The Double A Side has landed

OK, so it's all very well spending months sourcing just the right fabric for your 3-year old niece's birthday quilt, designing a double A sided pattern, piecing it all, finishing it with lovely borders, tying it with gorgeous variegated embroidery thread....  

but it's no flippin' good if you then miss the birthday!!  Imagine my horror yesterday when I realised Megan's big day was last Friday, not this week as thought!

Baaaaaad Auntie Pennie....

So, I just about managed to wrap it in more pinkness and get it into the post, special delivery, with a very grovelly card.  It took some doing, letting it go, and I think I might have to start again on the Heather Ross hunt to make another one!  

Anyway, I just got this......

I think she likes it!

Honey, I'm home!

Awww, quilting world, how I missed you..... The effort of trying to post via mobile proved just too traumatic, and my signal in not-sunny-at-all Cornwall was erratic at best so I have heaps to tell you and to catch up on!

I have finally figured out how all these amazing super-achievers get things done so quickly - they do absolutely nothing else..... I'm kidding of course, I know all you wonder-quilters have jobs and children to take care of really... or so you say!  With two weeks off, I got one quilt finished, another completely done and a significant amount of work done on a Christmas project.  I also initiated my friend Hilary into the joys of quilting, as we started work on Santa sacks and other Christmas goodies for her.  

In between sewing sessions I did a lot of dog walking - Hilary and I have 4 spaniels between us, so we did beach, woodland and sand dune walks to keep them all quiet enough for us to have the sewing sessions.  There were also quite a few afternoon teas, sticky cakes and yummy lunches consumed, so the diet starts now!

However it did rain, nearly every day, and on Thursday we got caught, whilst on a circular walk, by the worst rain storm I can remember.  I have never been so wet in clothes in my life - trust me, everything was soaked.  The irony was that it was sunny when we set off, so we left waterproof trousers in the car.  When we got back we ended up having to strip out of sodden jeans and wear the waterproofs instead so as not to soak the car.  Later that day, the area's website reported flash flooding...

Anyway, enough about my holiday, you want to see the work, right?

Well, I posted that I'd finished the raw edge applique circles quilt.  I finally decided to bind it with orange magic beans, as I found any solid binding just over-emphasised that colour within the quilt top.  The busier binding blended in really well, I think, and I'm really happy with this, it kind of disappears. I'm looking forward to being able to snuggle up under this on the sofa over the winter, with the bright colours really cheering me up on the dull days.  Alison's original tutorial on Cluck Cluck Sew can be found here.





Mind you, it's already been claimed by a certain member of the household, who actually kicked bags off the top of it last night so he could curl up on it.  Think I might have a wrestling match on my hands!


I also got Megan's Double A-side finished, and I have to say I love it!  It's the first time I've ever felt slightly sad that I don't have a daughter to give it to! I hope she likes it, otherwise I'm reclaiming it.  I finished it slightly differently, as the quilt already had the borders around the edge, and I couldn't think of a binding that I liked that would go with both sides.  So it is not bound - I just sewed the edges together almost all the way round and then turned it right side out and hand stitched the opening, and then top stitched all the way round.   

 As doing it this way meant it wasn't going to possible to quilt both sides and as both sides were very different layouts anyway,  I decided to just tie it using variegated DMC embroidery thread.  As I'd used cotton / bamboo mix wadding, this is now a beautifully soft quilt, and I am really happy with my first attempt at a quilt without using a pattern.

I might not be making anything pink for a while though.....

Yesterday I had a great time helping Annie from The Village Haberdashery on her stall at the Knitting and Stitching show in Alexandra Palace.  I'm sure Annie's blog will tell more about this, but it was great to see other quilters there - I spotted a few faces from retreat 2012 - but my favourite part was the number of handmade bags being sported by visitors, along with some fantastic handmade coats and jackets.  Quilters are a colourful bunch!

So much for improv....

It's been a busy day today.  I think working with Melody Miller's Ruby Star Vinyl recently has gone a bit to my head, because when I started cutting fabric for my niece's 3rd birthday quilt today, in my wisdom I decided it would be a double-A side

Megan, the niece in question, is responsible for my beginning in quilting.  I'd done lots of knitting over the 3 or 4 years before her arrival - and it was her brother Dylan's arrival that started that off.  For Megan's birth, I made a playmat, using a cheater panel and yardage from the same range, and I basically made two quilts with high loft polyester wadding and bound them together to make it nice and thick.  I didn't take photos.  All in all, I've learned a lot since then!!

So as Megan's about to move into a new bedroom with a big girl's bed, I thought I'd like to make her a new, pink quilt.  It has to be pink, it's been requested!  I've been collecting fabric for a few months and today decided to cut the pieces ready to sew together while I'm on holiday at the start of next month.  I've got loads of Heather Ross, because I loved the fairy tales theme, and also loads of Aneela Hoey, because it's pink!  As the two are so different in style, colour etc, I decided I'd do one side in one and the other in the other, and then Megan can decide which side she wants on show.  

Heather Ross layout

It was to be improvised, no pattern, just cut and sew bits together to make the 36" x 52" quilt I wanted. 

Only I couldn't do it, I couldn't just chop into the Heather Ross preciousness without a plan.  So I spent a while measuring the motif sizes on the various different fabrics - I've got Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty, Princess and the Pea and the Owl and the Pussycat, along with some lovely roses.  With the recent Spoonflower offer of a free fq for the price of postage I bought a princess and the pea panel, which is the centrepiece.  I then spent an hour with the PC and a dtp package in the absence of a high-falutin' electronic quilt design package, and drew it all out, working out what filler pieces I needed.  (I took a photo of the pc screen so I could check the layout, as we're not high-tech enough to have a printer at home!)

Once it was all drawn out, I very, very, very carefully cut the pieces out, with only one mistake.  I followed the wise advice, of measure twice, cut once.... measured twice, talked about the measurements and then cut it wrong!  Luckily it was a fabric I had lots of, so no major drama....  I used some lovely toning peach and gold oakshotts for some small filler pieces I needed and I've got 2 gaps to be filled with a Snow White.  Lastly, it'll have a pink oakshott border.  

Then I started on the other side, and the Aneela Hoey fabrics from Sherbet Pips, Walk in the Woods and a Sew Stichy panel.  It's very, very pink!  There's an occasional flash of pale blue and a couple of bits of grey, but otherwise it's unrelentingly pink!!  I thought the first side was quite a symmetrical pattern so I tried to make the pink side a little more out there.  This time, I'd cut the fabric before I did the drawing, so it was a case of fitting in what I had and working out what more I had to cut.  Whether it will look anything like this when I'm done is another matter!  

Once I'd got both bits done and used the screenshots to check the layout, I broke both sides down into blocks and put them all in separate bags, and once I have picked up the Snow White from Charlotte on Wednesday, I'll be ready to sew it all together.  

Once I'd finished those, I got on with yet more hand quilting of spirals, which is flying now I'm on the outside blocks.  I'm happy to report I only have 13 more to do!  Then I have to choose a binding, but it should be finished by the end of the holiday.  

And talking about Charlotte, have you all signed up for the Pervalong?

I was bravely resisting as I'm supposed to be on a fabric diet (even more so after yesterday's extortionate vet bill!!) but I was tempted over to The Village Haberdashery today to look at the pre-cut kits that Annie has put together for the project....  Firstly, let me help you a little in case of confusion - Charlotte's quilt, on which this QAL is based, was originally called Fractured, but because of it's colours and a certain line of literature popular this summer, it became known as '50 shades of perv'.  Annie has quite properly stuck with the Fractured moniker for her kits!  Anyway, I'm waffling....

I was doing so well with the brave resisting, until I saw this little bundle of pink and grey loveliness, and now I'm wavering....  

Lastly, I just want to say that although it seems to me like I've had a tough time lately, there's a friend of many of us going through something truly awful with her family at the moment, which really puts things into perspective.  I'm sure all of us are thinking of them, and wishing there was anything we could do to ease their pain.