WIP - Crochet Rainbow Blanket

I like to have a crochet project on the go, something simple that I can pick up and put down easily - normally done when I'm stuck in the car for a while with a sleeping child in the back seat.

This is my current project - more rainbows! 

It's basically a giant granny square, with each row a different colour.  It's not a true rainbow - the indigo and violet are more like purple and pink, but it's bright and colourful and that'll do.  There is going to be a lot of sewing in of ends of threads when I've finished (not my favourite part!), but it'll be worth it.

The wool was leftover from a rainbow blanket I recently made for a friend who had a new baby.  I had a lot of wool left, so decided to just work it up into a second blanket, ready for whenever it is needed.  There's not too much left to do now - I think a couple more rows and a border and then it'll be time to block it :)

Linking up to WIP Wednesdays at Freshly Pieced!

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!

Jack Attack quilt top finished!

Whew! I think that this is the most mentally intensive quilt top I've made to date.  Normally I can can just relax whilst patchworking, watch a bit of TV, and have a generally chilled evening.  Not so here - this one required a lot of focus and, yes, one trip back to the (online) fabric store to rebuy when I cut a couple of my diagonals the wrong way round.

But, it's done!

The pattern for the union jack part of this quilt top was a quiltalong over at Lily's quilts a couple of years ago, but I've just got around to my version.  It's a present for some very special friends who have just emigrated from the UK to Canada, so I hope they like their union-flag-and-maple-leaf quilt :) I was hoping to be able to post it to them in time for Christmas but I don't think I'll have it basted and quilted by the last posting day to Canada (Monday!), so it'll have to be slightly belated.

The patterned fabric is Emily Herrick's Rustique, bought from both eclectic maker and plush addict, with Moda Bella Solids in bleached white for the background.  But oh my, I don't think I can say enough good things about Rustique.  The colours are deep and gorgeous, and perfect for this project - I wanted to nod towards the red, white and blue of the union flag but felt that to actually use those colours rigidly would make a very stark quilt.  The quality of the fabric is beautiful - it has a really solid feel but is gorgeously soft.

I ummed and ahhed for a while over how to do the maple leaves.  My initial thought was to do fusible applique, but I wasn't keen on the idea of having raw edges.  However, as soon as I stumbled across this tutorial at Crazy Old Ladies Quilts I was sold.  Granted, it was a bit more fiddly to do maple leaves than petals, and you can see in the photo below that there are a few creases, but overall I'm really pleased with how they turned out.  Currently they are just ironed on, but I'm going to sew round the edges while I'm quilting it.

Oh so pretty! I can't wait until this is quilted and winging it's way to Canada.  Happy Christmas to my lovely friends across the ocean!

Linking up to Crazymomquilts for finish it up Friday, Confessions of a fabric addict and Richard and Tanya Quilts.

Rainbow Quilt DONE!

It's done it's done, my rainbow quilt is done!

I am so pleased with how this has turned out!  It's a bit wrinkly at the moment as I left it in the tumble dryer slightly long and the creases set, but they'll come out next time it gets washed (which, given it's my son's quilt I'm sure won't be long).

I quilted it in zig-zags, and have bound it in scraps of the green, blue, indigo and violet fabric.

This was going to be one of his Christmas presents, but I've already got him a few other presents and he's too little to really understand the idea of Christmas anyway, so I've decided to give it to him early.  I think a few games of hide and seek and a bit of tent building will be the order of the day!

Linking up to Crazymomquilts, Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Freedom Fridays and TGIFF.

Rainbow Quilt in progress

I'm currently working on my rainbow quilt.  This one is destined to be a Christmas present, but as it's for my 14 month old son who is unlikely to stumble across this post, I feel safe sharing it.

This is the first quilt that I've made using solids, and I've really enjoyed the novelty of the big bold blocks of colour.  I used kona solids for the fabric, and they are gorgeous, vibrant colours (when it's finished I will take a photo in the daylight to show the colours off better) and the fabric has a lovely weighty feel.  I bought the fabric from plush addict (here) where they do a rainbow fat quarter bundle, which pretty much solved my fabric selection!

My original plan was to make each of the zig zag stripes in a single colour, but when I was laying it out it just didn't look right, and after a lot of playing around I combined two colours per zig zag stripe.  I got the idea for the zig zag stripe layout using two tone blocks from Amanda Jean over at crazymomquilts.  It's a neat technique to form zig zags without the need for half square triangles!  Each block measures 5.5 inches finished: 4.5 inches of colour and a 1 inch white stripe (the white is kona snow).

I'm currently quilting it fairly simply, sewing lines about half an inch away from the white stripes on each side.  I'm using red thread for this so that it shows up on most of the squares, a bit like top stitching.  I don't tend to quilt very heavily as I like the look of widely spaced lines (and also I'm also a bit impatient and don't want to spend days doing it).

I finished piecing this quilt top over the summer, and when I started quilting it tonight I felt incredibly unmotivated.  I think the novelty of it had worn off and it just felt like drudge work to get it finished.  After I'd been working for a little while though (with the aid of a few episodes of The West Wing), I really started to get into it and I'm falling back in love with the rainbows.  I just hope my little man likes it - it will certainly be good for playing hide and seek under!