Baby quilt finished and handed over

I finished the baby quilt in plenty of time and mum-to-be Jenny loved it.  Apparently the blue in it is almost identical to the colour she's painted the nursery walls so I'd call that a win!

I love the way the pieced binding looks, I will definitely be using it again in the future.

I'm moving on to a quilt using a Mill House Inn jelly roll.  The pattern is Strip twist from the Quiltville website which is a wonderful resource for scrappy quilt patterns.  I'm not very good at scrappy but I thought this would work well with these fabrics.

Only 5 weeks til I go back to uni.  I have a lot of sewing to fit in before then...

How to sew a pieced binding

While staring into space concentrating at work today I decided to go for the pieced binding because I wasn't sure how I would be able to accurately measure the sides so that the binding changed colour at the corners.  I know that's a little obsessive but it's my engineering side creeping back in.

I pieced the strips together staggering them each by 2" to minimise wastage when they are cut at 45 degrees.  The seams were pressed open to make less bulk when sewn to the quilt sandwich.

I used the 45 degree line on my ruler to trim off the staggered ends and then measured the width I wanted my binding.  I use a 2 1/4" doubled binding so I cut as many 2 1/4" strips as I could.  You should get 13 out of a width of fabric.

The short strips were sewn end to end and the seams pressed open.  The binding was then pressed in half and voila!  A gorgeous pile of pieced double binding ready to be sewn to my quilt tomorrow.

Be careful when you're pressing the binding in half because it is now cut on the bias so it's quite easy to distort the strips.  Make sure to press straight down rather than pushing the fabric along the ironing board.

Binding dilemma

I've been sewing like a demon for the last couple of nights and managed to get the top finished, layered up and quilted. Now I'm stuck with the problem of binding.

I have six jelly roll strips left.  They are all the same pattern but 2 each of 3 different colour ways. I don't know whether to pick four and use one on each side or to cut them up and piece them together somehow to get a scrappy binding. Maybe sewing them in a diagonal would set off the braid.

I'm pleased with the piecing and quilting so far.  My braid ruler from creative grids was wonderful and made everything very simple and quick.  I'll definitely be using it again.

Win an AccuQuilt Go

Jackie from Canton Village Quilt Works has got together with AccuQuilt to, very generously, give away an AccuQuilt Go on her blog.

I'm beginning to fall in love with my different rulers but the idea of a machine that gives you accurately cut pieces every time is just something I can't pass up.  Particularly for all those curvy pieces I've been scared of tackling:

Head on over to her blog to see how to enter and while you're there have a browse around.  Her custom quilting is absolutely beautiful and her Kaffe Fassett quilts are scrummy.

Good luck x

On a roll, moving onto the baby quilt

I don't seem to be able to get on top of all my deadlines.  I just made the wedding deadline, I just made the block swap deadline and now I'm down to the wire for my step-sister's baby quilt.  However, my new braid ruler is a God-send.

10 mins this evening with the rotary cutter got me these lovely stacks of chisel shapes out of 15 jelly roll strips.  I spent a long time faffing around trying to get the balance of colours and patterns right but eventually I think I got it right.  Here's the first strip put together.

The baby shower is on the 29th August so I have a week and a half to get it done.  One of these days I'll do some thing in a leisurely time frame or maybe not.  I have 6 weeks left until I go back to university and I need to squeeze all my sewing into that!

Blocks Swap Blocks done

My blocks for the block swap are finished and packaged up ready to go to the post office in the morning.  I think they turned out pretty cute.

I'm going to have to do some work on the one I kept before I can do anything with it.  Spot the (not so) deliberate mistake.

I can't even blame George for that one.  It was just simple lack of concentration.

Why George Clooney is bad for quilting.

Here we have 48 half-square triangles neatly sewn to 48 squares and pressed into a nice crisp seam.

Unfortunately the squares were supposed to be sewn along the side of the turquoise fabric, not the pink -oops!  Moral of the story: don't watch George Clooney films while you're sewing, he's just too distracting.

My first Block Swap

I'm very excited to be taking part in my first block swap through the Missouri Star Quilter's Forum.  The instructions were very simple (a must for a first timer) - make 12 12" finished blocks in a summery floral fabric, keep 1 and post the other 11 over to America.  I think I can handle that.

After months of sitting in a corner hand quilting it felt good to get cutting again.  300 2" squares, 96 2"x3.5" rectangles, 48 2"x5" rectangles.  I feel ridiculously excited, too excited to sleep, so I started sewing.  My lovely neat piles became this:

Not so neat.  I can't leave them like that or it'll probably become a kitty nest over night so more work before I can sleep.

That's better, sleepy time now zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Wedding quilt finish

I made it!  The quilt got finished, the dress got finished and they both made it the 350 miles to the wedding without being lost, damaged or stolen.  I managed to take some pictures of it before I handed it over to the bride and groom.

By the way, I don't live in a castle and sleep in a four-poster bed every night.  That's just the hotel room but maybe some day ........  

Don't the bride and groom look happy.  You can see where I got my colour inspiration from - I was there when the bride bought the fabric for her dress.

 

Oh well, on to the next project, a block swap on the Missouri Star Quilt Forum.