another "special birthday" quilt

Finished another “ special birthday” quilt just before Christmas, finally got to hand it over a few weeks ago after hot weather and COVID got in the way!

Disappearing 9 patch with a bit of extra length added, super happy with the colours! 

Sewed the whole thing on my vintage Singer, handled the quilt layers sooo well, plus the extra room in the throat makes it so much easier to feed through the machine, I don’t have to roll it up in a bundle like I do with a Janome, that is a bit of a tight squeeze at times!

  I have another one in progress that I must get a move on with!

Birthday quilt projects

I have made 3 birthday quilts in the last few months, but due to lockdown I have not been able to deliver any of them yet! And just in case the intended recipients check in on the blog, I can't post any photos of the first two quilts! 

But I should be ok posting the most recent one, which hopefully I will be delivering after work tomorrow. 

On Saturday my friends daughter  turned 18. On Friday I decided to make her a quilt! I looked through some books- and my stash!- for ideas  and worked out a design. Saturday I sewed up the front and back pieces, and Sunday I pinned and quilted it. All fabrics from The Stash - I have a box of rainbow strips from the first few quilts I made, I must have cut out heaps of strips!  Even the binding was 3 lots of leftover pieces, there was just enough to go around,  with only about 30 cm left over.

Today I managed to duck outside just before the rain started, and took a couple of photos. Of course The Dog had to check it out, as you can see in some of the photos!

Quilt design board

I have read on craft blogs about people trying out patterns on a " design board". I realized a few months ago that I actually had something I could use! 

I had made a portable pin board/ display board for work a few years ago, made from corflute boards (old real estate boards) gaffa taped together, and covered with sturdy pin board fabric (which can be used for velcro backed cards too). 

The sturdy fabric takes pins well, so I can pin strips of fabric on to play around with colours - and after all, isn't that the best part of making a quilt?

Disappearing 9 patch - done!

Finally finished my Disappearing 9 Patch quilt. 

The Dog insisted on joining in with the photo shoot!

Planning the next project now...

Off to the beach pt 2

Once I finally figured out how to place the strips - pinning them to a large pinboard really helped!- and that I needed to stagger each strip by half a block, not a whole one ( which looked like bricks!) things started coming together!

The finished quilt!

When I gave it to my sister she said " It's the beach!" - yay! 

Off to the beach pt 1

Looking for ideas for a gift to make for my sister’s birthday, I came across this image on Pinterest. I lot if searching ( Pinterest is garbage for anything other than just pictures!) I finally found the pattern had come from a book on Bargello quilts.

I coudn’t find anyone with a copy, but my quilting pro MIL did have this book, which I borrowed. It was very helpful in planning my design. There was a lot more involved than I had first thought! But after weeks of trying to puzzle it out myself, the book was really helpful to understand the process.

It even has graph paper to photocopy and plan with.

This was my colour plan, crinkled from being carried to Rathdown Fabrics and Spotlight to find some fabric!  

Hip to be square #1

I bought this “ Pretty little patches” magazine years ago, and  liked the pattern for the “ Disappearing nine patch” quilt.

So started playing around with colours, and cutting out squares. Sewing squares together to make 9 patch squares. More next post - I can only write short posts, because I can’t see the bottom of the screen!

q q c 2

Another birthday quilt for a lovely work mate- we have  had a couple of " special" birthdays in the last 12 months! 

I love all the shades of blue in this, I was a bit tempted to keep it actually! The back is a gorgeous indigo cotton weave from Spotlight, but it is a heavy fabric and I broke a couple of needles before swapping to a leather needle to quilt the layers together!