Milestone giveaway!

Hello lovely readers! I recently passed the 300 follower mark which was an exciting milestone, and I want to celebrate by giving YOU some fabric.

 

I have two prizes up for grabs - this bundle of Prince Charming fabric from Spotlight in cool colours...

...and this bundle of Prince Charming fabric from Spotlight in warm colours.



 

 

There are 6 metric fat quarters in each bundle - which adds up to a metre and a half of fabric - definitely enough to make a baby quilt top or be the base for a larger quilt top.  Or, you know, just add it to your stash!  A different person will win each bundle.

To enter the giveaway, simply leave a comment, any comment.  If you want, you can get an extra entry for each of the following (just leave an extra comment for each that applies):

- following my blog through google friend connect or a feed reader (new and existing followers both count);
- liking my facebook page; and
- sharing this giveaway via your favourite social media (you could blog about it, share it on facebook, tweet about it, whatever!).

This giveaway is open to everyone (including international participants), but if I can't contact you, you can't win. If you are a no-reply blogger, please leave your email address in the comment.

The giveaway will stay open until around 10 pm Sunday 23 June 2013 (New Zealand Time), and I will use the random number generator at random.org to pick a winner for each bundle then.

WIP Wednesday

I've been working away on my Sailboats quilt.  A couple of weeks ago my friend Helen (yes, the one with that cushion) gave me some pointers on machine appliqué and let me use her (rather lovely) Janome Horizon to appliqué the stars onto their background squares.

This was a deviation from the pattern - it instructed reverse needle turn appliqué, where you needle turn appliqué the lighter background pieces to the star fabric.  That method would make sense if, for example, the stars were light and the background was dark, but for this pattern it seemed like an unnecessarily large amount of work, so I went with machine appliqué instead.

 

I then stitched the star borders together and added them to the central panel and the first border.  After that I created the third and fourth borders using lots of little pieces of the blue and red fabrics I used for the boats and the stars.

 

Above is my finished quilt top, and below is the quilt top from the book (Le Petit Monde de Jacqueline Morel).  

You can see that I changed the colour scheme up a bit - I think mine is a bit crisper and more modern, while the original has a softer, vintage feel to it.  I also changed the placement of the boats, mainly because I liked the look of some more than others (and to be honest, I thought the little one in the centre of my quilt would be the most difficult to make and therefore I only wanted to make it once!).

You might also have noticed that my boats are reversed from the ones in the original quilt.  This is because the pattern instructs you to use templates to make the boat blocks.  I'm sorry, but no way was I going to do that - it would have been a disaster for me.  Instead, I copied the boat blocks from the book, and used the copies as foundation papers to make the boat blocks.  This was far more accurate (and therefore satisfying) for me.

I now have the quilt top basted and am planning to quilt it this week or this weekend.  I have a question for my readers though - something which has been bothering me for a while.  I will be giving this quilt at a baby shower, and I would really like to put a label on it, but I don't know what to say.  My friend is having a baby boy, but he doesn't have a name yet (as far as I know - and it's not really the done thing here to name your baby before birth).  I'm sure this is something many of you have encountered before, so I would love to know - what do you do in this situation?

Linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced:

P.S. You might want to check back tomorrow for a giveaway I have planned.  Only if you like fabric though!

Helen's cushion

My stitchy friend Helen celebrated her birthday this week, and as a gift I whipped up this very simple cushion using fabric she had admired in my giant star quilt.  I think the pom pom trim is what really makes this cushion!

 

I made a quilt sandwich with the feature fabric, cotton batting and a backing fabric in the usual way, and free motion quilted very carefully along all the lines in the cushion front, to add some texture without distracting from the fabric design.

 

The quilting was reasonably time consuming, but not as difficult as I thought it would be.  It probably helped that I have done some free motion quilting every day this week, so I am in a pretty good FMQ groove.

The back is a simple envelope closure.  After making a few cushions with an envelope back, I think the trick is to make sure the two pieces overlap more than you think they should.  This is an 18" square cushion and I cut the two backing pieces 15" by 18".

Both the front and the back fabrics are from Laura Gunn's Garden Wall collection.  The pom pom trim is from Spotlight and has been sitting in my stash waiting for just the right project for a long time.

Right, I'm off to buy more pom poms!  Linking up with:

and with Finish it up Friday at crazy mom quilts.

Sunday Cat Words of Wisdom #23

Cat Words of Wisdom are coming to you a day late this week - but better late than never, right?

If you find yourself in a sticky situation..

...don't come unstuck or duct for cover.  Tape control...

...and you'll be able to patch things up in no time. Ralph

Sorry about all those terrible puns, I was on a roll! (Ok, that's the last one, I promise.)

Now, if you are so inclined, feel free to enjoy my favourite song about sticky tape.

A foxy mini quilt

Do you remember this little fox?  He was created when I decided to try something totally new for me - appliqué using a hand sewn blanket stitch.  He's been sitting on my dining sewing table for the last few weeks, waiting for me to figure out what to do with him.  I finally realised that I just wanted to do something very simple, so I free-motion quilted around the fox and added a crisp white binding.

My choice of binding fabric might have been influenced by this cold wintery morning - somehow this has ended up looking like a very wintery mini quilt.  This little fox is from Kajsa Wikman's book, Scandinavian Stitches.

This was a totally new FMQ design for me, so my free motion quilting lines aren't perfect, but I'm ok with that.

Have I ever explained my philosophy on seam ripping and unpicking?  Basically, unless something is really terrible, I don't unpick.  I like to think of my quilts recording my level of skill now, at this moment in time.  I'm hoping that in years to come I will be able to look back and see an evolution of my skills.  This philosophy also gives me permission not to be perfect, which is quite helpful for someone with perfectionist tendencies.  Of course, I do go back and fix things which are really a mistake!

This little guy is about 9 1/2" by 8 1/2" and will live on my wall somewhere - probably held up by this same washi tape.

I'm linking up with the Modern Mini Quilt Challenge at Ellison Lane Quilts.  There are some amazing mini quilts linked up already - go check them out!  I'm also linking up to Finish it up Friday at crazy mom quilts.