So Many Stitches

As promised, here's Finish #2, the Love U in green quilt. Concentric squares take a long time to hand-quilt, I found out. I don't know how hand-quilters do the intricate patterns (on traditional quilts), which must include thousands of stitches! (Hundreds of thousands? Millions?)

There's something about hand-quilting that just looks more traditional, isn't there???


Or maybe I just choose square quilt-patterns that I wouldn't do with free-motion (wobbly straight lines for me) or a walking foot (too much turning) machine quilting.

I find that printed flanelette on the back makes the quilting and any mistakes disappear, but you can see the pattern even on this small picture.


As mentioned, I did concentric squares in the solid green blocks. The prints are MODA Love U, I picked all the green and yellow prints and substitute a few from my stash to reach the right number.


For the border, I tried another stencil out of my collection - I'm usually more a fan of wavy lines, but the straight edges of this braid seemed to suit this quilt.


Now that I look at it on the photo, the briad reminds me of a strand of DNA ;) Such a science geek, hahaha!

I might yet stich in the ditch around the little yellow squares in the 4 corners, they look a bit lonely right now, and that wouldn't take too much effort.


Overall, despite taking quite a while (4 or 5 months, I think), I'm glad I hand-quilted this quilt and even more glad that it's done!


I won't even show you a picture of my pour right middle finger (the one that I use to push the needle through). My ring finger is starting to have the same hole in it, because I switched over when the middle finger was too damaged to touch a needle ;) It'll heal, and it better, because I still have about 3 circles to quilt on my BIG hand-quilting project, the Imagination 1 quilt, and that must be done for the quilt show! (Though I bet no one would notice a half circle in among all the concentric circles! So the pressure to finish is only moderate - apart from my pride!)

Soon, I'll be ready to baste and quilt the Filmstrip Cafe quilt, still debating quilting options. I might do parallel straight lines on it, as I've seen it on other quilts and liked it. Oh well, time for another anti-strep-throat pill, ugh.

Two Finishes!

Well, I'm sitting at home with strep throat, bored out of my mind, so I managed to finish two quilts this week, and one of them hand-quilted, wahoo!

Today, I'll show you the machine-quilted one (won't have anything else finished in the next few days, so I've got to stretch this over at least two posts ;)

The only thing holding me up with my Hoot Hoot quilt was the lack of embroidery thread and needle. For how little I needed to do on this quilt, I didn't want to go and buy everything needed, but I was lucky enough to find someone I could borrow a needle and a foot of thread from! After that, it only took a day to get the claws and 'ear-hair' on the owl:


I basted the quilt that same afternoon.


Didn't have any hesitation deciding on the quilting, for some reason... sometimes the ideas just snap right in, other times I have to hum and hah for a few months, it seems.

I started with the owl, outlining the wings, body, face and pupils as I didn't trust all of my hand-applique to hold up during subsequent washes. I also quilted some feathers (the owl kind, not the decorative kind) on the body.


Next, I loopy-loop quilted all over the background. I learned that you have to plan carefully where to start if you don't want to cross lines and end up where you started WITHOUT having to go around the outside of the quilt first - puffiness alarm! I made it work somehow, but next time I'll think ahead ;)


Lastly, I outlined around the wonky stacked coins. That was a bit of a pain because I used a walking foot, so had to turn every 1/2" to 2". Luckily, it was a small stack of coins!


And here is the finished product!


You can even see the owl outline on the back (on the left in this pictures)!



This quilt was fun to make and I love the personal touch of my own applique shape. Maybe I'll make a series next, I'd love to make a giraffe and an elephant!!

Stay tuned for finish #2!

A Bit Of Knittery

In January, I saw some felting yarn in a store and loved the colours they had (notice that they're the kind of colours Moda often uses :)

I decided to get a couple of skeins of each and make arm and leg warmers - I'm just knitting them regular size and am not planning to felt them (you felters out there - can I hand wash them cold and there'll be no felting going on?).


I've just finished the first arm - summer is just not motivating enough to make warm clothes :) But the nights are getting cool here, below 15 C... so this will pick up, soon - plus, I've discovered the joy of audio books - no time wasted holding a book when I could move a quilting or knitting needle instead :) And as a bonus, the "movie" plays in my head, so there are no interruptions to check what's going on on the screen (I often quilt while watching a DVD). Win-win, I say!

Hoot Hoot Greetings

I've finished appliqueing the owl to my Hoot Hoot quilt.

I'm currently searching for my big needles to embroider "ear hair" and claws. I'm getting a bit impatient to get going, so if I don't find them soon, I'll go and buy new needles.


Question for you: I also can't find my stash of embroidery yarn, do you think wool will do the trick or should I just go and buy some thicker yarn (embroidery or darning or whatever)?

Film Cafe Top - In Love

Here's another quilt I love these days!


The top for the filmstrip quilt using Moda's Bistro line (mostly) is done. I'm not supercreative with this name: Filmstrip Cafe (there are coffee cups on some of the prints that I didn't use in this quilt). It feels like I'm going to a special kind of cafe when I look at the quilt though - and for some reason my brain thinks "French" when I think of the quilt. Probably because I associate both Bistros and Cafes with Paris/France :)

Guess it needs some ironing ;)

As I commented back to some of you already, I'm still madly in love with this line of fabrics. So a day after I completed the top, I draped it over the bookshelves next to my bed so I can gaze at it on either side of sleep :) Sigh. It'll probably stay there still I have a chance to buy the necessary batting. I have a fabric for the back in mind already; it'll be non-pieced and one of the pretty fabrics I've been holding back on other quilts.

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!)

Filmstrip Cafe

Ah handquilting, progress is truly slow doing that, especially in summer, when a hot quilt on my lap is not my favourite way of passing the time...

So I finally gave in and started a new project, well, technically I finished an old one (the Mossy Monkey Mechanic, pictures soon!), and I'm 90% done piecing the top for the filmstrip quilt recently featured at the Moda Bake Shop. I like a lot of their project, but have never realized one of their ideas so quickly!

Here are pictures of my pieces laid out - again, pics of the completed top coming soon!


Most of the prints in this quilt are Moda Bistro. I bought the fabrics 2 years ago at a little shop in New Brunswick. I loved the prints so much in the store that I bought them despite being over 15$/m - I usually abstain from such expensive fabrics, but couldn't help myself. I ended up buying a quarter yard of 9 or so prints. I added in a fat quarter of Moda Tranquility that I picked up in Kingston, Ontario (it's the center square in the bottom row). I love remembering exactly where I bought fabrics...

All these fabrics are very special to me, some of my treasure fabrics - that's whey they were still patiently sitting on my shelf. I was waiting for a pattern like this one - not just big squares, but enough of them to really showcase the prints.

I matched everything to the dark brown sashing (instead of the black from the pattern) and am quite pleased with the overall impression. I have a quarter yard of Bistro fabric left, in red with coffee cups. I thought about adding it in the mix, but it was too much "zing" for my taste :) I might used it for the backing, if I piece that...

I modified the pattern slightly, using solid 4.5" strips for the outside instead of pairs of 2.5" precut strips. Also, I only separated the center from the top and bottom film strips with 2.5" sashing, not 4.5". I thought it looks more balanaced that way.

Anway, it's been extremely satisfying working on such a quick project. I checked the pattern out on Thursday, cut everything by Friday and have most of the top together today (Saturday).

Tomorrow is a quilting bee meeting - I have a lot of hanging sleeves to sew on those quilts I want to put in the quilt show of my quilt guild in September. Lot's to do, with a deadline - exactly what I don't like :) I may have to downsize my contribution to the show!

Oh, and I'm done with going on vacation for now, though I've had a lovely time over the past 5 weeks, with only 9 working days - life could be so beautiful... :)