1st of the 8 charm pack quilts!

 So! When I was at FOQ last year I may have splurged on charm packs .... I do love a charm pack! I have 8 patiently waiting for their turn, well 7 now I have used this one! Its the fig tree one on the right in the picture above.

The pattern is splashdown by 'A few scraps' Please be sure to download the ammended  version (its says its version 2) the original had a little cutting error. Its a great pattern though! I was pretty pleased with this layout.

But there was a bit of a slip between the layout and the sewing machine it appears!!! I spotted the errors below so had to do some emergency surgery!

A tense few moments ...

But all was well!

One charm pack down 7 more to go!!! (Im not including gifted ones in this calculation!

this one will go to Project Linus

Gifted charm pack quilt

 Well the weather here has been awful ... what does awful weather mean??? It means a quilt making fenzy!!!! I do always like to start the year with some charm pack quilts, they are quick and easy to whip up and a very satisfying make. I love making mine with HSTs its quick simple and gives you a variety of layouts. Also clearly perfect angles make them so much easier without all the marking down the center.

I started with the one above, it was gifted by a chum who has obviously had it in her collection for a while!

Add in a FQ or 2 and away we go!!

There were a few OOPS along the way with placement etc but eventually we got there! another cute one to go to Linus

Cori Dantini panel quilt

Lovely chums are really lovely and often send me fabric when they clear out, they often say "I know you will use it" 🤣🤣🤣😊 which is sweet (and true 🤣) 

A chum came across a bundle of Cori Dantini fabrics which included this sweet set of panels 

There were several fqs which go with these. A snow day was a perfect reason to stay in and crack on with these.

I'm a big fan of keeping things simple, especially with super cute fabrics like these. So I decided  on bordering each panel with hsts.

so ta dah!!!! What a sweet wee quilt, off to Project linus it will go

Blast from the past!

Well this is a blast from the past! During a really icy spell we had a good old clear out of the loft, I have no idea why this quilt ended up there but it did. This was amde in 2009, my chum and I subscribed to a fabric monthly bundle from a local fabric shop. We eventually stopped because the fabrics really werent to our taste. We challenged each otherr to make a quilt from our least favourite fabrics. This was mine and I do love it. the border and backing is a very old Ikea print and it really sets the fabrics off well. the quilt is in perfect condition so off to siblings it will go!

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!

Seasons 2024 February

Well, how is february looking? January was looking a bit bleak, 

January

To be honest February doesnt look any better! Yes a bit lighter and Scoobs tided up the garden a bit in between storms. There are some very small signs of life but probably not visible on these pictures, some things beginning to poke through. Early days yet but oh my am I ready for some brighter weather