Fancy Free

This single bed quilt was first patched in 2015 and I found time to quilt it just before Christmas. It is one of my 2017 Finish Along First Quarter goals.

The fabric is a layer cake of Riley Blake Designs' 'Fancy Free' and I used a pattern by Lorna at Sew Fresh Quilts called 'Kyss Me By The Garden Wall'.

I used a large all over stipple to quilt it.  Of all the fabrics, I love the bicycle design the most...

The quilt measures 60" x 74" and the backing is made with more of the multi-print that I used for the long strips on the front, as well as a panel of  'Passion Flower' by Bella Roo Designs for Fabric Editions (that I pulled from my stash). I used an aqua gingham for the binding.

In 2020 I gifted this to my cousin's daughter, Claudia McNally.

#2017falq1geminijennz #2017fal

And I am sharing this at Lorna's very own "Let's Bee Social" quilt party link-up! Hi everyone! And also linking up with Amanda Jean's Finish It Up Friday party.

FAL 3rd Quarter Goals

Am feeling quite satisfied with my 2nd Quarter goals, having achieved three out of six of them! I think a 50% success rate is pretty good considering how busy and manic Term Two was at school!

Joining up with the 3rd Quarter Finish Along, we'll see how successful I can be with this quarter:

This purple Kate Spain cot quilt needs finished:  15th July - all done!

And I am still aiming to get this Patchwork Blues finished before winter is over!

I have this Amy Schimler panel to make up:

I have a set of racing fabrics to work together:

I'd quite like to get this Christmas quilt done too...BEFORE Christmas!

I need to get this French General UFO quilted up before September:

I would like to turn these into a bag using this new pattern I downloaded from Coates: DONE! 30th July

And I have this set of squares (cut from leftover Merry Mermaids fabric) to use on a Jumping Jacks baby quilt too...14th July - all done (man, I love chill-out time during school holidays!)

I have a heap of children's fabrics that I want to turn into baby quilts for the Southland Neo-Natal unit or eye spy quilts (for whatever) but just cutting them will be a long-term project!

Mataura Valley meets Ida Valley

Hello and welcome to my visitors from Kelly's Needle and Thread Thursday and AmandaJean's Finish It Up Friday! This is a finish from my goals list for the 2nd quarter of the 2016 FinishAlong.

While it is not summer at the moment (and the frost this morning confirmed that!), the vibrant colours of this quilt reminds me of the blue sky and summer heat of the Central Otago/Maniototo area that this quilt is destined for, and so I have named it 'Summer in the Ida Valley'.

We'd had a real Indian summer until about two weeks ago when it started raining and didn't seem to stop, so it's taken me a while to get the photos taken. With my cousin and I growing up in the Mataura River valley I thought it would be a good reason to head up to Mataura's 'cemetery hill' to get the photos.

My almost-as-tall-as-me-now son was my handy helper but still struggled a little to get the quilt high enough for a tidy, flat shot but you get the idea! I must say that the green of the Mataura Valley is very different to the brown-gold of the Ida Valley in the height of summer...

Photo taken a bit higher up the hill (where the top part of the hill was still keeping the look-out in shade).

This single-bed quilt is for my cousin's son, 15 year old Logan, and is made of his favourite colours of blue, orange and yellow.  I bought the batiks when in Sydney last year for the Netball World Champs and put it all together during the summer holidays, finally finishing off the quilting about a month ago.

The pattern is called 'Under the Sea' and is from Sue Pfau's book "Quilts From Sweet Jane' (Martingale); I've backed it with a deep blue spotty minky, making it very snuggly (which Logan will need in his sleep-out in winter!) and I've quilted it in simple diagonal lines.

My taller handy-helper-hubby was being silly when I asked for his help back at home...

...but I did manage to get a decent front-on shot!

Easy As (Summer) cot quilt

Using some of my 'textile preservation collection', I grabbed these Kate Spain charm squares and some yardage that I also had in the stash to create a pattern from 'Me and My Sister Designs' book ('Simple Quilts - Easy As 1, 2, 3', publisher That Patchwork Place/Martingale, authors Barbara Groves and Mary Jacobsen).

I used the pattern 'Easy as 10' (which, coincidentally, was also made in the same Kate Spain for Moda 'Terrain' fabrics!).  I had two charm packs so split the fabrics into a pinks/oranges/greens pile and a blues/purples pile - the second quilt top is waiting for me to quilt it up.

The backing fabric was in my stash and had exactly the right mix of colours for this quilt! And the binding was a nice bright teal solid, with the quilt finishing at 37" x 47".

I really liked the way that the pattern quilt was quilted, so followed the same design as used in the book, of a circle around each square and a flower inside each square - good free motion quilting practice!

For the wide strips I did a kind of 'hour-glass' loopy design to keep some curves without having too much going on over top of such a busy print background.

A finish for my goals for the 2nd Quarter of the Finish Along challenge and I am linking up to share with Crazy Mom Quilts' Finish It Friday linky party!

And I am sure I had snuck outside while the cat was inside but he takes his 'quilt inspector' role very seriously and managed to find me out there...

FAL 2nd Quarter Goals

Hmm, a bit of carry-over from my last quarter goals (though I did get a few things done on that list, just three projects I still need to attack is not bad!)

Carrying over...

The Kate Spain orange quilt - couldn't quite get the binding done in time so that will be first on this list!
DONE! April - see it here...

The matching Kate Spain purple quilt - ready to be quilted, will do the same style as the orange one.

My Patchwork Blues quilt top needs finished off - would be nice to have it on the bed for winter (after about six years of it waiting in the UFO pile!)

New to my goals list (and aiming to use some stash fabrics, though Spotlight are having a sale and so I can't make any promises about NOT buying anything more than the plain solid that I need for the batik quilt!)...

A batik quilt using this 'Under the Sea' pattern from Sweet Jane...
DONE! May

A mermaid quilt (or even two of them maybe) with these fabrics from my stash...
DONE & SOLD! May

A baby quilt with this Amy Schimler for Robert Kaufman 'Fly Away' panel...

Raspberry Delight for Charlotte

A single bed quilt (69" x 87") made from the Fat Quarter Shop's 2012 Moda Designer Mystery Block of the Month that I took part in. Finally, in January I was able to put the blocks together and at Easter I finished the quilting (just in time for the first quarter of the 2016 FinishAlong challenge).

The fabric range is 'Vintage Modern' by Bonnie and Camille - I adore the combo of cream, raspberry, pink and teal! That is one of the things that drew me to sign up for the BOM.

'Laundry Days' designed by Anne Sutton

'Mint Julep' designed by Lisa Bongean

'Weather Vane' designed by Barbara Groves and Mary Jacobsen

'Town Square' designed by Kate Spain

'Cherry Sundae' designed by Barb Adams and Alma Allen

'Breezy Afternoon' designed by Aneela Hoey

'Moonlight Serenade' designed by Sandy Gervais

'Lime Sherbert' designed by Bonnie Olaveson and Camille Roskelley

'Lakeside Retreat' designed by Joanna Figueroa

'April Showers' designed by Sweetwater

'County Fair' designed by Julie Comstock

'Sunday Drive' designed by Polly Minick and Laurie Simpson

It's hard to see (and was hard to photograph) but each block has a slightly different free motion flower design quilted over it - eleven are pointy petals and one has rounded petals - I had fun trying to think of how to quilt different flowers to complement the patterns each block.

I quilted vines with leaves in the narrow strips of cream-colored sashing, did loopy stipple with flowers in the wide border sashing, and a side to side loopy 'snake' in the thin red border, and some fans in the corner triangles - it was a great chance to use a few different FMQ designs.

The backing is a flower print from the Vintage Modern range as well.

And as per usual, it seems the whole 'family' had to be involved in the photo shoot...

And on January 22nd Charlotte finally received her quilt - a belated birthday present for December - she lives about a three hour drive away from here so it can be a bit tricky to 'drop by' but her family were passing on their way home from a quick holiday at Riverton.

Charlotte had been asking her mum for quite a while about when she might be getting a quilt from me (her older brother got one a couple of years ago), and she didn't realise I had already made one for her but just hadn't delivered it yet, so she was quite thrilled to be presented with this when they called in!