Little Bouquet Wallhanging

Finished a little while ago but I've only just gotten around to taking photos of it. (images are clickable for bigger versions)

I quilted the roses as suggested with wonky spirals, and quilted the leaves with a typical leaf vein pattern, which I then echoed around the edge of the bouquet on the background.

and now it's finished I'm not convinced that I like it... again!

Indecision...

I'm being indecisive about two things this afternoon, so while I wait for it to stop raining before I go and check on my cells I thought I'd throw my indecision out there to the internets to see if anyone can help me with the necessary decisions.

Firstly... now I have a darning foot, work on my
little bouquet quilt can resume. However, before quilting can begin I still need/want to add leaves and I have two options regarding leaves and can't decide between them. Below you can see my two options, and close-ups of them.

Left: leaves made out of red and green tartan fabric
Right: leaves fussy cut from some fabric left over from a skirt

So what do we think? Which leaves should it be?

The second thing I'm being indecisive about is in regards to my next project(s); fabric sat begging to be made into shirts.

Firstly I have this Italian shirting fabric that I bought at Clegs last time they had a 20% off sale
I think this would make up very well into the Emily shirt on Burdastyle, but I'm more confident with getting a good fit with princess seams (as in the JJ pattern). So I see my options as:
1- Make the Emily pattern as is (with the shorter sleeves)
2- Make the JJ body with the Emily collar and sleeves - is this possible? can I mush together patterns like that?
Should I take the risk of the fit with the Emily pattern? (I could always make a muslin first to get the fit right, shock horror!) Or do I 'play it safe' and use the princess seams in the JJ?

Secondly I have this slightly stretchy fabric that I got from the $10 corner at Tessuti
But currently have no idea which pattern I'm going to use for it. Any suggestions?

While on the subject of shirts, another shirt pattern I'm just waiting to use is the Ute blouse (which Nichola has taught me the proper pronunciation.) Sadly I don't have the right fabric for that one yet.

A dozen (mostly) red roses!

I've been making the roses for my little bouquet this evening. The roses are surprisingly simple and very fun to make.

If you've taken the time to count the roses in the above picture you'll probably have noticed that there's more than a dozen there. I am planning on having a dozen roses in my bouquet, but when I got to 12 and laid them out somewhat randomly on the background I decided that I'd made too many roses with one of the dark reds on the outside layer so to mix it up a bit I've made a few more with pink around the outside to choose between when it gets to sewing them onto the background. However, looking back at the photos I'm not so sure... I'll decide which ones to use when the next step of the instructions are posted. There are a few more photos on flickr.

I can't wait for the next step to be posted!!

Little Bouquet Quilt-a-long

As I mentioned last time, Cherri of Cherry House Quilts is currently hosting a quilt-a-long to make a 'little bouquet quilt' that I have decided to join in with.

I already showed you the fabrics I'd picked from my feeble stash out as possibilities for it, and at sewing club on Thursday evening we had a bit of a 'swap shop' where we brought along fabric/patterns we weren't likely to use to hopefully find them a new home where they'd be more loved. Jo brought along a whole heap of fabric one of her friends was going to be chucking out, so we has great fun picking through it finding pieces that would be true gems for each of us. I came home with quite a bit of fabric (whoops!), including some great pieces to use for this quilt-a-long project. I also picked up some other great fabric but I'll save posting about it for another time.

These are the fabrics I've chosen for the background of my quilt. I've gone for mostly greens and turquoises (because that's the colours I had!)

These are the fabrics I'm going to use for my flowers, I'm planning on making my bouquet with reds, pinks and a few purples. Again, because I have those colours, but they should contrast really well against the background. The last fabric on the right is a possible to use for the leaves, although I'm also considering cutting out leaves from the fabric from my leafy skirt to use... I'll see what each option looks like when I get to that stage.

Deviating from the instructions straight from the word go... as I don't have any "non fusible/non woven interfacing" I decided to use some white cotton that I had left from a previous project. In another deviation from the instructions I cut 5" squares of this white, aiming to end with 4" blocks for the background. Cutting out my strips, completely randomly at widths between 1" and 2.5", and once I had a reasonable number of each of my chosen fabrics cut I started stitching!

I've finished my background, which you can see in full here. It's not as nice as some of the ones I've seen photos of in the pool, having such contrasts within each block may have been a mistake, but I wasn't sure how else to do it with the number of different fabrics that I had. I'm optimistic though, as the red/pink flowers I have planned should still stand out really well. I cut out the perfect number of strips, only having one strip left over when I finished my last block.

The instructions for the flowers are due to be posted on the weekend, so this project will but put aside for a little while until then... maybe I'll finally stitch up my new PJs in the meantime...