Cushions and Pyjamas

Hi everyone :) I'm popping in to show you a couple of little projects I started and finished recently. I somehow ended up finishing these two projects and the Mushroom Houses quilt (more on that in a later post) all in one weekend. It was a little hectic! But good fun.

The first project was a cushion for my lovely mum-in-law. It was her 60th birthday recently and to celebrate we had a holiday in the Alps in France together, along with assorted family members including our gorgeous nephews, who are now 2! I thought I'd make a little something for her to remember the holiday by, so I started off with a little mountain scene:

 

And turned it into a cushion:

This means I've finally got over my fear of making cushions! I made a practice one first, and took the opportunity to also practice free motion quilting:

I was pretty proud of it! I still need a lot of practice befire attempting it on a full quilt, but I'm hoping it won't be too long before I can manage it.

The other project was a second pair of Lego pyjamas. This time round they were for my dad.

Here are my hubby and my dad together:

Fun times :) I'll be popping in again soon to show you the finished Mushroom Houses quilt, along with the start of a new project. See you soon!

I'll be linking up to Finish It Up Friday when it comes around :)

Quilting Round in Circles

Hi all :)

A little while back I asked for thoughts RE quilting this baby:

People suggested lots of great ideas, but I was still quite stuck! Finally I decided to go a bit out of the box - and quilt it in circles. Yup, circles. So with the help of a side plate and a vase I mimicked the pattern in the mushrooms-in-circles pattern. Ta-da!

I practised free motioning circles to see if that would work but although my skills are definitely improving - I reckon I can manage a passable free motion squiggle now - my circles weren't up to scratch, so I used my normal machine foot. And it was really good fun!

My stitch lengths aren't the most consistent thing in the world, but (a) they're pretty good and (b) I'm pretty sure the baby won't notice. The only downside about this style of quilting was the amount of knots I had to hand-tie and bury. It took ages! Lots of time crawling round on my hands and knees tying them and then trying to bury them securely. I think it was worth it, although I might not be in a rush to do it again.

The best thing about the quilting is how cool it makes the back look:

 

It really adds some interest to the otherwise plain green back :)

It shouldn't be too long now till I'm showing you the completed quilt, woop woop!

I'm linking up to Work in Progress Wednesday.

A Confession

Hi everyone! Hope you're enjoying your April. I'm loving the sun now that we've had our hour change. Shame it's still so cold, but I'll make the most of what we've got :)

I haven't been doing a lot of sewing recently. And I'm afraid I have a confession to make - I've been cheating on quilt blogs. Shocking, I know. You see, I've fallen rather head-over-heels in love with a blog called I Heart Organising. It's so beautiful! So my mind has been buzzing with ideas of how to organise our home and make things pretty. Not much has been implemented yet, but lots is going on in my head. We'll see how it goes!

In the meantime though, while I was on holiday with my church my lovely friend Jenny taught us to make felt animals:
 

And I've been making a few more Christmas blocks:

So I haven't completely given up on the needle and thread yet :) See you soon!

Ramblings

Hi again :) I completely forgot to link up on Wednesday after all. Woops. But thanks to everyone who read anyway and gave me ideas RE quilting. Lots to think about!

The quilt back is currently sitting on the back of a chair in our louge, staring at me. It's staring at me because (a) I need to figure out the ratio of green-on-the-left to green-on-the-right and I'm nervous about getting it wrong and (b) it knows it's soon time for basting and I'm scared. I'm going to have to face up to my fears soon. Mean quilt reminding me about this!

Intimidating, isn't it?

Anyway, while I put off the inevitable, here are a couple of things I realised I hadn't shown you. First up, I've been organising my fabric!

This is a very old photo, taken at my old house! Unfortunately this isn't the whole picture - there's also a basket full of mess fabric which still needs organising to work on. All in good time. This photo also shows me that I really don't need any more blue or pink fabric. For some reason I'm always drawn to blue fabrics, even though it isn't even slightly my favourite colour. Weird, huh?

Another thing to show you is I found a good use for fabric scraps :)

Hoping my family like the bunting cards, cos they're lots of fun to make!

Anyway, enjoy your weekends (I have a day off today so mine's started early, win!), and I'll see you soon :)

Houses under Construction

Hi all :) Wow, it's been ages since I last blogged. I don't know if it's the miserable weather or what, but recently I've been so tired all the time I've only just had enough energy to manage work and watching TV, so sewing and blogging have taken a bit of a back seat! But I have been slowly progressing, so here's where I'm up to :)

The Mushroom Houses quilt is coming together nicely. I completed the top a little while ago, and last night I started work on the back. Here's the front:

And here's the progress on the back so far:

Rubbish photo, sorry!

The back was inspired by the back of Juliet's Tilda quilt. A very lovely and very inspirational lady :)

So here's my dilemma - how should I quilt it? Free motion quilting is probably out as I've never really done it before, but never say never. I quite like the idea of getting some colour involved as the front is very white (maybe outlining each square in perle?), but the colours are quite awkward (fairly muddy shades) so finding matching thread could be tricky and I'm on a budget. As far as patterns go I'm a bit stumped - nothing's feeling uber inspiring at the moment. So, what would you do? I'll be linking up to Work in Progress Wednesday when it comes around to see if anyone has any ideas!

Hope you're all well, bye for now!

A little progress

I'm working on two projects at once at the moment, which is quite unusual for me! I'm normally a one project gal. But here's what's going on at the moment :)

Christmas Quilt

I made my first block! It's so pretty. Completely in love with the fabrics.

Mushroom Houses

While my hubby and mother in law were tiling our bathroom (thanks guys!), I did a lot of cutting:

And I've since been sewing the pieces into rows:

I also took the slightly-too-girly houses fabric:

And carefully pieced it to create a nice clean line :) I was really pleased with how this worked out.

Hope you're all well :)

Mushroom Houses!!

Hi everyone :) I've recently started work on a new baby quilt. Little Miss Cooper's mum has asked me to make a quilt for a friend of hers who is having a baby. We went fabric shopping together to come up with some ideas and we were browsing around without reaching any conclusions until she turned around and said "Mushroom houses!!" So, Lecien's Woodland it was!

This is going to be another gender neutral quilt. A little awkward as a lot of this range is based on fairies and flowers, but with some clever selection and some planned fussy-cutting (we'll be losing the flowery garland on the white fabric) I reckon it should be achievable.

Here's my plan for the quilt:

Does anyone else plan their quilts in Paint? Anyway, I'm looking forward to working on this one. The rows of houses between the rows were my friend's idea - I think they're going to look really cute! I'll be intruiged to see how close the real quilt looks to this picture in the end.

See you soon :)