Liberated scraps! Yum!

This is going to be a crib quilt for a dear friend of mine who's just given birth to a beautiful baby girl.

I couldn't get enough of this block, having recently made a table runner using the same one (see post below).  I have used scraps of Michael Miller, Denyse Schmidt and Liberty fabrics, with some Moda solid pink thrown in there for good measure.

It needs a border, because it's only a wee quilt top so far.  I just kept making blocks until I ran out of scraps and this is what I ended up with.

There is one problem, however....

CHUNKY!

BULKY!!

I am thinking that I will need to get a long-arm quilter to quilt in the ditch along these really bulky seams, so I can then go ahead and do my hand quilting inside the white stars.  There is no way my little Janome could handle these seams!  It could barely manage piecing them together!  I am hoping quilting in the ditch will help flatten it out a little.

Any other suggestions?

What's up, Doc?

Well, I've been pretty busy actually and unfortunately that has not left me much time for quilting.

Having said that, here is a sneak peak of a little project I've had on the go since before Christmas.

I'm also working on a baby quilt for a friend who has just given birth.  Hopefully she is too busy with the baby to read my blog!

I think it is a little too liberated, even for my liking!  I am planning to cut all of the pink squares back to the same size and just liberate the yellow "twinkles".

Hand quilting finished!

I'm so happy with this "quilt".  It doesn't have batting, so I feel weird calling it a quilt; it does have three layers, but the middle layer is muslin.

I love it!

I like the backing nearly as much as the top.

I'm not finished yet, of course.  Ive still got the binding to go.  Not sure when that's going to happen though, because I put hand quilting cotton in my machine and now the tension is buggered!

Stay tuned!

Does it need more?

I enjoyed quilting this little number so much.  The Perle cotton no.8 is a joy to sew with...

Hand quilting is so much fun.  I'm surprised that I like it as much as hand piecing.

I was going to create a cross-hatch pattern with the quilting, but a seed of doubt has been planted by someone else's opinion ("Cross hatching it would kill it.... Have you thought about doing something less structured in keeping with the modern look of the piece?").

Now I'm stuck.  Frozen.  Blocked.

Maybe it does need something more "interesting" that the same stitching running in the opposite direction.  I don't know.  And I really love this little piece.  I don't want to mess it up.

Another option: leaving it as it is.

Liberated Log Cabin - more progress

I've started hand quilting my liberated log cabin...

I'm using Perle cotton no.8 threads.

They are so lovely to quilt with.

I'm using blues and purples in the dark sections and red, pink, orange and yellow in the light sections.

The back is looking ok.  The stitches aren't great, but I just love the look of the stitches on the solids.

The dissecting lines are where I have quilted in the ditch, also with Perle cotton by hand.

It's going to take a while to quilt this project, even though it's only about one metre square because the rows of quilting are only one inch apart and I plan to create a cross-hatch pattern.  Eek!

PS - thanks to those readers who advised me on how to create straight lines of quilting.  I am using one inch wide masking tape and it's working really well. :-)

Liberated Log Cabin - progress

Remember this quilt?

Well, I started quilting it last night...

My plan is to cross hatch the whole thing, using royal blue Perle cotton no 8 in the dark areas and maybe pink or yellow in the light areas.

The only problem is, the logs are liberated, so I think I want the quilting to be "unliberated", if you know what I mean.  I mean, I want the quilting to be as neat as possible.

The quilting lines are about one inch apart, but they are pretty uneven looking.  I found it quite stressful as I was quilting, trying to keep the lines straight just by eye.  I think if I mark the quilt with straight lines it will take all of the worry out of the project.

Any suggestions for what to use to mark my quilt?

Liberated four patch - pinwheel FINISH

A bit about the "process" with this quilt:

1. I started with liberty scraps. I didn't have much, so I had to stretch them as far as I could. I decided to make four patches using the liberty scraps and some solid pink. I had been reading Gwen Marston's book "Liberated Quiltmaking" and so I decided to try out that method.

2. After I had made the four patches, I decided to give them some space by placing them around a liberated pinwheel (in grey). I was inspired to use the grey because there was a lot of it around in blogland at the time and I already liked pink and grey as a colour combination. I used Kona Cotton Ash.

3. Then I had to find a way to make even sized blocks, and because the pinwheel - four patch blocks were all such different sizes, (because the four patches were all such different sizes, because the liberty scraps had all been such different sizes), I decided to put a grey "L-shape" around one half of the pinwheel blocks. Then I squared each block up to be the same size, about 10" square.

4. Next: sashing. All I did here was trial various fabrics I had in my stash. I NEVER would have thought to pair pink and grey with lime green and light blue (Amy Butler), but once I saw it, I loved it. I carried the pink through into the sashing to almost create a chain effect. As you may or may not know, I am a huge fan of the Irish Chain pattern, and with hindsight, I can see that chain pattern coming through in this design.

 
5. Backing, batting and binding. Aaahhhh, the three Bs! Such joy! For the backing, I chose another Amy Butler fabric from the "Love" range, one of my all time favourite fabrics ever. I think it contrasts beautifully with the top of the quilt, and I love the way the quilting shows through, randomly meandering across the floral pattern. Batting is always 100% cotton. And for the binding, I chose the solid pink again. 

6.  Finally, the quilting.  I decided to try some outline quilting in the grey pinwheels and then a simple leaf pattern in the sashing.  No markings were used in the spirit of liberated quiltmaking.  I used the large "naive" style of quilting made famous by the girls at Material Obsession, and I think that style really suits the liberated quilts.  I still haven't quilted the four patches, and am yet to decide whether I will or not.  For now, they will remain unquilted.

A few thoughts about the finished product...

First off, I have to say I am pretty unhappy with the placement of the small four patch - pinwheel in the top right corner block. 

 It looks like the corner of the quilt has been cut off.  I should have been prepared to liberate a little more, in order to turn that block around so the colour was in the corner instead of the big grey "L".  I think that would have balanced the design.

The quilting is not good, but I am happy with it because since doing the quilting on this project, I have improved, and you have to be willing to do something badly to get good enough to do it well.  So, I'm ok with the dodgey quilting.

I wish I had had the courage to use a totally new fabric in the binding.  It looks too tidy with the solid pink.  Looking at the quilts in "The Quilts of Gees Bend" has really inspired me to get creative with binding.

Thanks for reading this far, dear reader!

ANZAC Bee Quilt - Liberated Log Cabin

This is my liberated log cabin quilt top (a la Gwen Marston "Liberated Quiltmaking" style).

Pinned and ready for quilting

I am yet to decide how I will quilt this quilt.

Hand quilt or machine quilt?

All over design or custom quilting?

Any suggestions are welcome, as always!

Bits and Pieces

Well, it's been a while, I know, but I have been working on a few bits and pieces...

I am the Queen Bee this month for the online quilting bee, ANZAC Bee.

I have received a few blocks in the last couple of days and although I am yet to piece them together, this is the look I'm going for.  I think it's going to be a really beautiful quilt!

I'm also working on a good old fashioned 9-patch using fabrics from the American Jane "Breath of Avignon" range.  I love these colours with a navy background.  This will be a gift for the next baby boy that comes along (there are plenty of babies on the way!).

I have completed 30 hexagon flowers with Judie Rothermel civil war reproduction fabric, ostensibly for the Hexagon Charm Quilt piece-along that I am a member of, but it's not going to be a charm quilt, so now it's just a hexagon project I'm working on.  I was going to applique the flowers to a background fabric, with sashing in between each piece of appliqued fabric, but I didn't really enjoy the applique, so I'm thinking I may now need to make an awful lot of hexagons to go in between the flowers....  Not sure yet.

And because I am basically insane, I have started making another set of hexagons out of liberty prints.  Don't ask me why, because I don't know myself!

This is a sneak peak of yet another project I have on the go at the moment.  The technique is called "pojagi", which is Korean patchwork.  It is a double-sided piece of patchwork, with no batting in between, making it an excellent patchwork project for someone living in a warm climate.  I first learned of this at The Silly BooDilly's blog.  This woman's work is seriously beautiful!  Do yourself a favour and check out her blog.

  Then I found this lovely blog, which gives EXCELLENT instructions on how to make pojagi patchwork.  This blog is written by a Japanese lady in English, which is her second language, but her instructioins are nonetheless really clear.  She has used pojagi to make a furoshiki, which is a Japanese wrapping cloth.  Her furoshiki is divine.

So, as usual, I have an enormous number of projects on the go, with many more UFOs waiting for some much needed attention piling up in the corner of the dining room!  Oh well, I don't fight it anymore.  This is how I work.  Now I just go with it.

Thanks for dropping by, and if you are reading this now, thanks for reading all the text as well!

Cheers!

Hexagon charm quilt update

I've appliqued the first of 30 hexagon flowers to the background fabric... I like it!  This was originally going to be a charm quilt, but I have changed my mind.  I want to make individual blocks with a hexagon flower appliqued to each block, and then I want to have sashing between all the blocks. 

This will be something a bit different from the last hexagon quilt I made, which was just all hexagons pieced together.  I still haven't decided whether I'm going to hand quilt it, or have it machine quilted by Barb on her long arm quilter.  Decisions, decisions!

And now, on to other matters...

I've been doing some more hand quilting with the Perle cotton #8 from Threadart.  I'm enjoying it so much more than I thought I would.

Any ideas on how to quilt the liberty / pink four patches?  Just outline quilting like the pinwheels?  Or little flowers perhaps?  Or a cross through the fourpatch?

Liberated Snowballs

I ordered a few charm square packs from Hancock's a while back, and the other day I whipped up a doll's quilt out of the Kona Primary Colour squares. I used the "liberated" style of piecing described by Gwen Marston in her book Liberated Quiltmaking. I love this style and I think it really suits the solids.

I've machine quilted in the ditch, and for the first time ever, I am going to try some hand quilting! 

This is my first attempt.  I have used Perle cotton, size 8 and done some large stitching.  But I don't like it.  I think I am going to need to draw the quilting lines on the fabric first, so the stitches stay parallel to the seams.  Also, I'm not sure I like this quilting pattern.  I think maybe some straight line quilting might look better with the liberated piecing.  Gwen Marston uses a combination of straight line quilting and liberated quilting in her work, and I think I like the straight line quilting better. 

Any suggestions?  I was thinking of maybe just using a diagonal lattice pattern.

Look at this box of goodies!

 I ordered these Perle cotton (size 8) from ThreadArt over the internet.  They were VERY reasonably priced.  I think with postage from America, it cost about AU$40.  I can't wait to try them all!

No plans for Liberated Quilt

Well, this is it so far...

So, in terms of "where to" from here, I have no idea!  Ok. that's not entirely true.  I went and bought a few bits and pieces from Peppermint Stitches yesterday, thinking I'd also like to use some of the blue liberty prints in the next border or two.

I'm thinking liberated triangles maybe...

Liberty Prints and Liberated Quiltmaking

I finished hand-binding the Liberty scrap quilt for our unborn baby's bassinet this morning.

And the backing...

I have started ANOTHER project!  Unlike all the good bloggers finishing their UFOs, I seem to be accruing MORE UFOs.  Anyway, I couldn't stop myself.  A a new aquaintance lent me some quilting books, one of which was Gwen Marston's "Liberated Quiltmaking".  I immediately became obsessed, pouring over illustrations of Gwen's work in the book.  I had to start something immediately!

Here is one of 9 blocks I have made using the "free piecing" method described in Gwen's book:

I have used only fabrics from my little stash so far.  You may recognize the liberty prints - offcuts from the liberty scrap quilt pictured above.  It was so much fun to make up the block as I went along, with no plan, no measurements, no idea what was going to happen next.  It really was liberating!