Quilting and cutting.

We cancelled our walk that we'd planned for today because the weather forecast predicted continuous rain but I woke to sun streaming in the window. However it didn't last and soon the rain began, a perfect stitching day. I had some jobs to do before I could get started but this afternoon I was able to settle down to sewing.

I needed to start the quilting on the baby quilt. I'm making this quilt from a pattern that appeared in 'Today's Quilter'. Here's their finished quilt.

You can just about see the quilting which is done in waves. I decided I wanted to do the same quilting, even though my lines are a bit shaky. They gave a full sized template so I printed this out and marked the quilt using my air erasable pen. I fully marked the first line for the first wave and then did dots to mark the following lines. It took a little time to complete the quilting on the first wave but after that it got easier.

Some of the marks have already disappeared but it doesn't matter if they don't as the quilt will have to be washed. I decided not to carry the wave into the border as I wanted to quilt the babies name there. You can see what I mean by shaky lines but they did get better as I got used to the pattern . I still have a lot to do but I stopped before I got too tired.

After a restorative cup of tea I started to attack my scrap collection. I'm planning on making a granny square quilt so I needed to cut the scraps into 2 1/2 squares. It took quite a time but I finished the first batch and had a neat pile of squares and some strings.

I got the next box of scraps ready to iron before cutting but I decided to call it a day.

As I took this picture I became very happy as I spotted my 61/2 square ruler which I'd misplaced a while back. That would have made it easier when I was trimming the 9 patch blocks. I really must keep better track of my rulers in future.

So to finish the day with a little hand stitching. The Christmas tree cross stitch is growing slowly and I like it more as it grows.

Lyndsey

Work in Progress Wednesday

So far March has been a good month to get my stitching projects done. There are still a few days left and I'm hopeful I will complete all my goals.

I had two major goals this month. The first, to finish Kathryn's quilt, was easy to do and she is now enjoying using the quilt. My second was to get Richard's Star Trek quilt finished. This quilt had reached the stage of finished top.

The quilt is large and so yesterday I enlisted Richard's help in making the quilt sandwich. I didn't want to crawl round on the floor and was planning on making do with the dining table. The table is oval and the fabric heavy so help was definitely needed. Richard turned out to be a real asset. He was great at moving the fabric around keeping it all nice and flat and he was also excellent at getting rid of unwanted wrinkles in the layers. I must encourage him to help in the future. The quilt sandwich was soon made and I had time to start on the quilting.

Richard had specific requirement of the quilting. He wanted the Enterprise in the central blocks to be outlined and then he wanted the background of the remaining blocks to be a meander. Now I feel I've got the meander pattern really sorted so this wasn't a problem but I wanted to try something different and showed Richard the pebble pattern. We agreed I'd use this on the sashing. There are 9 blocks all 24 inches square in the quilt and so far I have finished 2 so I'm feeling really pleased.

Going round the shapes was trying

The other piece I've been working on is a baby quilt for one of my work colleagues. I'm just finishing off the hand stitching on the binding and this quilt will be all finished. I'm hoping to be able give this to my friend tomorrow - at the latest on Friday as she is then on maternity leave.  

She doesn't know the sex of her baby and doesn't want to know so the quilt had to be gender neutral.

Later tonight I'm going to go through my UFO's as I have several that need to be finished. Some are quilt related and others embroidery with a little knitting thrown in for good measure. I'm trying to reduce my UFO's so I need less storage space (or alternatively I can use the space for more fabric).

I'm linking this post up with Lee at Freshly Pieced. Why not visit and see what other people have been up to. There's always lots to see and great inspiration.

Before I get back to my sewing I'm going to turn the heating up and make a cup of tea. Although it's officially spring the temperature is cool and I'm not enjoying it.

Lyndsey

Sewing again at last and a winner.

Having had almost two weeks of no sewing due to an arthritis flare up affecting my shoulder, elbow and wrist on my right hand I am once again able to sew. The swelling has gone and the pain has subsided so all I need to do now is catch up on the lost time.

My objective for April was to quilt the It's a clue quilt. I am doing an all over meander well not quite all over. I am meandering over the white background missing out the question marks and patterned squares. I found a shop in Kew that stokes Aurifil and having listened to you all say how good it is for quilting decided to give it a whirl. OK so I am convinced. It goes through the quilt sandwich beautifully and doesn't break or knot up. My machine appears to love it and for the first time I had no problem whilst FMQ. I also very carefully followed all the advice and help on FMQ about stitch length speed etc. I am very pleased with the results so far and the question marks really pop out. I finished half of the background quilting so I need to think about how I'm quilting the border.

I've also been working on my piece for the 'Shake your pom poms' hop which starts on Wednesday. My day is Wednesday so I'm a little stressed about getting it finished. Two weeks ago I was well ahead but now its play catch up. I still need to make the pom poms as well. Here's a sneak peek bet you wont guess what it is.

I also need to announce the winner from my blogaversary give away. Who is Mystica who said.

16 April 2013 12:16

"Happy blogoversary. I do have a blog but its more or less a reading/reviewing blog. I do so love to quilt but with a lot of work it has taken a step aside for the moment. However I love to follow the blogs and also get new ideas. I want to do a nine patch quilt top for a baby girl soon."

Mystica is from Sri Lanka. I have sent her an email 

Now I'm going to do a little more work on my shake your pom poms piece and I may finish the quilting later if I get time.

I hope you're having a good Monday.

Lyndsey

February decision

It's already February 6th and I hadn't decided what to concentrate on this month. Finding my pile of stitchery UFO's didn't help. I've already told you how I got on over January with my finishes and you can click here to read that post. In short I completed what I had said I would do. So here goes for this months' goals.

This month I am going to get all the quilting and binding done on my Dresden quilt. I finished the top in January and I have started the quilting but it is slow going. I love the way the quilting looks on the back.

As you can see some of my lines are wonky but I will get the hang of FMQ eventually. 

I am also going to work on my Christmas quilt. I have made 27 of the 49 blocks of granny squares so far. By the end of February I plan to finish all the blocks. The icing on the cake this time would be to have the whole top finished but I have other projects to work on as well.

Although I found heaps of stitchery I am going to continue working on my millennium sampler for now.

Away from February plans I have been working on my grandmothers flower garden quilt that I'm making for Lucy. This is made with English paper piecing and the hexagons are 1 inch. All of it is hand stitched. 

We decided on a rainbow theme with red at the centre. The orange and yellow rounds are complete and I've just started adding the green round. I have bought some fabric for this quilt purely because it was so cute but mostly it is made from scraps. I work on the flowers when I'm travelling by train which is currently only on a Friday. It also works when sitting watching TV or chatting.Each round needs six more flowers than the previous round so there are 18 green flowers and there will be 24 blue ones.

I'm linking this post up with Connie's Tuesday linky party at Freemotion by the river, Melissa's Lovely Year of Finishes at Sew Bitter Sweet Designs and Lynne's  2013 The Year of the Finished Project at Never Too Hot to Stitch. Why not go and visit and see what everyone else is up to.

Sunshine, Olympics and stitching

I have really been enjoying the sunshine and started the garden tidy up since the weeds have grown huge as a result of all the rain. It also enjoyable to walking Scamp without getting soaked.


I haven't seen much of the Olympics so far but I did catch most of the opening ceremony which I enjoyed and the men's cycle race yesterday. Neither of these were good for sewing to as they needed to be watched but I got quite a bit of knitting done.


Yesterday I decided to make a straight skirt for the summer. I have had the material for a long time and just hadn't got round to using it. It is Laura Ashley and was bought as a remnant.

The skirt has a side zip and a slit at the hem on the left side. The back has two waist darts but the front doesn't. Really quick and easy to make. I must get someone to take a photo of the things I make being worn. 


Lily Pad Quilting is gearing up to Pets on Quilts which runs during August. Click the button on the right to follow the link and find out what it is all about. They ran a test 'linky' party to make sure the links will work for the event. Whilst having a look at the links I came across Happy Quilting where Melissa is running a Tetris Quilt along. As I love the game I decided to take part. Follow the link to find out more. Here is my block for week 1

The blocks should be 5inch squares but I am using 3inch. The quilt along makes 6 blocks and the finished size was too large for what I wanted. My quilt will be 30 X 45 inches without the borders. This will be my Linus quilt for August. I now need to make my week 2 block as I am behind having started late.


Finally got round to getting started with free motion quilting. When I was last doing quilting over 20 years ago I did it all by hand. The machine really speeds the process up but I was wary of trying this technique because I had been told how difficult it is to control the machine when you first start. This is my very first try.

I started with just getting used to the machine without the feed dogs and then tried doing a leaf. I was not too unhappy with this start and have already progressed on with the technique. I will post next week to show my progress.

I have finalised my design for the little quilt swap I am taking part in, the fabric has been bought and later this week I will be starting work on it. However before then I have a quilt to bind and one to quilt and bind.