NAH quilt on display

This quilt is finished, and has the rather dull name of Not Another Hexagon (NAH) quilt. What can I say but, it was a nickname that stuck.

 I really like this quilt. It was so simple to create, yet is so visually striking and not really anything like I have done before.

 I have made 2 other hexagon quilts AND played around with colour gradients before, so I am really at a loss to explain why this quilt feels to different. Maybe its the muted tones that came in the Kona jelly roll. There are lots of pastel greens and orangey browns.

Smudge checking out the action.

 

  I talked about the piecing of the quilt top here, and then blogged some more thoughts when I finished the quilt top.

 Now onto some of the details. I used a plain grey homespun on the back of the quilt. Boring, but its never going to see the light of day and I didn't want to waste anything more expensive or prettier.

Bonus pin hole to the left of the knot.

 I decided to tie the quilt using DMC embroidery floss. I really didn't want any quilting to muck up the simplicity and sharp lines of the quilt. Plus knotting a quilt is a very quick process- about 1 hour for this quilt.

 I used one Kona jelly roll for the quilt top, and decided to use some strips from a second, identical, roll for the binding. I didn't want to frame the quilt with a dark colour and also didn't want to introduce a patterned fabric (like a stripe) so the second jelly roll seemed kind of obvious in the end. I used 10 strips , but cut them in half (22" long rather than WOF). As a result the binding matched the quilt exactly but didn't allow any one colour to dominate.

 I have hung the quilt in a formal lounge room- which is the first room you enter off the foyer. Its hung off-centre on purpose (in case your wondering!) but I am pondering if it should be orientated the other way, landscape style. It would be easy enough to do, but I'd have to sew on another hanging sleeve. 



This quilt started out as a little play with fabric and colour, and I have been delighted that it felt good enough to display on the wall as a piece of art.

Sunshine

I just had to snap this photo of the late afternoon sun spilling through the window onto my almost-finished quilt.

Back again

I just had to try one scrap vomit block

Sort and slice

I am having a spring clean. I have decided to make a Scrap vomit quilt
Obviously the scrap vomit quilt will be a long term project. First job is to cut up the scraps I have into 2.5" squares. Then i'll just make up the scrappy blocks here and there with no particular time frame to complete the quilt.


A tub of 2.5" squares. Yum.

Happy Drawing quilt

 Some friends had a baby this week, a little baby boy. I had been preparing by working on both a boy and girl quilt. Lucky for me the boy quilt was much (much) further along than the girl one. It just took me a couple of hours over the weekend to get it done.

 As  mentioned in my previous post about this quilt, the top started off with a selection of squares cut from the new Ed Emberley range 'Happy Drawing'. I cut 5" squares and threw them up on my design wall. Then I just ferreted through my stash pulling out bits and pieces that I thought looked good with them. There is a real mix of spots and stripes and other animal novelty prints. The Happy drawing range makes use of interesting and bold colour combinations so I wanted to keep celebrating that but still keeping the quilt suitable for a boy.

 I am not sure if I actually achieved that because both Elizabeth and Matilda questioned why I was gifting this quilt to a boy when the quilt has purple fabric in it, and also... pink cherries. Shock horror!

 For the  backing I used up the remaining piece of the Sandi Henderson stripe I had used on the front. Just for a bit of interest I cut off and rotated one section, so that the stripes ran in a different direction to the main part.

 For the binding I used 22" cuts of some of kona jelly roll left over from my kona hexagon quilt.  

 I like how this binding worked out, and may end up buying more kona jelly rolls for the specific purpose of binding quilts :)

 Here are the lions (and tigers) from the Happy Drawing range. (loose thread dangling from quilt is an extra bonus!)

 And the Elephants (with friends)

Giraffes. These pictures also shows off the quilting. Just simple rows of stitching either side of the seam lines.

 Crocs

 And my favourite from the range, the cranky dragon.

Welcome to the world, baby boy!

--July and August Bee Blocks--

I bet you're wondering what happened to the quilting bee I was in. I blogged the blocks for Feb, March, April and May. June was my month, and I sent out fabric and posted up a tutorial for my block. July was Joy's month, but as happens sometimes, life got in the way for Joy and it was August before she could manage to send out her fabric. Hot its heels was fabric from Mands, the August Bee girl proper.

Joy sent robot fabric and matching tone on tones in bright fabrics. This quilt will be for her son, who is 5(?).

The block looks deceptively simple, but there is a pattern to the layout of the block components, which adds some order to an otherwise busy block.

I think she is planning on sashing the blocks to break them up a bit. Cant wait to see her finished quilt.

Mands send some hot pink fabrics and asked for Whirly gigs.

What I really like is that Mands has used a background with a subtle pink spot on it. Its my favourite kind of background fabric at the moment (despite this I still keep using kona solids or plain homespun).

She only sent 2 pinks, but there was enough background fabric for a 3rd, so I raided my stash for some hot pink and whipped it up.

I love that this block has movement and is interesting, despite being so simple to sew.

I don't think I've actually talked about the blocks I have been receiving back from my month in June. These are blocks I received back this week. I have others that  arrived back in June, but are safely stashed for now. When they are all back I will pull them all out and piece the quilt together. This is my first quilt bee and I really want to have a quilt to show off within a few months of the bee finishing.

Happy drawing quilt top

I sewed this together last week just for fun. It's simple quilt made from 5" charms which I cut from some of the Ed Emberley Happy Drawing range, plus co-ordinates from my stash.





It's happy and bright but boyish.


-Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone while I sit in Sizzler (ughhhh) and the kids go crazy at the dessert bar.

Nosey Parkers

This is a completely non-crafty project but I just had to share. We have 6 guinea pigs (or cavies) that run free range on our back lawn. They are SO FRIGGEN NOSEY! Yesterday I caught these snaps while I was out in the garden photographing my rainbow bargello quilt. They couldnt help themselves but sneak over and see what I was up to.

This one is 'Chai' (we rescued them as a sister pair and the other one is pure white.. so we called them Chai and Latte). She is the most tame, and therefore nosey, of the 6 pigs. Behind her you can make out Smudge. She is the most skittish. We got her as a baby and she has had the least amount of handling.

This one is 'Licky' short for licorice allsort. She is our oldest pig and considers herself the boss. She isnt necessarily braver than Chai, but figures she ought to be checking things out if Chai is.

Guinea pigs are ace pets! We love them all!.

Rainbow Bargello quilt {WIP 8 of 12}

Introducing my first piece of quilt art. She now hangs proudly at the end of a long hallway. Its rather a dim and dark hallway, but a perfectly placed down light shines right on her and she really gives the whole space a real lift.

I purchased the rainbow fabric for this quilt 4 years ago and blogged about it here. I bought it as a fat eighth pack of hand died fabrics from the Perth quilt and craft fair. A couple of  months later I had a play around with some of the fabric and then it was all carefully stored for 4 years. More recently, I sorted through all my old WIPS and compiled a list of projects for the 12 WIPS in 2012 challenge. Somewhere in the intervening months I managed to lose the original bargello block and could only find the pack of fat eights. With nothing to build on I took the quilt in a new direction, outlined here. Earlier this month, I finished the front and back of the quilt, sandwiched and began the quilting process.  

The finished quilt is approx 30"x 40".

Here is a view of the back. I have added a hanging sleeve to the top which is why it looks kinda funny up there.

Quilting it was kinda fun. I was expecting it to be tedious, but because the quilt is small it only took a few hours. I'd really like to say how much I like the mottled colours of the hand dyed rainbow fabrics and how they look against the typeface fabric (which by the way is from the range Hometown, designed by Sweetwater and manufactured by Moda). 

I bound the quilt in a plain cream homespun.

Here is a long shot of the quilt hanging in its new location. You can just make out the door to me sewing room in the foreground of the picture... so I get to see this quilt every time I enter or leave my room.

Another angle of the quilt hanging in the hallway.