Cheating FTW!

I am finally making some progress on my Fire & Ice Quilt; I decided that I'm not going to start anything new until I clear out at least some of my UFO's and since I really want to start playing with some arty samplers this is quite an incentive!

I've tried to get on and add the centres to this quilt a few times with no sucess and recently I even tried curved piecing to see if that was more interesting (which it was until I had to unpick it all!) and finally I decided that it absolutely had to get done and I really wasn't to bothered about the authenticity of my technique. So, bye bye to burnt fingers, freezer paper and irons and hello to printed templates and pritstick. I am quite simply sticking my fabric to my paper cut outs and then gluing the curved edges over too - takes about 1min/piece and I can do it in front of the telly; I'm getting beautifully curved edges, my sewing machine loves me and I'm actually enjoying this quilt at last! When the whole thing is done it is going to sit in a big tub of water until the glue dissolves (yes, it definately is water soluble!) and then go through the wash, problem solved.

Proof: I honestly did make some progess on this beastie!

Labelled Up and Ready to Go

Today I finished up the labels for Aimee's Quilt and Baby Bargello. The label for Aimee's Quilt was originally going to be my first attempt at an ATC but Rob came in while I was making it and mentioned what a nice quilt label he thought I was making - I hadn't even thought of doing quilt labels like that (I was going with words-on-white) so once again he managed to inspire me to make something better than I was going to!

Rargh...

I've been lax in updating recently... don't know why but it's felt like a very busy week despite being no different from any other! Still, I have found time to do some more work to my lion and I think I'm done with the cutting now. I still need to fix him down but I picked up some lion-coloured threads and a pack of bondaweb today so I think I should get him settled down this weeked. I took a quick picture this afternoon (which prompted this posting) as we have visitors coming tonight and I have to pack him away so they don't destroy him while drunk so here he is in all his glory. The quilt is roughly single bed sized but it didn't fit on the table and there was no way I was putting something with this many little pieces on the floor.


The mane is made from loads of different yellow/orange fabrics cut in a spiky pattern and layered on top of each other - I left a tab at the bottom of each set so I can bondaweb them down but I think i'm going to leave the spiky bits free so they flow around as the quilt gets moved. It's not quite right on the left so I'll fix that next time I lay him out but otherwise this is how he'll look. Now all I have to do is decide what's going in the outside panels... I'm thinking maybe girraffe as they're nice and tall.

Basically I'm just going to have some of fun with this, it's been on the to-do pile for sooo long that I don't mind risking it a bit - I'm going to do my best to make it into something awesome but I've been 'meh' about it for so long that if it does go horribly wrong it won't really be a great loss!

In other news I've decided to stop lurking on the internet and get out there and 'meet' a few other quilters. So I have signed up for 'Another Little Quilt Swap 3' (ALQS3) and will be attempting to make an art quilt by the middle of July - I have a few ideas I've been toying with for a while so it will be interesting to see how they take form. (And an aside to mum if you read this: It's okay not to like it and I promise to keep making 'proper' quilts too!)

Finally I'm giving in to temptation and trying my hand at ATC's - I'm currently drafting out some practice pieces and then I'm going to have a go at joining some swaps. For those that don't know these are like tiny miniature quilts (2 1/2" x 3 1/2" so I mean smaall) which you then trade with other people - kind of like the trading cards we had as kids but far prettier! I'm quite excited to start work on a collection, particularly as once we move I should get my own quilting room which I can cover in pretty fabric creations!

All in all I'm giving my muse a kick start for spring!

Meow!

After much humming and ha-ing over my Flying Safari quilt I decided that quilting alone probably was't going to be enough to fill the massive black panels that are in between my pieced blcoks and all this week I've been pondering a paint-by-number style lion. I have no idea why I decided I wanted to make one of these but once it was in my head I just couldn't get rid of it. The basic thought now is that I could make various animals from fabric and stick them in each of the empty blocks.. we shall see how it goes!

I really had no idea how to make what I wanted - I've seen a few picture-patchwork creations around but never really looked at how to make them myself so I just sort of made it up as I went along. I'm thinking I can probably just sew all the bits on top of each other with my machine applique-style and then maybe throw in some decorative effects when I quilt it.

The biggest problem was that I can't draw to save my life so after half an hour of pathetic attempts at sketching I abandoned that plan and went with just cutting bits of fabric to approximately the right shape. The nose seemed like a good place to start being fairly central so I cut one of those, then some backing for it and just built it up from there. Inevitably it will end up a bit wonky as i'm just cutting bits by eye but i'm hoping it will come out ok. He still needs a big mane and a bit more shading but i'm pretty proud of it so far; I particularly like the eyes as he started to look a lot more like a lion than a scrappy mess once they were in place!

Lion; A Work In Progress

Something Random

The quilting bug has bitten and is refusing to let go... After we drove home from Rob's parents we went out for a very nice Easter roast at Stu & Claire's and followed it up with a trip to Hobbit Real Ale & Blues festival. Not being a great pub-goer 3 hours of watching people drink every type of Ale under the sun was plenty for me and I called it a night when everyone decided to move onto the next pub. I was going to watch a film but my re-discovered Flying Safari quilt was calling to me - I discovered to my horror that this is by far my worst UFO and was actually started in 2002! It was supposed to have a flying geese border so I thought I'd assemble that (the geese were already made) but when I looked at the geese I discovered that 16yr old me had different standards than 23yr old me and there was no way on earth that those geese were going to make a border that fitted the quilt properly.

With my plans scuppered I decided it was a shame to waste all those hours I spent piecing geese so I put them together into a little wall hanging instead - I now present "Flying Free", my first piece of improvisational quilting (if I call it art it doesn't matter that I lost all my points right!). It consist of flying geese in 'tiger' and 'leopard' on a black background and whilst it may look like a completely random mish-mash there is actually a method to the madness.

Flying Free

And another finished quilt

We went back home to catch up with mum's and dad's for the start of the easter weekend and whilst curled up on the sofa 'watching' the (golf) masters I managed to finish sewing the binding onto Aimee's Quilt. I'm amazed with the results to be honest; it was always a bit of a gamble as it was the first time I've ever made a quilt without a pattern to follow and also the first time I've machine quilted rather than hand quilted one but I can honestly say that I love it. There's a large part of me that doesn't want to see this one go but I think that because it was always being made for someone else it will be easier to let go off than on of the ones I made for me... it really is about time I stopped hoarding everything I ever made anyway! I just hope that Aimee likes it; I'm pretty sure her mum will but small childern=unpredictable so I guess there isn't any way to tell other than to give it to her!

The finished quilt

Oopsy

Well, I ordered the thread to finish quilting Aimee's Quilt but I 'accidentally' added a bargain pack of Japanses Taupes. Twenty 10" squares of Makower's Zen Taupe's will shortly be arriving on my doorstep; I'm not sure what i'll do with them but they looked so pretty, and were so on Sale, that I couldn't resist! I seem to have really fallen for the Japanese fabrics at the moment, maybe I'll make a wall hanging or summat so I can admire them lots rather than stashing them in drawers to gloat over!

C'est Finis

Et Voila - Baby Bargello is done. I quilted it in a simple zig-zag and added an outline of the inner border, it's a much simpler quilting design that I'm using for Aimee's Quilt but I think it emphasises the pattern nicely without distracting attention from the pretty fabrics. All in all I'm very pleased with this quilt... All it needs now is a label and it's ready to go to its new home

Quilting in Process

And the finished quilt

Edit: I decided the pictures above don't really give any impression of the size of the quilt so, lacking a convenient small child to photograph, I have enlisted the help of Tiger (who is pretty much baby-sized) to bring you the following quilt-simulation... basically it will be plenty big enough for baby and should carry over quite nicely from cot to cot-bed as s/he grows up. Thanks to some artful corner turning you can also see the backing which quilted delightfully (not a tuck in sight!) and, according to Rob, will give them the alternative of using the quilt upside down as well... not sure what I think to the idea of hiding all my lovely patchwork in favour of an Ikea bedspread but I'm sure he meant well!