My first striped quilt

Such a cuteness :) If you don't mind my lack of modesty :))

I started with more solids but somehow they didn't fit in. So the white stayed and also the white based prints. And just couldn't let the giraffes go :D

At first I wanted to use Rita's directions from the Bayou quilt but I decided not to. I pieced the stripes from one end only, and that's because I like to have at least one stright corner. Yeah, I'm just lazy :D. I hate having to watch the angle when I trim the batting so I had 3 straight edges and only one with 1-2mm difference between the stripes. Piece of cake :D

The really difficult part was quilting it because the nice lady that asked for this quilt wanted something wavy. And that's quite difficult for me. I don't think I would have ever started quilting if I didn't discover straight line quilting. But it's ok, I can live with it :). Plus, I actually made a lot of straight lines, and this kept me sane :)))



One thing I hate is the biased fabric. And right next to it it's the printed fabric that's not on the grain. You can see it very obvious in the butterflyes. However, I decided not to go crazy cutting the fabric follwing the print and than pieceing a little on the bias. I think it turned out ok, the buttlerflies are flying, right? :)

Next up, my first linen :)

My first piping

Yes, another first.

I bought a bliss charm pack although it's so not my style. And forced myself into something a little too sweet for me. I didn't manage to do something bliss style, but I do love it.

Some white from my local quilt shop (my Kona is not here yet :( ) some Moda feathers, a bit of red Kona and a part of one Bliss charm pack:

I didn't give piping so much thought. I cut two 1,5" white strips and one 1" red strip. Ironed the red folded and placed it between the whites, folded part on the inside.

Ironed it open then folded and that was pretty much it. I wanted to avoid bulk and made sure the strips were not pieced togheter in the same place.

The difficult part was finishing the binding/piping and took me more than half an hour to join the ends, also paying attention not to join the red and the white in the same place to avoid beeing too bulky. See the 2 blue marks? That's what they're for.

I'm really proud of myself :D. It's kind of flauless :)) The only problem I had was using white thread to fininsh the binding, meaning white thread on red fabric, but the other option was haing some red spots on the back and...hmmm..I think it's better like this :)

Lots of first time

And I mean lots of :)

My husband's first time in the ER. That was something I wouldn't want again. But for the others... hmm... maybe it's the begining of a beautifull freindship :))

My first mini quilts. As in really tiny quilts :). Around 50 x 60 cm.

And the first time I used minky type fabrics. (sooo soft and nice and soooo much pinning, duh!)

They were ready incredibly quick and now I dream about bolts of minky :D

My first huge-for-me quilt.Around 130 x 170 cm. That was a beast to quilt. I have no ideea how somebody can quilt anything bigger. Just wow! With this one I have only lousy photos but the quilt was so so nice. t was a custom quilt and although mom said the kid's favorite colour was blue, I just didn't have inspiration with blue. As in staring at a blue pile of fabrics for days and ...nothing. So I made a very blue back, with lots of sharks. So not my style but kind of cool :)

My first blog award, that came from two ladies that I love enjoy reading. 300 folowers is little? Get out of here :)

I'm really not a fan of blog awards, but the fact that I actually received one for this tiny blog made me feel really good so this time I'm going to play :). As in name 3 nice ladies with not-so-many-as-in-300-followers that I enjoy reading.

Of course, first up is Kristy, also known as the pan lady ;). I follow Kristy, follow as in can't wait a new post and cannot immagine how come she doesn't have 300 followers by now :)

I looove reading Mary (yeah, fine, you passed the award here but this doesn't mean I can't sent it back, right? :P), she got me dreaming about QAYG and I love her sense of colour even though we are very different. I just feel good when I vist her and I want to see more of her really cool house :)

I instantly fell in love with Andy when I saw her favorites gallery on Flickr. And then I saw her quilts. What a fantastic lady!

Sorry for the long post, it's been a while ... :)

Gray, the new white

Oh, wait, did I say green was the new white? Forget about it! Gray is the new green. Or white. At least until my white kona arives :D

So, beause I really love how the Cip quilt looked, and because I had no inspiration for a custom quilt waiting for me, I decided to go with something I knew I'll love: gray and pink. Really, who doesn't?

I've been thinking about another pattern for quite a while, but it seems that everytime I am not having enough inspiration, or I'm just to stressed out, one simple quilt like this really makes me going. And after I see it done I have enough energy to start over with a totaly different thing.

I am having a lot of second thoughts about the sunspots, but in the end...there's nothing I can do about it anymore :))))




I started with a gray backing in mind but I felt it was too much, so pink it is.



Now I'll go planning someting with some linen I found today at a local shop. Not cotton linen blen, just linen. It's gonna be fun. Or not :))

Or maybe I should go finish a huge-to-me quilt. Neah! I'll go with the linen :D

The Cip quilt

I know that all my 9 readers (ok, 10, I know husband is reading :D) were dying to see it :))). So here it is:

Just before basting


I was really nervous about pieceing all the blocks together because I was supposed to use sashing. And that sashing was supposed to hide any imperfections in the blocks. I wasn't really paying attention when I made them [ops]. Plus, my walking foot gets really tired afer un hour and needs to stop. And I can't stop whenever he wants to. So I went along, knowing that it might not be perfect.




I quilted it in a sort of a spiral, a rectangular one. I have no ideea how you call this :). But it eneded up perfect.

4 Charm packs gone, 4 more to go. (Yeah, I know, it's a little more than 7 :D)

Charm pack quilt

So I ordered 7 CP. I am not sure if this was one of the greatest ideeas or I'm just stupid :D. Ok, not that it really matters or that I would actually want to find out. :))) But I needed to get out of the solid square/ print square thing.

Of course, I was sure I reinvented the wheel.

I took 9 squares and divided them in 3 groups, 4, 4, 1.

The first 4 stay like this,

next 4 are cut in 2,

the last one is cut in 4.

And here's the block.

Now the problem was the sashing. I tried white, dark gray, red and green. They all sucked. Really, it was nothing modern about this quilt, at least not as modern or bold as I was dreaming.

So after white large sashing, white tiny sashing, red large, red tiny, gray large, gray huge, gray random, tiny green, tiny gray, large green, wonky squares, I decided to put them all togheter. Just like this.

Now the question is: after my 5' of glory when I thought I actually found something new and after two hours, one last night and one this morning, when I found no sashing to like, how much was I actually influenced by Andi's quilt? I mean, come, on, take a look. They're like sisters. Twins :). Ok, not identical twins, but still :))

[Photo uploaded on Flickr by Patchandi]

Really!

The confort zone - in and out

I know from the very first look if I like a fabric or not. And I also know that I might like one fabric but will never use it. These are usualy large scale prints or classic paisley. But this never stopped me from buying them, of course :)))

So I've seen Amy Butler's Love collection for some time and knew I kind of like some of the prints in there. I bought the dots immediatly but hesitated quite a lot for the rest. In the end I couldn't help and finally bought 2 charm packs. They are way out of my confort zone. Way!

So after staring at them for a while I decided to actualy do something. Man, that was hard :))) I made two tiny baby quilts and although I think I like them, I am not very sure :)))). No, actually I like but would never use. They will make the perfect present for somebody else, though :)))

After this exhausting experiment :))) I decided to go back to the confort zone. And that felt so good!

I love evey single fabric from this quilt. Anne Kelle, Wendy Slotboom, Monaluna, Laurie Wisbrun, Amy Butler's dots and the supreme Kona White. Bonus, Ikea's hippos. Perfect!

Extra bonus, binding from a local shop, meaning I didn't have to wait 4 weeks for it.

I wanted to do some strip piecing but my kid came in the room just as I was ironing the strips and one thing let to another so after 10 minutes or so I had everything squared :)))

I think the 4" squares work best for me. Large enough to piece easyly, small enough not to have big differences. I actually think this is my best pieced top, I only had 2 corners with no more than 1 mm difference. Pretty cool, I might say :)

Pop-as-in-pop-corn quilt

As in the squares really pop :))

I've done two more quilts with this 4" finished squares and 1,5" finished sashing and I started this one with quilting in mind :). I wanted the squares to pop out without using extra batting under them, like I did before.

So the big thing was quilting it. I found out that they pop out best when I sew about 1/4 walking foot away from the stich. I now realise I could have sewn another 2 rows on the white, but it would have been a little stiffer and I guess it's not what you want from a baby quilt.

Yeah, I'm more than ok with it like this :)

One special moment for this quilt was the binding. After 2-3 quilts where I had big doubts about the binding I choose, this one was really really cool. I think it made a lot of difference and it helps a lot with the poping :)



And because I rarely get to see exactly how big a quilt is in real life, I decided to clean my sofa for this one :)))



Next step: rearrange the shelf :D