"A very bright quilt, Jacob's Birthday and some sewing."

Hello,

I thought I should get back to blogging. Took a little rest from it. Read lots of books instead of browsing the net. Plus I did a little sewing.

 We recently celebrated our Grandson's first Birthday. It was a fun day watching Jacob delicately open his presents. Each present was different which was lucky. I am sure he would have been happy with the paper and packaging let alone the presents inside.

Back in November last year I had joined up a packet of squares that I had bought back in January 2012 from Good Sammy's. I paid $5.00 for the packet of over 600 squares which originally came from a patchwork shop in Queensland. I did have grand plans of hand quilting it for a Christmas present but unfortunately time got away from me.

 I did plan to make the quilt a bit bigger but found out my fabric for the border would have to be cut up into pieces, something I didn't want so the next plan went into play. I had already cut out a few of my own squares to make it bigger so I had to un-pick a bit and with the extra squares I used a cotton reel and traced around it, put some sticky stuff on the back and threw them on the quilt. Where they landed was where they were sewn on.

 I then machine quilted it on my embroidery machine. This was a huge task for me but I am so happy with the end result. The quilt measures 48 by 63 inches.

Once again I used the heart design, this time a bigger one shrunk a little to fit into the 5 by 7 inch hoop. I used Gutermann 100% cotton colour number 2833 for the thread.

 The backing was some more of the Peace/Love fabric, nearly finished that fabric, it seems to go on forever.

This quilt will match this one I made back in 2012.

 A total of three quilts this year have been machine quilted on my embroidery machine, super pleased with how they have turned out.

The only other sewing I have done is three pairs of PJ shorts for Jacob and two tops which are way too small. I won't be using this top pattern again.

Would love to hear how your day is going.

Happy days.
Bev C

"Friday Night with Friends Valentines Quilt."

Hello,

Friday Night with Friends was held yesterday, with events like this I like to make a little project and get it done. I discovered a quick and easy pattern for a Valentine's Quilt when I followed a link from the Primitive Quilts and Projects Newsletter. I cut out the squares etc on Thursday planning to sew on Friday but the temptation was too hard to resist. I had most of it joined together and Friday saw me finish it off and start the machine quilting.

 Once again I used the heart design, the small one this time.

 With it being a Valentine's quilt I had to throw in a few cherries. Only a few as I only had a very limited amount of the red thread.

I used a blue fabric on the back that has pink roses and for the binding some fabric that has cherries on it.

Thanks Cheryll for hosting the sew in.

Happy days.
Bev C

"The Letters Quilt - Real men do pin quilts."

Hello,

Now that the Australian Open Tennis is over for another year I was able to sew down the binding on the Letters quilt yesterday.

 The fabrics for this little quilt all came from the stash. I had picked up the binding fabric a metre of spotty blue spots on yellow at Good Sammy's last year. It was one of those fabrics you buy because you know it can be used one day.

 I love the quirkiness of the backing fabric. Picked this one up at a Garage Sale, the length contained several metres of fabric. It is a narrow fabric but wide enough for this quilt.

I decided to quilt this using my embroidery machine. The three layers of fabric were pinned as per usual then hooped up for each design. The heart designs took a minute for each one to stitch out. I used a small heart and a medium heart design. On some of them I altered them in size a little depending where they were placed on the quilt. The feathers design on the outside took 2 minutes to stitch. The machine embroidery thread was from Birch. It was the same colour thread on both designs but because of the closeness of the stitches the green colour showed up more on the feathers design.

Believe me real men do pin quilts, thanks for your help in the pinning process David.

Can you hear the rain? So good to see it. Had a good storm last night as well. So much lightning and huge claps of thunder but best of all is the rain. Everything is washed down, the plants must be so happy I know we are.

Happy days.
Bev C