Browngellow Finito!

Thanks for all your lovely compliments on my BrownGellow quilt! Many of you asked how I would quilt it - it's time for the big reveal: (drum roll)

Can't see much of the quilting there, can you? Good thing there are close-ups below!

I think I was inspired by a bead-curtain, 70s style :) Maybe because of one of the fabrics in my Chicks & Elephants quilt?



This is the backing fabric - I bought it on sale last year, 3$ a yard or so - I really love those types of colours and I could even abide the large floral print which usually isn't my style.


Meandering on the brown fabrics:


And a leafy, ranking vine all around the border - I went out of my usual comfort zone and used a thread that definitely didn't blend in! I concentrated hard when quilting and am happy to say that there are no major kinks in the vine, so I'm happy to show off the distinct quilting!


I know I marked this quilt done in my sidebar, though I admit that I have about 3 feet of binding to do. But technically, it's done :) Yay! All for me, too, harharhar!

I'm almost done writing up the tutorial for how I made this quilt! It's a bit more work than my usual quilts, though patterns are hard to compare - definitely worth the effort though, I'd say :)

A Magnetic Message Board

The Moda Bake Shop (in my reader list) recently published 8 things to make from a layer cake or something like that. One crafty item was a magnetic message board made from a stove cover. It worked pretty well - I craft-glued fabric to the cover, folded the fabric over the edge and was generous with glue on the inside of the rim. Made a bunch of matching magnets and attached a loop (ribbon glued to the inside of the rim) to hang the whole contraption. Fairly quick! Though I learned to make sure to use good magnets or they don't hold anything up!!

End Of Year Challenge Progress

Well, if you've followed the changes in the list on the right, you'll see that I've made some headway in the end-of-year-challenge I set myself this fall.


3 quilts are done, phew...

... and I recently had a spurt of basting motivation, which means after basting the BrownGellow, I also whipped up a backing for the Free As A Bird quilt and basted it.

I had planned on basting the Disaster Quilt as well, since I finally finished the borders on it, but ran into yet another disastrous problem; so it's once again out of sight out of mind in a corner. I was close to getting rid of that quilt twice now! More about that later (when I'm in a really good mood, so that after writing it I'll still be in a mediocre mood)!

I'm still staring at the Sunset on Water piece, figuring out what to do with it. I'm pretty sure it'll stay a small size, but that's all I know for now :)

Oh, and I can guarantee that the blue string quilt won't be done, and I probably won't tackle quilting the Free As A Bird quilt this year either. Oh well, it was an admirable goal, haha!

And I did of course start 3 new quilts and finish one of them, so maybe that'll make up for the unmet goals? :)

How are your plans for finishing up projects before 2011 going?

Fabric, My Love

Indulge me in another post about my current favourite fabric!

I've put all the poppy fabric I posted about the other day through the wash. It's lovely to see it all unfolded!


These Michael Miller fabrics are awesome quality. They dried very quickly after coming out of the wash, and I looked at them, wondering if I had somehow ironed them already and forgotten about it! They smoothed out beautifully again. There was barely any stretching of the fabric (i.e. the cut-lines still matched up!!!) and the colours didn't run. (I used a shout colour catcher but it's as clean as can be.. (if there's no colour on those sheets, can I reuse them??? Does anyone now? I feel wasteful)).

Now I'm tempted to buy a ton more yardage of this print series, before I've even cut into it ;) I won't, but I want to!!! Just look at these fresh colours!


PS: Hah, "I won't but I want to"??? I just did!! 8 more yards from FabricFlair - I've been having an absolute wonderful experience with this Etsy store! Go and visit Christie yourself, she's so accomodating and extremely fast at getting orders out! (Shipping same day or next!)

Here, Chicky Chicky

Looky here! It's pretty much ready! (Binding still to do)

I once again couldn't get myself to do an overall-quilting-pattern, so it's turned into more of a free-motion sampler :)


Thought I'd share the different styles I used with you:





A free-motion grid! I didn't do too bad with the lines, eh? I did mark them with a disappearing marker (pink, from Singer - it kind of disappears faster than I can quilt, actually), but I only had that idea *after* I started the first line and didn't want to take the quilt back out and start the line again, haha! So I marked the grid very awkwardly and somewhat haphazardly with a ruler while the quilt was in the machine (meaning I didn't have a very even surface underneath). The lines are about 3/4" apart. I kind of like the grid look, though this block reminds me of an oven mit - they must use that pattern a lot! :)

This was the easiest block, I just outlined the printed squares...


Feathers and loops (easier to see on the back, which means this was a great piece for practicing! Who says you can't practice on a real quilt????)


McTavishing on the opposite side:
And of course: PEBBLES!!!

I love this fabric, the bead curtain - so 70s! I went along with the pattern and did some connecting lines between beads of the same colour.

Concentric circles around these green rings that fell in the brown water:


This one was fun - I kind of just put the needle down, get an idea and go for it. So maybe these could be invisible plumage on the chickens???


And I guess the brown dotted block didn't photograph well - it has one big spiral on it, but didn't show up well in my lighting.

I love being at the binding stage of a quilt again. I love hand-stitching the binding. I know many people don't. Too bad, we could trade off unwanted tasks!

Bargello Update - Are You Ready???

Well, my little brown yellow bargello is now called BrownGellow and is not so little anymore...

It grew from this little experiment:


To this bedsized quilt!


I'm very happy with how this turned out, and I took lots of photos of the process, so will put up a tutorial soon for those of you who'd like to try a bargello of your own!

For not having used a pattern, I ran into amazingly few problems :) (mostly to do with me mixing up colours, sigh, here comes the seam ripper!) I also discovered that when I make one section of a seam-heavy quilt in the summer and the other sections in the winter, my 1/4" seam allowance is quite difference - which totally sucks when trying to match seams. I was pretty inventive with my cosmetic quilt surgery! :) And in the end, no one can tell! Hah


I've decided to quilt it first and then put the borders on, since I'm expecting a bit of shifting during quilting, so it's basted to an oversized backing and batting right now!

Last Quilt Class and Banquet Night

Booh, my quilt class is over!

It was a lot of fun to do this again...

Here, the ladies are busy quilting on their last night of class - they're all aiming to have their quilts ready for the banquet night "Show and Share"!




And here's the picture from our closing night - 3 students couldn't make it, unfortunately...

Don't the quilts look fabulous??