Monday 16 June 2014

LBQB First Quarter Finishes

So the Little Blogs Quilting Bee is well under way with the first quarter blocks all having a 'wonky' theme.

Now I know these have all arrived safely I can show you my wonky wonders!

I can honestly say this has pushed me away from my comfort zone ... anyone who knows me will tell you I am a perfectionist and don't do miss-match! I discovered that I wasn't the only one who cringed at the idea of not matching corners and making things symmetrical ... but in the spirit of embracing the challenge we all gave it a go!

Saying that, I think the challenges allowed some room for manoeuvre and the whole idea was that we would get an opportunity to do something that was someone else's style or colour choice.

These are the blocks requested by Lou (March), Jenny (April) and Joanna (May). 

For Lou who had requested a 'Wonky' star, we were pointed in the direction of this tutorial by Owen's Olivia. This was my resulting star: made from the Curiosities range of fabric by Nancy Halvorsen.



Jenny asked for a 'Wonky' log cabin block, in brights and solid colours so this is the resulting block. It was easy once I had located fabric in the right colours. 



Joanna provided a great tutorial for a wonky churn dash block on her blog. I ordered some Moda solids and once her background fabric arrived in the post I set to work. I found all the scrappy piecing fairly easy and planning the wonky squares was fairly quick, once I had worked round a flaw in the background fabric which reduced the available fabric considerably. 

However I will say that putting the whole thing together was not only time consuming but with all the little seams it was neither a pleasure to sew nor to press! I don't think it turned out too badly considering, here's the result:



I am looking forward to seeing how all these blocks look when they are put together ... and Lou's Wonky star gets the trophy this quarter for being the most fun! Here you are Lou:  

LBQB Trophy Quarter 1 is awarded to Lou.
With the second quarter underway and my June block wending it's way as I type   it will be interesting to see all the other new ideas our Little Blog Quilting Bee members will come up with.

I also had fun adding into the packages some of my own goodies and trying to choose something I could include that I thought the Queen bee for the month might like. 

I sent heart shaped coasters I made to Lou, here's her Instagram post, brown paper packages to our lovely Jenny containing a few of my favourite things and some allotment themed goodies to our green fingered Joanna, here's her Instagram post.  This has been such fun!

Saturday 14 June 2014

Don't worry, I have it covered!

When my hubby bought a second hand conservatory suite I must say I wasn't too impressed. The structure was solid but the covers were dated and had seen better days.


"We'll just get new cushions," he said, which got me thinking. There was nothing wrong with the cushion pads themselves, it was just the fabric that looked like it had seen better days. It had been repaired a few times and wasn't exactly what I would have chosen for style.

I have made loose covers before. For a few different items: suites, chairs armchairs and chaise lounges. I knew that although I needed lots of fabric it wasn't difficult,especially if you had an existing set of covers or a shape to follow. I also knew that I had in my stash some canvas weight furnishing cotton. It was the remainders of a roll of fabric I bought called Mintern, from Laura Ashley. It was left from curtains I made for my Kitchen in my previous house. I still have the cups and the table mats to match. 

My SIL got roped in to help me salvage the zips from the old covers and cut off the seams to prepare the old covers as pattern pieces. It was good to have some company as it was a rather monotonous task. I think it also demonstrated to her that if you start somewhere it isn't too difficult!

I sewed for a few evenings ... taking up the kitchen table as the fabric was heavy and I needed extra space. I also lined the cushion back pads, to allow me to take the covers off without disturbing the padding again.

I made about 15 meters of red piping (from some Laura Ashley Bacall in Raspberry) and am really pleased that I decided to pipe the cushions. This is the finished suite:

Here's a better picture of one of the chairs:


It was a big project and I'm really pleased with the results! 

I am linking up this finish with Kate's Finish Along as this is on my Q2 list of things I hoped to complete! 

Sunday 8 June 2014

Instagram Success

A little over a week ago I reached 200 followers on my Instagram account ... which I thought was amazing, thank you!

I decided to have a little 'thank you' giveaway and made some cafetière jackets and a couple of pincushions. One was for the winner of the giveaway and one for my 200th follower.

This is a quick screenshot from Instagram:

The winner was chosen via the random number generator I found on line ... amazing what you can find to do the work for you ... and the winner is Janice Thomson (aka @janithom) who was 6th on my list.

Well done Janice ... send me an email with your address details and these will be on their way to you down under! 

I will have another giveaway soon, it was such fun!

Katie who blogs over at StVital was my 200th visitor so along with holding a giveaway I made contact with her and arranged to send her some goodies.  

She has 4 adorable kiddies and lives with her hubby in Canada. I love her quilting and her cakes but this has to be my favourite quilt on her blog:



It's a present, present! I hope she doesn't mind me sharing her picture with you, it was such a bright and fun photo, here's a link to the post where she has some more photos in lovely high definition. The binding has little white snowflakes all over, it's beautiful!

It's been a busy week at work and yesterday I was briefly at the Rawdon Summer Fun Day with the local Community Library Craft Group which due to torrential rain and 4 inches of mud across the whole of the field was bit of a catastrophe:

My daughter, Alex, has been off school with a virus and I think I have had a mild version of the same, although I wasn't feeling very well today I'm much better this evening. 

It does look like she might have recovered, she was out in the garden dressed as a blonde elvish princess:



I love the way she mixes up her fairy tales and took with her a basket of red delicious apples, don't they grow up too quickly! 

Tuesday 3 June 2014

Hey partner!

Been busy with my planning & layout ... decided to go with a central appliqué panel and some happy Kate Spain "Summertime" ... this might take longer than I expected!
It's coming on nicely and it's great fun!
I think I have such a little blog I'm safe to show you how I'm getting on so far. I've added the cake toppings now and a few other bits since I took this: