Vladamir in Sunday Sketch

A friend of mine, Creative Fidget, loves to sketch and takes with her a sketch book and a mini water colour paint kit. She sketched this at my place last week.

You can see Tori's car quilt and Vladamir curled up on the couch, Emily is patching on a table behind the couch.

Finished Car playmat Quilt at last!

It really has been so cold here in Melbourne. Even though my market was indoors on Sunday I was still cold, probably symptomatic of the cold I am coming down with.

In between sales I sat and hemmed the binding around the Car playmat Quilt I have been painstakingly making for my daughter. Finally finished, I can sit back and bask in the loveliness of finishing yet another quilt.

Tori has already had fun playing with the quilt with her cars and walking up and down it like she would be walking down a street.

I chose a Michael Miller stripe for the bias. I still haven't quite got the hang of doing the binding as a continuous strip of fabric, so I sew all 4 sides separately and when stitching make sure that my corners are nice and neat. I like the look of a handstitched bias ...

For those who are interested, I used some strips from a Happy Campers Jelly Roll, some strips from a Breath of Avignon Jelly Roll, some Kona solids. The trains were a Japanese print I got ages ago. The roads are black homespun and the road signs are a print that again, I bought ages ago from GJ's in East Brunswick.

I backed the fabric with some 100% wool blanket weave, but if you wanted to re-purpose a blanket you could do that as well. I have a bit of woolen fluff coming through on the hand stitching, but I hope that with a wash it might disappear.

The car signs are appliqued on using the trapunto method that Don't look now uses in her quilts. Sewing the applique onto a batting back and then trimming around the applique.

The quilt was hand quilted used Perle in black and white. Now that I have a ironed out all the mistakes and perfected the round corners on the road, I am hoping to make another one, but this time it might be a bit quicker in construction!

This is how cold it is in Melbourne, both my female cats curled up with each other ...

Tori's Car Playmat Quilt

I am chugging along with Tori's Car Playmat Quilt. I work on it in spurts. I have been busy doing correction all weekend so I needed a moment last night, just me and my machine and this was the project I picked to work on.

I had originally picked out a backing and I started to stipple it and then I changed my mind. So I unpicked all the stippling and bought some red pure wool merino blanket for the backing at the Stitches and Craft Show. I think this will make it more snuggly.

I found some material at GJ's in East Brunswick which was essentially a whole stack of road work signs. So I cut them up, interfaced them and appliquéd them onto the quilt using straight stitch and then zig zag. I backed them in some batting to give them a raised look. The round one was a bitch to do.

I staggered the signs all over the quilt giving it a bit more of story. The test play with Tori this morning has certainly proved that the applique has been worthwhile.

I think that it gives it a nicer feel and Tori certainly got a thrill when she came across the railway crossing sign!

I am hand quilting it rather than machine stitching it. Not sure why, just want to. Simple black running stitch up each side of the roads.

I have some gorgeous multi coloured stripes from GJs for the binding. Won't be finished this weekend, but hopefully it can be done by the time Tori goes to Germany in October so that she can have a blanket for the plane.

A larger car play mat quilt

Getting close now ... I think that I like the size that it is. I will put a 2-3 inch sash around the outside to bring it all together.

Am I happy with it? Mostly, I am not happy with the way the checks sit in the shunting yard, all a bit wonky. But I am not going to un-stitch .. I have un-stitched enough!

I love the red section to the left of the quilt.

And I am rather happy with my corners, even if they are not 100%

Nearly there!

Car Playmat Revised

We took the play mat for a spin and found that it really needed to be a bit bigger.

If it is bigger than we can use it in the car as a blanket as well ... so I have played around with what it will look like with some more blocks added to it. I think that the additional colours will work better than the dull green overtone it has at the moment.

AND! I get a chance to do another corner (can you just feel my excitement?)

Blocking away ...

I tend to go a bit batty if I don't have my creative outlet. Yes I have several projects on the go at once, but who doesn't?

I snuck into my sewing room last night and played around with some fabrics for the car or playmat quilt that I blogged about the other day. First I seperated the blocks in my excel file. I decided to use black for the roads (I know, I know). But I didn't have any grey fabric kicking around and I do have lots of black!

I thought about using block colours, but then I spotted some yummy japanese fabric that I had in my stash and the colour scheme just seemed to work. There was a bit of cutting that needed to be done as the fabric itself is printed like a patchwork.

I will probably end up using applique to make waves over the top of the blue patchwork once it is done. I want to include every once in a while a patch that has something, such as the kids camping or the pigs at the fair.

I've started to use the happy campers jelly roll for the "houses" section of the playmat. Playing around with colours.

The one advantage of constructing a playmat like this using the block method is that you can trim as you go to ensure that all seams are even and then you can stand back and see what works or what doesn't work and re-arrange things.

It is interesting that your ideas change once you start sewing.

Red for STOP, green for GO!

In a moment of reflection this afternoon I found myself sketching out the following quilt idea in my notebook. I haven't been into my sewing room in ages. School work and manuscript writing is gobbling up my time and energy. The closest I come at the moment is sketching a few ideas here and there.

But I know that in two weeks time, I have a "student non-attendance period" (school holidays) and I will have some time to tidy my room and hopefully complete a few projects. I am not looking forward to next week when I have two parent teacher nights in the one week. It is great to meet parents, but two 7am -9pm days in a row is quite taxing.

Anyway, inspired by both Ms Curlypops and my daughters current love for cars, I have been playing around in my head with an idea for a 4x4 9 block quilt (plus sashing) that would double as a play space for her cars and imagination. If you know me, you will know that the things that I make have to be functional ... Other ideas for playmats here and here!

Tori is currently playing with a few strips of black cotton drill for her "roads" and then she likes to "build a city" around her roads.

So the idea that has been kicking around is a basic quilt block construction, 16 blocks in total and then over the top of the different sections there might be a selection of things appliqued on; hotel, garden flowers and trees, houses and water waves. Then some complimentary sashing around the outside. With each square being 2 inches squared, the quilt should end up being 32 inches squared.

Still working out in my mind how to do the curved road, but I need it in there for the challenge! Not sure if I would put batting in it .. the function would definitely be as a play quilt rather than one for warmth, but I can imagine it being used in the back of the car as blanket on long drives.

But most importantly, there needs to be traffic lights, crossings and a round about. As Tori would say "Red for stop, green for go!".

I haven't done the calculations yet for the material that I need, but I suspect that I might use some of the left overs from her paintbox quilt and a dark grey for roads rather than a harsh black. Any opinions? Who would be interested in a quilt-a-long for this project?

On the quilting front. I have one baby quilt waiting for binding, two baby quilts waiting for stippling and Tori's Paintbox Quilt is slowly coming along. Her "big girl bed" arrives this weekend at long last, so I need to get on my bike and make sure that it is done for winter. I am hoping to get it professionally stippled when it is all finished.