Strandom - Block of the Month sneak preview!

Ah my poor blog... neglected like my diaries of old! Hopefully not any more though.  It's been a very busy few months here, as I'm sure it has been for most of you!  I've done two workshops at The Sew Room in Alford now, so I'm semi-officially a sewing tutor :) (More details and pics soon!) 

In summer holiday terms we've been to John O'Groats and back, Dunrobin Castle (after 5 years of nearly getting there!) and a lovely wedding of dear friends of ours.

This is a sneak preview (you saw it here first!) of a Block of the Month sampler quilt series we're hoping to start very soon at The Sew Room.  I decided to play with solids for a change, which is quite fun :)

Kathelle x

EJ's Quilt - Part 2

A wee update on the quilt! I've not managed to do a huge amount on it since last week.  It's all arranged - you can see the spares floating about in the corner of the photo - I had 9 in total, so I'll use them in the back of the quilt somehow, as this section is nine blocks wide by nine blocks tall.

I sewn up all the squares and blocks in columns and now I'm half way through sewing the rows together... I've done two more since this photo was taken.  I'm much happier with the colours in this version as they really pop and are very vibrant which is what I was hoping for.  Yay! (I'm sad I know...haha)

Close up of the centre of the quilt half sewn up.  I was trying to use a different colour of pinwheel on the corners of the large ones so they stood out a bit more.  For example I used blues and greens to frame the pink one below.

Now once the top's done, I need to decide how to quilt it.  If I were a wonderful expert with freehand quilting I would do swirls around the pinwheels like the wind... but I'm not, by any stretch of the imagination. :/ I may experiment and see how it goes, I just really think that straight line quilting wouldn't work on this pattern, it would lose it's freedom and fun, hmmm...  We'll see!

I had a rather busy weekend with having a brand new niece (though I've not seen her yet, I can not wait!) going to Aberdeen and church.  So I hope to have a productive week getting stock ready for Strandom and the usual household stuff :) And trying to finish this quilt top of course!

Kathelle x

EJ's Quilt - Part 1

I found this quilt pattern on Pinterest a while back and loved it so much I just had to make it!  

It's called "Windy Days" and is by Sarah Meyer as part of Moda Bake Shop, which has heaps of ideas and projects for pre-cuts.

It seemed the perfect choice for a cot quilt for EJ when she gets big enough, which gives me a wee bit of time to get it sorted...  link to pattern here.

I found this cool pinwheel fabric at "The Sew Room" in Alford.  I wanted to include it somehow, but I couldn't quite decide how... (in typical fashion haha!)  Eventually, I decided to use it as the border fabric to make the quilt a bit bigger, and I used it to select the colours for the pinwheels.  
 There's blues, pinks, purples, greens and a little bit of orange, which sounds a bit mental written down but it looks really good.

 The pattern is technically for a charm pack and that would be the easiest and most sensible option, but I couldn't see any that I liked enough in the right colours.  So, I bought some fat quarters in bold, punchy colours like pinks, orange, teal and purple and cut my own "charm pack" (a charm pack is a pre-cut pack of 5" fabric squares)  I also cut far too many in my enthusiasm... so, I'll pick the best and use the rest in the back somehow haha! :)

Whilst feeding EJ a few months ago (she's 5 months now) I watched a few Eleanor Burns videos on youtube and learnt this "swirling" technique for the back which works soo much better that whatever I used to do.  This is only my second quilt, the first one I made was for DJ, I'll show pics of it in another post.

 

 This was the first attempt at the layout when I'd sewn enough pinwheels together.  I wasn't too happy with it as the colours were nice but it was a bit pilly wally... and lacked the bold colourful look I was wanting for it.  

 

Solution: more contrast and more turquoise!

The large pinwheel at the top right didn't stand out enough either so I changed it from this

 to this, and I'm so much happier with it.

slightly crumpled by a little boy!

more crumpling... haha!

and I lost one :( (not his fault, mine this time!)

Only one lost casualty which wasn't too bad going with the to-ing and fro-ing and floating about for a month or so waiting patiently on the table.  I'll try to arrange it again soon, but it'll have to be in the evenings or there'll be a pinwheel thief on the loose! (Can you tell I tried it before... bad plan, haha!)

Kathelle x