Strawberry hearts and orange pinwheels

A lot of recent activity in the sewing lounge has been for others.  Mainly making up kits for two charity quilt workshops I am running in March and April, which has taken up a lot of my time.  Mind you it has reduced my novelty stash and scrap bin considerably.  Then Mum gave me some of her scraps, so back to where I started LOL!

  These scrap triangles donated from a friend have been hanging around for a long time and a need to sew finally gave me the push I needed.  I was thinking of making a  mini but there were a WHOLE lot more HST to be trimmed so it might stretch to a doll quilt.  The HST finish at 1.5", so the pinwheels are 3" and its now 15" square.  Perhaps I will add a white border, not sure.  Lots of HST left over, but not four the same fabric, so need to use them up in a different way, perhaps the border?

While making something orange for February RSC was important to me....I really got fired up about these pretty strawberry reds and soft pinks in my stash.  I had written down a note on an easy method to make 1.5" HST I had seen online. So then when I started seeing cute images of heart blocks for St Valentines day I just started sewing.  THe blocks finish at 4" but no idea what I am going to do with them, perhaps another mini, just enjoyed the process of playing!

The weather has been hot and humid, too much to want a quilt on my lap for binding.  So now its a bit cooler I have finally finished a few of my binding jobs.

I made this out of the last scraps from my plus sign quilt. I had to piece and substitute some of the reds to get the last few rectangles.    I made it the right size for the scraps that I had left over, so is only big enough to be a dolls quilt.

This quilt is even smaller and will also be gifted as a dolls quilt.  I need to make some teddy bear sleeping bags to go with them!

Happy quilting Sue

Frolic flimsy finished

Frolic flimsy is finished!  

The border was fairly straight forward.  The addition of the solid white border stopped the stretch from bias edges and the HST behaved beautifully.  I have stitched right around the outer edge immediately and found some of the HST seams had started to pop open.  I am considering adding another skinny white border....but for now enjoying the quilt as it is.

I already had lots of blue HST made in my parts department.  So I have a lovely array of colour variations.  But my pinks follow the pink in the quilt fairly closely.  I like the combined effect of existing colour and new.  There are lots of fabrics in this top that I can point out and say, "that was a backing, or from Mums unwanted stash, or from a bag I made." It is a scrap quilt...except that I did have to buy some yardage in white and green, plus there was some bargin bin navy that was perfect to finish out the blues.  I might have purchased other colours before checking my stash adequately but they will be used eventually!!

Happy quilting Sue.

Traffic jam flimsy finish

I took the Frolic top to patchwork so I could trim the edges in company of friends - to boost my confidence!  But in order to carry all the bits and pieces I had to empty these mini quilts out of a bag.  When I got home I decided they deserved some attention NOW while they were out of the bag!

The navy mini just needed hanging corners added - quick unpick of already stitched down binding and that job took 10 minutes!  The colourful nine patch neonatal quilt needed binding - took another 15 minutes to find a cute orange stripe in my stash and get that sewn on.  Last but not least the aqua/red neonatal quilt needed quilting and binding.  So now I have some hand sewing for evenings and three little quilts are nearly finished - yippee!

My Traffic jam flimsy was next in line for some overdue attention. I found a rapidly dwindling collection of grey and black fabrics and cut up 4.5" strips and sewed the borders on.  The pattern has a pieced borders from 2.5 squares, but I had depleted my supply of pre cut squares in these colours and I am happy with the final look.  I am going to try and quilt this myself, but need to find a backing first.

A continuation of my experimentation of making very large HST I made a giant churn dash - this is currently 37 " square.  I am going to add a blue border to make it finish up at the size I want.  The idea is that it will make a good teen boy quilt fand a easy kit to cut and make for the charity workshops I am hosting.  However with all that "blank" space one really should try out some new quilting patterns ; ) we will see if that happens or not!

Happy quilting Sue. 

Quilted ladybird cot quilt and Frolic takes shape

The second ladybird lone star cot quilt has been ready for quilting for months.  Mum took pity on me and did the main stitch in the ditch then gave it back to me.  For some reason I went with heavy quilting, which looks great, but too way too long for a little quilt!  Oh well its all done now, just needs a trim and binding.

It took a few  before I got the rhythm of making the Frolic blocks.  Its great to have all the little fiddly units made, so I quickly got 12 blocks finished in a day and half - in between getting kids back to school and normal domestic duties.

Then I made the sashing and decided that I really needed to see it laid out on point.  

A friend called in and that gave me the motivation to crawl around on the floor to decide if I wanted the hassle of making the quilt on point.  We both quickly agreed, that on point rocked!  And I had already made one half block so the decision to progress was easy!

I kept motoring away until Frolic was completed!  Well I still have to add the borders.  I have the HST made, but not sure if I have enough (because this is only a half sized version of Bonnie's pattern), as I being lazy and not doing the maths.  

That's next weeks job!

Happy quilting Sue.