2014 FAL

Last year I completely missed out on the FAL, however, this year I'm ready to go with some WIP's in mind in hope the peer pressure will nudge me towards finishing them.
My Q1 list is as follows:

1) I gave this quilt to my OH for Christmas, but thanks to health issues, didn't get it finished, and it still needs the binding finished. It's been on the bed since the festive season, but I need to get it all hand stitched down. Should be an easy finish to start with!

2) this is a scrappy tripalong memorial quilt for my neighbour. Needs to be backed, quilted and bound.

3) Hexie Melody, which is back from being basted and needs to be quilted and bound and delivered. (And then I need to make another one to keep!)

4) HST quilt, needs to be backed, quilted and bound.

5) AMH voile St Louis 16 patch needs to be backed, quilted and bound.

There is one more quilt I want to do, which is for the Mexico Street children Alison blogged about, but I'm too lazy to walk upstairs and photograph the Sew Stitchy layer cake!!
So, that's my list. See you in March to find it how many I got done!

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100 days.

Right then, one day to go, but with an event for 150 tomorrow night it's unlikely this list will change before the end of the year!

Having posted back on the 9th November that I had made progress on only 4 of my 17 projects, and that I would have to work hard over the coming 40 days, everything went a little bit awry.  As many of you know, less than a week from that post my life went through a pretty cataclysmic shift.  So, I'm sure you're not expecting great progress with this, and you'd be right!

Here goes:

1) design & make a cd holder using the Melody Miller records fabric - tried and failed.  Have something else in mind during the course of 2013.

2) Make double-sided quilt for niece Megan - finished, loved and delivered to Megan.  I saw this over Christmas hanging in her newly decorated pink bedroom! (1 finish)

3) use the brown batik Charlotte challenged me with - 2 projects in mind for this. I used the tote bag we got goodies in at Retreat and made the batik into a tree trunk.  The leaves are Innocent Crush.  Project two was a 40th birthday present for Charlotte - a pouch which you can see in her post here.  What she has failed to mention is that the pouch was lined with brown batik! (2 finishes)

4) Make an Amy Butler weekender bag using 'Newquay' fabric neeeeever gonna happen!

5) make the Christmas wonky log cabin into a mini quilt - Christmas was pretty much cancelled in my house this year, so no Christmas projects got done.

6) finish the double circle flying geese cushion cover from FQ Retreat scrapped...

7) make mug tree / Christmas cards  see item 5

8) make 3 thank-you popsicle mug rugs replaced with Bottle sacks filled with pink champagne! See this post for more details. (1 finish)

9) finish campers travel sewing kit oh dear, no excuse for this not getting done!

10) make 2 x hopscotch quilts with jelly rolls This may have been a tad optimistic, but will keep me busy in 2013.

11) finish Maison de Garance quilt for Christmas gift DONE!  Hurrah, I did manage to finish something, even if I was hand-finishing the binding on Christmas Eve!  This now graces the bed of my OH's parents, and looks lovely, though I say it myself.  It was finished with a border of the rich goldy-biscuity colour with the rich deep red as the binding.  Backing was a plain beige sheet.  Although I wasn't sure about this to start with, and it was definitely a 'well, they'll like it' I ended up loving the warmth and vintage-y feel of this one. (1 finish)

12) make 4 x Oh Fransson! bags for Christmas gifts 3 made, and then another one was made in black denim, 2 of those were sold for use as Christmas gifts, the other two are still here.  I also have wallets cut out ready for sewing, and I made 2 pretty pleats totes in Melody Miller Ruby Stars Vinyl telephones panels - one with the orange phones, one in the blue phone colourway. One sold along with the pouches and one given as a gift.  I also started another Christmas quilt for my niece and nephew but a sewing machine in need of service put paid to that!  (counting this as 2.5 finishes!)

13) make a notebook cover for Christmas gift well, I've got the fabric and the notebook, just need to get the two together! Nothings' changed there but I did make other Christmas gifts - see above!

14) make a duvet cover for the spare bedroom out of IKEA fabric another project for 2013.

15) make a QAYG version of Weekender bag using Tula Pink fabric.  see item 4.....

16) various bee commitments 

17) edited to add: finish raw circles quilt!!! Yay!! All done, hand quilted and bound and just gorgeous.  Currently over the back of the sofa where the feline in residence is also in love with it and spends most evenings asleep on it! (1 finish)

So, out of the original 17 items, I'm counting 8.5 finishes.  As 3.5 of those were quilts, I think that's not bad under the circumstances.  Had I not had a few weeks of other things to deal with, plus a sewing machine which gave up the ghost in the days before Christmas, I would have got a lot further. However, hopefully I can get the remainder finished in the next few weeks - at least they'll be ready for next Christmas.  

I'm linking up for the final round-up.  I don't expect to be in line for the prizes, but it was fun trying to get everything done!

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!

Let's try again.....

Attempt two at today's blog....

So, it's finished!

Coming along nicely...

My raw edge circles quilt is gradually getting there.... The quilt top is all sewn together and now I just need to work on what backing to use and how to quilt it.  

It's not good enough weather here today for photos outside, so here's the quilt top artfully draped over one of the sofas!  It's such lovely colours, I can't wait till it's finished, and I think it'll be a great splash of cheerful warmth through the winter.

I'm considering plain red with a small section of red magic beans on the back.  There's quite a bit of my beloved pezzy and some teal magic beans on the front, so I think it would be a shame if the back were completely plain.  I'm thinking this multi-coloured Aurifil thread in Laura's giveaway over on Needles, Pins and Baking Tins today would be just the thread to quilt this.

I've also got quite a list of other WIP's at the moment - two bee blocks for Plan Bee 2012, a maison de garance quilt for the in-laws for Christmas, and I want to try and make a start on my niece's birthday quilt too.  

I'm linking up with Lee over on Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesday.

Is it just me....

...or has this now become a quilt of two halves?  I made this little beauty a bit bigger, which meant adding in some new blocks made with fabrics I didn't have when I made the first lot.  


So of course that meant weaving them into those already laid out and doing some significant rearranging. then I decided I didn't actually like some of the new 'filler' fabrics, so I took those out.... 


then I decided I'd made it a row too long, so I took that off.....


then I decided I'd tried to make it too matchy when the first part went out of it's way to have every quarter block different colours and patterns. So I did some more rearranging.  


And this is what I have now, along with an absolutely stonking headache!

probably should have moved the ironing from behind the door BEFORE taking the photo!

It just feels to me that the top part which is laid out on a piece of wadding and so lying nicely with no gaps, looks like it has stronger warmer colours than the bottom part, which isn't on wadding and so not sitting so well together.  Could it just be because the bottom is nearer the window and so in brighter light which makes the colours look lighter?

I've put some of the stronger reds back in before taking this photo which did make the balance better, but does it look balanced to you, much more experienced quilters?

Let me know, 'cos I really want to start stitching it together!

and now for some Nina Simone...

'.... and I'm feeling gooooood!  Dummmm, de-dummmmm, de-dummm, de-dum, de-dum-di-de dummmmm.....'


On Wednesday, my machine and I went for a little trip, coffee, chat, sewing, and I was somewhat stunned to realise when I went to get my machine for this sojourn that it was still in it's carry bag where it had been since retreat!  A whole month without using my sewing machine.  I knew I'd been off my game, but that shocked me, even so.  


This weekend has seen me battling to finish a project I was doing for someone else, and then late last night, after singing along to 'Mamma Mia', in an effort to avoid the second half of the football, I decided it was time to get on with some fun sewing.

So out came this, a project I last worked on back in March on our Cornish holiday.  It's taken from this tutorial and I had completely forgotten how much I love it and the colours are so cheerful.  Last night I managed to get all the pieces laid out, and realised that I needed at least another 14 'blocks' made up, so I'm now going through all my fabrics trying to find about 20 more that I can make up into squares and circles, and then start rearranging the main part of the quilt I've already done to incorporate the new pieces so they're properly spread out.
Then I just have to keep them in the right order while I start sewing them altogether - think many photos will be necessary!  But hey, it feels great to be back!