A Finish - Modern Irish Quilters Swap

Today is the postal date for our Modern Quilters Ireland swap!  This year, we have been making Christmas cushions, for our assigned partner.  It's a secret swap and my partner doesn't know I am making for her but I hope she'll like this as much as I do.

I had great fun with this little project!  I was going to hand quilt it but then changed my mind.  I wanted swirly quilting in the white to suggest a bit of a snow storm and once I had that on, the hand quilting didn't feel right.  I put a bit in the blue star points but you can barely see it!

I also changed my mind on the backing fabric.

I was going to use the Folk Art Holiday fabric but then thought it would be better used to bind the cushion and frame the star, so I dug into my Ikea 2014 Christmas print.  I have a few yards of this home decoration weight cotton to make into a table cloth.  I really like it as the backing!

The Folk Art fabric worked really well then for binding front and back.  I used two 2.5" strips x width of fabric and a 3/8" seam to have it even both sides of the cushion.  Clover wonder clips held everything in place (love them!!!) and then zig-zagged it all down!

The star burst was quilted in straight lines using a walking foot and the star and ray were quilted in the ditch too to make them stand up a bit from the background.

Lastly, to accompany the cushion, we were to make a small Christmas tree decoration.  Mine was made of scraps from Joy by Kate Spain as was the red in the cushion above.

So all done and another tick off the Christmas list - getting there!  Just have to put up our tree today now so I can hang my decoration from last years swap!  Love this little touch and hope it will be a yearly tradition!

Mum saw this finished yesterday and given her track record of swiping cushions,  I had to tell her hands off it's spoken for!  So this is going in the post today - hope you like it partner!

Linking up to Crazy Mom Quilts and

Night Sky Update

Well, all the Flying Geese are made at last and up on the wall!  The blocks are still not yet pieced but I think Jana might be extending the Quilt-A-Long, so I might get this top together before the 25th.  There are a lot of Flying Geese in this pattern.  My small verison has over 90 and the full version of the quilt over 170 of them!

Camille Roskelly uses the stitch and flip method in this pattern.  You cut 2 squares for every one rectangle and place one of the squares right sides together on the rectangle, sew a line along the diagonal corner to corner and trim the excess 1/4" away from your sewn line.  Do the same again with the other square on the remaining side.  This means a lot of scraps! 

There are other ways to make Flying Geese, specialty rulers like Fons and Porters, paper piecing or the make 4 at a time from a larger square.  During the angled on line class with Rachel @ Stitched in Colour the pros and cons of each method was looked at and the Fons and Porter ruler got the thumbs up and the 4 at a time method, the thumbs down (harder to keep 1/4" at the centre seam and 3 usually turn out ok and 1 a little off!).

I made mine using the stitch and flip method and still got 3 good ones to 1 wonky one when I chain pieced them.  Next time, I will slow down and pay more attention!  Still now that everything is up on the wall, I know what Christmas fabric I have left in my stash for other projects (mum wants a table runner!)

As for the scraps, they are the perfect size for my Cushion and small decoration for the Modern Quilters Ireland swap.  I made a tiny 3" star from the leftover triangles of a small star and used the Red, White and Aqua triangles below from 2 of the larger stars. 

Adding some layer cake squares and some Kona Snow for background fabric, I have a shining star!  Hope my swap partner likes it!

Now just to quilt it! 

Happy weekend everybody! 

Christmas Stocking Challenge

Finished ahead of deadline!  Our branch of the Irish Patchwork Society issued us a challenge to make a Christmas stocking, or a Wine Bottle cover, for our meeting this Friday.  Thinking a stocking would be more fun to make, I pulled out my Folk Art Holiday fabric, I bought from Fluffy Sheep Quilting, and some Kona white and flicked through lots of magazines to get some ideas. 

I found some images in card magazines belonged to mum and traced the outline onto some parchment paper to transfer to the fabric.  Rudolph is from Crafts Beautiful 2013 and in this month's Simply Homemade I found these three snowmen.  I gave them bodies and some snowflakes and a song to sing.  They are singing the song about Santa asking Rudolph to guide his sleigh and Rudolph proud as punch to be lead reindeer for the night!

If I was to make this again I'd not have this section so square.  Rounded to suit the shape of the stocking would be better I think.   I also had a problem with limescale build up on my iron and it made a yellowish mark on my crisp white fabric.  And I have blue chalk lines still showing, difficult enough to remove without washing!  A fun project though and I really had fun with the embroidery.

I managed to get it all sewn together as a stocking on Sunday afternoon when the light was quite dark and foggy so I had to wait for this morning to get some natural light photos.  I thought about staging it on Wilbur's kennel but Wilbur wasn't having any of this.  He was in his uncooperative, I'm going to jump at your head until you pay me attention mood.  Even Bonio treats weren't working today. 

Wilbur getting ready to jump!

For the back, I used the same print in the white colorway and a sparkly dot white fabric for the cuff.   So that's one ticked off the Christmas list at least, lots to do yet on the others!  Looking forward to Friday evening, when we get to have a party, eat the sweet and savoury dishes people have brought and get to see what everyone else has done!

 Linking up to Finish it Friday and

My Happy Mosaic!

Chelsea @ Patch the Giraffe challenged us today to make a mosaic of things that make us happy and share it with you all.  This was great fun!  I made my mosaic on Big Huge Labs which for some reason is not pulling in the source info this morning.  Apart from my own photos these were found on Pintrest.

Things that make me happy:

• Tea, tea and more tea (love my morning cuppa!)
• Dogs, our Wilbur and Charly especially.  
• Tigers are beautiful and scary, (wrote an essay about one in school that got me an A, thanks Teach!) 
• Books.  I love reading and learning and just getting lost in a good story.  I'm a Science Fiction Fan mostly and love Doctor Who and books by Ursula K LeGuin
• Penguins.  Who doesn't love Penguins?  Gordon, my family and friends are represented by the penguin on the bottom offering free hugs.  G is still wearing the crazy beard.  Trust me I am protecting you all by not sharing that picture! 
• Hobbies.  Apart from quilting B&W photography is Hobby #2 though it's taken a back seat to collecting camera fabric lately!
• Paddington Bear - just love this little guy and his adventures.  I love to travel too, I've lived in Seattle, Frankfurt, Cork and Limerick and travelled outside of Ireland every year, with work or to explore new places on holiday, but my most favourite place, so far, is the West Coast of Ireland.  That's the Atlantic coast of Clare in the middle picture.  My favourite holidays are walking the dogs every day on a different beach working our way up the coast!  

So what are you thankful for?  What makes you happy?  Want to join in the fun and answer the Chelsea challenge?  Here's to a happy filled weekend!

WIP Wednesday

Got my camper van cushions finished just in time for my cousin to give as a Christmas present - I just love these and in the new year I'm making one for myself!  The fabric was Kona solids with Essex Linen in Steel and fat quarters from the Tidal Lace bundle I won from Anne@Playcrafts.  Still have a good bit of this bundle on hand and am pondering projects...

In the meantime the Christmas sewing is in full swing! 

I've finished up my three carol singing snowmen.  This is for our branch challenge in the Irish Patchwork Society.  We are to make either a Christmas stocking or a wine bottle cover.  These three guys are singing Rudolph's song where Santa asks him to guide his sleigh.  Now just to come up with a back and a cuff and put it all together!

Finally last week, while writing about the Night Sky Quilt-A-Long that Jana is hosting on her blog, I was struck by the red, aqua and white colour combination of this little star.  I'm still thinking of this for a larger project but I had an idea to use the left over triangles from the large blocks in this Christmas Quilt. 

The 16" blocks use flying geese made with the strip and flip method in the pattern, which gives a nice big leftover triangle.  So instead of putting them in the scrap basket, I'm using them for my Christmas cushion swap with the Modern Quilters Ireland.  We had some last minute join ins and my swap partner changed, so I've been having a rethink of what to do for a cushion top. 

I think this shining star would be perfect, so partner I hope you like it!  I found it while having a browse in Barbara Brackman's Encylopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns while looking for something else.  It caught my eye and I had a go at drafting it up to a 16" size.

I have just enough triangles left over in red and aqua and am using a layer cake square for the ray in fabric similar to the triangles. I think it will be really nice hand quilted.  Here's hoping it all goes to plan!

Linking up to Finish it Friday and

Murphy's Law meets Night Sky QAL

I've been making progress on my Night Sky Quilt this week.  Not a lot of progress it has to be said, but still some!

Jana @ Jana Machado has organised a Quilt-A-Long using Camille Roskelly's pattern Night Sky.  Today is link up day over on her blog and I am pleased to say I have one block made.  Yup, just the one!

The rest are like a giant jigsaw puzzle in pieces up on the design wall!

I'm making a small version of this quilt 48" x 56" from my on hand Christmas fabrics.  Mine is a scrappy version made up of a left over Layer Cake of Joy by Kate Spain, Riley Blake's Santa's Little Helpers and a smattering of Folk Art holiday.

I've added in Kona Snow, Ash and Navy in an attempt to pull the scrappiness together, very similar to the palette in the original pattern made with Bonnie & Camille's new line of fabric, Daysail.

Not using fat quarters, I started with cutting up all the pieces I would need, working out how many of each block and what colours I wanted, whiled away the whole afternoon last Sunday. 

I thought I had everything nice and orderly, then realised the aqua solids I had sewn into my centre 4 patches, were meant to be star points!  I am very good friends with my seam ripper (have 4 of them!)

 So I ripped and laid them out again this time by block!  Much better.

Then got to chain piecing.  All was going fine until I ran out of bobbin thread.  I didn't notice until the last one went through- doh!  

So I wound a new bobbin, decided to be very good and give the machine a clean while I was at it and tried again.

Yup made a hames (Irish term for a right royal mess!) of threading my machine and chain pieced them all like this!  More ripping and redoing.  I didn't swear once, I might have sighed a lot though!  I eventually got this one lone navy block sewn together.

As I was working from layer cakes one of my big blocks is made up of 2 colours of the same print.  I quite like it though it is a bit crazy looking!

I'm loving the large 16" blocks in this pattern.  This red block is my favourite so far.  I really like the red white and aqua colour scheme too.  Must think about that for another project!

So, worrying I wouldn't have much to show you today for Jana's blog hop, only 1 poor solitary star block pieced together, I cleared the design wall and started laying out.  This was tons of fun!  It really is like playing with a big jigsaw!  And look,  I have one piece in the large aqua block, second row, laid out backwards! 

Quite a bit left to do but it's coming together, despite Murphy's what can go wrong will go wrong influence.  Row 3 and 5 will be very similar to row 1, so a really scrappy Christmas looking quilt I hope, in the end.  Eventually!

Linking up to Jana today.  Please head on over there for more of the blog hop and to see her fabulous blocks.  So far Jana has managed to make unique blocks, no two the same!  Some people even have a finished quilt top!  No pressure then, it's not like I have a deadline or anything!   34 more days, plenty of time don't you think?

Schnitzel & Boo Mini Quilt swap round 3!

So with everything going on, Christmas swaps, Night Sky Quilt -A-Long, writing my second pattern and making table runners and cushions for family, I decided to join another swap!

Received in swap round 1 - thanks Christina!

Made for swap 1

I really enjoyed rounds 1 and 2 of the Schnitzel & Boo Make a Quilt, Make a Friend swap, so I didn't want to leave myself out of this one.  Plus this one is on Instagram and not the usual blog/Flickr platforms, and I wanted to see how that would work in comparison to the last two swaps.  There has been a lot of talk on Instagram taking over from blogs and some people trying to cut down on social media are avoiding Facebook and deleting Flickr accounts in favour of Instagram.  A really good blog post looking at this is Whipstich's I thought it might be Instagram but it looks like its your phone's fault.

Made for round 2

Received in swap round 2 - thanks Lisa!

I like Instagram.  I like the simple picture format and the back and forth one line banter - seems to me a bit of Twitter and a bit of Flickr combined.  I miss the longer discussions though and for me still prefer the blog.  I've been on Flickr since 2008 and have a bit of an emotional attachment to it!  And I like big pictures.  I have a large smartphone Galaxy Note 2 and still would prefer to see bigger images but Instagram is not designed for PC.  Sure I can do the pinchy thing and zoom in but I sometimes feel like I'm missing out on something on Instagram.  So many hashtags, so many images in my feed and I only follow 180 people. Is that too many?  Swaps and de-stashes seem to happen and I've blinked and missed them.    Do I need to be more selective?

Anyway, I'm jumping in with both feet this time around to see what happens and this is my mosaic for my swap partner as inspiration.  I normally try and pick 16 likes and do a 4 x 4 to give a good selection but conscious of this going on IG I made it 3x3 so they wouldn't be too tiny - change in format is already having an influence on me and my decisions!

1. Diamonds mini quilt, 2. beautiful applique, 3. Thimble Blossoms Dwell Mini, 4. sewing machine cover, 5. Forest mini quilt, 6. The Snow Ball Mini Quilt, 7. Girl's Weekend Swap - My mini for Elena, 8. Pretty in Patchwork Doll Quilts, 9. DQS 13 Ready to Send!!

Still I'm looking forward to another mini quilt swap.  The social nature of sharing in progress and making with a secret partner in mind is great fun regardless of platform.  I will keep you updated of progress here on the blog and on IG and for old times sake I'm posting to Flickr too!

In the spirit of being social I'm linking up to Lorna at