Customer Show And Tell, An Update

It’s funny how the internet works.  Obviously a quilt I pinned on pinterest has gone a little mini-viral and today I’ve received a heap of emails asking me where they can get the pattern from.

This is the pattern.

Very sadly, I cannot claim ownership of the design or the quilt.  A customer made it, not me.  But I can give you the details to where you can buy your very own pattern!  Yay me!

The designer is an Australian company - http://www.craftcubby.com.au/ and the direct link for the design is here: Jungle Patches.

I’ll do my best to email all of you who emailed me directly, but I hope this answers your questions!

Suzie

Another Flimsy Bites The Dust

I’ve got a rotten head cold.

I thought I might share that with you.

Haven’t sewn a stitch therefore.  Have sat in a quiet corner and knitted some lovely cables.  I find when I have a head cold, sitting quietly in the corner, with a nice movie and some knitting works wonders.  It’s almost medicinal.  Medicinal knitting.  I like the sound of that.

A few weeks ago I showed you my Nancy Halvorsen stars.  You’ll be pleased to know that it too is finished.

I’m thrilled to bits with this one.  I was going to add another border around the outside as I had more precut squares to use up but I think this is just lovely as it is.  And it’s huge.  I’m going to bind it in black and call it done.

I’m unsure why I’m leaning towards black homespun in things at the moment.  I’ve another quilt on the go that also uses black homespun.  I think it must be because we are heading into winter (though someone forgot to tell Mother Nature, it’s been spring weather all week long here).

It was a ridiculously easy quilt to make, and I’ll type up some instructions when my head clears a little.

Do you like it?  I’m more than a little pleased with it, to be honest.  I think it’s destined to be a quilt we might actually use, rather than another flimsy in the cupboard.  We’ll wait and see.

Till tomorrow,

Suzie

Finishing Finishing Finishing

Oh I’ve been finishing stuff.

My husband has been working long hours and is getting home late, and so I get to sit in the sewing room after the children have gone to bed and not feel guilty that he’s in the lounge by himself (watching football, quite happily – why do we guilt ourselves into feeling we have to sit with him every minute of the day?  He doesn’t care, he’s happy)…

I digress.

I’ve been finishing off some of the messy blocks that needed to be made up into lovely quilts, and so I present my first ta-dah for the day.

One hundred percent made with scraps that come out of my ‘Bonnie Hunter Scrap System’ that I implemented on a very small scale a few months ago to see if it would work for me.  I’m pretty sure I can say it does!

The only rules I gave myself was that I had to have red chimneys, cream background and less busy outer borders of my cottages.  Everything else was as I pulled it out of the bag.

And I’m pretty happy with it, to be honest.  It was hands down one of the quickest quilts I’ve made.  It really went together very fast.

It was difficult to find a sashing and border that worked with everything, but I think I’ve compromised rather well.  It defeated the purpose of using my stash if I had to buy metreage for the outside borders, so I’m happy with my choice.

If you don’t recognise the pattern, it’s Bonnie’s Happy Scrappy Houses.  I’ve had my eye on it for ages but it looked a little complicated, but gee whiz, it was EASY.

And so, lovely readers – the first in one of my many finishes this week.  I’ll post more later.

Hope your weekend has been a quilty one.

Suzie

Made up scrappy stars project

I can't believe how quickly time passes these days.  I know I say it every time, but it seems I plan to come back the next day and post, then I turn around and three weeks have passed.

 

I’ve been sewing though – I posted these stars a few days ago and I have been pretty good at keeping up with their stitching – in fact this stage of it is fairly nearly done.  Please forgive the wide expanse of very thready design wall – I’ve realised that whilst I can post photos online with my Ipod, I can’t edit them to crop out the blah bits.  Always something with computers!

 

I’ve made thirty six of these stars – all with a cream centre.  I’ve now officially run out of cream again.  Why don’t I ever see the end of the rest of the colours?  I’m sure they breed.

It’s all happening rather organically, really.  I have no plan – I started with the stars, they looked good so I added some side sashing, that looked good and so I continue.  I find I really enjoy these quilts that just grow as they want to.  It’s always been a system that works well for me.

Makes life difficult though in relation to writing up patterns – it’s hard to go back and do it over. 

Good old Nancy Halvorsen autumn tones.  Every one a winner.

This is where I am up to.  I’m thinking that I’ll put a black cornerstone in the corner of each row section.  It looks pretty dark here but that’s more the light in the photo than the quilt.  One of these days I’ll find a computer/photo/blog combination that works for me.

Once I’ve done that, I’m not sure what I will do.  I still have a stack of 2.5” squares cut that I want to use up, so I think they will form part of the border.

I’m more than a little pleased with it.  I have to say, it’s impossible to make a dud quilt out of such lovely colours.

My weeks have been filled to the brim with children, wedding anniversaries, mother’s day and birthdays – May is a BIG month for our little family.  But I’m seeing the light, and hopefully I will be able to get this top down very soon.

I’m thinking (only thinking) that I might do a pattern for it though I suspect it’s easy enough to get the pattern from the picture.  All 3.5” and 2.0 inch squares, really.  Easy Peasy.  But if people are keen, I may do that.

Hope your weekend is a quilty one!

Suzie

Some Stars

Somewhere around the web a million years ago I saw a really pretty scrap star.  As I have a million scraps and a million ideas on how to use them up, I thought I might have a go at making one.

Mine is different now.  This is the centre.  It’s 25 two inch squares stitched together for the centrepiece.

Then I used a plain white homespun (it’s all I had but I’m really quite enjoying the starkness of the white at the moment) and a larger remnant of pink to make the star points.

And I’m quite pleased with it.  I’m planning on making on in each colour that I have – I’ve all my scraps put into boxes of the same colour, and it seems quite easy to pull one out, whip up a star and pop the box away.  Of course, it didn’t even make the slightest dent in the fabric stash but I am trying.

If I have a good run I may have another go this afternoon at making another colour.  We shall see.

Not too shabby points matching!

And that’s my Saturday update for you.  It’s still freezing here but I think we might be having a very cold winter (which is totally fine with me!) this year.  I don’t have a log fire in this house (husband didn’t want the hassle of wood in a new house) and sitting by the open oil heater doesn’t quite have the same ring to it but none the less – that is where you’ll find me this afternoon.

Happy Quilting!

Suzie

Bonnie's Happy Scrappy Houses

Whilst I haven't been blogging as much as I should, I've definitely been sewing.  I've spent more time than I'd like to admit stalking admiring Bonnie Hunter and the sheer volume of stuff she manages to get done in her day.  I know she has a system of stash management, but I was too scared to start hacking into the fabrics I have on the off chance I may use them later.  What if I need large bits?  What if I need borders?

So, mostly my stash has got bigger and not been used at all.  This has to change, I can't MOVE in the sewing room.

We had a bagful of fabrics left over from the shop (which closed five years ago) and I figured I have no emotional attachment to any of these fabrics, in fact I'm sick to death of tripping over them.  Yeah, I could sell them on Ebay but that's all too hard.  So I implemented Bonnie's system on a smaller scale with some of these fabrics just to see if it would work for me.  If it's a disaster, it is no big loss - I didn't love any of those fabrics anyway and I'd be glad to see the back of them.

So the result is this:

Whoo Hoo!  Apart from cutting up the strips, this is hands down the quickest scrap quilt I've ever made.  I'd sewn the whole 42 houses in a day, the outer border the day after.  None of this piecing for weeks on end stuff for me!

It's up on my design wall now, with a burgundy homespun behind it to see if I like that for the sashing.  I'll probably end up doing that - it's not too offensive a border and honestly, spending money on the border and sashing kinda defeats the purpose of using up fabrics.  

But I am totally thrilled to bits with it.  I hope that last photo isn't too blurry, it's taken with my new Ipod and I'm still learning how to take a good picture.  

Today I may get the sashings on, I may not.  I've just spent the morning decluttering a few of my clothes, so I feel all good and virtuous so a sewing afternoon may well be on my cards. It's wet and raining and cold here today which is AWESOME!  It's been too long since we've had rain.  That's a constant theme where I live.  I know you US girls are having the winter from hell but I'm so jealous of the snow and the fireplaces and the cosiness.  Snow would be cool.

I hope your day is filled with quilty goodness, and I shall see you another day!

Suzie

Hi...Remember me?

It seems all I do is disappear for months on end and then come crawling in, apologising for my absence.

It shouldn't be that way - but life gets in the way for all of us and things (like quiet quilting times) get pushed to the sides.  

I have my kids back at school now after school holidays and have decided to I will be a no-volunteer school mum this term, just to give myself a little bit of breathing space.   I figure I don't have to say yes to absolutely everything - it's okay to stand back and let someone else do it for a change.  Easy to say, harder to put into action.  I'm working on it.

So in the sewing stakes a lot has been happening - in typical I'm all over the place with my quilting but it's been good fun regardless. 

I had a box of left over Nancy Halvorsen fabrics that I've been playing with and I came up with this:

It's kinda based on Bonnie Hunter's Wonky Stars.  But longtime readers know that I don't do wonky very well, so I had to make it a bit more formal.

I'm thinking I'll do the side sashing thing like in the photo above - most of the pieces I have in the leftover box are already precut so the challenge is to try and do something pretty without recutting them.   We shall see how it looks.  It's using about a thimbleful of the swimming pool of fabric that I have in that particular scrap bag, but at least I'm trying!

Anyway, must go,  see you another day

Suzie