More 2016 Finishes

With only a couple of weeks left for 2016, I have realised there are some quilts not blogged about. Given that is  a diary of my quilt finishes, I need to fill in

First that comes to mind are the baby Quilts.
I was the only person who knew that Lukes new baby was to be a girl so I could make her quilt.
Seeing the baby wasn't going to sleep in a cot, I decided a full single was a better idea. 
I decided on the Kittens Quilt by Elizabeth Hartman. For fabric,  I have a lot of Pam Kitty Morning fabric which I also used for Maisies quilt, and it is perfect for wee girls.
decisions made.
This is Hazels Quilt.

Once baby was named Hazel I had a bit of a problem. I couldn't help but make a Hazel Hedgehog quilt- another Elizabeth Hartman pattern. I had made one before for the Quilt Along held by Gnome Angel. That lives in Australia with Sienna, so I had to make another one. Again I turned to Pam Kitty Morning for the fabric. I made this a large cot size. It can be used as a play mat or whatever they find useful.

My November finish was Summer Solstice. This was a quilt along with Melissa from Happy Quilting.
The fabric is from the Eden range by Tula Pink.  This one is 100 by 100 inches so is a biggie.  I still manage to quilt it on my Bernina without any problem.

The latest finish is Coral Anniversary. This is a row quilt which The Quilt Room held to celebrate 35years in business. One row was completed each month from April to December.
The fabric is True Colors by Amy Butler.

September One Block Wonder- Rainbow Stacks

This month's One Block Wonder with Upstairs Hobby Room is a paper pieced block called Rainbow Stacks.
I decided to make mine up in a cushion in colours matching the July Block I made into a table runner for her.
Because her runner had a white background and a black and white print in it, I chose those as my 2 framing fabrics. I think they worked well, and is very different to the original, so shows how a lighter frame works.  A border would show the block better, but I had already reached the size I wanted for the cushion

My mother loves her cushion and it does go well with her runner, despite being a very different pattern.

Below is the runner made from Sandy's  Brilliant Clusters pattern

The back of the cushion is the same as the border fabric on the table runner.

 

I have enjoyed the Block of the month with Upstairs Hobby Room, and have made some lovely things over that time.

Thanks to Sandy for her hard work hosting this and for providing the patterns. Also thanks to the sponsors, especially Zipit, who I received some lovely zips from.

 

I am joining in with the linky for this month's block.

One Block Wonder BOM for August- X-Boxed

I have been doping these block of the months, designed and shared by Sandy at Upstairs Hobby Room,  all year.
This month I decided to use and unusual fabric line Dapper by Luke Haynes for Moda. It is masculine but with pink and purple fabrics included. Mens shoes, and spectacles are amongst the fabric s in the line.
I chose to do a 5 block quilt as in her quilt for May- May Flowers.
I plan to put a row of the X's at the top and bottom,  but it is again a busy month, and I haven't had time to finish the quilt but it is at the top of my list. I don't like to leave these BOMs unfinished at the end of a month, but will have to for this one.
Rather than miss the parade of blocks on Upstairs Hobby Room Blog I will add my photo of the main part of the quilt.

I am joining the link up on the blog

Snowman Village- Fat Quarter Shop Designer Mystery BOM 2015

The 2015 Fat Quarter Shop Designer Mystery Block of the Month was using the Primitive Gatherings fabric line Snowman Gatherings.
The setting is really lovely with Snowmen and trees being the filler blocks and a  row of beautiful stars top and bottom.
The quilt has been much admired by everyone who has seen it

This is quilt finish No 12 for 2016

HSTS -Summer Solstice Quilt Along

This week's sewing in Happy Quilting's Summer Solstice Quilt Along was Half Square Triangles. I am doing a 4 by 4 block setting so I had ALOT of HSTs. 384 of them.
I am using Eden fabrics by Tula Pink.All done and trimmed.

 

With so many pieces, artistically arranging all of these HSTS for a photo was not an option for me. 

Linking up to the Happy Quilting linky.

Summer Solstice - Flying Geese

The first week of sewing for Happy Quilting's new Quilt Along meant making flying geese. because I chose the make 16  of the 20 inch blocks, I had to sew 16 groups of 8 flying geese.
We used the No Waste method, which meant it went fairly quickly.
Here are my piles of geese in Tula Pink's lovely Eden line.

Linking up with the Happy Quilting fortnightly show of blocks

Brilliant Cluster- July One Block Wonder

This month's One Block Wonder  on Upstairs Hobby Room was a star block- Brilliant Cluster.
I love stars and so was very drawn to this block.
Unfortunately this month was very busy quilting-wise so I didn't have time for a full quilt.  I don't want to leave the work from the One Block Wonder finished at the end of each month, so always try to finish it on time, whatever I have decided to make.  I decided to  make a table mat for my mother from the block. She asked for bright and colourful.
This was the result. It is deliberately scrappy, with the fabrics coming from my scrap bins or stash fat quarters. The red star points were bonus triangles from stitch and flip corners on a quilt I made a couple of years ago.

Last month I was the lucky winner of the zips from zipit.  Jenny was really lovely to deal with as well as generous, and she has a great zip offering. I highly recommend her if you are looking for zips and friendly service. I asked for a selection of 22 inch zips, which is the size I use most often. Jenny sent me a wonderful rainbow of colour.

I am linking up to the monthly round-up of projects at Upstairs Hobby Room

Summer Solstice

The lovely Melissa from Happy Quilting is holding a quilt along. The first part (cutting) has been posted so there is still plenty  of time to join in.
I have chosen to do a 4 by 4 layout of 20 inch blocks.

I am currently trying to use some of my collection of fabrics, so chose to use  the lovely Eden line by Tula Pink. The hardest part was choosing 16 of the fabrics to use.

After 2 days of cutting I am finally finished. I know I will be pleased it is all done as we go along, but there was an awful lot to do.

Here are my cut piles. The squares of fabric in the front are one of each of the fabrics used.

I am linking up to Happy Quilting

Topographical-June One Block Wonder

I loved the quilt that Sandy from Upstairs Hobby Room made using this month's block. The colours were gorgeous and I had been wanting to make a blue and green quilt for a while.  I shamelessly copied Sandy's colours when it came time to make it. I like big quilts which are big enough for a bed, so needed to make 9  of the 24 inch blocks.

This quilt didn't really need a border but I admit to being partial to them, and prefer the way a quilt with a border looks on the bed. I went ahead and added 4.
The quilt ended up being 87 inches square.
Quilting-I decided to do a simple stipple for this.

I had made some aqua blocks which I decided to replace. I instead made some blue-green blocks and some green-blue. The original blocks were perfect for making up the extra backing needed. The quilt was too wide for just 2 widths of fabric.  I think they look great in a line.

Please take the time to make a quick comment before you leave the page. You don't know how much they mean. 

I am linking up for the Linky Party at Upstairs Hobby Room

Kaffe Challenge Quilt

The little Facebook Quilting group I belong to has been doing a challenge quilt. We did a block swap of the Woven block which had to be made with at least 2 Kaffe Collective fabrics, up to 2 blenders with a white tone on tone background. We then had to make a quilt using our blocks.

I decided to combine the challenge with the idea of circles. Several of the group are doing a circle quilt, inspired by the 365 Circles that is running this year.

I joined and sashed the woven blocks and treated it as a large square, then just made a giant Square in a Square block. I liked the centre diamond floating rather than touching at the edges.
The sashing is bright pink Aboriginal Dots and the border is Kaffe's Dahlia Blooms. The binding is Ribbon Stripe

The backing features a row of spare woven blocks down the centre.

Quilting-each of the elements is quilted differently.  The centre is cross hatched, following the lines created by the blocks. The Circle triangles have organic wavy lines  and the border has a scroll design.

Size is 85 inches square

Following a suggestion from Korrinna  and based on  our group name,  the quilt is called Sew Let's Kaffe.

This is finish No 10 this year

May Blooms - One Block Wonder 2015

Again, this month, I have participated in Upstairs Hobby Rooms One Block Wonder.
After making a small quilt last month, I was determined to make time for a bigger one this month.
The May block is called May Blooms, and is a wonderful  large flower block of 24 inches.
I have 2 options for a recipient, and both love pansies, so I decided to try to make my flowers into pansies.

I found 4 Fat Quarter bundles amongst my stash which gave me sets of 3 shades of the same colour in the way I was looking for. There are Butterflies by Lizzy House, Mixmasters Fizz by Robert Kaufmann, Dream by Timeless Treasures  and Pepper Corry's Brushstrokes.  Always great not to have to buy extra fabric

Some of the flowers I graduated colour from light to dark, and others I reversed the order. This was to show the different types of pansies. The same went with the centre's of the flowers, which were again alternated. The yellow centre's have the black outside them to represent the "faces" of the pansies.

The quilt finished at 80.5 inches, so it grew quickly.
I quilted this with Aurifil white colour 24 in a all-over swirl and petal design.

Originally I planned on a 3rd border of yellow, but after these I felt it was enough.  Seeing the Red Bridge photo  I think the extra yellow border would have been good too.

A quick word about the Red Bridge for those who don't know about it. This pedestrian bridge is in Feilding a town less than 10 minutes from our home. When I was looking for somewhere to photograph a large quilt a couple of years ago, I found this. The large quilts can hang down so the full quilt can be seen. The redness with the green grass and trees in the background is a great setting for many of the quilts. The Council even painted the bridge shortly after I started using it, so from dull red it has become a bright shiny orange-red.
Now most of my quilts get a Red Bridge photo.

I am linking up to the Upstairs Hobby Room Linky of May Blooms.

Fancy Foxes

I had bought a kit to make  for a Fancy Fox quilt quite a while ago from Whimsy Quilts & Fabrics. so I decided it was time to get moving.  I love Elizabeth Hartman's animal patterns and had made some of her other animal blocks. I had made up some Fox blocks as a test maybe a year ago. These 4 test blocks eventually got made into a tote bag by a lovely friend.

This quilt has a background of Michael Miller Pinhead Dots in Fog, with the foxes made from many different orange, rust coral and red fabrics.  I wanted a larger size than the kit made up, so I gathered a few extra fabrics than provided in the fabric bundle.
The pattern is borderless, and I have yet to see it otherwise but I wanted a border to add a bit if size and to keep the foxes contained. I chose the darkest fox fabric for this, and am happy with how this works.

The label is a white fox so I guess he is an Arctic Fox.
Size:64 inches by 74 inches
This is quilt finish No 8 for this year.

Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2016 -April blocks

I have followed the RSC in previous years, and admire so much of the work shown, but never joined in.
In January my scrap strips bins ( especially the 2 1/2 inch strips) were overflowing, so I decided it was time to  get started.
I have never been organised enough to have a blog post ready for Saturday, so today I have finally managed it.
In view of the fact that I wanted to use 2 1/2 inch strips, and that the resulting quilt would eventually be gifted, I decided on Bonnie Hunter's Boxy Stars for my block.
My goal was to 3 or 4 of each colour.

January's blue with purple was an easy enough colour, but February's Brown with pink was a challenge. I hardly ever use brown, so lots of pink was added. I only managed 2 decent blocks and one paler one,  which will need to be replaced.
March's Purple also proved difficult. I didnt realise how few purples I used. I did have plenty of F Qs of it so I scraped together 3 blocks
April-another one which surprised me. While I have plenty in my stash and had been using a lot of orange in for the Fancy Fox quilt, there was not much in my scrap bins. Again the stash of FQs came in handy
My April oranges

So, here are my 4 months'  blocks

I  am joining in with  up with the  Soscrappy Saturday linky.

Diamond Path ~April One Block Wonder

This month Sandy at Upstairs Hobby Room has an easy but effective block. She has named it Diamond Path.

I thought her blue and white version was very pretty, but decided to do something a little different.
I got out my bin of black and white prints and chose an apple green Free Market fancy  fabric as my contrast.

 I found that the fabrics which worked best had more black than white in them.
I have a lot of sewing planned this month, so chose to just do a 4 block small quilt.
My preference is always a quilt of at least lap size, but the smaller size was achieveable for now.  I did think I hope I had a little time to go back and make a bigger quilt, but that was not to be. April HAS been busy quilting-wise.

Once I had made my 4 blocks, the fun was in choosing a setting.
It came down to the fact that I was only doing a small quilt in the end. I chose the setting whick created the most complete look for the size. I think if I had gone bigger, the stepped setting may have been my choice.

The completed small quilt. It has finished at 31 inches square.

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This design sews up very quickly, would be great for a newer quilter, and is quite dramatic with it's big diamonds. If I had gone back to do another, I was planning on big alternating blue and red diamonds to see how that would look. I think it would be great for a boys bed.

This month I also finished Sandy's Bliss Medallion quilt, in gorgeous Amy Butler fabrics. To view, follow the link or the button on the right hand side.

I am linking up to the Upstairs Hobby Room Linky Party

Bliss Medallion Quilt

I won a prize in Sandy's Upstairs Hobby Room  One Block Wonder Linky Draw- a pattern of hers of my choice. I chose Bliss Medallion.

Our small Facebook group had a weekend retreat, so I decided at the last minute to make up this quilt, as I wanted something straightforward that didn't need intense concentration.
 I have a lot of gorgeous half yard bundles of fabric, which I really need to start using. I chose Violette by Amy Butler. Only 6 fabrics were needed for the larger size.

I did all the cutting the night before we left, and had each set of fabrics in a plastic bag, labelled.
Most of the blocks were made and rows sewn together before the end of our weekend.
It was a quick days sewing to finish the quilt top.

Quilting was with Aurifil 2000  (sand) which matched the background perfectly.
The large corner areas lent themselves to feathers, so big bold ones were done. A feather wreath in the centre block doesn't show- but it is there.   The rest  of the quilting was in rows following the diagonals of the fabrics.

This was a fast easy and very pretty quilt to make. The photos don't do it justice.
This is Quilt No 7 for 2016

Scrapbasket One Plus One

 This month Upstairs Hobby Rooms One Block Wonder   is called One Plus One.
My 2 1/2 inch strip bin is overflowing, so I used the opportunity to use that for my blocks,
 Somehow, I  kept making more and more blocks, so ended up with enough to make a quilt.

Borders were necessary to take it to a good size, so I decided to use more scrap strips to make a piano key border. Once I laid it out I didnt like it. I found it too busy. It stayed on the floor for a day or so, and I found the piano keys  had grown on me.  I added in the black stop border, I really liked how it joined the quilt and the border. The black was repeated for the binding.

This was quilted using Aurifil 2021 and an often used all-over design,  Loopy Clams by Lyn Durbin
I dont know how,  but my 2 1/2 inch strip bin doesnt to have any less fabric in it.  I will just have to keep looking  for opportunities to use them.

I am linking up to Sandy's Linky Party At Upstairs Hobby Room. I  looking forward to seeing what others have done this month.
This is quilt No 6 for this year.

One Block Wonder Revisited

I made a small table topper last month using the Upstairs Hobby Room X's and O's tutorial.It looks lovely on my table.   See it  here
When I saw the other blocks on the linky, I noticed they were mostly in pink or coral tones. Two days ago I rashly decided to do another project in a different colorway. Once I had decided to do a cot size, I did a little research in nursery trends.  Grey always seemed to feature-teamed with pink, blue, yellow or teal.I chose the teal with grey.  I realised later they are the Air NewZealand colours, and the colours of my High School uniform,  so are a not unfamiliar combination.     I chose to to use the same 4 fabrics to see how the blocks  play together when repeated.

I found that there were 2 options for the layout. One had the teal as the main colour

And the other the grey

I liked the more subtle grey best so went with that.
The next decision was borders. I knew I wanted borders but my preferred fabrics had insufficient left. I had to go with what I had.

I quilted this with organic irregular  straight lines, which I thought suited the modern look of the blocks.
Size- 46 inches square.

I am really happy with how this turned out, and am so pleased I had another go at this block.

I am linking to the Upstairs Hobby Room Linky party.

This is my 5th finished quilt for 2016.