Well, hello September....

I can't believe it's September already! With one thing and another August was a busy month sewing wise, with wedding outfits, finishing projects and starting new ones. So here goes....
A family wedding mid-month prompted a flurry of stitching with a new frock, two new purses (1 for each outfit I had to choose between), and a tie for the other half made from my hoarded Birds and the Bees by Tula Pink.

Then there was the wall hanging I'm mid-way through for one of my sisters. She wanted a beach scene, so I drew on the improv teachings from Lu Summers at the Fat Quarterly Retreat and made this up, using Kona solids and all pieced with Aurifil 50wt - my new favourite thread now I know how to stop my machine rejecting it!

While I'm waiting on spray baste for that one, and deciding on a backing, I got going on the quilt for another sister (yep, we're never ending!) this time made from Melody Miller's various Ruby Star collections. I've been wrestling with the best way to display her fantastic designs with the huge motifs and eventually decided on super-size hexes. Photos of this on Instagram lead to my most exciting quilt related experience when Melody herself commented how much she loved it!

And last but not least is Fairground Attraction, my mini quilt made from the Triangle City EPP block I started with Katy Jones at FQR, in Mirror dots, and posted today on the Aurifil Facebook page and tweeted by Alex Veronelli himself! What a weekend! Thanks to Kelly at Jeliquilts for letting me know it was up there along with her fabulous Rainbow quilt.

Last but not least, I currently have a giveaway running in conjunction with The VIllage Haberdashery, so just click here for more details.

Linking up with Lynne over on Lily's Quilts for the Fresh Sewing Day. And by the way, according to Aurifil, this month is National Sewing Month, so let's do it proud!

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All sewed out!

All the components are now made, just need to sew them all together, add the borders and quilt and bind. I have till October half term to finish it....

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Oh I do like to be beside the seaside....

Progress report.....

3 squashy beach huts

Terrible night-time photo of sea and fishing boat.

I think it's getting there.....

 

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Can you see what it is yet?

Earlier this year, two of my sisters came to stay and we got onto the subject of quilts. The one made for my step-mum's 60th has gone to my youngest sister now, and the two middle sisters requested one of their own. A's is to be made of Melody Miller - and that's causing me some problems, I can tell you!! The thought of giving so much precious Ruby Star away, especially as now there is to be no more....

Anyway, as usual, I digress.... C originally asked for her quilt to be an alphabet of animals, and quite possibly fuelled by the several sloe gins we'd all drunk by that point, we picked the most obscure creatures we could for each letter. Luckily, a few weeks later that plan was rationalised to be a wall hanging to hide a crack in the wall in their rented. She had also said one of her favourite things I'd made over the years was the beach huts wall hanging - remember this?

After some discussion, we narrowed it down to a beach scene as if seen through a window. We also both liked the paintings of the Welsh artist, Helen Elliott, and so I've settled on a cross between Helen's colourful, naive style, and the beach huts mini. There's a bit of inspiration from two mini quilts in the book 'We Love Color' too.

Today I trekked to The Village Haberdashery - normally a 45 minute journey, today it took me 2 hours and 20 mins, but I was determined to take advantage of Annie's Bank Holiday Sale! Horrendous traffic, and the seasonal flash floods couldn't stop me. I was extremely and unusually disciplined and stuck to only buying what I went for. I can't tell you how hard that was, as there are an even greater array of sumptuous, temptingly gorgeous new fabrics in at the moment - I sense a few covet posts might be on the way.

So, this evening, I've drawn out the design - 45" x 36" so not exactly a mini this time - and I've laid out the colours of what will be going where. Here's what it looks like so far.....

Wish me luck?!

 

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The 5th Covet

Last week, over on Lynne's blog, there was a write-up of a new quilting programme specially for i-pad called Quiltography. I was intrigued and went ahead a bought a copy. Not sure quite how long it's going to take me to photograph, measure, and name every piece of fabric in my relatively small (yes, beloved partner, I did say small!) stash in order to get the most out of it, but there was one feature I couldn't wait to try.

I saw a photo on Mark Lipinski's Facebook page and immediately thought it would make an amazing quilt. Quiltography offers a fab feature where you import a photo and it converts it into a pixelated-style quilt pattern, along with the number of pieces you need in each colour! 

For the life of me I can't work out how to load the photo of the quilt pattern, but take my word for it, it'll be great. There's even piecing diagrams for each block and then a layout diagram too, so hopefully fool-proof..... we'll see.

Anyway, you're hopefully reading this and wondering a) if I own the programme, what am I coveting, and b) what's this got to do with Annie's wonderful shop that this week's covets are celebrating?

So, here we go.... as well as all the wonderful patterned fabrics, Annie has an enviable collection of Kona solids - just what I need to do the design justice. So I need a Kona colour card with new insert so I can match that up with the colour suggestion in the pattern and try and make the quilt look as stunning as I think it could.