WIP: baby quilt panel

 A cot quilt panel from Spotlight, bought a couple of years ago...I've put a striped flannel on the back and have stitched in the ditch along all of the straight lines and around the pram. 

Will change to the open toe foot to free motion quilt some echo scallop lines inside the buggy's hood and basket, as well as around the flowers, hearts and butterflies. Then it will just need some binding and it'll be done!!

Linking up with Lee's (of Freshly Pieced) WIP Wednesday blog post.

Riley Blake baby quilt

The first finish of my Q3 Finish-Along Challenge list: as well as a link to Crazy Mom Quilt's Finish It Friday and Kelly's Needle and Thread Thursday - welcome everyone!

Made a couple of months ago from a layer cake of Riley Blake fabric, in lovely softly-muted colours of pink, lemon, mint and grey; I layered the 10" squares in sets of similar colours and made half cuts until I had five different-sized squares...I then took one of each fabric in each size to create each block before sewing them together in columns of the same tones...

This week I free-motion quilted across the blocks with a loose loopy meander, throwing in the odd four-leaf clover at random times as well as into at least one of the smallest squares in each block, plus putting a larger flower into some of the largest rectangles now and then.

For the border I just repeated the large flowers and the loops all the way around. The binding is a Tilda fabric.

On the back there is a pale yellow, soft and cuddly flannel....my lovely workmate Lucy is awaiting the birth of a grand-daughter in Canada and this quilt will be winging its way over there shortly.  

And while taking the photos in the bedroom I realised that I don't think I've ever taken a photo of the appliqué pillow I made back in about 2004...

Monday: have tonight created a machine-embroidered label for the quilt, first time I have tried this...I didn't want to write on the quilt with a dark black marking pen as I didn't want the black to be so stark against the lemon flannel...

...the double heart next to 2014 was an oops (I thought I had programmed the machine to stop after the final heart but no, it started to repeat the whole line again!)

Cross My Fingers - Finish Along Q3 Challenge To-do List!

Okaaayyy, will give this a go - The Littlest Thistle blog (aka Katy) is running a finish-along challenge - great incentive to win any of the awesome prizes and I know I will need the incentive!!

I had already planned to make a conscientious attack on my UFOs and WIPs, so for each one I finish by 30 Sept I'll get one entry into the prize draws.

Here is my "fingers-crossed list"!

• assemble and complete my 2012-2013 Moda Mystery Designer BOM
• complete my Jigsaw Blues quilt (quilt and bind)
• quilt and bind the baby panel (with pram on it) that I bought two years ago
• finish toy giraffes #11 #12
• complete my Amelia's Hot Cross Buns quilt (below) (quilt and bind)
  
• complete my Riley Blake baby quilt (at right) (border, quilt, bind)
• complete my Country Jigsaw quilt (extra row of blocks, quilt and bind)
• create and complete the String of Pearls QAL quilt that I have just bought a set of Robert Kaufman/Anne Kelle Remix Ovals fabrics for - bliss! (Have been wanting to make this one for quite..a...while!) got these colours yesterday at Kitz'n'Thingz, and have ordered the yellow, orange, blue and grey ovals fabrics from FabricFix and The Fat Quarter Shop (the US dollar is high against the NZ$ at the moment so I did add a few other wee goodies to the order as well LOL!)
  
• SIGH! BREATHE! GET STARTED!

Sofa cushions #2-4

Four new cushions in total now, just one more to re-cover.  

The two larger ones are made with a furnishing fabric called Pohutakawa that I picked up on special in Spotlight yesterday. The soft green matches well (I took my tote bag to the shop with me so I could find something with a big pattern that would complement the Comma fabrics). I think it's cool how the flower shape/pattern echoes the motifs in the Comma designs too - serendipity!

This is the second one I've made with the Comma fabrics, just quilted it with some straight lines.

Everything (with a warm batting inside it) has the Rumbles seal of approval of course! (Bess, in the background, would just approve of being allowed inside at all!)

Of course normally I would not have so much going on one sofa but as you can see the second sofa is kinda full already (is like this most days of the holidays/weekends) so I will spread some of the cushions across that as soon as a space becomes available..."KIERAN! Take a break already!!"

A-ha! Human-free zone...here are less cluttered views:

Oh-So-Musical bag for Jayne

 A commissioned project for my lovely colleague Jayne Diack,who asked for a bag to carry her flute and music folder. She chose the Oh-So-Happy pattern from a previous bag and asked for music notes on the front. Happy to oblige!!

I quilted some score lines on the front panel and machine blanket-stitched the motifs. Handles and lining are lime green. 

And tried out some machine embroidery on the inner pocket, which gives a little thrill when you look inside and see it!

A shame I don't have any musical instruments or score sheets here at home for the photo...Kieran's electric drum kit just didn't have the same ambience as this old gate!

And just for fun, here is the bag that inspired this one...

Sofa cushions #1

School holidays at last, so am making the most of the no-alarm mornings to get onto my WIPs!

Cushion number one to match the throw quilt I made earlier in the year:

Went with concentric circles on the front and straight lines of quarter inch or half inch widths on the back. Much improved on the faded red cushions that we'd had for about the last eight years!

Dinosaur Walk kid-sized single bed quilt

A quick little project with some fun dinosaur fabric I bought a couple of weeks ago...Dinosaur Walk - panel and footprint print by Sugar & Spice Textiles, sold at Spotlight, with a binding in their dinosaur words print.

Here's the birthday boy (now nine months after the event!) with his quilt...

                                         

                                              

Is about 45" x 60" and just has a red solid backing with a corner of the leftover footprint fabric.

I just did diagonal lines across the panels of dinosaur pictures and then organic lines (following the lines of the footprints) in the footprint fabric.

Linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts' Finish It Friday... 

Happy Birthday Lachlan! 2014

I took the chance to try out the embroidery alphabet function on my 'new' machine to add a wee message...