I Love My Monkey Mechanic!!

Have to say, this turned out to be one of my favourite quilts!!!

I left off in July at this stage:


Wondering what I could do in the in between fields to not take away from the swirly pattern.

Well, after humming and hahing, I just set it aside waiting for inspiration.

It struck.

In a moment of haziness, it seems, because my inspiration was PEBBLES!

Argh. Why??? It took *FOREVER* to pebble all the brown spaces. And it, of course, used a ton of thread, blah blah blah. I have never read a single post about pebble quilting that didn't comment about the amount of thread used ;) It does seem excessive for pebbles, I admit, especially since I go around 2 or 3 times for most pebbles. And in this quilt, in the pointy bits of the 4-armed swirl, I did very tiny, 1/4" pebbles at times. Suffice it to say, I'm all pebbled out now, but I LOVE it! The polyester batting worked really REALLY well for pebble quilting - I felt like I was doing trapunto quilting without actually having to shove more batting in between the layers! But have a look yourself (and don't hold back with the comments :) Doesn't it look awesome? I'm so excited!!!)


Don't you want to jump on the little pebbles and bounce???

And check out the pebbles from the back!


And, oh my goodness, I LOVE the back too!!!


But you probably would like to see the rest of the quilt front? :)


I just want to shrink and bounce on it, from pebble to pebble, and then run and hop along the swirls... I've never had a quilt make me feel like that before - it's a teensy bit scary :)


My puffy swirls are still all there and visible:


Sigh, I could have put another 10 photos of pebbles from all different angles here, but let's not overdo it ;)

I'll leave you with the complete top - I'm off to push my fingers into pebbles again and giggle at the puffiness :) (Better than that bubble-wrap!)

Mossy Monkey Mechanic

I printed this pattern for a monkey wrench block out AGES ago! Literally within months of starting this blog, which does feel like ages ago :) Well, 273 posts could be ages ago, eh?

I really like the effect of this pattern - rounded shapes with straight-edged pieces, excellent :)

I did a bit of adapting because I didn't agree with the measurements in the pattern - some of the triangles were much too big - I like to avoid cropping when I can and just have the triangles 'fit' to begin with.

I made a test block - yes, I totally learned from that darn cat quilt project that's still 'abandoned' because I cut all the pieces and then realized I miscalculated! - it's in the top left corner of this pictures and worked out well.


So I went ahead and cut out pretty much all the shapes using one brown background fabric and various greens. As I mentioned previously, I've accumulated quite a big green stash and it's time to use some of it up...

... so I can buy more, harharhar!

I decided to build the quilt up slightly different, by making 3 types of blocks. A solid brown one (8" square), a green one made up of 4 green triangles (triangles made from 6" squares), and this pieced block (which is a monkey wrench minus one layer of triangles):


So I got to mass-producing my 30 blocks...


Look at the brown green houses ;)


I carefully avoided having two of the same greens touching in a block. The complete monkey wrench block in this picture was one of my practice blocks.


Truly mass-produced...


Here's my final layout, now you can really see the pattern!


If you want to make this quilt:

For a 5x6 block layout (approx 12" blocks for a quilt ~60"x70"), you need the following:

BROWN:
60 - 2.5" squares
30 - 3.5" squares (cut diagonally to get 60 triangles)
30 - 4.5" squares (cut diagonally to get 60 triangles)
10 - 8" squares (leave whole)
9 - triangles (cut from 8" squares)
2 - triangles (cut from 6" square)

GREEN:
60 - 2.5" squares
30 - 3.5" squares (cut diagonally to get 60 triangles)
30 - 4.5" squares (cut diagonally to get 60 triangles)
30 - 6" squares squares (cut diagonally to get 60 triangles)

Love U In Green

It's been one of those weekends, the type, where the quilting spark just strikes me full force, so I succumbed (with very little fighting) and whipped up two baby quilts, basted and 1/3 quilted a big quilt and put half the binding on another big quilt - and it feels GOOD! :)

Let me introduce you to baby quilt #1, the Love U in green.

I made it using charms from this charm pack by Moda (bottom right):


I started off similar to the Free As A Bird quilt (still in progress, still hunting for grey fabric for the last border, *sigh*), but I picked just green/yellow/white prints and paired them with solid green squares. I'm making this quilt as a hand-quilting project (same as the next one I'll introduce in a couple of days) so I wanted a simple design with not too many seams.


here are the squares pinned together into columns - it's a beauty how quick charm quilts are when you just sew patches together :)


Sometimes I'm lazy and instead of writing out labels to number the rows or columns, I just put pins into the top square to count the sets :)


I must have paid attention to my seams in this quilt, because I only ran into two problem situations with seams not quite matching up as I joined the columns together... yippee, it's a good day when... ("the seams match"; "the binding seams don't fall on a corner"; "the fabric dyes don't run"... :)

Here's the top complete.


And lastly, I picked some matching fabric for a quick border, I did the "interrupted" style again, it's a bit of work matching the corner pieces as I'm also lazy and don't bother measuring, I just eye-ball :) It all works out in the end!


This quilt is now basted with some nice flanelette as backing and ready for its first stitches. I'll probably keep it simple, with outlines of all or just the green squares and something fun in the broad border!

A very gender-neutral baby-quilt, don't you think? :)

Stacked Up And Gone

The binding is finished, the label is done, and the quilt is on its way to the little fella (born last Thursday). I was sad to send it off, because it was around for just one week (and only a couple of days in finished form) - very little time to bond and part with a quilt!

The quilt measures about 40" x 30" - I was told by my first baby-quilt recipient that that size worked perfectly for her new-born, so I'm sticking with it.

I put some of my favourite fabrics on this quilt, including the daft-looking sheep...

As mentioned before, it's stippled all over, but I promised myself to experiment with straight lines next time.


The back is light blue circus-themed flannelette.

Here's a close-up of the pattern; I used a neutral coloured 100% cotton thread for piecing and quilting.

And of course, invisible binding a la turning*turning:

Saddling a Horse the Right Way

No pictures today and just a short post...

Finished sewing all my pink rows and have pinned them together in couples - joining them for a complete top is tonight's labour so there should be some nice photos of the quilt top by next week!

About the green quilt: leaving it in plain sight for inspiration seems to work, in some ways. The quilt has been growing in my mind and is now past the baby quilt stage and all green. I might just do that, a twin-sized quilt out of all green charm squares - that should certainly satisfy my love for green :) Anyway, so far it's all a plan in my head; it's exciting to see what that green quilt idea will actually grow into.

I think for the baby quilt with stars, I'll have to start with the stars and match the background fabric to them, instead of saddling the horse backwards!

Green Quilt

Thanks for all of your suggestions so far! Amazingly, pretty much all of your preferred the yellow stars and the whitish kittens over the other star options :)

Those will be my first two choices, though I think I can do better with my fabric stash, so rather than rush, I decided to put the little quilt on hold for a bit. Here's my makeshift design wall, a towel stuck on a dresser drawer, so that I don't loose my arrangement of the green squares.

Green, Green, Green and Charming

I've definitely caught the charm bug! Because I couldn't wait for my charm packs to arrive, I decided to use some of my own fabrics (that's a new concept, isn't it??? Actually using up stash fabric?) and cut a bunch of 5"x5" squares from my green collection. I really like green, maybe it comes from living in cities with too much concrete for most of my life, so I've been buying green fabrics here and there without a plan.



Then I decided to play around with some baby quilt patterns that I have been planning. I realized they kind of fit into a charm pack quilt. I laid out the squares for a starry quilt:


And then my progress came to an abrupt stop, because I couldn't make up my mind what to use for the stars... here are some options, I'd appreciate any opinions!

1) Kites, bubbles and bees in primary colours:
2) Batiks that blend in with the background:
3) Yellow stars with bees, sheep and pears:

4) Funky kitty cats on off white:

5) I could also make a pure green quilt with no stars and use a different (more solid?) background colour for a starry quilt...


And in very sad news, I got a message from one of the etsy sellers that the Bistro line of the Moda charm packs she was offering was sold out, booohooohoo!!!