Dog Gone Cute!

You know when you see a fabric range and you have to buy it (Noteworthy anyone?)  Well, I got that bug last week when I saw Lorna's Dog Gone Cute pattern.  As a Jack Russell Terrier owner how could I resist this one?  Even though Lorna is very generously giving the instructions for this away on her blog in a series in September, I bought it straightway, thinking I'd make a memory quilt of sorts of our two previous JRT (Toby and Patch) and our current boss of the house, Charly.

Then it occurred to me not to leave Wilbur out so inspired by Lorna's fun take on terriers I tried my hand at a Basset Hound.

To get to a Basset I somehow started with a Beagle and then kept on going, making the ears longer and the jowls more jowlier(?)

 Always amazes me how wide headed some beagles can look!

 Bassets have really long pointy heads so a high forehead was called for.

Working with strip and flip squares was great fun.  Trying to figure the angles on the strip and flip rectangles not so much and I spent pretty much the whole day Saturday with a pen and calculator, trying and testing.  The nose gave me the most trouble!

I decided to use a lightweight denim fabric as the background which was a mistake as it stretches a bit so ended up using the walking foot on my Pfaff for piecing!

Testing a block and designing it at the same time uses up quite a bit of fabric and the discards were growing by lunchtime!  (all that black is 3 attempts at a nose!)

Still I got there in the end and thought my Wilbur block might make a nice cushion as its 18.5" square but I think I might lose something of it in a curved form and am now wondering about working him into a dog quilt with some of Lorna's blocks....

 I went back to the virtual drawing board and played a bit with the face as I think the long big eared Basset look could be stronger and came up with this one on the right.  Think this might be more Spaniel than Basset.  What do you think?  Left or right for Wilbur?

 Then it was try a few more dog shapes and maybe change the shape of the nose.  Big or small?

Speaking of big noses I couldn't resist this and had to design a St.Bernard too.  This is really addictive!  I am so looking forward to Lorna's blog hop on September 1st.  Lorna has kindly agreed to share the block of my longer eared furball if I can get it written and tested in time.  Would you make spaniel or a hound?  If so any of these catch your eye?  This weekend I hope to check and double check my scribblings again by making Ben.  I still miss that Basset!

Mum, Charly, Me & Ben!

Swaps! Hit & Miss or a great opportunity to try something new?

One of the first swaps I took part in was the Halloween swap organised on Flickr in 2013.  My partner was Kirsty from Schnitzel & Boo!  Imagine my trepidation, making for a well known blogger and published designer!  I loved every minute of this swap though and had great fun playing with my Halloween fabrics.  I made a banner, placemats and a tote bag for the very first time.

In return I received nothing.  Yes I was a little disappointed but I was proud of what I made and delighted with the lovely and thoughtful response from Kirsty.  Over 70 people took part in the swap and it was a big success.  Maria the swap organiser offered an angel make but I didn't want to put someone to the effort of making on behalf of a swap partner who let us all down.  I learned recently that there is a blacklist of bad swappers but you really need to not deliver and not communicate to get on that list.  Shame it has to exist in the first place. 

Yes life happens and there are lots of things more important than sewing, but communicate and make amends!  I like to think that most people would and I didn't let it put me off swaps.  When Kirsty started her own swap shortly after, I signed up straight away, and have taken part in the rounds 1-3 and received these fabulous minis and lots of extras from Christina, Lisa and Ruth Ann.  Some people are really generous with their time and the goodies they include and having had nothing for the Halloween swap I appreciate these people all the more!

Siobhan, my swap partner in the #nerdscraftitbetter swap, had fierce back trouble and couldn't sit at her machine for long.  Did she give up, nope!  She made me tons of stuff and gifted Star Wars fabric so I could have fun making nerdy stuff for myself.  The Star wars minis now live on the shelf with my Russian dolls and all the goodies you see on the table came wrapped inside the R2-D2 bag.  I was hopping around the kitchen when I saw R2 and he was like the Tardis- bigger on the inside.  I just kept finding stuff!  Thank you @shevvyrox!

Taking part in swaps has a bigger advantage than just getting nice stuff in the post though.  It makes you try something new.  For rounds 1 to 3 I tried applique and free motion quilting, scrappy rainbows and confetti fabric bits with matchstick quilting. 

For the last two Christmas's our online group have swapped table runners and cushions.  I received the two on top and made the two on the bottom row.

In the making of the runner I learned how to handle partial seams and released this as a pattern here on Craftsy where its been downloaded over 5000 times!

Swapping economy blocks with What the Bobbin was great fun.  Send 12 fussy cut blocks and get 12 different ones back.  Turned into a fun cushion my mum has "borrowed" for her sofa, so she has benefited from the swaps too!

Here's the thing though, swaps take time.  From a small pincushion to a mini-quilt with handmade extras they will challenge you, surprise you, delight you and sometimes disappoint you but for me, they are worth it and worth making the effort.

Sign ups for the Schnitzel & Boo mini quilt swap round 4 close today so if you are looking for a really well organised swap don't wait.  Sign ups form is on Kirsty's blog here if you are interested.   I'll be missing this round as I have holidays in the middle of it and can't commit the time to do a good job.  I'll be looking forward to finishing up a summer tote bag swap and our annual Christmas Modern Quilters Ireland swap though so still lots going on!

What do you think?  Swaps - Love them or Leave them?

Design Wall Monday - the Swoon edition

My cousin is getting married next month and I decided to make her a quilt - a Swoon quilt!  I think its a great name for a wedding quilt.

To be fair, I started this quilt way back in the summer of 2013, with the intention of making a quilt for her new apartment, that she would be moving into in the Spring of 2014.  We had been on holidays in Chicago and she took me to a tiny quilt shop filled with 1930's reproduction prints and these guys!

This is Crazy Daisy by Benartex and I thought I'd use the fabric I bought on our shopping trip to make something nice for her.  I figured a Spring deadline, 8 months to make a swoon quilt - easy peasy!  2 years later (she has moved twice since!) and all I had made were 3 blocks and bits for a 4th cut out. Bad, bad cousin!  So feeling a bit guilty, booking flights and thinking all things holidays, I decided to get cracking and bust out of that I don't want to make another Swoon block funk I had going on.

So I made this fiery one.  She is marrying a guy from Brazil and I was going for the hot samba feeling with this one. 

Might have overcooked it a bit as it doesn't quite go with the more flowery blocks from 2 years ago!  As the fabrics are all from the same range, and designed to co-ordinate with each other, I decided to keep going and make a few less contrasty and more mono-chromatic Swoons.

 An Irish flowery version.

 The sun does come our over here from time to time, just not this summer (coldest July in 22 years!)

 Not sure about this one but it seems to work when put up on the wall!

That hot fiery one was still sticking out a bit so I remember reading somewhere, if some thing sticks out as wrong either remove it or add more of the same in so it doesn't stand out on its own!

 So I'm going for add more of the same and seeing what happens!

Linking to Design Wall Monday

Finally Finished!

I was very tempted to wait for Friday to share the finished kitchen but I couldn't wait!

It all started with these tiles.  The quilter in me just couldn't resist them!  They are called Provenzo Deco from Budget Price Tiles and they come in a 4x4 layout so this space just required 3 tiles (1 chopped in half and cut to fit at the top).  Worked out less than 25 euro which is a total bargain I think!

Once the tiles were up, we decided it might be time to paint the walls.  I was thinking about painting the wood panelling for quite a while.  Making a big change like that had me a little worried but quilting does give you more colour confidence and the more I play with fabric, the more hues and tones seem to be out there.  I decided that now was the time to just go for it and G, to be fair, isn't really bothered about these things, so he let me at it!  He did help with the ceiling and got roped in at the end for the high spots!  So, lots of Jasmine White and Gerorgian Cream later it's finally finished!

I can't believe how much brighter and smarter it looks!  I love the spray painted chairs.  Some weeks ago the mother in law and I had great fun with Valspar Spray paint.  We used the paint & primer in one spray cans in 4 different colours, Sandy Peppers, Home from Home, Beet Beat and October Moon.  1 can did a chair, a storage cube, a stool and sections of the garden fence!

The big splurge came in the form of these Woodland wall decals I found on Etsy.  I saw some decals with a mama Dachshund and some puppies in Love Mae's shop and loved them but wondered if maybe there was a Basset Hound version.  Instead I found this really cute woodland scene!  A friend is building a house so I bought her some butterflies as well.  That was all the excuse I needed to place my order.  Shipping from Australia was really quick too!

They come in a roll with some suggestions on layout.  We had a bank holiday on Monday so I spent a few hours on Monday morning building a tree and arranging leaves.  It is a spring scene with happy bunnies and squirrels and baby chicks in a nest.

As the scene is a little big for my space I continued it to the other side of the door.  I'm not sure I like the way that red owl is eyeing up the little blue bird.  Might have to re-arrange that bit!

My cheapest purchase in the revamp was the curtains. 

I picked up 2 table cloths in Homestore+More for 10 Euro each and folded down one end to make a pocket for the rod.  I ran a second line of stitching across about 1.5" from the top to have a bit of fabric extending above the pole.  Easy peasy!   I did get lucky as the two tablecloths were cut only 1/4" different from each other so lining up the coloured lines was a cinch!

The only other change was to remove one set of spotlights and change it for a Navy lamp.

 

It's great to be finally finished this go around at the kitchen!  Next year hopefully we'll get a new counter top and maybe a circular table  to have a little bit more space this end next to the kettle and teapot!

 For now I'm calling this one done & dusted!  

Mark your diaries - Pets on Quilts is coming up!

My favourite linky party is Pets on Quilts!  Every year Lilypad Quilting hosts the linkup for blog posts and Flickr photos of our furballs in quilt form or posing on quilts and lots of prizes are given away for dog on quilt, cat on quilt, quilts on horses, quilts featuring dog/cat etc.  One year there was even a hedgehog posing on a quilt!

I've entered  both our furballs and even though Charly looks really cute on a quilt somehow Wilbur always manages to steal the show!

It's the action shots that do it I think!

We have great fun every year doing a photo shoot in the garden and they love it on account of the abundance of treats required to get them to sit still for a few minutes!  They have me well trained...

Mark your diaries August 17th is the date to link up with Lilypad quilting! Really looking forward to it!

Bee Block Finishes

So, while the paint is drying in the kitchen and my machine is buried at the back of the room, I thought I'd share some Bee Blocks I made for Modern Irish Bee.

Last month, Erin asked us for coloured blocks with a wonky star in the middle.  These were great fun.  We had to choose 35 squares of a particular colour 2.5"x 2.5" and lay them out in a arrangement pleasing to the eye with a white square somewhere in the middle.

I chose orange and purple and seemed to have more variety in the orange for some reason.  Using scraps we were to add wonky points to the squares around the white and create a star!

The tutorial for these can be found here on the Modern Quilters Ireland blog and going by the colours everyone is making this will be a beautiful rainbow quilt.  Great way to use up scraps too!

This month Cynthia asked us for disappearing 9 patch blocks and sent us some orange batik prints in the post for the centres.  It was fun to get an envelope with 2 charm squares in it.  Most people had to wait for the blog post to come up to see what mystery block we'd be making.  

Cynthia asked us to use black fabric with white prints and white fabric with a black print for the remaining squares.  I pulled from stash and I think these are mostly Lotta Jansdotter.  It's been a while since I made a D9P and there is something really lovely about making a simple block. 

One of the first quilts I made made for my friends daughter's 3rd birthday - Puppy Park fabric by Riley Blake & some machine embroidery on top!

Using layer cakes it's a fast and easy way to pull together a quilt top.  I really like how you can showcase a large print  or novelty fabric and add calmer places for the eye to go to.

 I love the simplicity of these in Black & White with the pop of orange.  Great choice Cynthia!

 Will make a very beautiful and usual quilt I think!