!
  

  
• Local Landscapes IPS exhibition in June (Irish Patchwork Society) – Finished!  Collage quilt using hand dyed fabrics called Upriver
• Selfish Sewing -finish sewing machine cover & Tape it quilt from Brigitte Heitland workshop – not done
  

  

I don’t feel bad I didn’t get the last 2 done as they were for me with no end date needed and I had enough to do with the must makes that I got done!  So for this quarter I’m carrying those two over and adding:

• Swoon quilt for my cousin who is getting married in September – better get a move on with this one!

  

  1. Tote back, 2. encomenda, 3. Handmade foam tote bag., 4. a Tote Bag, 5. bag-3, 6. Library Bag, 7. Urban Grocery Tote, 8. Anna Maria Horner Tote Bag, 9. Julinha's bag, 10. LEANNE'S BAG, 11. Denyse Schmidt tote, 12. Solids Only Tote Challenge, 13. tote bag, 14. large tote bag, 15. 241 Tote - present for a friend..., 16. Natasha's First Birthday Tote Dec12

• Secret Summer swap which is a tote bag with the Modern Quilters Ireland group.  These are my picks as inspiration.
• IPS summer challenge, postcard from your summer holidays which will be Greetings from Limerick as we are not going anywhere this summer!
  
• 2.5” squares swap – no idea what I’m going to do with these yet but they are 400 squares swapped with some of our IPS branch members so a mix of my fabrics and 14 others!  Should be a fun project to work on – any ideas?

So that's my lot for Q3.  Linking up to

Exploring Pixel Quilts - Guest Post on MQI

Today I have a guest post over on the Modern Quilters Ireland blog exploring pixel quilts. 

I love the way pixel quilts create a recognisable shape from coloured squares and I've been playing with photo software, Pic2Pat cross-stitch software and an online program called You Patch to generate a pixel quilt plan.  If you want to know more the post is live here! 

Sewing organiser - A finish!

One of the first blogs I followed, when I discovered quilting, is Aneela Hooey's Comfortstitching.  Aneela designs really cute fabric, very girly, lots of sweet colours, pinks & purples and beautiful hand drawn art. She also makes patterns for fabric boxes, pouches and project books.

Last week, when leaving a comment on Carla's blog Granny Maud's Girl, suggesting Annela's blog for inspiration for pouches and small makes from heavier weight cottons it occurred to me that it would be the perfect place to find a use for this embroidered design of a fox and a bunny!

The design is from Urban Threads Moonlit Winter.  They have since released Spring, Summer & Autumn in both machine and hand embroidery - they are really gorgeous.  Urban threads is another one of my favourites and well worth a look!

I came across this design while looking for cute bunny rabbits, as my swap partner for the #SPDFairytaleswap on Instagram loves them.  I thought this fox and rabbit were seriously cute.  I'm calling them Fred and Barbara (no idea why, just suits them to me!) 

My Husqvarna has an embroidery adapter that I don't use much, preferring to hand stitch embroidery but sometimes I set it up and use Silk threads and let it run.  I had a nice big scrap of solid grey and let the machine do its thing and scratched my head for a bit as to what to do with the embroidered piece. 

Annela's Project Book Pouch looked like it might be the perfect thing for it. I used some Architextures and Art Gallery fabric to make the little piece stretch into a book cover.

Some Minimalista fabric and a low volume fat quarter with scissors all seemed to go well together to make pockets for a few small goodies.

Hand sewn binding on the front to finish.  I used fusible fleece on the front cover as I wanted it a bit squishy.  Next time, (and there will be a next time as I am definitely making one of these for myself and probably as Christmas presents for everyone I know!) I'd stick with Aneela's instructions and use the stiff heavyweight fusible to make it more book like.

I really like how this turned out. Hope my partner does too!
Linking up to the Friday finishes and