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.