2012 - A Recap

I’m in the quiet of a house that is mostly sleeping. One child is awake, as she has been since six o’clock. She’s an early bird. She’s not old enough to be up by herself so Mum has made the grand sacrifice of getting up early too. I had a late night last night, so it was quite a struggle.

On the plus side, I’ve done two loads of washing and I’m about to do a 2012 recap post – let’s get into it, shall we?

 

Show And Tell January

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That was a much bigger post than I intended.  I had a lot of Show And Tell for January, didn't I?

 

New Year’s Resolution

I have many New Years Resolutions. 

Do I follow through on all of them?  No.

Do I follow through with some of them?  Surprisingly, yes I do!

I’ve tried to keep a blog for a few years now and after a month or two I let it go.  This year I am proud of how many times I managed to update my blog.  Admittedly, I’ve not been around much lately, but that is more bad management than anything. 

Next years resolutions remain much the same as this years’.  Get more finished.  Become more responsible with my time.  Waste less.  And the Holy Grail of resolutions – Be. More. Organised!!

This includes the blog.  I really am going to try and blog at least once a week.  Daily posts, while they are admirable, just don’t happen here.  But I’m aiming for weekly.

So until the New Year, I wish all of you such a wonderful Christmas if that is your thing, a good break if that is your thing, and a happy and successful 2013.

See you next year!

Suzie

Show and tell–the spare room

I once saw a lovely pattern, knew it wasn’t too difficult, and decided to see if I could make my own version.

This is the finished result.  I quite often make myself draw quilts into my EQ programme, more so that I can get expert at that and as a good quilt drafting exercise.  This is one that was easy enough to do in EQ. 

This quilt adorns the spare room wall.  Forgive the cropped out bedframe – it was the best I could do.

Till tomorrow,

Suzie

Little Girl Quilts

Part of the joy of having two little girls is that you have the perfect excuse to pink-ify certain areas of your house.  I am so pleased I have my girls – I never felt the need to try for a boy.  I’m sure I’d have just as much fun creating boy quilts if I did have a boy, but the need has never arisen.

This is the quilt that adorns one wall of one daughter’s bedroom.  It’s a design by an Australian designer, one half of what used to be The Chook Shed.  If you know Aussie quilting, you know of The Chook Shed.  We all cut our teeth as quilters using their lovely, easy applique designs.

I think they have gone their separate ways now and are designing separately, which means we have twice as much to choose from.  But I do miss their original designs, which were so ideal for children.

Till tomorrow.

Suzie

Block Holder

I’m a member of a quilt group that meets every second Wednesday night.  I don’t get to go every time – sometimes it’s just too hard to get everyone organised in time.  But I do make an effort to get there at least once a month.

We always have a Christmas dinner towards the end of the year, where we give away a gift to an unknown recipient.  This year we had to make a block roll that measured approximately 15” square.

I didn’t have a clue where to get the pattern from, as there seems to be very few online.  So I thought I might share how I made my version.

Right.  First of all, no real measurements here.  Just a rough guide.  I don’t have the energy to do a proper fancy schmancy tutorial tonight.  It’s been 40 degrees or more all week and I’m drained.  That’s 100 degrees for you non metric readers.  Very. Bloody. Hot.

Stitch, piece, applique or quilt a design on an approximately 13” square of fabric. I’ll be cutting mine back to 12.5” so make sure your design stitcks inside this measurement.

This is mine.  The original design was from a group on Flickr called ‘Hoop Love’, which houses a staggering collection of out of copyright embroidery designs.  This was one of them.  If you like fancywork, as my nanna calls it, then you will LOOOOOVE this flickr site.  Email me if you can’t find the address.

Once I had stitched my design, I placed it on a layer of wadding and cross hatched the centre with quilting.  It’s a bit hard to see, so I apologise for that.

Trim design to a square measuring roughly 12.5”.  Stitch a border on either side.  Mine were about 2.5” x 12.5”.

Stitch a border on the end.  Mine was 2.5” wide again by about 16.5”.

Stitch a piece to the opposite end of the design, so that it measures about 16.5” x 32” when complete (seriously, just an approximate is fine).

Cut the same sized piece from backing fabric and wadding, pin the three layers together and quilt as desired.  Mine was in the ditch around the main square and then in big straight lines for a while (till I got bored)

Trim the three layers to measure the same size.  Mine finished off about 16” x 32”.  Again – it doesn’t really matter how big your design is, as long as when it’s folded, the main applique design sits nicely in the centre.

Cut two rectangles of wadding about 2” smaller in size than your design (in my case, about 15” x 30”.  Find the middle of your block holder and mark with a pin.  Find the middle of the wadding and centre the middle over the middle of the block holder.  Stitch in place (if you look really carefully you should see a stitching line in the middle of my wadding.

Make some ties by cutting 1” x 12” strips, folding them over and topstitching all the rough ends down and stitching them in place.

Bind your design.  I used 2.5” strips folded in half.  Just the way you would do your quilts.

Handstitch binding in place, give it all a good press, fold it in half and do up your ties, and there you go!  A lovely block holder.

When the weather cools down, I think I’ll make a better tutorial and show it off – but for now, I hope this one will do.  I don’t think I missed any steps, but if you do find some, please let me know!

Till tomorrow,

Happy quilting!

Suzie

So obviously I have two girls….(a little show and tell for you)

I love that I have two girls that I get to create lovely girly quilts for.

My daughter was given a birthday card one year, and it had the most divine picture on the front.  I knew I could make something really special from it.  I blew the design up a million times on the photocopier, then drew it out onto a huge bit of paper.  From then it was quite an easy process.  I didn’t have the right colour pink for the castle, so I used beetroot juice to dye that.  I didn’t have the right pale colour for the sky so I used food colouring for that too.  And both worked a real treat, I think.  All the fabrics were from my stash.  I have no lack of pastels in my cupboard.

Wasn’t difficult at all, really.  Cartoons and cards and wrapping papers are all great to use for applique quilt blocks.  It was a bit of a buggar trying to blanket stitch the middle area, but I persevered and she got her fourth birthday present for her fifth birthday, so I wasn’t too far behind.

Till tomorrow,

Suzie.