Fresh Sewing Day

So it's September already!  Linking up today to Lily's Quilts Fresh Sewing day where we are invited to review what we did or are most proud of for August.

My summer holidays are late this year and everybody else seemed to be away on theirs so I had a lot of August for sewing time!  I made two cushions, designed my own block, made more City sampler sew-a-long blocks, and went star crazy working on the Swoon-A-Long 2013 and Melissa's Star Surround Block at Happy Quilting.

Charly and I entered the fabulous Pets on Quilts and I joined the Global scrap Bee and my first swap (fussy cut paper pieced blocks).

It's been a busy month.  Here's hoping I can get half as much done in September!  My favourite?  Definitely the pets on quilts photo shoot.  That was great fun!  So much fun I just have to post this photo again!

Penny Sampler Progress

It's been a tough week this week.  I ended up with a sinus infection and a busy work week where we had presentation training.  Turns out I say ahm a lot.  We were videoed and got to see ourselves in action.  Not the most pleasant of experiences!  Now I'm paranoid about ahm... but hopefully that's a good thing and I can break that habit.  So playing catch up this weekend on my Penny Sampler quilt course with Stitched in Color.  There are 3-4 blocks a week so I was anxious to not fall behind.

I got off to a good start but it quickly turned out to be a bit of a challenging weekend too!  First I made my heart block with turn under applique and got fabric show through.  Very tormenting!  And it was looking so sharp and heart shaped too.  So I remade it with fabric backing and no show through but this time around they all turned out puffy!

The heart shape is't as perfect as the first method and I changed from black sketch stitching to white.  Looking at it now I can live with it but straight after the perfect heart shaped first block I was a little disappointed. Not giving up I tried again with blocks number 2 and 3 and thankfully things went better.  I love these two, they are so wintery feeling.

Keeping with the snowy theme for my quilt and realising I'd get show through I stuck with fabric backed applique and figured I'd have to iron them totally flat to get rid of as much puffiness as possible.

There's a lot of work in this block.  Some of the houses have tiny pieces and the background is pieced as well.  In the middle of this the kitchen tap broke and we had to turn off the water from the mains.  So with no water to clean the floor or run the dishwasher and mumbled curses coming from Gordon the two dogs and I stayed well out of the way at the other end of the kitchen and sewed away the afternoon.

I was looking for a snowy feel and I think I got it.  I'm so glad this block is done.  I had to rip out three of the roofs as they weren't horizontal but well wonky.  Ripping out three rounds of sketch stitched, glued applique houses left me muttering under my breath as well.  Next time I'll use twice as many pins!  Finally got there in the end though and my uncle Tony helped Gordon fix the tap so the mains is back on, which means the electric shower and the dishwasher are available again.  Relief!

Star Surround Assembled

From this 

 and this

to this:

My Star Surround block from Happy Quilting's Quilt-A-Long is complete.  I chose to make the block in a 40" size and will be turning this into a baby quilt.  I'm really happy with the colours and love the design.  Step by step instructions are on Melissa's blog if you want to give it a try.  I'm hoping to get this quilted up over the next few weeks for the grand parade linky party in September. 

Linking up to Happy Quilting and Thursday Threads!   

Boo!

I took a break from Star blocks to get a head start on the swaps I signed up for.  Being in Ireland with swap partners internationally I try to get ahead of the postal deadline to allow as much time as possible for travel time.  My partner for the Halloween Sewing Swap is quite a distance away so I decided to get cracking!

I  have suitably stalked my swap partner online and poured over the likes and dislikes page and came up with a Boo banner.  I'm using this Tutorial from Fabric Mill.  I've changed it a bit and made it 25% smaller and I'm happy with how it's looking so far.

The swap calls for 3-4 handmade items so I have used some scraps from my RJR Boo Crew fabric.  I'm making placemats based on this Tutorial from Fairy Face Designs.

My favourite part of this fabric range are the dancing skeletons.  I love those guys!

I have lining fabric on order from Etsy and so far so good!  Don't you just love Halloween?

Linking up to

Halloween Sewing Swap

1.Happy Howloween 2. Witch silhouette 3.Happy Halloween Quilt 4. Witch on broomstick 5. Mumford 6. Spooky silhouette 7. Cute creatures 8. House Wallhanging 9. Fun Halloween 10. Table runner 11.Witches Feet 12. Happy Pumpkin 13. Skeleton Doll 14. Pumpkin Fabric 15.Cute Halloween Fabric 16.Cute graveyard fabric

Another Mosaic, another secret swap!  This time it's a Halloween themed swap hosted by Martha at MCSQRD.  I've been assigned my partner and I can't wait to get started.  I know what I'm going to make already and I have Halloween fabric in mind so Happy Shopping time!

To help out our swap partner we have been asked what our favourite things about Halloween are.  Growing up in Ireland in the 70's (eeks I am that old!!) we tended to make our own costumes.  In school in between learning about the druids and old Irish fairy tales we'd make our own witches hats and masks.  Dressing up tended to be something easy like a ghost, mummy or a witch (hats were a doddle to make, almost everyone had a broomstick back then for some reason and you could get a cape from a black plastic bag in a heatbeat!)  You didn't really see pumpkins in the supermarket much so every now and then we'd have a lantern made from a turnip.  If you've ever tried carving a lantern out of a turnip then you'll think pumpkins are the best things ever too!  That probably explains why I have a lot of them in my mosaic above and possibly why I like the colour orange so much.  So favourite things about Halloween - homemade & orange.  Mind you I'm quite fond of purple and lime green too!

A Finish - Dogwood Cushion

Can you believe this is a practice piece?  It's the first exercise in the Penny Sampler Quilt course over at Stiched in Colour.  We are learning applique techniques and I finished this yesterday evening.  

 

These are not my normal colours but I really liked the pattern in the orange fabric when I was browsing through fat quarters in my LQS.  The cream tone on tone pattern caught my eye.  I have no idea what it is but I bought it in two different shades of blue as well for my Doctor Who Quilt-A-Long.

The black sketch stitching was great fun and not that difficult in the end.  I've always liked this look but for some reason felt it must be hard and shied away from it.  I think I have found my new favourite way to applique!

The course is still open for registrtation here and you can join in anytime.  Linking up to Finish it Friday and

and

WIP Wednesday - Still Starry Eyed

I pieced my Star Crossing block from last week - couldn't help it, I had to get it together and I'm very pleased with the result.  The block is 32" and I'm going to add borders to bring up to 36" square for a baby quilt.  It was really easy to put together.

I've been thnking about how to quilt it and have come up with straight lines along the sun rays and stipple in the white areas.  Not sure what to do with the navy square and star centre.  Maybe I'll stitch in the ditch and echo in matching thread?

I'm thrilled with how this block turned out and I love the pattern multiplied so I've drafted a 24" block as well.  I hope to put this one together as a tutorial and pattern but I've got some more Star blocks to finish.

Last week I had a star centre for Happy Quilting's Star Surround QAL.

This week I have surrounds and corners.
 

Next week is assembly but I couldn't resist laying them out for a sneaky peek!

I'm loving this project.  It'll be a 40" baby quilt, hopefully in 2 weeks time.

No joy on my Swoon QAL this week - still in pieces.  Hopefully Sunday will be a swoon day for me and I'll get this one done as well!

These large star blocks are tons of fun and very versatile.  I'll be making them for a while, 5 more Swoon to go in addition to this one!

Linking up to