So it’s been a while, but I haven’t been completely idle! I’ve been away and then busy with work, but I have squeezed a few crafty things in here and there. Below is the little coin stack top I made:
I bought a big budget pack of charm squares and some marble charm squares and made this up quite quickly (for me!) It was originally going to be a quillow, but in the end I decided that it was fine as a regular quilt. I’m annoyed that my “coins” don’t line up exactly, but it’s quite fun anyway. I have some red starry fleece to back it with, I just need to get on and baste and quilt it. It’s a good size for a baby quilt at ~ 36″ by 48″, and people keep having babies at me at the moment so it seems a good idea to make up some appropriate quilts! I don’t really hold with gender stereotyping of colours, but this does feel more like a boy’s quilt than a girl’s quilt. Mind you, depends on the child!
Also, remember these?
They’ve been languishing for ages because I’ve been working on other things. I even intended to do some while dog-sitting for my aunt – I took all the bits with me – but ended up making completely new things instead! Then I went to spend a month helping out with my friends’ three small children (aged 3, 1 and newborn) – there wasn’t time for sewing and if there was, there certainly wasn’t the energy! Now I’m back home, and it’s high time I cracked on with this project – my sister is expecting a baby in August so I should at least finish *this* quilt even if I don’t manage to make a baby quilt on time. (I do have vague plans in that direction too, but more on that later perhaps.)
After some thought, I decided I did need to make 25 nine-patch blocks instead of 16, so that’s obviously more hearts I need to make, but I think it’ll make a better-sized quilt in the end. That said, the only time I’ve had recently to do sewing is at Quilt Club! Even so, I’ve started chain-piecing the hearts (rather than faffing about making them one at a time) and consequently I’ve made a pleasing amount of progress – over half the hearts I need are now pieced up and waiting to be made into disappearing nine-patches! And I have a small stack of pieces pinned and waiting to become hearts, too. My next job is to cut some more cream squares – I knew I didn’t have enough cut, but wasn’t sure what the short-fall would be so I decided to use up what I had and see how far I got. Fortunately I still have a *lot* of cream fabric to use, so that’s not a problem! And obviously I need to make up and then disappear the nine-patches, but I’m not so worried about that bit now that I’ve done a couple of D9Ps. At last I’m feeling like I can see the end of the tunnel with this project and it’ll be really good to get it done and dusted.
I’ve also been quite naughty recently – buying fabric when I still have all those projects on the go! But you just can’t resist pretty fabric – or at least I can’t. I like to visit fabric shops when I go away – the few local ones are ok, but it’s nice to see different fabric selections and choices too. When I was down in Dorset dog-sitting, I visited Hanson’s fabric shop several times – it was amazing! So much patchwork fabric, I didn’t know what to do with myself! It’s where I got the fabric to make my aunt’s table runner, among other things. I also went to the fabric shop in Salisbury and got some lovely solid-coloured fat quarters and some really cute strips. Not quite sure what’ll happen with them yet, but they’re lovely colours and I definitely needed more solids in my stash. No, don’t look at me like that! I really did! 😉
I also recently went to Aberdashery in Aberystwyth, on the way up to Anglesey to see family, and picked up five really lovely yellow and gray fat quarters:
I love the way the colours interplay and I think I may do something really nice and simple with them – perhaps just a lot of equilateral triangles (with or without a honeycomb pattern – I’m not sure yet). I seem to have done a lot of fiddly things recently, so I’d like to do something straightforward for a change! While I was there, I also picked up two more FQs of the gorgeous poinsettia fabric I used in some of my Christmas presents and two more Oriental fabrics. No idea what I’ll do with them, but I really like the Oriental/Japanese/Chinese designs.
While I was in Anglesey, my uncle and aunt took us to Abakhan, a fabric warehouse in north Wales. (I’m not sure my uncle will be daft enough to do that twice!) It was an interesting experience – there wasn’t as much patchwork fabric as I’d hoped (although there was a craft fabric section) and some things seemed *more* expensive than I’d seen them elsewhere. However, an open mind and a sharp eye revealed some great bargains, especially thanks to Abakhan selling some offcuts and ends of bolts by weight. For example, I picked up some fantastic black-and-white sheeting that’ll be perfect for my big D9P quilt for the princely sum of about £6! It’s not wide enough (though it’s *certainly* more than long enough!), but I was planning to do some piecing on the back anyway and I have a whole bunch of charm squares of the fabrics used on the front, plus more pink batik, so that’s fine.
In the main fabric section, I also picked up a quantity of useful-looking calico (perfect for adding structure to quilted bags and pot holders) and some nice plain pale blue/gray cotton fabric that’ll be very handy as a background for busier fabrics.
In the actual patchwork section, I had some great (and bargainous!) finds:
This Christmassy print with gold snowflakes was only £1.80 a meter, and with just under 2m left on the roll I couldn’t resist buying it all – the repeat isn’t very large, but there’s enough for me to try a kaleidoscope quilt with it. After all, they don’t look easy (especially setting up the fabric properly before cutting) and I’d rather make a mess with cheap fabric than full-price fabric!
I LOVE this fabric! It’s just so bright and fun. And it was also only £1.80 per meter! In some ways it would also have been great for a kaleidoscope quilt, but there’s not quite enough for the necessary six repeats (even though there’s almost 3m of fabric there!), and it’d almost be a shame to lose the base pattern because it’s so cool. I may use it fussy cut or as a backing fabric.
These chevrons are great! Lovely zesty colours and there’s a lot of fabric there (this is a piece that was being sold by weight), so it’ll be perfect for backing.
I think this is what people mean when they talk about an ikat look – ikat is fabric woven from tie-dyed threads (I’ve seen it done in Cambodia and it’s fascinating). Clearly this is just a printed effect here, but it looks cool. I love the print and the colour shading, it reminds me of the beaches I saw in SE Asia – again it could be a back or be used as a kaleidoscope quilt.
And now I really must stop buying fabric and start MAKING thinks with it!