Round Trip V.1 quilt

 In January I was very keen to join in with Emma Jean Jansen's sewalong for her Round Trip quilt pattern and I decided to create a quilt to donate for auction at the Clash For Cancer charity bowls tournament being held by my lawn-bowls club at Easter.

I had this Serendipity (by Artisan Batiks by Lunn for Robert Kaufman) fat quarter bundle that had been in my stash for a while and decided to make the large throw, using the 6" blocks for Version A (coloured fabrics in centre strip and corners, with the sashing being the two inner panels of each block).

I used a blue batik (from Spotlight) for the background/sashing fabric.

With 110 blocks to create, there was a LOT of cutting to do first!

When it came to quilting it, I was able to make use of the new channel locks that I had purchased from Bernina (the Sewing With Passion girls in Invercargill) which meant I could do straight lines on my Bernina Q20 longarm - so it only took me about 90 minutes to do.

I used the same dark blue batik for the binding.

Finished at 56" x 64.5"

Emma Jean's pattern has variations for all sizes of quilts, and for variations of colour placement/layout, so I can see myself using the pattern again in the future (hence the title, V.1)

PS: Was sold at auction for $255 to one of our bowling club members, Beth Campbell - overall the entire tournament raised almost $15,500 for breast cancer support in Southland - a fantastic result for the organising team that put it all together.

Beauty in the Unity

Another catch-up of a project from the past year or two that hadn't yet been shared...better late than never!

This quilt was a mystery QAL kit from Donna Ward at Donna's Quilt Studio (the store is now closed and Donna is focusing on longarm quilting), that I completed in 2022.

It had a good mix of different blocks eg flying geese, stars etc.

It is a large lap/small twin quilt that measures 57"square, and it made a good practice piece for learning to quilt with my Bernina Q20 longarm machine - I used both free-motion and ruler work.

I love the colour and boldness of Kaffe Fassett fabrics, but have not used them much - only on this little zip pouch - so chose this colourway for the project (Donna usually had three colour/fabric choices for customers to choose from when she offered a QAL).

Another chance to use some stash fabric for the backing - a batik that has been waiting for just the right project!

Gypsy Mama for My Mum

This is a pattern by Judi Madsen which is called 'Mama Gypsy' (I got it the wrong way around when I wrote my label, sigh) and Judi ran a quilt-along during 2019 for people to join in with, so I thought I would join in as I bought the pattern a year or two ago and this was good motivation to use it.

An inside photo  - I only got this finished on Sunday 22nd Dec, which was cutting it extremely fine
as I needed it washed, dried and wrapped up before Mum came to stay on Christmas Eve evening!

I decided to make this 81" square quilt for my mum to have on her bed as hadn't yet made a large quilt for her. She is a fan of purple, and when I found the purple/teal batik, I decided to run with those two colours and a white background - so that all took a bit of working out as the pattern is designed for using with a larger range of colours.

As mentioned in my previous post, the weather here has been terrible (not summer-like at all) and I was lucky that the 23rd of Dec was not raining and I was able to hang it up on the line for a couple of hours to help dry it out.

The photo doesn't do it justice, but every time I walked past the back door, 

the colours of the quilt looked simply stunning in the light of the overcast sky.

For the quilting, I used a range of different free motion designs - simple 1 1/2" cross-hatching inside the outer ring of batik sections, wiggly straight lines on the centre batik blocks (using a set stitch on the machine), some FMQ side to side lines inside the purple or teal borders of the small white squares, some FMQ squiggly line 'stars' inside the small white squares, straight lines inside the large solid squares, an FMQ pebbled-leaf motif inside the large white centre border and then an FMQ double-bubble style of motif in the outer white triangles. 

Phew! It was a big job on a domestic machine!

The backing is a purple minky (for which I just use flannel as the 'batting' as the quilt is massive and was heavy enough just with the minky backing).

Merry Christmas!

The great thing about Judi's pattern, is that it also gives you a smaller pattern to use up the off-cuts from making this quilt. I didn't follow that but have got two small lap quilt tops made from the off-cuts, waiting to be quilted...adding to the to-do list!

Great to be sharing with my quilting friends via Wendy's Peacock Party , Kelly's Needle and Thread Thursday and Michelle's Beauties Pageant - make sure you check out the great work everyone 

has been doing by visiting those links too!

Here is a photo of the quilt on mum's bed - a king single:

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!