Sunday Stash

Baby quilt possibilities...there's a good few pregnant friends hanging around me at the minute, so I will be making plenty of quilts for the little mites over the next few months. Obviously I really MUST stock up on potential fabrics for the job, mustn't I?

I found these little beauties over at Quilt taffy. It doesn't get much cuter than Minny Muu, does it? That Mama Duck with her head scarf on is so sweet she makes my teeth hurt.

Thank you for the HUGE quilt love and advice on backing. I'm going for a flannel. I found a lovely bright pink with white spot, so now I have to wait for it to arrive from the good old U.S of A. Why can't I find decent fabrics over here? Or at least the fabrics I want. I wish I had a shop of my very own. (don't you dare encourage me - I have thought about it, and even found an empty shop that was so cute and old fashioned looking it'd be perfect for my dream...money and the bottom line says I really should get a grip and ignore the dream, though.)

can't I keep it?

That's what Miss G said when I showed her the animals quilt top I finished off this afternoon. You can give the baby my quilt. Oooh, she's a mean one. But I'm feeling a little possessive myself. Can you see why? (the pics are biggies - so you can click on them for a better view)



It was such a simple pattern, and took me 2 days to make. Yesterday I did the applique panels and spent part of this afternoon sewing them all together. And that was with plenty of tea breaks.

Look at the animals....



can you see the fancy rainbow coloured thread? (Ok, you can't, but imagine the rainbow coloured thread - it's a king tut, colour number 918 and I got it from asding)



I think my favourite is the hippo. Might have a lot to do with that big gingham background.



My only mess up was the elephant is facing the wrong way. But I think it wasn't reversed on the pattern. It doesn't matter, elephant tells me he is over the moon to be able to look at the beautiful tangerine giraffe. Hippo agrees.

My niece isn't actually due until October, so I can rest a while and decide on the backing. Minky? Chenille? Just regular cotton? Hmmm... what do you think? I'm only going to quilt it simply, around the blocks. A cozy backing might be nice. Give me your opinions, I do really value them.

So, if you are in need of a quick and easy project for a new baby, try this pattern. In fact, just have a look at all the other patterns over at Michael Miller. I'm thinking that deer one would be rather nice, or the fridge art one, or doggie daisy. Or about 10 others.

winners!!!

129 comments - wow!!!! Well, 128 because one sneaky Aussie tried to leave 2 comments (she's a sneaky one, you'd better watch her).

So, thanks to the magical random number generator (how do they work? Magic?) I drew 4 names and the results are......

The winner of the basket and all it contains is number 11 florspace


and the 3 runners up (who will win some candy and some other treats) are;

number 52 - tinker899 (Jan - you didn't leave me a contact email, can you get in touch with your address so I can pop you a parcel in the mail?)

number 90 - bluemountainsNSW

number 125 - Marit

I've left comments on each of your blogs (well, I'm about to) so contact me with your addresses purlease and I'll mail your winnings out.

Thank you to everyone who commented, it's lovely to know there are people out there who read this blog and take the time out to comment. It makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.

Sunday Stash

The fabrics for the giant animals quilt arrived this week.
Clockwise from the top;
2d zoo, in 'multi' Alexander Henry
Good Folks, Cathedral in 'dusk' Anna Maria Horner
Just Dreamy, Medium Dot in 'orange', Riley Blake
Ta Dot in 'tangerine', Michael Miller
Ta Dot in 'lagoon', Michael Miller
Picnic Checks in 'strawberry', Jane Sassaman
Floral Swirl in 'teal', Erin Mcmorris
Red Letter Day Stripe in 'lime', Lizzy House
Blooming Bubble, in 'yellow', Alexander Henry

All from fabricworm. Just be careful if you click on that link, I've just added some stuff into my shopping cart, and I really didn't mean to.

More stashes over at my mate Tam's place.

And don't forget - the giveaway is still on until later today, just click here and leave a comment if you haven't already!

working through the wip list

I am not a huge fan of paper piecing, I find it a bit challenging, and beyond my poor little brain. But the results (of other people) are always amazing.
I had to make 2 blocks of pink trees for a quilting bee I'm in on flickr, and found a great paper pieced pattern for a fan tree whilst trawling the internet. It looked simple enough for my small brain to cope with, and it actually worked out pretty well. I'd love to see a tree like this in real life. Along with the trees from Charlie and the Chocolate factory, and squirrels that crack nuts on demand.

I also paper pieced a simple triangle tree, and then improvised another triangle tree to make the block up to 15.5 inches. It turned out rather beautifully, if I do say so myself.



Next on my list of things to get finished is the quilt from the old red barn co. quilt along. I have half basted the sandwich, and then ran out of pins. I know I have another pack somewhere, but I can't find it for the life of me. Seems the pin monster has snuck in and gobbled them up. Or I've put them in one of those really safe places. Quite often I buy things for presents for the kids or the husband and hide them, only to lose them again until after their birthday/christmas. Told you my brain was only small.
This quilt is going to be for Miss G, for at her mama's house. I was planning on making the mystery quilt out of sew hip magazine, but I lost my mojo with that one after 2 blocks, so until I find it again this liberty print beauty will suffice. I bought an egyptian cotton for the backing, which was incredibly cheap (£5 for 3 metres) but decided it wasn't quite the right colour when it arrived, even though you won't see it really. It's like a vintage sheet, so soft. But in the end I went and bought a big piece of 'real' liberty tana lawn from shaukat, and spent too much money, but it does match perfectly and I know it won't bug me to death for the rest of my life like it would have done if I'd used the egyptian cotton. I love shaukat, they have an amazing selection of fabrics online and the real life shop is even more amazing. It's like a labyrinth of corridors and tunnels, with more great stuff around every corner. Well worth a visit if you are ever in London Town. The prices are minus VAT, that gets added on at checkout, so bear that in mind if you get over excited and start shopping.



I also managed to get a quilt finished for my best friend's daughter (Miss G's best friend). She had seen an eiderdown type of quilt in one of my books. I had a layer charm of moda's snippets fabrics, and bought a (cheapy cheap) single duvet from ikea, which I trimmed down a bit because I didn't have quite enough to make a single bed sized quilt top. I even hand tied this one too, so that was another thing to try crossed of my list.

We took it round to Miss E this week, and she was over the moon. So was her mum, which made me over the moon too. (It's a bit crumpled in the picture - NooNoo the cat decided it was his bed, he's not best pleased it's disappeared).




Don't forget the giveaway is still on until tomorrow evening (my time - that's UK time), head over and leave a comment for a chance to win! I can't believe how many comments I've had so far - over 100. Wow. I think I'll have to put together a few runners up prizes too, won't I?

it's a giveaway!!!!!

Since I have been busy making fabric baskets (thanks again to Ayumi) for the kiddywinks's teachers and I believe I mentioned the possibility of a giveaway in that post it's time I came through on my promises.

And here you are - a fabric basket stuffed full with bits and bobs to keep you busy. There are a couple of packets of seeds for you to grow tomatoes and radishes (yum, radishes), some vintage notions (ricrac, binding and lacy binding), a charm pack of tula pink's neptune fabrics, a spool of tape measure ribbon, some quilting pins (the long ones with a flat head), some japanese mushroom sticky tape, a notebook and pen (for emergency list writing), a packet of skittles and a packet of starburst - which taste like summer (and if you are in the US might not realise that over here in good old Blighty, our candy is flavoured with real fruit juice, yep, real juice, and we have blackcurrant flavoured skittles too. Very delicious) and last but not least, in fact it's my favourite thing, a cupcake tape measure come pin cushion.

So, do you want it? Just leave me a comment (make sure I can contact you too, so if you don't have a blog with an email address that your name will link to, leave me an email addy. Thanks)

I'll draw the number at the weekend, on Sunday.

Good luck!

oh my, indeed

As I have mentioned before, I have a new niece on the way, which means baby gifts must be made, and (most obviously) one of those gifts must be a quilt.
After spotting the wise woman planning the 'giraffes, elephants and hippos - oh my!' quilt from Michael Miller (a freebie too), I decided to get in on the fusible web action, I have ordered a heap (yes, a heap) of fabrics from the ever wonderful and incredibly helpful fabric worm, and popped to the copy shop today to get the applique patterns enlarged and copied.

Cripes. I know I am crapper than crap at maths, but when I picked up the (what looked more like a poster rolled up into a tube but was actually a) giraffe and his mates, elephant and hippo, I was a little shocked by the size. It took some gentle explaining from the husband that enlarged 400% is actually 8 x bigger, not 4 x bigger (I think - I was lost as soon as he mentioned numbers). Once I got my head round the size of the shapes I'm going to have to applique, and stopped having a panic at the possibility of the bubbling of fusible web, or bits coming all unstuck where they shouldn't I am now incredibly excited to get started, but I will need to go and get more fusible web, and wait for the fabric to arrive before i can even think about getting anything done. *EDIT - 400% IS 4 TIMES BIGGER, I WASN'T LISTENING PROPERLY TO THE HUSBAND, IT SEEMS!*

Rather than follow the pattern and use the fabrics suggested, so my quilt ends up looking like this....



I (with some help from Cynthia and her web site) have picked fabrics to tie in with this one instead.....



It's a bit cheerier, more suitable for the little lady.