Inspiration for a quilt

Mum has this towel hanging on the line. The colours are gorgeous, but I can see it being an appliquéd quilt. What do you think?

My Creative Space

Life has been a bit frantic this week leading up to the 4th Birthday of my daughter. Lots of creative things happening including a moment of quilting indulgence using some vintage Sesame Street Fabric.

Baking has also been high on the priority list, playing around with making gingerbread pops for my daughters birthday.

More creative spaces here ...

My Creative Space: Quilt Blocks

I managed to steal some time yesterday in my sewing space and I allowed myself the luxury of blocking some of the fabric that I got printed by Spoonflower. The iPhone picture is a bit dodgy ...

I am happy with most of the designs, but will probably tweek them a bit more to make them a bit more workable. I am going to make a little dolls quilt for Tori and see how the Spoonflower fabric washes up.

To see more creative spaces head over to the Our Creative Spaces blog.

Patchwork Heaven

I needed to get some backing fabric for my Monochromatic Quilt this afternoon so I ventured out with Nicholas strapped to the front of me to GJ's in East Brunswick. I couldn't resist taking a few snaps of the wall of quilting fabric.

Their "Patchwork Room" was previously upstairs with their glitter and dance range on the bottom floor. Unless you were "in the know" you probably didn't realise that they had an extensive patchwork range upstairs. Now you can see it from the street.

The downstairs space is choc full of yummy patchwork fabrics, including lots of alternative prints.

Their Japanese corner now works better than it did, you can see all the prints without walking around a fixture.

And there is a table of pre-cuts when you walk in the door .. tempting you ...

Upstairs they are hoping to set up a space where they can either run lessons or have craft groups come in and sew. Very exciting!

Check out their new web site and subscribe to their mailing list to find out about sales and specials. They also have a frequent shopper program, just don't do what I do and forget to bring the card.

Dear Jane Quilt

Green Fairy Quilts linked to this, and I have fallen in love with the idea of this quilt ...

via Green Fairy

The detail in both the patchwork and quilting is breathtaking.

via Green Fairy

I can imagine that this quilt would be a long term project and definately a labour of love.

via That Quilt

I love the rainbow version, however, I can imagine it in either a monochromatic palette or white/grey/black palette.

via

You can buy the book here and here is the blog with instructions (But if you love it, buy the book and support your fellow crafter!).

Westernport Quilt Show

Looking for something to do next weekend?

The Westernport Quilters have their annual Quilt Show at the Westernport Festival
February 19th & 20th 2011

image via Westernport Quilters

As taken from their web site:

"On the picturesque Hastings Foreshore, the Western Port Festival Program has something for all members of the family. There are events to entertain all ages.
Including displays of Quilts, Art, & Handcraft

Demonstrations in Hastings Hall, High Street, Hastings

Westernport Quilters Inc. is proud to be a part of this free show and we hope you will come along and enjoy this community project. You could also be the lucky winner of our beautiful raffle quilt.

Why not enter one of your own quilts in the show, or take up the
challenge to “Dress Miss Westernport”. Again this is all free of charge and a great opportunity to display your work. You do not have to b a member of Westernport Quilters to enter. There are no “Quilt Police” and prizes are awarded by way of viewers’ choice. "

Sounds like a great excuse to take a nice drive down the coast and indulge in some quilty goodness!

Someone loves my Car playmat

I've been getting some traffic from Zen DIY web site about Tori's Quilt Play mat as part of the Zen Kids web site. Scroll down the page, we are about half way down and there are lots more ideas for making a handmade play mat.

I've been itching to make another one again, to see how I can improve the process and make it quicker. I was thinking that perhaps the back could be done in a nice soft cord or a fleece. And the road signs could be a quilt square rather than appliqued.

Alternatively, I could try my hand at writing a pattern. Now that all my text book writing is done for the year, I am itching for another writing project.

The quilt has gotten so much wear so far, it has gone to Germany, loitered around the back of the car on occasion and of course it has been played with as a car play mat.

The blood red merino backing has washed up so well (machine cold wash wool mix) and the cats love it. Draping themselves over the top of the quilt at every chance they get.

So if I actually wrote a pattern, is there anyone that would test the pattern for me?

Hello Betty .. I need ideas!

I got myself a Hello Betty Retro Jelly Roll and a layer stack a few weeks back and I have done some squares for Tori's Paintbox Quilt, but I want to use the rest of it to make lovely quilt of teal and rust colours.

So I have been crawling around the net during my work breaks looking at what everyone else has done ...

via TLC Stitches

I love the way this quilt does the whole zig zag stuff, although if I did it I would probably do some sashing around the outside of the quilt.

The back of the TLC quilt looks lovely, I love the way they have put the solid squares up the centre of the piece.

I love this table runner, the colours look great. Candice mentions in her flickr stream that she used a charm square pack for this project. Don't you love the way that she has eloquently used ric rac!

via daffodilhilltoo

Misocrafty on Flickr also has a great coin stack quilt on her photostream that looks great and was made from some honeybuns ...

This is a lovely "sampling" creation by on-cherry-sew. Perhaps I ought to consider one like this if I can't make up my mind!

via Gayatri"

Another gorgeous Zig Zag quilt. This blogger pointed me towards a web site which show you how to do a Zig Zag quilt without the pesky triangles ;-)

Does anyone in bloggy land have any other ideas? I have a jelly roll and a layer cake in these colours.

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?)

Testing the Play Mat

Like any good IT person, I like to test things .. why should a patchwork quilt be any different?

Once I sewed the four larger blocks together Tori and I walked the half done quilt through to the back room singing "build a city and a country".

It passes the "building" test. But I feel that it is still a bit small to meet her needs. Contemplating making it a bit bigger ... I'll have a think about that ...

The roads are big enough for her cars ... but she still wants traffic lights!

Play Quilt: Making that corner

I left this block until last. The concept of it terrified me! Lines I am good at but curved bits I tend to stuff up.

I got some paper, drew my 3 x 3 2 inch blocks out and then made the outside corner line from one of Tori's dinner plates. I then measured the width of 2 inches around the bend and then voila! Presenting my template ....

Pinned to the material, I trimmed the material 1/4 of an inch from the template. Not sure where pattern piece "C" is, I suspect that the cat or child ran off with it. I will probably retrace these pieces onto cardboard with the seam allowance (or buy a patchwork template).

Rather than use the green fabric for the corner, I had a scrap of "space" fabric which fitted in quite well.

Overall pretty pleased with my first attempt at a cornered piece. With the inside edge I ran a stay stitch along both bits of fabric. It worked well, but I found the edge without the stay stitch was easier to work with.

Getting there! I am feeling rather confident with my 4 piece corner and now I am wondering where else I can use it!

More playmat Blocks: Noah's Ark

Some more to add to the pile that I have already done for Tori's play quilt. I am starting now to sew 4 blocks together to create one mega block. Trimming as I go ...

The top blocks are a darker green and they are utilising some Noah's Ark fabric that I picked up about 2 years ago. Tori spotted the fabric in my sewing room and coerced me into using it. It took some time to fussy cut some animals out, but I think that they look great.

There isn't really any pattern to the layout, so some of the fast quilt construction techniques are not being utilised. I individually cut out the coloured squares, position and then sew and then add the black road. I am not constructing the road from individual squares, just using sashes.

Tori is starting to get excited by the "blankey that is growing". I hope she still wants to play with it when it is finished.

Play Quilt: Happy Campers

I've done some more work on the play quilt. Completing yet another four blocks to add to the others that I have already done.

I opted to use some brown and most of the fabric comes from the "happy campers" jelly roll that I got from the Fat Quarter Shop a few weeks back (currently my favourite online store!).

I must admit but I love the luxury in fussy cutting bits of fabric and watching them come together. I hope that I take some of the ideas from Tori's Quilt and use it to make some more conventional baby quilts.

While I was putting these four blocks together, Tori was playing on the table next to my sewing table with her cars .. wanting to know where the traffic lights are.

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.

Why is craft such a female dominated world?

I tend to indulge in a little mindless internet surfing from time to time, but this afternoon I stumbled across a collection of sites that I have not seen before. And I asked myself the question, why is craft such a female dominated world?

It is a bit strange to see sites called "Quilt Dad" and "I am just a guy who quilts" given that I am used to reading about women and mums who quilt.

Flipping through one of the daddy quilting blogs, I noticed that quilters of the male gender blog about different topics to many of the quilters of the female gender. Most of the posts are quilting related, but I am talking about the non-quilting posts. Once post sparked my interest I came across a post on Open Source Embroidery.

picture via Museum of Craft and Folk Art

Being an IT person, I love it when I see cross over into craft. I am forever looking for computer quilting fabrics and thinking of how I can incorporate the geek into what I make.

Check out the two blogs I linked to. These guys are doing great stuff! Do you know any other crafty blokes blogs we should be looking at?

Paintbox Quilt Update

I decided to go with the current block design for the Paintbox Quilt. I spent far too long fiddling with colours from my Kona roll and the fabric I had, and then decided to take the advice of Elizabeth and go for monochrome prints. I think that they look better than what I started with, vibrant. I might not be able to use all the quilt fabric for Tori's birthday in this one, but it will look good and I have other ideas for a picnic blanket for her with the rest of the fabric.

The bat fabric is a Kokka Echino print from a few years back, I generally use this print to do baby shoes.

So I have done 5 sets or 10 blocks so far. The first one took me ages, until I found my rhythm. Now it takes me about 20 minutes to do 2 blocks, providing I don't get distracted! I am going to do the 32 colour Paintbox Quilt, with the new design ... so 5 colours down!

I do two blocks at the same time. Using two 2 1/2 inch strips I cut out 3 pattern and 2 block colour squares and then I sew them in tandem. Measure, Cut, Pin, Sew, Press, Trim if needed.

I work from the inside out and then with the left over pieces of fabric I quickly stitched them together and pressed them out so that perhaps I can make a mini-quilt from them one day.

I took the blocks along to my inlaws on Tuesday night and my daughter took a liking to the mini-blocks that I had done and spent ages sorting through them on the table and playing with them. I figure by the time the Single Bed Quilt is finished, I will have enough mini-blocks for either some matching cushions or perhaps a cot quilt for my shop.