WIPs and finishes!

I've been busy working on my projects before going on my trip next month, so I have some pix to show.

At last the fundraiser quilt for my DD's school is finished. It's on display so the kids can enjoy their artwork, then it's going to be auctioned. Fingers crossed that it was worth the work. It took about 2 weeks to make.

My niece has just had a baby girl, so I decided to make a diaper bag. I got the pattern from here.
Here it is:

and here is a pic of the inside of the bag. Lots of pockets!

That's a centre divider that you can see down the middle.
I hope it will be useful.

I finished the March blocks for the Sew Bee Create group.

It's a 25 patch , all in shades of blue, and will make a very pretty postage stamp quilt. My pic doesn't do them justice.

and lastly I'm assembling all my stars from the Oh My Stars quiltalong.

This is it so far:

There's a lot more to put together, and now I've decided to make the quilt larger, so lots more stars to make too.
I'm happy with how it looks so far!


Linking as always to

Till next time,

Sue

Pink Castle Bundle

Katy at I'm a Ginger Monkey is having a fun contest. You pick a palette of 12 fabrics from Pink Castle Fabrics, and make a mosaic of them. The winner gets that fabric bundle, plus the prestige of having it sold in the store to other admiring folks! How cool is that??

So I started choosing fabrics. Now my desktop is filled with possibilities, and it is surprisingly hard to pin down which I like the best. They are all so nice...

In the process of doing this, I found out a few things about my own preferences. I knew I liked coral, and I thought I would choose to pair it with turquoise, but I turned out to like it with a greener shade. Some of the fabric collections stood out for me,  Salt Air by Cosmo Cricket, (I love it!) and anything by Joel Dewberry. I like gray as a neutral. Brenda at Pink Castle has such a wide selection to choose from.

So, hours later, here it is, ta daaa!

The fabrics are, starting, you guessed it, at top left:

Pezzy prints in gray
1001 Peeps Sheherezade in orange
Ruby, Sundae Stripe in ruby and sherbet
Salt Air Sea Garden in ocean
Salt Air Coral Bloom in seafoam
Walk in the Woods Circle Stripes in cloud
Free Spirit Designer Solid in dark coral
Modern Meadow Herringbone in pond
Salt Air Tiny Bubbles in coral
Riley Blake Basics solids in seafoam
Deer Valley lodge lattice in azure
Salt Air Sea Garden in coral

Till next time

Sue

9 year old artists

Now that I'm home again from a short trip I'm rarin' to go on my WIPs.

My DD is having a fundraiser at the school where she teaches. She had the idea that I would make a quilt. No, it's not like that, I'm joking. The kids in her Grade 3 class would make the squares, and I would put them together. Then we decided to include two other Grade 3 classes. So I came home to 61 squares. Here they are:

The drawings are just amazing! I know I couldn't do so well if someone said to me "draw a penguin" (they love penguins).
We used Sharpies on white squares 6 " finished.

Pros  for the Sharpies:
they fit our budget
they come in a large range of colours
they are indelible

Cons for the Sharpies:
They are indelible, and if you got some on your clothes they would be, but would the colours stay where we put them?

I've done everything I can to set the colours. First a hot iron. Then I bought some Retayne, and following instructions I put some squares in hot water. Horrors. The water was turning light yellow. The first batch shed a little ink, and the outlines of the pictures turned fuzzy, instead of very crisp. This is a lot of stress. Imagine 61 little kids looking disappointed, not to mention their parents. That is a large group.
Finally I got into a groove with warm water, less colour loss, and no dramatic changes. Then I ironed them again. Phew!! Relief! They still look great.

Now I'm sashing them together, here are the first few rows:

The sashing is a sort of jungle print, in keeping with our wildlife theme.

And after that my other WIPs seem a bit tame (pun!), so more about them on another post.

Linking to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced. I'm going there now to browse the fantastic things everyone is making.

Till next time,

Sue

Liebster Award, thank you, thank you!

Recently I learned that Mary Frances of Outside the Line has awarded my blog a Liebster Award.
So I did what anyone would do, I shrieked with joy and did the happy dance! After that I Googled Liebster to see who Ms or Mr Liebster was. Not so. It is a German word meaning favourite or beloved   and so the award is given to five of your favourite blogs. The blogs you choose to award should have less than 200 followers, with the idea that you will be showcasing a new blog to your readers and then they pay forward the award (after you tell them about it!) to another five of their favourite ‘small’ blogs. The love goes on and on.
So thank you, Mary Frances, I am very honoured.

Now, if I have an obsession...OK, I have several, one is reading blogs. It is very hard to choose only five out of them all to tell you about and pass the award along. If any of these blogs have more followers, or have already received the award, my apologies. Recognition is always good, though, right?

Here goes, in random order:

1.A Labour of Love  not just quilts, but lots of other lovely projects too.

2. A Sometimes Quilter    It's always fun reading Kate's blog. I love her quilts.

3. Deb Rowden's Thrift Store Quilts  Deb was a real inspiration when I started making a memory quilt. I like the idea of "upcycling", not to be confused with recycling!

4. Katie Mae Quilts  Kate does amazing quilting, see her Swoon blocks.

5. Patchwork Duck Designs Nicole makes wonderful quilts in fantastic colours

I hope you will visit these blogs, you're gonna love them!

Till next time,

Sue

Bee-ing adventurous

Sew. Bee. Create. :
This is my first bee, ever. I know I can find the time for it, and I'm pretty sure I can make blocks (with enough instructions), but I had not expected to feel so nervous cutting into someone else's fabric. No room for error, and I so want my fellow bee-ers to like the blocks. Performance anxiety, wow.

The good thing about a bee is that it gives you  chance to experiment with new techniques, colours and so on. I'd hoped for this, and that's just what happened.

January started with a bang (for me) with an improvised block. I'd never done this before. I learned several things from doing this:
1. Simple is better. Too late for that now, but I'll keep it in mind.
2. All those seams use lots of fabric. I had almost no fabric left, yet a few bee-ers managed two blocks. See 1. above.

Here's the unfinished block. It's to be trimmed by its' owner.

Feb's block seemed like more familiar ground. Framed squares. OK. This time I set off with more confidence. I knew what sizes I wanted the squares for a block. Again the lessons learned:

1. My math skills are very poor
I found it surprisingly difficult to calculate the widths of the surrounds to finish up with the right size block. I kept getting it wrong, over and over. Finally I got it on the fifth small block I made. I must be a very slow learner!

2. Make sure there is enough fabric for a complete surround before cutting and sewing. See 1. above.

Here are the two blocks I made:

I wonder what March's block will be like?

Linking to Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times.

Till next time,

Sue

Not Quilts - Gasp!!

This last few days I've been working on a few projects that are not quilts. Not even approaching quilts! I know!

Last Christmas I won a prize on the Sew Mama Sew giveaways. It was 2 yards of Heather Ross fabric in the Mendecino print. How excited was I! My first plan, and I said this in the prize draw, was to make a skirt for one of my GDs. There are 2 GDs however, and on more thought I nixed the idea.

There the fabric stayed, while I waited for a project worthy of my prize. Last week I thought of it, a new shower curtain! The one I had didn't match my colours, more of a make-do really. So I set to work measuring, and realized that a shower curtain is approximately 4 yards of fabric. No problem, off to the fabric store, where I found a perfect match that didn't overwhelm my lovely print, and it was on sale! Meant to be, obviously! Hours later of cutting and measuring, I sewed it together, with French seams everywhere, no raw edges for me! Luckily my sewing machine does a buttonhole that is so automatic, I hardly have to be there. It took more time to mark where they would go! And here it is, I'm so excited, every time I see it, it makes me smile!! ( I know, I'm overdoing the exclamation marks, put it down to too much caffeine.)

My other project has just been finished, and I can't wait to share!
A bit of background: I'm going on a short trip in 2 weeks, and another in April, lucky me! I decided I really want a tote to keep everything organized, but I could not find a pattern that worked for my requirements: has to be large, stay on my shoulder, look at least slightly stylish, have several zipped pockets, and have a recessed zip at the top. It seemed impossible to find all these in one, so I decided to modify a pattern to suit. The pattern I chose is the Nikki tote. The only thing it lacked was the zips. So I read tutorials for how to insert zippered pockets and how to put in a recessed zipper. Great tutorials both, but the recessed zipper in my situation was a little different and caused me quite a few groans and gritted teeth.

Here's the result, and I'm delighted that it has turned out better than I had hoped!

Here's a shot of the lining

the zips are set quite high in the body, just behind the edge of the zip there, I'll spare you the picture.

Here is the recessed zip closed:

Linking to everywhere I can find, no not really, but I am so happy with my sewing this week!

Linking to Finish it up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.

Till next time,

Sue

Stars in my Eyes

Since it's now February,( I know it's not the first anymore, but near enough), I'm looking back at what I accomplished last month. It seems like there is a let down after the activity and pressure of Christmas, and I coasted on that for a while. Now I'm gearing up again!

At the moment I'm all about stars. First, the Oh My Stars quiltalong. I'm running to keep up, so far I'm still about on schedule.

Here's a pic of my latest variations on the sawtooth star:

Those little guys are 4 inches square, with not much room for error in cutting or sewing. Several of these stars were rejected and re-sewn due to not enough contrast or placement mistakes. Sigh! On the whole, I'm enjoying making them, and I still like my fabrics!

Next up are the Swoon blocks. I laid then all out on a sheet the size of the finished quilt to get a sense of how they will play together.

This is what I've got in mind. My quilty friends have advised me to "just wing it" when trying to join them together. I was hoping for some more concrete advice than that! I've started the QAYG process on them, I'm going to use Marianne's method to join the blocks. So far I've quilted about 5 blocks, here's today's one:

It certainly beats wrestling a large quilt through a small sewing machine!

The quilting pattern came from here , the link was shared by Katie Mae Quilts.

I also made a laptop sleeve for my DD. Here it is, front:

and back, another star, I can't help myself!

How about you? What have you been doing?

I'm linking to Lily Quilts Fresh Sewing Day, and WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced. There's so much great creativity for you to see at both those sites!

and because I'm only a little blog, 

Till next time,

Sue