Around the House 5 - HST quilt

I've never named my quilts, but this one probably does deserve a slightly better title than "HST quilt".  It could be "my favourite quilt ever", or "I just love this quilt", because I do.  Before I made this quilt I had used half-square triangles not very successfully on a couple of cushions, but for this quilt I took my time, trimmed all the squares, and was over the moon with how it came out.

I bought the fabric in this quilt just because I loved it.  I had kept popping in and out of the shop over a couple of weeks, trying to justify to myself why I could buy it or what I could make with it.  In the end, I just bought half a metre of each of the patterned fabrics and then started to muse on quilt designs.

The finished quilt looks absolutely nothing like my first idea.

My first idea was to make a sort of pixellated explosion starting in a bottom corner of the quilt, and moving diagonally across it.  I don't think I've explained it very well and I'm not sure I can describe it better - I will just have to actually make that design at some point and show you!

However, on musing over the fabric, I started to feel that half-square triangles were the way to go.  I bought some of my favourite patterned white background fabric - you can just about see the swirly flower pattern in the picture below (I absolutely adore this fabric, but the price prohibits me using it in more quilts), and started making the blocks.  I cut 6.5" squares to start with, and the finished blocks are 5.5".  I like to cut my squares a bit bigger than necessary for these so that if my seam allowances are slightly dodgy I can still trim them nicely to the right size.  Once I'd made a good pile, I began playing with a layout on the floor, and finally settled on this diamond pattern.

When it was finished, I hand quilted it about a centimetre on each side of each seam.  It took ages, but I was off work waiting for my baby to arrive, so had nothing else to do but whale around the house, watch daytime TV and handstitch this quilt.  I do really enjoy hand quilting - there is something very therapeutic about taking so much time over something.  You can't rush it, you just have to be there, and really enjoy the process.  It's quite an antidote to machine quilting where I sometimes feel under pressure to get it finished as soon as possible.

I backed it in a dark blue fabric spliced with a strip of the flea market fancy pink spots.  Because of the off-white thread I used for quilting, you can see the quilting design really clearly on the back which I love.

I bound it in some more of the pink spotty fabric - it's quite a wide binding, done at the time because I didn't know how to do a nice narrow binding, but actually I think the small white border and wide binding really frame the quilt nicely.

This is definitely one of my favourite curling up in front of the TV quilts, it makes me smile every time I look at it!

Around the House 4 - Wren and Friends Cushions

I previously talked about my charm pack trial, having a go to see what it was possible to make with these packs of pre-cut squares.  For anyone who hasn't heard of them, a charm pack is a pack of usually about 42 x 5 inch squares, in a range of fabrics from the same fabric line (so they should go together well).  They are a good way to get a taster of a fabric line, and for around £10 a pop aren't too pricey either.

I posted before about the wall hanging I made with a PB & J by Basic Grey for Moda charm pack.  I also bought a wren and friends by Gina Martin for Moda charm pack.  I love the vibrant, almost 1970's colours in this range, and the blend of oranges, greens and blues which go together in an unexpected but lovely way.

I decided to turn this charm pack into a range of cushions.  For the first cushion I cut 16 of the squares into quarters, giving me 64 x 2.5 inch squares.  Then I simply stitched them together into an 8 x 8 square.  I backed the pieced square with a piece of wadding and some scrap fabric and quilted it diagonally using an orange/red variegated thread, and then made the back of the cushion with a piece of brown fabric and a zip closure.  I have a few Christmas cushions in the pipeline to make, and when I do I'll try and put together a tutorial for how I finish the backs of cushions with a zip - I have a really straightforward method which I saw demonstrated on TV once, it gives a lovely neat finish and I find holds together better than an envelope back.

For the second cushion I again took 16 squares and kind of half followed the method in this tutorial over at stitcherydickory dock to make the blocks you can see in the photo below.  I finished the cushion in the same way as the first one, except with a white fabric for the backing.

And here's the back.

The third cushion was made using some of the triangular offcuts from the second cushion, and another one of Amy's tutorials.  I'm really pleased with the effect, but think that it would be good to try making it with a darker fabric for the background, or quilting it a bit more heavily, so that the seam lines aren't as obvious.

If you're keeping count, you'll realise that I still have 10 charm squares left from my pack.  I've been planning on using those to make a small dresden panel for a cushion - I've never done a dresden before and am quite excited to give it a go, it's just got pushed fairly far down on my to do list with all the Christmas sewing that's going on!

Around the House 3 - Wall Hanging

Continuing my roam around the house...

I always wondered how much use pre-cuts (charm packs, jelly rolls etc) actually were, and what you could really make with that little stack of squares or strips.  Finally I decided that the only way to find out was to have a go, so I bought two charm packs - a PB & J by Basic Grey for Moda one, and a wren and friends by Gina Martin for Moda one.  I turned the pb&j one into an awesome wall hanging, and the wren and friends one has become a series of cushions (I'll write about those in another post).

I put the charm squares together in fours, and then arranged them on point alternating with squares of a creamy coloured cotton (nothing special, just the standard plain cotton from my local shop).  I quilted it using an orange peel pattern following this tutorial over at petitdesignco.  I'm not very well practised with free motion quilting, so loved this method of doing the orange peel quilting as I could use a walking foot.  It's really simple to do, but so effective.

I also quilted in the ditch along the edges of the large squares - that's visible from the back but you can't really see it from the front.  It's backed in the same creamy cotton as I used for the background on the front, and I bought some extra yardage of one of the charm square fabrics for the binding.

I'd always intended this to be a wall hanging, so during construction I added a couple of pockets to the top corners so that it would be easy to hang using a bamboo cane.

This was a fun project as it was contained quite a few firsts for me:

• my first charm square project
• my first time doing orange peel quilting
• my first time doing this folded binding, following Amanda Jean's tutorial over at crazymomquilts- I have done it ever since as it gives a lovely narrow binding and a neat finish 
• my first time doing a quilt on point

It was great trying out so many new techniques, and I was so pleased with the outcome.  It's now hanging on our study wall, to brighten up my day when I'm working :)

Triple zip purse finished!

I am so excited by this purse!

I love making purses, and my sister loves anything with lots of zips, so when I saw the tutorial for this over at A Quilter's Table I knew who I was making it for.  It would have been a Christmas present if I could have hung onto it for that long, but it was too fun so I popped it in the post to her right away.

When I was visiting my sister a few weeks ago we went into her local fabric shop and she fell in love with this gorgeous dog fabric, so I whipped back to get some, along with the purple accent fabric.  The pockets are lined in a pink polka dot fabric I had in my stash.

I found the tutorial in general really good and easy to understand.  I did end up doing the final steps slightly differently as I found the tutorial method a bit fiddly.  Also, because I was concerned that my zips hadn't all gone in totally in line with one another, I used a slightly bigger seam allowance on the side seams to ensure I caught everything.  As best I can explain, what I did was:

• Once you have attached all of the zips, and it's just the sides of the pouch that need closing up, rather than turning the pouch through as described in the tutorial I OPENED THE TOP ZIP (it's a pain if you forget to do this - experience speaks), lifted up the biggest pocket, pressed the rest flat, and stitched from the bottom of the pouch upwards on both sides up to where it met the biggest pocket.  You are just stitching through the main body and the two smaller pockets, not through the biggest pocket.
  
• I then stitched the two sides of the biggest pocket, leaving a gap for turning on one side.  You need to be careful to lay the pocket down how it will lie in the finished pouch, not just pull it out at right angles, and you won't be able to stitch right up to the top of the pocket.
  
• Then, I stitched down from the top of the pouch, through all of the layers, until my stitching joined up with the main pocket stitching from the previous step.
  
• It should now be possible to turn your pouch the right side out through the gap you left in the side of the biggest pocket and the open top zip (see why that was so important?!), iron it all out and stitch the hole in the pocket up.

Overall I'm really pleased with the result.  It has pulled a bit tight across the back because of the bulk of all of the zips on the front, but that doesn't seem to be affecting the way it works so I don't think it'll matter.  You may notice that the top zip is on the front of the pouch rather than directly across the top as well - that's just to do with me lining it up like that when sewing up the sides because I didn't look at the photos properly.

I'm linking this up with crazymomquilts finish it up Friday!

Tiara

I spent an evening last week playing about tiara making.  My baby sister, who is not so much of a baby any more, is getting married soon and instead of spending a ridiculous amount on a tiara from a bridal shop I offered to have a go...