Quilt alongs

This week I finished my quilt top for the Hazel the Hedgehog quilt along run by the lovely Angie of Gnome Angel.

Not the the best photo but I shall get out and take some nice ones when the madness of vintage ends.  The quilt top I love though, this is going to be for my little boy mr 18 months can’t wait to see him playing with it.  As long as you are awake the pattern is fairly straight forward, though ten of mine didn’t have ears at one point (fixed now).  I have decided to bind it in a mixture of all the spike fabrics but can’t decide on a backing yet.  Hazel has taken me most of February to complete I only finished him a couple of days ago, since then I have caught up on my two blocks I needed to do for my Inflight quiltalong.  Here is the seagull and the curlew, the curlew is my favourite so far.

I won a prize in the Inflight quiltalong at the last link up so a big thank you to Juliet from Tartan Kiwiw for hosting this quiltalong and having such fab prizes.  This little bundle of loveliness came to my mailbox is colourshott by Oakshott and it feels fantastic, so much so that it didn’t even make it’s way into my stash I needed see what it was like so it’s now turning into lots of flying geese, I have no idea what I’m making but making the geese made me really happy so I have vowed that I am going to be random a bit more often since it makes me smile lots.  What type of sewing makes you smile lots?

Hazel the Hedgehog Quilt Along

This month I have been participating in Angie from Gnome Angel Hazel the Hedgehog quilt along.  Hazel the Hedgehog is a pattern by the very talented Elizabeth Hartman of Oh Fransson.  This is a beautiful pattern and surprisingly fairly straightforward to put together, I wouldn’t say easy you certainly have to stay fully awake but the instructions are very clear and well written.

I decided to do the lap sized quilt so 25 little hazels to make.  There are quite a few different options for making these little beauties, I decided on having the bodies all the same and just having the spikes different patterned fabrics all in blue tones as this quilt is going to be for my little fella.  A wee tip if you are doing this quilt is that the eyes and the legs can be put together in strips then cut down to the correct size to save some time, and this pattern really lends itself to chain piecing.

Shout when you see the mistake, don’t worry they can’t hear you.  This is what happens when your getting sleepy and should really stop sewing.

Here is my 28 wee babies (I’m thinking of a wee pillow with the spare 3) time to get these all pieced together, think that shall be a job for tomorrow night, that’s one advantage of being a vintage widow, lots of time for sewing after the boys are in bed.

Vintage 2015

Up till now its been all sewing and no shiraz, but its now shiraz time.  Vintage 2015 started off for us a week and a half ago, and its getting very busy already.  A little bit about me first.

 

This is me, Lisa.  Im a scottish lass who grew up in a small village in Fife in Scotland, i graduated as a quantity surveyor and worked for a civil engineering company working on various job sites in the UK.  In 2003 i came across to visit Australia for a year back packing and fell in love with the place, a year was over too soon and i was back home with a new plan to move to australia,  two years later i had my visa and moved to Adelaide.  Again i worked for civil engineering companies though across here the job title is contract administrator, same job different name.  I loved working on site, i have always been a tom boy and gotten on well in a male environment.  A year to the day after arriving in the country i met Brendyn and he changed my world completely.  Seven years later i am the farmers wife, we have three beautiful boys who are ten, three and eighteen months and I’m embracing the country life.  We have our own veggie patch, I’m getting better at the old preserving and cooking and i have discovered a passion for quilting.

Brendyn works with his parents on the family farm and vineyard, we grow shiraz, grenache and cabernet sauvignon and run some cows and sheep.  So vintage is our busy time of year, its what the rest of the year is working towards.  For brendyn it means he is flat out busy 24/7, for me it means i become what the locals around here call a vintage widow.  There is occasionally a lump in our bed at random times of the day but generally i don’t see brendyn unless I’m helping out.  Most of the vintage work is done in the evening and overnight (you don’t pick the grapes when its too hot, cooler is better) so with two wee boys I don’t work the vintage with him.  I do the paperwork, do shuttle runs with equipment with him and am chief bacon and egg sandwich maker but my tractor driving skills are fairly poor.

Brendyn runs a contract harvesting business so we don’t just pick our own grapes but we have a few lads that come in to help him out catching.  This is the harvester we do all machine harvesting so its not quite as romantic as crushing the grapes with our feet like you see in the old movies.

I will try and get some pictures of the harvester working for next time but next time you have a bottle of wine it could be some of this.  Cheers

Scrap busting and tidying up the fabric

Living on a farm has it’s great advantages, lots of fresh veggies from the garden and I can’t imagine a better place to bring up my three boys.  One down side however is those pesky little mice that come in when the mood takes them.  The tell tale mouse smell was in the spare bedroom where my fabric lives so it was time to get everything out from under the bed.  With no place to hide the mice were a goner and thankfully they were living in some old flannel scraps that I wasn’t sad to say goodbye to.

What wasn’t good was having my whole stash in the hallway, wow that’s confronting.  All those half done projects, bits of fabric I had hidden and boxes of baby clothes I’m making a quilt with……aghhhh what to do with it all.  The guilt the guilt.

This gray cloud does have a silver lining though well actually lots of black linings.

Ive got got a lovely little crafty storage area, yippee no more nappy boxes under the bed for me.  That’s two units on top of each other I got six of these units for $50 from a clearing sale at a print shop that was closing down and I managed to get these storage boxes from ikea and the fit like they were made for it.  I’m as happy as Larry.  The top three have the Cotton that I love and then there is the other four hmmm yes well I’m not ready to call in the hoarders just yet but let’s just say I’m not proud of myself.

On the bright side it has really motivated me to try and use a lot of my stash this year if I can.  And I’ve even finished a wee tote from the stuff that made me hang my head.

 

 

I came across a whole bunch of four and twelve square patches that I had left over from my yet unfinished millefiori quilt from the Sarah Fielke on the pond range that I had obviously kept for something ( just not sure what ) so I just sewed them all together randomly to make a long rectangle and turned them into a shopping bag.  The bonus bit was the lining is a poly cotton that I was not loving and I used some left over fleese from when I was making the baby some sleeping bags.  I have a few bits left so I see a few more of these in my future.  From guilt to pride in one little bag, I love recycling.

Swift In Flight Quilt Along

Block two for the In Flight Quilt Along the swift.  I’m really enjoying this quilt along it’s helping me learn paper piecing as it is a skill I would like to master this year I have done three blocks so far but before that I had only done one paper pieced block so I’m fairly early on in the learning process.  So far the quilt along has been fairly gentle but already I can see my weaknesses showing, I love the accuracy it gives me but I still haven’t gotten my head round the funny angles you have to try and achieve so I still have to unpick on a regular basis.  My main problem however is trying to get the seams to line up when I’m piecing the blocks together when they are sitting at different angles, if anyone knows a good tutorial please drop me a wee message.

Ive been seeing a few beautiful blocks posted on Instagram of the blocks and I love seeing all the different colour ways everyone is using, if you are quilting along I hope you are enjoying it as much as I am.

Big bear for Beth bear

Grrrrrr this is big bear, isn’t he fab. He is a pattern from the tartan kiwi he is a massive 30 inches square and it was great to be able to use some big print fabrics.  I was a bit nervous about the size of this guy as I’m just learning paper piecing but this is a very forgiving pattern which was a relief.  My little sister is still back in Scotland and now has a gorgeous little daughter called Beth who will be two in March and they call her Bethy Bear so when I seen this pattern I knew I needed to make one for her.  It was a really fun pattern to make and I think a small boarder in the white background and he will be done.

I have just had a fab night out at the Peter Lehmann Noodle Market with the family it’s great to enjoy dinner outside in a stress free way with the littlies, Brendyn dropped me of with the kids and went back out for a beer so I’m going to spend the rest of the evening reading my Patchwork City book, there is a quilt along starting in February and I’m going to play along, can’t wait to get started.  Have a great weekend. Lisa xx

Linking up with

linking up with Devoted Quilter for TGIFF

A second finish off the list

Yippee a second quilt finished for the year.  This little pirate number is for my little three year old, when ever I’m sewing he always comes up and asks ” snowing something for me mummy?” The answer is usually no so I was feeling very guilty so I have now finished his pirate quilt he wanted.  It’s not turned out the way I wanted it as I ran out of the fabric I wanted so had to compromise, but little man was over the moon with it so that’s what counts. He was so happy with it that it had to go to bed with him last night despite the fact that the house was so hot I had to crank up the air conditioner, at least I know it’s loved.

In Flight Quilt Along

I really love the patterns of Juliet from the Tartan Kiwi so when she announced last year that she was going to be doing a quilt along I knew I wanted to play along.

Today was the kick off and the first block was the swan and I couldn’t wait to get started.

So here is the swan, isn’t he beautiful, he is needing trimmed down but I shall wait to do that when I’m ready to piece the whole quilt together.  The photo seems black to me but it’s actually navy blue and white, I’m trying to show restraint with this quilt and did originally plan on just making it just with these two solids but I’m now thinking just one red bird would pop out nicely.

if your interested in joining the quiltalong the details can be found here.

An unexpected panel quilt finish

A second finish for the year, woopee go me!  I quite enjoyed binding my quilt this morning and while packing up I came across an old panel quilt I hadn’t finished.

Panel quilt finished

Machine binding

It’s been a work in progress for four years, wow that’s scary.  It’s actually the first quilt I ever started, I was pregnant and my mum was across from Scotland and I said I wanted to make the baby a quilt so we grabbed this fabric from spotlight and set to work making the front, finished the front in her visit too.  Then we had a scan and found out that girl I was having ( I was convinced it was a girl, it was going to be called Beth ) was actually a boy. So as we planned for James to come into the world the quilt go relegated to under the spare bed, James is turning 4 in April.  It did make its way out from under the spare bed briefly and got sandwiched and walking foot quilted when I was pregnant with Lewis another darling wee boy, I’m so out numbered in this house.  I wouldn’t swap my boys for the world, but no more babies for me so it’s time to find a little girl to give this quilt some love.  I have a cousin back home who has just had a baby girl so I think it may have her name on it.

A finished quilt and my first venture into free motion quilting

With a tear in my eye my baby (18 months) went into daycare for the first time today, he was alright but me not so much.  On the bright side it gave me time to bind my quilt for my friend Emma’s new baby Finlay.  He is a tiny wee thing born on Christmas Eve and I’m going to get another cuddle from him this afternoon, I will be glad to take his present to him this time, better late than never. I had planned on doing craftsy’s BOM 2013 this year so when I found out the baby was going to be a boy I decided to use the robot factory fabric to make it suitable for a wee boy.  I loved the class and learnt a fair bit too and I’m really chuffed with the result, especially my wee applique robot that I pulled together myself from one of our colouring in books, the craftsy basket of flowers wasn’t going to quite cut it for the wee man.

Baby Finlay’s quilt with help from my handsome assistant

My wee robot

My first attempt at fmq

I even signed it lisa xx

Here is where I stick out my chest and say I quilted it myself, feeling a wee bit smug 🙂 I over thought the whole FMQ thing and read every tutorial I could find on the internet and got terrified it all just seemed too hard and too complicated.  So I took the two main bits of advise that stuck in my head which were to forget the unpicker and have a glass of wine. Best advise ever.  I loved it.  It’s actually quite liberating its a bit like doodling on you school books when you were at high school.  As this was a sampler quilt I took the chance to quilt every block differently, some I love some not so much.  Thery are all pretty messy and there are some little spider legs on the back in areas but I really enjoyed the process and by the end of the quilt I was getting better at it already

linking up to TGIFF at Quilt Matters