A quilt for Neal and Helena

Today I am finally sharing a very special quilt. This is the project I alluded to as my 5th hit in my hits of 2014 post. It is now with its intended recipients so I can blog about it all I like. This is a very special quilt, and a true collaboration between myself and my Gran.

My cousin Neal got married to his lovely wife Helena in November of 2013. The wedding was on the beach on Stradbroke Island in Queensland, and it was absolutely beautiful (see above), a really lovely day to be part of. If I'm remembering correctly they had requested/suggested a quilt as a wedding gift from my Gran. Granny and I decided that I could help with the quilt, so we started working on it when she was visiting Victoria for the first few months of last year.

Granny wanted to make a medallion quilt design, so we sat down with some paper, a ruler and pencil and experimented with a few designs. I had learnt with the previous the medallion style quilt I've made that it's a lot easier to design the quilt if you have a base unit of measure that each border is a multiple of. We tried a few variations and different borders and such, and eventually settled on the design you can see in the photos, involving quarter square triangles, squares, flying geese, applique and plain fabric borders.

Granny knew she wanted to include turquoise as one of the main colours (the main colour chosen at the wedding, for the decorations, bridesmaid's dresses and groomsmen's ties), and also wanted it to go well in their bedroom, which has a royal blue wall and a lovely painting on the wall with some orange in it (which isn't the room pictured here). From here we had our main colour scheme so went hunting for fabric.

All the fabric was bought at GJs Discount Fabrics, and we tried to pick a range of colours, from pale to bright to dark, and a range of print sizes, from large prints to small prints to solid colours. I particularly like the addition of the orange with the blue and turquoise, I think it's made for a really fresh looking quilt.

One of the fabrics we chose had a larger floral motif, that Granny decided to applique onto the large turquoise border, along with some bias strips and similarly cut out leaves.

Granny did the majority of the piecing of the quilt, although I helped with a little bit of it and with some of the cutting. For the quarter square triangles in the middle we used this method and for the flying geese we used this method.

Once the piecing was finished, I was in charge of quilting, and I ended up doing a combination of free motion quilting and straight line quilting, varying the quilting design to suit each border. We discussed a few different options, and quickly settled on stippling on the quarter square triangles in the centre and the border of squares. It took a little more thought for the other sections.

Darren made the fantastic suggestion of cross-hatching the background of the applique border, so I stitched all the way around the edge of the applique, and then marked the cross hatch lines at 1" intervals, first doing one direction then the other. There was quite a bit of quilt manhandling required to do the cross hatching, as I went back and forth along the lines but I am thrilled with the outcome so glad to have bothered. Having spent my time basting properly and using my walking foot, I didn't have any issues with puckering of the fabric when I was doing the second pass of the crosshatching, which I had been a little concerned about.

In the end, after trying a few different options (including in this baby quilt) I decided to just stitch in the ditch of the flying geese. I just went back and forth in a zig-zag along each side of the geese to reduce the rotation required of the quilt.

For the larger blue outer border I had decided very early on that I would just do concentric squares around the border, and when deciding how far apart to do them I decided to make them progressively further apart as they reached the edge of the quilt.

The quilt is finished with some orange binding, and it has a turquoise backing (from the backing section at GJs so we didn't have to piece the back, hurrah!)

A big project, and I'm absolutely thrilled with how it turned out. I was secretly hoping that Neal and Helena wouldn't like the quilt and I'd be able to claim it. Sadly that wasn't the case, so it has a happy new home with them.

Wallet for Granny

I am very behind in sharing some of the things that I've been making (I'm blaming the Hollyburn Sew-Along, but realistically I'm just slack!). Anyway, better late than never, right? Today I wanted to share another wallet, this one a Christmas gift for my Gran.



After seeing the one I made for myself, my Gran expressed an interest in having one herself. So we went through her fabrics for her to choose what she'd like her wallet to look like.



We found this lovely shell fabric, which is an African fabric with a sort of waxy finish on it. As Christmas approached, I selected some coordinating fabric for the lining and set about making the wallet.



This time I interfaced a lot more of the pieces, as my first wallet turned out to be a bit 'floppy'.



Second time around it was a lot easier than the first, and I'm very happy with how it turned out; look at that super top-stitching! (I know, I'm so modest!)



Now to make myself a new one too...

Sorbetto with Granny

Since it's the weekend, I wanted to take a break from the sew-along and share with you what I got up to last weekend with my Gran. Do you remember the fabric I bought for my gran just after Christmas? Well last Sunday we spent the day having a sewing date to sew the fabric together into a Sorbetto Blouse.

It was quite fun introducing my gran to the concept of downloadable pdf patterns, and even more fun spending the day sewing with her.

We used a self bias binding around the arm and neck holes, but turned it around to the outside so it was visible.

Doesn't the top just look fantastic on her! Thanks for a very enjoyable day Granny!

New Fabric - Thankyou Granny!

My gran is incredibly generous, and while I was staying with her she instructed me to choose some fabric that I like and that she would give it to me. And so, here is the fabric that I chose:

Some lovely navy blue japanese fabric (the third one along has a heap of different prints on the same piece of fabric):

Some gorgeous japanese prints, and some coordinating silks:

Also, not pictured, I have some lovely pink/purple/blue japanese charm squares.

These three pieces of Liberty fabric. These will become two dresses. The two blue ones are big enough pieces for dresses, so I will be thinking of what pattern to use for this. Any suggestions pattern more than welcome:

And some smaller pieces of these Liberty Fabrics which will be made into a quilt:

Lastly, this piece of fabric, which has more drape than quilting fabric and i'm not sure exactly what it is. It's going to become an elastic waisted skirt:

So thanks again for your generosity Granny! I look forward to sewing with it all!

Thank you Granny...

I've had this post in my mind for a while and since it is Mother's day here in Australia I thought it appropriate to post it today. I would like to publicly thank the person in my life that has had by far the biggest influence on my sewing; my Gran.

Granny has helped and encouraged my sewing from the beginning right until today, and I'm sure into the future. She is actually the reason that I started my blog, to make it easier to share my progress and creations with her since as she lives the opposite side of the world to me it's not all that easy for her to see them in person.

A Close-up of the quilt that Granny made me in 1998-99.

For as long as I can remember Granny has been doing patchwork and quilting, and when I went to stay with her in the half-term holidays she would teach me how to do it myself. Starting with hand quilting around the outlines of printed cushion panels, and progressing to basic patchwork and moving on to more and more ambitious and complicated things.

The whole quilt Granny made me.

Machine pieced and quilted by her.

Before I finished high school I had completed, with Granny's guidance, many many cushion covers, a patchwork bag, a patchwork waistcoat, a pair of raggy dolls, and I had even completed a single bed quilt top and begun quilting it.

Taking me along to many different quilt shows, patchwork classes and workshops and more also showed me from a young age how welcoming, varied and friendly the sewing community is.

A close-up of the quilt that Granny made my brother in 2001.

It was this basic sewing knowledge that I was then able to use when I started university and had the need and desire to make fancy dress costumes, and since graduating my progression into garment sewing. I think the attitude of getting stuck in and having a go, even on things I've never tried before, stems back to the times when I would do just that, after raiding Granny's truly superb fabric stash of course! (Over which she is incredibly generous, never begrudging my use of any cut of fabric, no matter how beautiful)

The whole quilt that Granny made my brother.

Machine pieced by her but sent away to be quilted.

Even now, from the other side of the world Granny is a huge support to my endeavours; from encouraging comments on things I've completed, to words of advice when I'm pondering over things, to gifting me with sewing books and fabric.

Me & Granny.

So thank you Granny, for all the help, guidance and support you've given me over the years, both in sewing and in life. I am truly grateful to you for sharing with me your interest which has allowed me to form many happy memories through shared experiences, and I hope there are many more to come.

xxx

Thanks Gran & Jo!!!

Before I continue posting the gifts I made for other people I wanted to show you what my Gran and Jo gave me for Christmas.

Two jelly roles, some charm squares and two fat quarters of various Moda fabrics.

Now I need to decide what to make with them. I'm already having fun running ideas through my brain, especially since I've never made anything with jelly rolls or charm squares before.

So Thanks again Gran and Jo, it's a great gift and I'm looking forward to using it.