Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Single Hectic Eclectic Bordered Quilt. An Amazing stash buster quilt.

Single Hectic Eclectic Bordered Quilt. An Amazing stash buster quilt. 
 



My first UFO down for the year. What a fantastic start to the year.  I love the feeling of finally finishing off a quilt that has had to be put aside for other projects time and time again.


I plan to get more UFO's (Un Finished Objects) completed this year. The goal is by the end of the year to have no remaining UFO's remaining hidden in my sewing room cupboard, or in plastic tubs forgotten about under my sewing table. Same goes for the odd shoe boxes of fabric cut up and waiting to be sewn into something pretty, usable and useful stashed in various places around the house. 


This single Hectic Eclectic quilt is the other half of the previous Single Hectic Eclectic quilt that is currently up for sale on my madeit.com.au/Netto store.  Originally I had planned to make them into a double quilt, but then changed my mind and made two single quilts.

I love that they are both amazing stash busters. This pattern allows you to showcase so many different beautiful fabrics in a variety of sizes.

Some of these fabrics I purchased myself at a variety of fabric stores, one was from Big W, and others were given to me as a gift for Christmas many years ago. 



I can see myself making another of these style quilts again in the future. (Maybe when I have no remaining  UFOs lingering and making me feel guilty about not finishing my projects in a more timely manner.)


Some of these fabrics have been cut since I first started quilting. Prior to making these two single bed quilts, I made myself a double bed sized quilt. Although I now have a French Braid quilt on my bed, I do drag out my double HE quilt when it's needed to throw on the bed, or to give to a house guest that stays over. I've even used it as a picnic blanket on the beach when we went 4WD on Bribie Island. 



The backing is a black geometric print. I quilted this with a blue variegated thread. This one was Gutermann colour 9986. I like the way that it pops against the dark background.

The quilt top was quilted with Gutermann colour 919, which I ran out of during the quilting process. So the quilting was put on hold overnight while I had to wait to get another thread spool. 



For the boarders I had enough left over from my own French Braid quilt. I love this fabric. The reason that this quilt has a boarder is to make it to single bed size. This quilt has six squares across instead of the seven that the other quilt had.




For this quilt I decided upon a premade binding that took my fancy while trying to work out what to spend my Christmas vouchers at Spotlight on. Premade binding always comes in handy and is so hard to go past. I was lucky that I was able to get a different pattern this time.




As yet this quilt is not for sale. However I may change my mind on that. After all a girl can only have so many quilts in the cupboard....

My store is www.madeit.com.au/Netto




Saturday, January 24, 2015

How to wrap a Quilt for a pink baby shower.

How to wrap a Quilt for a pink baby shower.





I know that I have been so slack with my blogging and sewing lately, and while I am hoping to turn that around this year... as always, I will just have to see how I go. Unfortunately studying full time at home, doesn't leave a great amount of time available for anything remotely fun... like sewing. 




Especially when you add things like virus/malware attacks during writing an assignment. Or having to stay up far too late to wait out a thunderstorm and then submit an assignment online. Oh the joys of studying online in Queensland's storm season.
I am still studying my degree online, and while at the moment it feels that it is taking forever, I am slowly, slowly getting it done.




I have called this quilt. I heart Raspberry. Due to the faint heart pattern on the white boarders and the Jelly Roll used being called Raspberry Parlour. I've made this quilt for a friend's baby shower for baby number two.

This quilt measures 43 inches across by 66.5 inches down. Or for those of us who use the metric system, that's 110 cms across by 169.5 cms down. So this is a decent sized single bed quilt.





I used red thread for quilting the top, to contrast with the white love heart boarders around the red and pink central jelly roll fabrics. For the bottom I used an ivory thread which really popped against the dark background on the backing. I used Gutermann threads, the red was colour 156 and the ivory was colour 919.

The batting or wadding of the quilt is natural cosy 100% cotton quilt batting that I've purchased pre bagged from Spotlight. This time I cut a queen-size piece of batting in half and have used it for two smaller quilts. Not sure if it worked out to be cheaper that way, but it was what I had on hand.




The jelly roll was purchased from The Quilters Store in Salisbury. Since moving to the south side of Brisbane, I've slowly been able to explore the different stores on this side of town. (Now I have the best of both sides of town, as I can go and visit the quilt shops on the north side when I visit with friends or relatives.)



The jelly roll/rolie polie used to construct this quilt is called Raspberry Parlour by Riley Blake designs. When looking for ideas on how to make a quilt from a jelly roll I stumbled across some great ideas such as the 'Jelly Roll Quilt Race' on YouTube. My favourite video was the one by the Missouri Star Quilt Company.
Although I didn't like the look of the angle of her strips when pieced together, so I just joined them straight.



The backing is a mix of black homespun and a lovely raspberry and white print fabric. I've cut the raspberry fabric slightly off centre. The white quilted thread really stands out on the black backing fabric, but blends in with the print fabric.

The binding is a fabric which has a mixture of both red and black colours which I felt would look good from the front to frame the quilt, as well as from the back.




I really enjoyed how quickly the jelly roll strips made up the centre of the quilt. It was fun to do. I'm already hooked and plan to do more quilts in this style.

As you can see from the photo this is how I wrapped the quilt for the baby shower. The ribbon was just long enough at 2 meters.