Another Baby Quilt : :

This is a project that I completed last year before sewing became un-enjoyable (for some reason it felt like such a chore while pregnant!!).
My brother and sister-in-law had a lovely little girl so I decided to make her a quilt!! (Like I do every time someone has a baby!)

Here is my labour of love (aka the quilt)...

Ha ha this photo makes me laugh! I had my 6'3'' husband hold up this quilt and told him to crouch down. Poor guy was so uncomfortable trying to keep his head out of the picture! The whole time he kept asking me to hurry up and take the photo. What I put that poor man through! Love him!

This pattern was from one of Camille Roskelly's books I have previously mentioned here, here and here (and probably half a dozen other places that I cant be bothered linking to right now!)

 I used the Riley Blake fabric line 'The simple life', which is pretty old now but I've been hoarding it for baby girl quilts!
I also threw in some Kona solid fabric for the boarders, background and binding, and backed it with some Tilda fabric I got from my local craft store. 
 I used my machine to attempten a loopy-type stitch using the BSR. Not too bad for a first go hey?
Of course the BSR helps immensely!

 I've really got to work on my free motion quilting...but practice makes perfect I guess. Overall, I'm pretty happy with it (although I know its a far cry from perfect!).

I've also started being 'good' and labelling my quilts!! I think this is the first quilt I have actually labelled! I know some people like to include information about the quilt and what-not on the label..but hey at least its a start!! 

I liked this pattern so much I started making a boy version. Its still sitting unfinished in my cupboard (of course), but I know as soon as someone has a boy, that will be the kick up the bum I need to whip it out and finish that one too!!

Jessica

Baby Girl Quilt : :

Despite my obvious lack of posting on my blog of late, I haven't lost interest!! We have had a lot of things going on in the last few months.
 We are steaming ahead with our renovation, my logo for the store is now done, and we had the twins 5th birthday in the middle of all that as well (where does the time go?).
All that was done in between the everyday things of shopping, cleaning, kinder, speech pathology, visiting friends and family, and SLEEP!  (not nearly enough of the later though if you ask the bags under my eyes!)

But despite all that, I still love to squeeze some time quality time in with my sewing machine!

Earlier this year one of my good friends had a beautiful baby! (please ignore the clucking you may or may not hear coming from me).

So of course, every beautiful baby needs a beautiful quilt!

The pattern for this quilt is called 'Sweet Pea', and came from the quilt book written by Camille Roskelly,  'Simplify'. (I L-O-V-E her patterns, fabric....hair, and the fact she is a member of the same church I go to! Yup, she has got a lot of things going for her!)

I used my favourite fabric, Sarah Jane, Children at Play. (yes I know i have made a zillion quilts with this fabric range before. I just have a whole ton of it!)

This is also the first time I have EVER free motioned! I decided to just stipple the quilt instead of getting fancy (and frustrated) with a pattern. I used the Bernina Stitch Regulator (fondly known as BSR) and while it's not fool proof, it was definitely good for me!

I found that it really helped me stay a steady speed, as every time I moved the fabric too quickly, my machine would start beeping at me! I know it makes for 'lazy quilters', as I was told by a Pfaff sales representative when I asked if Pfaff sewing machines come with any sort of equivalent (really, I deserved it! I mean, come on, would any other machine even come close to a Bernina?)

I would like to be able to use the free-motion foot without the stitch regulator eventually, so I tried to maintain a steady speed while quilting. The best thing is that while I'm leaning, my quilts still look fantastic, and it gives me loads of practise!

I love the look of the heavy stippling. I'm not a great fan of sparse-stippling! I am honestly coming to believe that a quilt can never be too quilted!

So this quilt is now over in Baltimore keeping one gorgeous baby girl warm! I really hope I can go and see this quilt in action in the US soon!

Jessica 

P.S Sorry for the terrible lighting with the photos. I stayed up really late the night before and then got up at 5am to finish it! I just snapped a quick photo at my friends house before I left!! Ill up my game for the next post!!

A Vintage Quilt : :

Mr Handsome loves his mum. He treats her like a queen! (Which is one the the things that I really love about him, because that's how he treats me too).

He wants to give her something special for Christmas this year, so he asked me if I would make her a quilt.

He had a look though my quilting patterns and magazines, and we picked one out of my currently-favorite book, 'Simply Retro'.

I have made two quilts from this book so far, and I just love the patterns!

We decided to use the pattern 'Vintage'. This pattern makes a quilt that is big enough for a twin bed! I didn't have that much time (or fabric), so I decided to scale it down. I naively thought that I could just decrease every measurement by 1 1/2 inches to make the quilt smaller. Erm.....WRONG!!

That plan soooo did not work! After getting frustrated, I had to sit down with a pen, paper, and calculator and figure it all out.
It took some work, but I effectively turned the pattern into a jelly roll quilt!
I don't know if that means I can pass this pattern off as my own now...(probably not)....but I'm really happy with it! I am getting a little bit tired of really large blocks, so it was a refreshing change to make some 'normal' sized ones.

Enough chit, chat....here is my quilt!

I used the fabric line 'Winters Lane', from Moda. Its supposed to be Christmas fabric, but I think its non-christmasy enough to use all year round. I really like the mix of blue, red and grey.

The background fabric is Kona Snow, which I think matches perfectly with winters lane.
I backed it in a vintage-looking cotton that I got from spotlight, and bound it in a solid red.

Once I got over the measurement/planning stage, this quilt was really fun to put together (although, I wont lie, it DID take me a long time).

All that's left is to label the quilt, then wrap it up for Christmas morning. I hope my mother-in-law likes it!

(This is me trying to be artistic at a park near the beach! I really liked the rope and I wanted to get a photo with it!)

We are spending Christmas is Mr Handsome's family this year, which we do every other year. He has so many Aunts, Uncles and cousins, that even after 5 1/2 years of being married, I still haven't met everyone! (and I have NO CHANCE of remembering names), but it should be a lot of fun, and I'm glad my kids will have a zillion cousins to play with!

Jessica

A New Quilt For A New Baby!

My Sister had her second baby last Friday!! A darling little boy! I am now the proud Auntie to one niece and 5 nephews!!So of course I wanted to make her a quilt........Drum Roll.......

 TA DAA!! 
(Yes, I am crouching uncomfortably behind the quilt for the photo!)

I just want to say how much I L.O.V.E. this quilt! It turned out better than expected and I adore it! I used the pattern, Baby Love, from Camille Roskelly's Simply Retro. Yes I know, I have used this pattern before, but its such a beautiful baby pattern I just couldn't resist! (The fact that it whips up super quick, and I accidentally cut enough for this quilt when making this one has absolutely nothing to do with it!)

I have a quilting rule. NEVER make the same quilt twice! So for this quilt instead of just binding off my blocks, I added an additional white boarder, then my row of 'flags' (which were oh-so-easy, and look GREAT) then another white boarder. I really love how the 'flags' are free to wave about, and I'm sure will give my new nephew something tactile to play with and hold onto. 

 

I used two of my all-time-favourite fabric lines, Sarah Jane's Children at Play, and Out to Sea for the quilt top. There is just something about the little rockets, pirates, and paper air planes that just makes it absolutely perfect for a boys quilt (especially my handsome little nephew!).

 

I backed it in a minky dot fabric to make it perfect for newborn snuggles. Its super soft and matched so perfectly with the colours in the quilt top that I decided to flip it over and turn it into the binding as well. I have never sewn with minky before, but it wasn't too hard. I spray basted this quilt, which I have also never done, then just stitched in the ditch to join the three quilting layers together. 
I chose a decorative stitch on my sewing machine to stitch the binding down, machine binding being another first as well. 

 The decorative stitch kind of got lost in the minky fluff, but I was still happy with the result.
For a lot of 'firsts' on this quilt, I am super happy with how it turned out! 

 I cant wait to meet my newest nephew and get lots of baby cuddles! 


Toodles!

Jessica

Swooning over swoon!

SWOON is here!! It finally came!

I love this pattern! So beautiful! This is another pattern from Camille Roskelly.  You can check it out here
(There is also a PDF version for those who cant wait!) 

After looking at this pattern, I realised that I must really really like this pattern!
It looks suspiciously similar to the quilt I'm making now....

 

This is a Quilt-a-long that I'm doing. The lovely Melissa, over at Happy Quilting is hosting it.  I was so happy when I caught the start of it! I L-O-V-E how its turning out. I'm making a queen sized 4 x 4 block quilt. Melissa is the perfect hostess too! On her flicker page, she gives a lovely comment on every-single-photo that's uploaded! Now that's dedication!!

I'm making my quilt from Joel Dewberry's Heirloom fabric. The background is Kona stone. I'm really loving how its coming together! When I showed Mr Handsome my Joel Dewberry fabric, he thought it was way too bright (and so did I), but the stone really tones it down without detracting from the beautiful colours in the fabric!

But, no matter how similar these quilts may be, I'm still going to make swoon & love it just as much!

Ill be sure to update my progress, and gush over my new Swoon pattern some more later!

Stay Tuned!

Jessica