Bags!

so! We are all very very excited here, very nervous too but hey, just grateful to be getting out again, off to Japan in 5 days time!

Hankering down in preparation so what better to do than whip up some bags and whittle down the fettle list!

Above is another mermaid for another swimming buddy gift. Below we have some Emmaline bags, 2 for a crafty chums auction and 1 for my 

Finished Selkie pouch! It's the open wide pouch by noodlehead, a perennial favourite 😊

I also wanted some pouches for 2 of my most treasured notebooks, my Goshuin (shrine stamp) book and my travel journal,  I bought that in Florence, I'll need to get a new one  when I go back this year!

The Hemminway pouch by Centerstreet quilts was perfect for these, a great pattern ,loved making it.

Bubbles quilt

Its done!! I finally finished the 'Planets quilt'

On our many visits to Kaleidoscope especially during restrictions and lockdown I became quite addicted to the Speckled fabric by Rashida Coleman Hale. I mean how flipping gorgeous is it??

I knew fairly early on that I wanted to make the Bubbles quilt by AYLIN NILYA I have had the pattern for years but never really found the inspiration to make it, I just needed the right fabric! and the speckled fabric is perfect! I decided that I wanted to make a lot of different sizes of bubbles each in a different colour, I wanted it to look like planets in a galaxy of the blue speckled

I started this at the first Gartmore retreat of 2023 and made three of the bubbles or planets as I now think of them!

I made another 2 in the last weekend of february, I am not going to lie they are tedious to make .... its not the patterns fault it is just so repetitive which goes with the territory of this kind of quilt I am afraid, so lets see how I progress with it!

Well the update below is from August/September I think, the tediousness of paper piecing log cabin and the waste of paper and ink finally got to me so I figured out how to machine piece the log cabins, saved so much time, instead of doing one block per day I could do 3 or 4 and chain piece. I think it also saved a lot of fabric as well.

Organisation is key!!!

I find joy in organising, it gives me such pleasure, people sometimes dont understand this and I often get comments about slowing down and enjoying the process but making the process as efficient as possible is what gives me joy, so you do you and I will do me 😊

Now I was motoring on with the quilt!

Organisation is my happy place

I decided not to size up the smaller bubbles, mainly because I was unsure about how off center I wanted them to be, I felt it would depend on what blocks were above and below them and that wouldnt be decided till the end. The amount of fabric I had for each colour decided what size of block I made, I would only get a small planet from a FQ

Then I hit a snag .... I ran out of the background blue, sadly my local shop had closed for a few months (opened up again now - Hurrah!) but I couldnt find any which wasnt online, unfortunately there is NOTHING on the selvedge which tells you which shade of blue this is and as you can see below I bought a few shades which werent right ...

Thankfully a lovely fabric shop - The fabric fox came to my rescue, apparently its the colours of the speckles which tell you which shade of blue to order, so I promptly bought up every bit she had of it 😂

Now we could motor on again!

Now this quilt is a keeper and there is only one person I trust with my long arming - Cath the Cumbrian long armer!

And oh boy did she ever come through, to be honest I sort of felt the quilt was a bit flat and 'meh' once i hgad finished it but Cath brought it to life again. I love it!!!!!!!!

I am now a convert to labelling my quilts, so used one of my gifted labels for this one!

It says December 2023 on it and my inner Sheldon says well actually it was January 2024 until I got it back and bound ettc but hey I will shush my innder Sheldon and say 'Its only a month' 😂

And the icing on the cake??? Rashid Coleman Hale like my post about the quilt 😊 I still have a whole load of Speckled left so lets see what that becomes!

Floral big cat tiger!!

He looks a bit creepy here doesnt he! a deconstructed tiger!!!

Thats a bit better!

Almost there!

ta dah!!!! just the papers to take out!

Papers out and he is pressed!!!

Look at him with his safari chums!

I do so love these floral big cats so so much! Fabulous patterns by Hobby Landing, really really love these so much, lets see if I can get through the other five in 2024!!!

 

Quiet play BOM

We have another finish!!!!

This is the finished Quiet Play BOM for 2023 - Under the garden, now I will start with saying I do love this quilt rather a lot! but lets say it hasnt been without its challenges .....

To start with I was hoping to do this in liberty fabrics, so I bought 7 meters of plain blue lawn, now I couldnt really justify liberty plain lawn so I bought lawn from a reputable company ....

I pre washed it as it was quite dark blue, and it bled, pre washed again, still bleeding A LOT !!!

These are the colour catchers after several washes

so I contacted the company, its a long sad story but the most they were willing to do was refund me 10%, I was not having that, me being stubborn thought that was admitting that it might be partly my fault (it wasnt, I pre washed the fabrics according to the instructions on their web site) So I ended up with nothing, I could have taken it a bit further but by that time it was causing me anxiety so I just thought leave it here!

Next decision was what to use instead? I decided to go scrappy, I have been collecting Hungarian blue fabrics and thought I would have enough of the (just!) to do the background.

So off I set! now the mariners compasses in the pattern were pretty easy peasy for a seasoned FPPer like me 😂

I got the chance to use up some of the blues I had bought for the Lion quilt for Leo but never used.

There were 2 sets of sashing blocks, these scallops which were great for using up scraps

Also the anchor blocks below, I tried to use a similar fabric for all the anchors. You can see below the first non compass block the angler fish, he should have had teeth but I wanted him to look more friendly!

I am trying to streamline the sewing room more! Raskog trolleys for the win! They hold my project baskets nicely and can easily be wheeled around

Also I was a bit worried about the amount of FPP I have been doing and the effect on my main machine, its been getting a battering over the last year! So I set up my featherweight permanently in the sewing room and now use it exclusively for FPP, best thing I have done, love it and its so sweet to look at too 😊

As the BOM went on the non compass blocks got more and more difficult, one of them, the crabs I think had 56 pieces in one block .....

 

The mermaid below really kicked my butt too ..... but overall I loved it

These turtles were "challenging" 😂

Seahorsies were ok actually, no issues with these

I did have to buy more fabric for the sashings but thats ok, this quilt used up a lot of my stash which is a good good thing!

It will all head off to Siblings together!