June STUD Texture

The theme for June's STUD swap was texture. I originally had plans of trying smocking or tucking or gathering, but these quickly fizzled out as my first attempt just looked a mess and I was running out of time.



Instead I decided to try a technique that I have had in the back of my mind for ages. I got the idea from this book (can't remember now if I bought it or if it was a gift).

What I did was take a piece of plain fabric and cover it with fusible webbing and then stick lots of scraps on top until the fabric is covered. After ironing in place I then used my machine to sew all over the fabric to secure. I used both running stitch and some of the decorative stitches my machine has.



Then I cut it up and made this quilt.



Adding in a bit of ric rac some and some buttons for a bit of extra texture.



Susi (my STUD partner) sent me a wonderful quilt.



See the shell in the net, all the bubble buttons and the mendocino mermaid. Isn't it great! Thank you so much Susi.



Amelie says a big thank you for all your well wishes (and I do too!). She has decided she wants to stay at home until the plaster comes off. So she is now my official sewing helper!

Sew Kid at Heart Bee

Yep I just couldn't help myself. I joined another quilting bee. Though this one is slightly different. We all send our fabric out at the beginning and have a year to make all the blocks. I think this is a great idea as it is everybody's turn at once. But we are yet to see what happens when we try and track who has made what for whom and what the status of each quilt is! I can only hope we all manage to keep on top of it all.

Anyhoo I totally underestimated how long it would take for me to put together the fabric packs to send out. And I didn't realise (silly me) that Amelie would want to be involved. We have spent days knee deep in fabric deciding what goes with what and which fabrics Amelie likes the most. Anything with flowers, horses, spots and stripes apparently! Anything yellow or pink is always a winner too. And every time that Amelie and me had sorted out a pile, Hanna had carried it off to another part of the room.

But now I think I have it sorted and I hope I have included oodles of fabric for everyone. It certainly felt like I was cutting for at least 4 quilts!

What I am thinking is to have a quilt made up of mini stars, squares, rectangles and pieced animals. Does this make any sense to anyone? I have a blurry image in my head and am hoping when the blocks come in it will all begin to fall into place!

The patterns for the pieced animals come from this book. I bought it eons ago and then got scared off by all the inset seams that the patterns have. But there are some cute pieced patterns for animals so I sat down and worked out how to eliminate the inset seams.

Mari (Midland Design) sent a wonderful selection of greys, blacks, oranges and turquoises. She is making a monster quilt for her daughter and asked us to make monster blocks. This was great fun! But Amelie was quite happy to package them up and post them to Mari. I did explain to her that they were nice monsters but they had to always be at the bottom of my sewing box.




I did a mixture of machine and raw edge applique and added some felt and buttons.

Kris aka(Skovy) wanted some bugs for her blocks.



If you want to make bugs like these there are a whole load of patterns here. This block is bug number 14.



This bug is one I made myself. As Mari says it looks as though he should be in jail.

Ariel sent the most delicious selection of fabric strips. She wanted a spiderweb blog and pointed us in the direction of this tutorial. So easy. I am in love with this already and so want to make a spiderweb quilt.

Breaking News

My little Amelie has fractured her arm. All serious sewing is on hold as she is in quite a lot of pain.

Wonderful Post

We have been having such great fun opening the post box over the last week. Almost every day there has been some goodies for us. It is Amelie's favourite part of the day.

Viv was sooooo sweet and sent this book.


(Photo shoot set up by Amelie!)



Just because she wanted to. Thank you so much Viv. It really is a fantastic book and Amelie has almost memorised it completely. She "reads" it to me every morning and evening. Hanna loves making the scarface Tom cat noise!

I was lucky enough to win a giveaway by fellow Bee Inspired quilter Barb, aka quiltingbarbie. She sent this fantastic t-shirt to Amelie.



I tried to get a picture of Amelie wearing it but she has decided it is her sport t-shirt and that she can only wear it to her gym class on Thursdays! But she loves it. Especially as the dog looks like "Bitzer Maloney", a character in the book Viv sent. Thank you Barb.



Barb also sent all this fabric! Wow! When she heard Amelie was so into horses at the moment she very kindly also added in some squares of Heather Ross West Hill on blush. Amelie has been having great fun sorting through my fabric looking for co-ordinating fabrics!

Then to top it off this wonderful Spring Blooms Quilt came from Lisa aka Lydia's Treasures.


The butterfly and bee are so cute and so well embroidered. I am in awe. I love the flower stems too oh and the fabric as well!



And look at this cute little angel doll that she included. It was very quickly snapped up by Amelie. Thank you so much.

Row Robin Swap

A long long time ago I signed up for a swap where each person makes a row for everybody else's quilt. We started by making the first row of our own quilts and then posted this to the next person who would add a row and so on. At the end we should all get a quilt back with 6 rows made by 6 different people.

So the theory goes anyway. So far this has been a swap of mixed feelings for me. At the very beginning I just could not decide what I wanted for my row. Did I want a theme? Would that end up too twee? Did I want houses? But then what would I do with it when finished? Finally I decided to use my feathered friends fabric and make "Spring Twirls". I slaved over the blocks to get all my points lined up and everything perfect. Then I sent it off bang on the deadline to the next on the list.

And I heard nothing. Not a peep. After a few emails and a few weeks, I finally heard from that she had received my blocks and had been out of town but had been working on the row. She would post them to the next person on next Wednesday. Great I thought. Phew I am glad my work was not lost.

Then I heard nothing. No photos in flickr, no email. The next on the list had not received my row. This is over a month ago. So I sent another email asking that she just post my original work either back to me or to the next on the list. Again nothing.

Now I am resigned to the fact that my work is lost. But I have to say it makes me sooooo mad. It is one thing to not follow through with a swap you have signed up for but quite another not to return somebody's work to them. I really am extremely annoyed.

Anyway, I had agreed with Carrie (the person sending to me) that she should wait until she had a few rows together before posting to me. I was going to be on holiday and it made more sense for her to mail everything together when I got back. And true to word when I got back from the UK in May a package was waiting for me with 3 rows!

Carrie is using this quilt as inspiration. She wanted a row with a single flower. Sorry for the appalling photo but I was in such a rush to get this finished and into the post.



I found it quite a challenge to make this row. Working on such a scale was hard to get the overall picture of how the block would turn out and also to make sure everything was lined up etc. I have no long rulers which made it particularly hard!

Bobbi wanted a row using kelly green and mid blue. Angela had already made wonky log cabins and Carrie had made a row with squares and rectangles so I added some zig zags.



Angela wanted something circular if possible. She had already started her quilt with a fantastic double wedding ring and Carrie had made some great wheels for the second row. I decided to do some drunkard path circles. This time my calculations were way off and I have ended up with about a trillion spare circles! I think I will make a mini quilt out of those!



Finally as I know I will never see my twirls again, I decided to redo my row. This time I just chose the colours red, white and aqua and the theme anything goes.




Since the next on the list had flaked I felt some pressure to whip out these rows as quick as I could so that Melissa (the last on the list) could finally have something to work on. She was yet to receive a single row.

Unfortunately, after 10 days of solidly sewing, my machine and I were not on speaking terms and my row is not as well made as I would have liked (which is why I only have photos of a couple of the blocks). Not a lot of the points ended up lined up. But you know at this point I just thought bugger it. Sorry but that's how I felt. Now the whole lot is posted off I feel a bit better and once the dust settles might have another bash at both Carrie's flower and my row. But I repeat "might".

Now I am enjoying a break as I only have one row left to do!

A Modern Pinwheel

Goodness me how time flies. I have been meaning to write this for a couple of days but somehow have never found the time. My littlest is testing her boundaries every way she can and goodness me that is tiring. I have also been working feverishly on some rows for the Row Robin Swap I am in. To be honest I think I might be losing my sewing mojo! Too much in too little time. I might just have to step away from the sewing machine for a little while!

Anyway whilst it is still somewhat fresh in my mind the second theme for May`s STUD swap was "Twisted Traditional". After umming and ahhing for quite a while I decided to try and make a modern pinwheel. To twist the original I pieced each of the triangles making up the pinwheel. I was going to use different prints and go for an eye spy type pinwheel but I thought that might look a bit of a mess. The solids turned out very striking and I think also make it easier to determine the pinwheel shape despite the piecing. To further twist the original I made all the triangles different sizes and shapes.

A is for....

Archduchess Annabel the Alligator, adorned in an adorable apron, ably amassed an abundance of apples.



I just couldn't resist the theme "Alphabet Mania" for the STUD swap this month. Even though I knew it would be a bit of a squeeze getting it all done this month.

After receiving my wonderful DQS6 quilt from Monika I had to try raw edge applique and this was the perfect quilt to try it on. It was actually surprisingly easy. I was too chicken to try it free motion and instead used my see through sewing foot and kept the feed dogs up. I just went really slowly and hoped for the best. I don't think it came out too badly and at least Mari from Midland Design seems to like it!



I am also getting into triangles at the moment. Just love them. Flying geese, half square triangles, pieced triangles. All of them. So I plunged in with the border. There are probably a million ways of doing this more easily and I certainly found out that my choice of method was not very good. Still it's a learning curve right. Now I just need to do some research on triangles. Anyone know any good links?