Mendocino and robots

I used up the very last bits of my Heather Ross Mendocino farbic to make this skirt... which is now listed for sale on my store.

I have also made and listed a couple of boys raglan Tee's, including this robot one.

Dodgy photo's

Taken at night with a flash.

I quilted the D9P queensize quilt first. It took me ages to pin into the quiltframe, partly coz its so big and partly coz I got the quilt top pinned on backwards and had to redo it, but I wanted to start with this one first because its such a busy dark design that it would hide any mistakes in quilting better. I also thought it would suit an open meander well, which I thought was a good simple design to choose for my first evern attempt at free motion quilting. The pinning took about 1.5 hours and the quilting took about 1 hour! The wadding did buckle up in one place, but because the quit top is so bumpy and bulky from all the seams I the buckle is well disguised (I couldnt even find it to photograph it).

Not many pics of that quilt as its really hard to see the quilting anyway! Looks like I forgot to photograph the back too. ooops.

For Matilda's diamond quilt I decided to do a stipple, but only on the green/yellow fabric. I dont really dig green/yellow as a colour so I wanted to make the pink/red stand out a bit more. I was seriously running out of time when I got to this quilt, so I am sure I could have done a much neater job of the stiple :( I should have just stopped and left it on the frame and come back the next day so I could take my time and enjoy it. Oh well! live and learn. The pinning took about 1 hour and the stipple about 1.5 hours.

In the centre diamond I tried out a free hand flower.

I think I like the back of this quilt better than the front. Thans George in his PJ's playing with a fairy doll house behind the quilt!
You can just make out the stipple design on the backing fabric

Ready to quilt

Tomorrow I am hiring a long arm quilting machine for the day and hope to sandwich and quilt three quilt tops. I had a trial run 2 weeks ago when I attended a mini-course on its use... see here. The quilt tops are pictured above, stacked with their backing fabrics and wadding, all cut to size and ready to go. The first in line for the LAQer is my queensize D9P quilt, pictured at the bottom of the stack (I FINALLY added on the borders!). Then I will quilt Matilda's diamonds quilt, pictured in the middle of the stack. Finally, if I get time, I will quilt the ziggy top I finished last week and it sits on the top of the pile.

Stay tuned for photo's- if I am not to shy I will take them on the quilting frame in the shop!

Little crooked smiles...

Arent just reserved for dashing, fictional vampires... this little crooked quilt I am in the middle of constructing makes me smile my own little crooked smile.

I bought the fabric and instructions as a kit from Quilters Barn. The quilt is called 'Ziggy'. I still have the borders to add, but I was just busting to show off a pic. Once finished it will be about single bed size.

And while I am here I will share with you some little micro-premie outfits I sent out this week. I am sending all my best wishes to the to the little girl they were sewn for.

Feel like shopping?

You mignt want to visit my tin whistle store . I've just stocked it :)

Ziggy quilt

I bought a quilt kit at the recent Perth craft and Quilt fair from the Quilters Barn stall. Its called 'Ziggy' (its not up on their website unfortunately). Its a series of zig zags pieced together from half-triangle squares. Now the quilt I just finished is made up of those blocks as well, but pieced from individual 5" charm sqaures... Check out this cool way I was instructed to make the half-triangle square blocks for the Ziggy quilt (note this is probably a completely normal quilting method. LOL... i really am a novice when it comes to quilting!)....

Take two pieces of fabric 30cm x 55cm and lay them right sides together

Pin the foundation paper supplied in the kit onto the two pieces of fabric (the foundation paper has a series of 5" square blocks printed on it with the diagoinal marked through each square, and then a series of stitching lines marked a 1/4" each side of the solid diagional lines).

Stitch all the diagonal dotted stitching lines, going through the paper and both layers of fabric.

Using a rotary cutter and ruler, slice along the solid lines.

Pull away the foundation paper on each of the "triangles"

Fold them back and press the seams... viola half triangle square

From the origional 30cmx 55cm cut of fabric I generated 16 half-triangle squares.

I have another 9 'sets' of these to make and then I can piece together the zig zags.

For Luke

George's little daycare buddy turned 3 last week, and as his mum had admired Georges red tartan pants I knew just want to make Luke. I added in a Milly-made raglan skivvy to bulk out the pressie. I pieced together the front using strips of red and cream knit and then cut out the top as per normal. Not sure I really love the placement of the stripe accross the front, but I like the concept of pieceing different pieces of stretch fabric together.

Lily modelling the Betty dress.

She even pulled a suitably coy expression for me!

Have you got your sunglasses on?

'Cause you're going to need them to view this just completed quilt top.

Update on Matilda's quilt.

I finally started piecing this quilt top together today. Yay! It took me forever to trim the halftriangle squares down to 4.5"(there were 308 of them afterall). Here is the final layout... at the last minute I decided to shift the centre of the diamond up to the top 1/3 of the quilt. I think it will look more balanced when the quilt sits on Matilda's single bed. Did I do the right thing? Its not too late to change it if I get anough comments saying "Blergh what were you thinking?!". To give you an idea of the size of the quilt I had Matilda lie down next to it. Once I have sewn it together it will end up about 5-10" smaller all around due to all the seam allowances.