What I bought

There was nothing I really needed at Chilford, so I just ended up buying bits for half-formed ideas. I've realised that often the bast matching materials are the ones from the same series so it's good to get a few when you see them.


I liked these birds and the dots went well with them.


These were super cheap. I have no idea what they would be for.


You can never have enough stripes.


I love Liberties material. It's a bit expensive and patterned for my liking, but I couldn't resist these. Maybe I'll build up a collection over time and do something with them.


These go together perfectly. I have no idea what you'd use them for though.


I have a half-formed idea with these. Maybe sooon, maybe... There seem to be so many other projects to do.

That's it! A ood thing to. I just have NO MORE SPACE. I need to stop buying and start making!

Single Girl Quilt

Another day, another project finished. Here is the quilt for the baby Mabel. A year late but finished. I really loved the pattern when I saw it. It's called "single girl" and it's by Denise Schmidt.



It took quite a long time because I had to make all the templates out of Myla so I didn't hack the pattern to pieces. I tried to make it as random as possible so each ring looked different.



In the end I did most things wrong. I cut the white material too small and had to unpick it. In future I would cut it much bigger so I could trim it down afterwards.



I finally got to grips with how useful two rulers can be when your quilt is really big. I am not too good at folding them in four and trimming. It just scares me, so this lining up of rulers felt safer.



The biggest problem was the machine quilting. I found it really hard to keep turning the quilt as it was quite bulky and involved a lot of folding it then re folding it. All the twisting and turning and stopping and starting meant that the needle kept jumping when I stopped and started and it took me a long long time to work out how to minimise it. So it's a bit rough round the edges, but I learnt loads and those are my favourite kinds of quilts to do.

It looked great in the end.

Chilford Quilt Show

Another year, another quilt show. This year I thought I would pay close mind to how people appliqué and observe how shoddy I am in comparison. I really loved these folk art mini quilts. I think, although they are not really my style, there are parts of them that I really appreciate. Just the sheer time involved for one. I really got up close to people's stitching and marveled at how accurate they could be in something so small.











As for what I bought. Jeez, that's another post

Cloud Nine

So for my birthday I asked my mum to buy me some Cloud 9 flannels. They were pretty costly as they seem to be only available in the States and I had to pay import tax on them, but I saw this pattern on Cloud 9 and I just really wanted to make it.


I really like the pattern as it's modern and retro all at the same time and the flannel is so soft. After spending years on my last quilt, it just felt so nice to do something easy and straightforwards.


It only took a few hours to cut the strips, sew them together. By the end of the day I had the backing on and was sewing it together. I didn't quite follow the pattern at this point as it's for a baby and I had used some offcuts of wadding so I thought it needed some slightly more substantial quilting.


I did pin the quilt as opposed to doing my usual tacking. I do find however that pins ping out and scratch me, so used quilter's safety pins on the edges.


I ended up doing simple straight lines inbetween the owls in big, white, perle stitches.


And here is the finished thing. It's bigger than I expected, but I really enjoyed doing it as it took a week in total.

Knitting

So I finally had the push to finish off the knitting I started last winter. I was much quicker and before I knew it I was on the borders... only to run out of wool. It's so annoying as I saw it everywhere at Knit and Stitch but now I can't get it for love nor money. So it's back in the bag it goes until Loop have more wool. Another project so nearly finished!

I changed the pattern a bit as I didn't really want a stole, I wanted a blanket, so I just knitted the main panel twice and knitted them together.