Ron’s Quilt

One more quilt done! It was completed about a month ago, just in time for R’s birthday (he turned 7, if you can believe it – I certainly can’t… ).

 

The biggest mistake I made with this quilt was asking the birthday boy how would he like his quilt to look. this led to several weeks of going back and forth, deciding and un-deciding, drafting ideas and throwing them out the window, and eventually settling down on a pluses quilt design. I was inspired by this quilt (via fabtalk), from the “I love patchwork” book.

I would have gone for something more random, and with more subtle tones, but R likes vibrant colours, and doesn’t like the randomness. We split the difference and ended up with a compromise which I enjoyed making, and he loves to cuddle in.

 

I used fabric from my (steadily growing) stash, which these days includes mostly online purchases. I was glad to find a use for the two greenish and mint solids – when I first got them in the mail I considered immediately donating them to the nearest charity… While they looked very bluish on my computer screen, they reminded me too much of green hospital uniforms in person… Of course if I had read the name or description I could have realized they named them sea foam GREEN and mint GREEN for a reason, but I was too busy fabric shopping to bother… lesson learned!

I think the end result looks good, though, and it was an interesting challenge to venture outside my normal colour comfort zone (did any body say grey?…). Since R actually liked these colours, I used up the leftovers for the simple pieced back as well.

Other fabrics used here were Mendocino Seahorse by Heather Ross, Posie in slate by Denyse Schmidt (from the county fair home dec collection), and a lot of Ikea’s beige cotton for the background and binding.

Oh and the quilting was much easier this time, since it was all straight lines, no pivoting anywhere…

I’m hoping to make at least one more quilt for our living room this year, keep your fingers crossed for me – will you?

Charles

– aka Mr Mini Fluffy (or was it Fluffy Mini? I forget…)

I borrowed Fanciful Felties from our trusty library the other day, and left it in the living room, where it was found by Daniel. He cheerfully proceeded to flipping through the entire book, oohing and aahing along, until he decided on his favourite project. His big brother went to a birthday party, leaving us a quite afternoon, perfect for taking on a cute project…

I don’t have wool felt, but I had some eco-fi felt  from our nearest dollar store that needed to be used, and it worked just fine. Daniel then insisted on going through my pile of scraps to find a suitable skin coloured piece for the face.

It was a fun way to try my hand at free-motion machine stitching. Nest time though, I might do the stitching before cutting out the fabric – the small cotton piece was a little hard to manoeuvre…

We added the arms and a suitcase, and Mr. fluffy was then whisked away by his happy recipient….

I really like the style of this book, and hope to make ms. fox one of these days. If you haven’t done so yet, you can check out the Samantha Cotterill’s website and blog right here.

A Quilt for Daniel

It happens to me all too often.

I fall for a beautiful fabric (or seven of them).

I run out to get it (or drool all over my screen for days before actually hitting the “check out” button).

I get my beloved piece of fabric home.

I wash it, Iron it – and than I fold it neatly and place it on a shelf, where it will never see the light of day again, because I have no clue what to do with it, or it’s so pretty I’m scared to cut into it, or some combination of the above.

But this time I was determined to make quilts for my boys.

I even told them I was going to, so they can hold me to my promise.

So I got myself a yard of this chino Bus fabric – it just demands to be made into something boyish and lovely!

 

 

And after a few days of scribbling some ideas, I decided on a simple wonky squares design. I wanted to try this ever since I saw “what a bunch of squares” in the Denyse Schmidt Quilts book.

 

 

 

It’s the biggest quilt I made so far, at about 60″ x 80″. Everything went smoothly until it was time to quilt it…

 

I really wanted to have these spiralling squares quilted on each block. You know, the kind where you have to pivot 90 degree turns some gazillion times?  Probably not the best idea for a first large quilting project… For two days I struggled and wrestled this quilt through the machine, to the point my arms were aching the next morning. Lets just say the quilting isn’t going to win any beauty contests, and leave it at that.

 

 

The result, however, was well worth these minor pains. Although the quilting isn’t perfect, I love the way it turned out. And even more important, Daniel loves it too. I didn’t make it in time for his birthday (which was in December), but he was still very exited to receive his quilt about a month ago, and he happily cuddles with it every night since.

What more can I ask for?… More echino fabric of course! now that I’m actually using my stash, surely I’m allowed to get some more, right?…