Supertoting

A while back I made myself a supertote - perfect for hauling projects around and I even take it to work if I have paperwork to haul around! (might need a second ...)
I made it using my new favourite block "Fox and Goose" and used some awesome fabric from Jessica Wheelahan called "texttype". I think it is available from Material Obsession but I have her email if you are interested! It is is perfect mustard fabric and it is a little heavier than quilting cotton so it was perfect for my bag!

Well I also had a conference in Melbourne in September and decided to make a long weekend of it when two of my girlfriends also decided to tag along and make it a super long weekend! One of them lives in Perth so we don't often all get to catch up. Both my friends are quilters (or learning) so fabric shopping was certainly on the agenda. Therefore they both needed supertotes as well - how else where we going to carry fabric around??

And here were my fabric purchases... Amitie Textiles on the left and GJ's Fabric on the right. Supertotes did well :)

G + Y Wedding Quilt

I get very excited about making wedding quilts - there is just something special about making something celebrating such a beautiful event. My friend G from Melbourne recently got married so of course I had to make a wedding quilt. We had only met Y a few times as we live in different cities but I knew her favourite colour was green and I wanted to keep it masculine and minimalistic as I know G likes that style. After searching Polka Dot Tea for some perfectly yummy green and grey fabrics and playing around with a few designs - I decided that a simple plus quilt was the way to go. The green is a Michael Miller Cotton Couture in "Turf" - my new favourite colour!

I was really hoping to get a pic with a tram in the background but they ended up all too shady!

I used 4" squares and once I had laid out the quilt used this fantastic method from Poppyprint to sew it together.

It was really quick to sew together! I quilted it in a square random grid kinda way using a few different shades of grey and green aurifil thread across it diagonally.

The back is a light grey and a panel from Jeni Baker's Nordika range - it matched perfectly with the grey. I also embroidered a "G + Y"  into the panel but forgot to take a photo!

I was in Melbourne over the weekend so I got to hand deliver it to the recently wedded lovebirds!

Dilly Bag-a-long

Have you heard about the Fussy Cutters Club hosted by Gnome Angel - there is going to be a Dilly Bag-a-long using Judy Newman’s Dilly Bag pattern. 

As a recent convert to hexies I am going to be part of the blog hop so watch this space! I had my orange fabrics out the other night so I may have already started...

You can purchase the PDF of the pattern from Gnome Angel

Where did August go?

Wow, what a quick month! It was quite a productive one for me!

First if all, my Gypsy Wife blocks



I really cannot wait to put this together! Though the thought of cutting all those strips has me a bit scared!
I was super lucky to win last months gypsy wife QAL giveaway over at WIP Girl - a $25 Fat Quarter voucher. Very pleased to report this went on a bloc-loc HST ruler (plus then I had to fill the cart so I got a few backing fabrics)

I was originally down for November for Stash Bee but swapped with one of the other members. I have been thinking about this quilt for a while now - a bookshelf quilt for my little girl. She turned 4 the other day and is a massive book fan! You can see my tutorial over at the Stash Bee blog but here is my block!




Xx

Gypsy Wife QAL Progress

Well I have been plodding along with my Gypsy Wife each month. I am loving how much this quilt is making me think and challenging me.
Here are my July blocks



And my June blocks

Block a Day July

I bought some new tubs to start sorting my scraps in colour order the other day. I grossly underestimated how many scraps I had! One out of the 4 boxes kinda got sorted. When I say scraps I mean like 1" squares and tiny odd shaped scraps. Some got sorted into a box to take to childcare for collage but some I could not part with! I was thinking I needed to do something improv to start actually using them. The lovely Adrianne from On the Windy Side then decided to set herself a Block a Day July challenge - so I decided to play along. I decided to do QAYG mainly because I think it will be another for of scrap busting all those odd sizes of wadding I seem to accumulate. I will be putting them together using the Pile O Fabric method from the 2013 Skill Builder which I finished at the start of the year.
This is my first batch - Rainbow!!!!




I am also practicing my free motion skills. I am making great use of the online tutorials from the Free Motion Quilting Project by Leah Day. I am using the very sophisticated method of sorting it alphabetical and choosing the first design from each letter. I think it is pushing me to try something that I perhaps would not have usually tried.

I am hoping I can keep the momentum up for the whole month - along with my other projects and work and kids etc yikes I also have a conference paper to write!!!

Guess who got a quilt frame!

ME!!!
I have been toying with the idea for a while now and then a friends mother was selling one... it happened to be Mothers Day... well it happened! It is quite large and I am still playing around with it. I really need a new machine to go on it as my Janome just does not have the throat space to do the designs I want. Seriously considering a Juki and saving up! It is funny when I go shopping now as I constantly ask myself  - new machine or new {insert random object here}.


My first go - not too bad!


then my first big project

This quilt is for my friend Kristy (or Kiki as my kids call her) she asked me to make one in red and aqua - not usually my colours for quilting and she gave me free reign over the design. I decided I wanted to do a half square triangle quilt with all different designs. My almost 4 yr old daughter wanted to design one of the blocks (can you guess which one) which made it a really personally quilt for my friend who loves my kids so much!


I quilted it fully on the frame - in a scallop all over pattern. I broke the thread so many times in the middle of the quilt it was starting to drive me crazy! Maybe it is a tension issue? I had a little issue with the quilt bleeding when I washed it (even with using 2 colour catchers) - just two fabrics I used in the centre panel bled. No too noticeable but I think I will be more careful using red and white next time.

Of course the backing had to contain shoes for the shoe lady - lucky i found this awesome print.

Outside my window: Twinkle Twinkle

The Quilter's Guild of NSW and Quilters Companion Magazine and Brother International (Aust) Pty Ltd are running a under 35's quilt competition with the theme "Outside My Window". I only JUST fall into that age bracket so I decided to enter *bites nails*. I struggled with the theme for a few weeks but then decided to make some stars!

With my bundle of Kona Summer 13 colours I won from the Feather QAL, I took out all the bluey colours and matched them with another fabric in my stash. The star blocks are a paper piercing pattern from Ula Lenz called Foldstar. I enlarged them and decided to use a LV background. I also decided to add some interest and use a black star and yellow star in opposite corners (OK that was code for I didn't have enough blues..)

I bought some Lizzy House Constellations fabric to back the quilt and while i was pondering the plain border I had planned decided I should try to replicate the constellations fabric. Lots of tiny equilateral triangles. But I am so happy with how it turned out!

I actually thread basted this on the quilting frame which was an interesting exercise. Was not quite confident enough to do the quilting on it though! For the quilting I did a falling star sort of pattern. The border is done in a milky way sort of vortex swirly pattern.