Curio Hills

Last weekend my daughter came home for a couple of days for Mother's Day.  We had a lovely time, making nice meals together and chatting. On Mother's Day morning we participated in the Mother's Day Classic, we did the 4 km walk together, in our town the walk is along our river and it was really gorgeous.  We went out for morning tea with some other family, including my mother, and then Indy left to go back to Melbourne. 

Sometimes I can find myself getting a bit lonely when she first leaves after a weekend together, so I threw myself into some 'selfish sewing' just for me.  I finished this quilt top which I'd started at our little sewing retreat at Bordertown a few weeks ago.

The pattern is from a recent copy of Quilty magazine.  It's a great beginners quilting magazine, I really like some of the very simple patterns they have, which are very suitable for beginners.  Another nice extra they offer is that you can mail order kits to make some of their quilts.

 

 I modified the pattern Trail Marker by Ashley Newcomb, who writes the blog Film in the Fridge .

  

The background is a cream Spotlight shot cotton, it's so soft and lovely warm colour.  For the hills I used a layer cake of Basic Grey's Curio.  It's an old line which I've been waiting for the perfect project to use.  All the hills are improv pieced, so are different sizes and the sides are different angles.  Alot of fun to sew up, although this method does waste alot of material.  I had to go and buy more background to finish the quilt top.

I offset each row so that the hills weren't directly underneath each other, by adding various lengths of the background fabric to the beginning and end of each row.  I also added a strip of background to the top and bottom of the quilt so that the hills appear to 'float' in the quilt.   

 

I only cut two hills from each piece of fabric in the layer cake, so I have quite a pile of scraps left over.  I'm hoping I can use them to make something, although of course some of them are odd shapes.  I'm not the only quilter who hangs onto piles of scraps because they are too pretty to throw out I guess!

Street Grids & Jewelled Triangles Quilts Ticked

I'm slowly making my way through my Finish Along list for this quarter, I am so easily distracted that a couple of new projects have caught my eye and my rotary cutter but I guess as long as I am achieving something that is OK.

First up, I managed to get the binding on a couple of the quilts on my list.

I took heaps of pics of my Street Grids quilt, I'm so proud of it.  I am not a 'perfect point' kind of a quilter, but I took my time, re-sewed where necessary and made a success of this quilt.  I love the colours and the linen background.  Even the quilting went well.

Laid out on my bed, it's lap quilt size at 52" square.  Aren't the colours lovely?  The inside photos are a bit dull I'm afraid, but I think you can see my quilting quite well in some of them.

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Thought I'd better make a collage as I took so many photos!  The fabrics were based on 3 different Wickerweave textured solids that I bought from Pink Castle Fabrics some time ago.  They have a very faint wicker design printed onto them in a tone on tone pattern.  Lovely to use, and I found them very easy to match up with other fabric in my stash.  I also used some Architextures and some random fabrics including a Kei Honeycomb and a Zen Chic Comma print.  The batting is a very thin So Soft blend, and combined with the Spotlight Voile I used for a backing it is a soft, buttery light quilt.  Lovely for summer evenings I hope.  People have asked me if voile stands up to everyday use as a quilt backing - I haven't had trouble with it but I also don't have young kids around here or dogs so my quilts don't get heaps of laundering.  Because this quilt has a white background it will also be kept away from my cats, as one of them especially sheds heaps of fur. 

 

Arranged on my great grandmother's wicker chair.  Quilts always look so good draped over it.  The pattern is from Art Gallery Fabrics and is called Street Grid and is a free download on their website.

 

One more picture.  I do love a folded up quilt picture, it's like underlining that the quilt is finished.

From photo overload, to a one off!  I finished this Jewelled Triangles quilt while Indy was home from Uni.  We had decided to gift this quilt to her friend Sophie and so I was on a mission to get the binding finished, nothing like a gifting deadline to get the needle going.  I finished it the night before we left to take Indy back, so this photo was taken quickly before we left.  Indy was nagging at me to be quick, her arms were aching, she was cold.  So not a great photo.  The colours are much richer than this picture shows, and really it's hard to see the binding, but at least you can see that it's there.  It's a simple design, so really it's mostly about the colours.  Lots of purple, some very dark blue and pops of red, and some print fabrics mostly from Tula Pink's Birds and the Bees and Zen Chic's Juggling Summer. 

The handful of red triangles scattered across the quilt really lift it.  Sophie feels the cold heaps, so we are hoping this will keep her warm.  It's got a wool batting and I quilted it with a very large stipple so it is lovely and soft and warm.  I hope she likes it.

So with two items ticked off my FAL list (actually it's 3 but the third is a secret project, just for a few weeks) of course my mind turned to items not on the list.   My FAL list for quarter 2 is here.

  

I've decided to make a little Perfect Zip Bag, from Elizabeth Hartmann's pattern.  If you are ever in doubt about buying one of her patterns, just buy it, they are so reliable.  I love her blog Oh, Fransson! and can't wait for her new book.  So my pieces are cut, and I hope to finish it tonight.  Then I don't feel so bad about jumping off my list for a while.  Although I have been eyeing a couple of bigger bag patterns.  Surely just one wouldn't hurt?