WIP Wednesday - the Frosty One!

I am slowly tackling that finished flimsy pile, one by one I'm making a dent!  This past weekend I basted my Penny Sampler quilt (design by Rachel Hauser @Stitched in Color) so I could get to some hand quilting with my new perle cottons. 

This has been a finished flimsy for over a year as I think I was afraid to quilt it.  Not really knowing how I wanted to tackle it, I only knew I wanted to do some hand quilting.  Looking back over the notes Rachel gave us I remembered she hand tied hers rather than stitch in the ditch and added some big stitch outline quilting on the star.  

 I want to add a bit more hand quilting than that but figured get it basted and tied first and see what springs to mind.  So I spent a few hours last Saturday watching the Jungle Book singing along with Louis and Balou and got her spray basted, hand tied and trimmed to size! 

I'm stuck on a binding colour.  G thinks dark grey to frame it and balance all the pastel but I am considering something lighter as the fabric pick for this quilt was inspired by a frosty Christmas feeling.  Any suggestions?  Binding it before hand quilting is recommended by Rachel and it will feel nicely finished even though I can be adding to it a bit at a time watching movies!

I am making progress on my QAL's too, this week, working on Yvonne's Snowflake Shimmer design.   I've added in more diamonds to my version with Yvonne's blessing and given myself a little bit more work to do but I am having real fun with this one, chain piecing my way through the square in a square blocks. 

When I made my Halloween quilt a few years ago and it had 16 square in a squares I thought I never wanted to see another one again.  This time around I have about 40 and am loving pressing them open.  Maybe its the colours I'm working with.  So frosty, but in a different way to the Penny Sampler above.  The weather is definitely changing and it's nearly time to light the fire and nestle in as the trees change to gold and red and burnt orange- my favourite time of the year!

A Finished Quilt Top - Penny sampler update

 

I finished it!  At last I have a Penny Sampler Quilt top.  My frosty version (previously posted about here and here) of Stitched in Color's design is pieced and I have to admit I'm all paper pieced out!  It's been a few weeks of horses, teapots, teacups, flowers, lots of diamonds and lots of removing paper (my least favourite bit) and it's finally all pieced together. 



The massive Kona Seafoam hanging diamonds doesn't dominate as much now it's a complete quilt top.  The blocks and borders are a mixture of pieced blocks, applique and foundation paper piecing.  I still have to hand embroider the birds tail and feet and the horses bridles on.  Rachel shows how to machine sketch these bits in with black thread but I like the idea of adding some embroidery to this quilt top.

I'm going to hand quilt this one and eventually it will end up in our bedroom.  Trying to keep Wilbur and Charly paw prints off it will be a challenge and it will probably take me all winter to quilt it but I'm looking forward to it!

Linking to all the Friday finishes, Crazy Mom Quilts and

Design Wall Monday - Nearly there!

Still working on the Penny Sampler (design by Rachel @ Stitched in Color)!  The assembly of the main sections of the design is all done and it's starting to look like a proper quilt top now!  Also starting to run out of room on the design wall!

Option 1, for this design, is to finish sewing these large groups to each other and leaving it at that for a 66" x 73" throw. 

This is what I originally intended to do and the colouring sheet that Rachel gave us is not too far away from my actual quilt top.  I was going for frosty with hints of a winter fire in the darker coal colours and pink and oranges scattered about the place.

Don't ask me where the green Seafoam comes into the winter palette!  Not sure what I was thinking there at all.  

Looking at it like this though, it feels unfinished to me so I'm adding in the optional 9" diamond row on the bottom.  

I think it looks much more balanced with it than without and gives me a chance to pop in more of that Seafoam towards the bottom right!

Nearly there now!

Linking to Design Wall Monday

WIP Wednesday: Back to the Penny Sampler!

So the Triangle top is finally finished and I was very good!  I didn't put it away like I normally do and flit to something else.  I made a quilt back out of this Tula Pink 5m fabric, from the Foxfields collection, that I bought here on Craftsy.  I really love this colour and the pattern is adorable.  So I pin basted it last Friday and it's ready to be quilted.

 Not quite in the quilting zone of mind just yet and facing a mostly empty design wall, I had the choice of piecing more London arrows or cracking on with Fat Quarter Fizz with an Oriental twist or hand sewing down some binding (my least favourite part of the quilting process!).  Of course the butterfly effect hit again and I didn't do any of that but decided instead to revisit my UFO's (unfinished objects!) 

I was feeling a little guilty that kids are back to school this week and summer is practically over and I haven't done that well on finishes for this quarter's Finish-A-Long.

I've got about 5 1/2 weeks to bust that list, (triangle being one I'm pretty much assured on) so I pulled out my Penny Sampler quilt from last year designed by Rachel from Stitched in Color. It's been on my list all year!

Maybe it was the trip to the zoo on my few days off last week with my little cousins, or maybe the chilly nights starting to draw in that prompted me to pull this one out.

I'm going for a wintery feel with this and not having finished it last year (Halloween sewing got in the way!) I'd really like to have the quilt top at least put together.  I'm very tempted to try hand quilting quite a bit of this one!

This was a project taught as part of a 3 month class on Applique, precise 1/4" piecing and Paper Piecing.  The design of the quilt is really different using a sampler approach to teach the three skills but also a broken border approach to contain the blocks which I really, really like!

There is a large outer border of diamonds that wraps around the quilt.  It's broken up by the inner border of crosses and a long filler block to showcase a favourite fabric. 1" squares are dotted about for a third broken border!

There are quite a few blocks and a lot of design elements to this one and I got as far as the applique and precise piecing last year.  So this week, I've been trying to catch up on the paper pieced blocks and some of those borders!

I think my favourite might just be the flower pot.  I did have a few problems joining the centre section on this one.  It's not quite as flat as it could be and I'll be attacking it with steam when it's sewn into the quilt top!  The coffee pot was easy and looks really big an dramatic in the quilt.  Kona Seafoam was used to try and balance the long hanging diamonds on the left as it is dominating the quilt at the moment,  and I need to balance it a bit better.  It is a really lovely shade though especially with the Kona Snow and Charcoal.  So I'll have to add a bit to the bottom diamond row to pull the eye away from the left a bit.  My new design wall makes these decisions so much easier and if I was to make this again I'd probably not put so much Seafoam in one place!

Of course this project being from last year, I had managed to lose the tea cup pattern that goes with the coffee pot!  There was an option to pay a few more dollars for an ebook at the end of the course which I didn't opt for, so I decided to try and make up a cup pattern in the style of Rachel's myself! 

Last month I bought EQ7 andrunning it on my Mac I had a few hiccups over a corrupted user but the support team at EQ7 were brilliant helping me get it sorted.  So Saturday, having the whole afternoon to myself and a working computer I gave it a go!  I have a new found respect for paper piecing designers! 

I spent ages trying to get the handle right so that the pattern would print in easy to put together sections.  EQ7 helps and gives you a warning saying that you have an inside corner - doesn't tell you where though!  In the end after much messing about, 2 cups of tea and quite a few rich tea biscuits I had an aha! moment.  

I opened the block library and searched for cups! Yes I know, I'm a dope!  I didn't find a cup but a basket handle which was perfect and I copied that.  The trick is to think in planes and straight lines.  Rachel's cup handle is a bit more rounded and much more elegant but I'm happy I got there in the end!  EQ7 gives you a blue outline when all is well, so nice to see after 3hrs messing around!

Of course when I printed the first one I forgot to hit reverse! So I now have two cups, facing in different directions!  That's ok too! It's my version of the quilt after all!

The last paper pieced block is this one called the Dala Horse - this horse is the reason I wanted to make this quilt in the first place.  When I saw him, I knew I had to make him and signed up straight away.  He's almost the last block in the whole quilt though so you have to work up to him!

Rachel has a new class on offer starting next week and there are still places left.  It's called angled and walks you through 5 quilt designs using triangles, diamonds and flying geese.  I've signed up (hoping to piece 1 of the 5 designs!) so will really have to get a move on to get the bottom row of diamonds done,  one more horse pieced, sketch stitch in the horse faces and assemble all these blocks together!  Luckily very few need sashing and I'm really looking forward to the assembly bit!

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WIP - Catching Up

Well it has been crazy busy here not that you would see from the blog posts or lack thereof.  Just finished up a busy work week and a trip to TV land, well Irish TV land in the form of my best friends mum getting called up for the national lottery show.  We had a brilliant day out, got to be on TV for all of 5 seconds and watched it replayed at least 3 times already!

So catching up this week on the Penny Sampler quilt.  I started high key and low volume and then something happened to me.  It's been a colour invasion.

 I did remember that I was going for low volume and did a mid make correction:

 But contrasting colour got the better of me again.

 It's going to be an interesting quilt this!

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