A couple of years ago I bought a jelly roll of Kona Cotton Solids (from Robert Kaufman) online from Craftsy. I had planned to use the jelly roll to make a Strip and Flip Quilt on Cluck Cluck Sew blog. On Friday I got an unexpected call from work saying that I did not need to work. Yay! With nothing else planned for the day, I decided to sew this quilt top. The jelly roll came with 2 strips of 20 colours. I decided to leave out 3 colours (black, white & cream) and sewed up each 17 colours together. This gave me two halves to join together at the end. Unfortunately I made a BIG mistake when I came to cut my quilt top halves to flip. I was supposed to cut the quilt top halves into 8″, 5″ and 30″ width sections. Because I folded each quilt top halves in half to square off, I accidentally cut 2 lots of 8″ width sections and 2 lots of 5 ” sections!!! To solve this mistake, I decided to cut more white strips and flip both 5″ width sections. So instead of making a Strip and Flip quilt, I made a slight variation of it! I kind of like it but I am now tempted to make another Strip and Flip quilt. Time to go shopping for more jelly rolls :). Quilt Top Details: Current size is 48″ x 66″ Pieced by me Jelly roll of Kona Cotton Solids (from Robert Kaufman) I’ve decided to link up with Young Texan Mama’s Sew Cute Tuesday (25th October 2016)....
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Today I thought to try a row of squiggly lines then have another go at stippling/meandering. I think I am getting better! Especially with the slow start and slow stop. Although there are still some big stitches from inconsistent hand speed. Not too worried about that as there’s a big improvement since the last block! Most of my stitches seem consistent so I’m happy with my progress so far. I found it difficult to see where I’m at especially when I’m moving from right to left. I hope this will get easier the more I practise. I can not wait to do another block tomorrow :)....
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I have always wanted to try Free Motion Quilting (FMQ) ever since I made my first quilt. I have watched countless videos on YouTube and Craftsy. I have decided to just take the plunge and do it this Spring holiday (2 weeks). I really hate wasting craft supplies so I’m going to practise FMQ on small squares of fabric and join them together using Quilt As You Go (QAYG). I first got this idea from this QAYGFMLQAL on Quokka Quilts website. I have decided not to add a border as suggested by the Quilt A-Long (QAL) as I wanted to get right into FMQ ASAP. I am aiming for a lap quilt which are usually 50″ x 65″ so that is roughly 30 squares total if I made the squares ~10″ in szie. I raided my fabric stash and I’m going to do them in solids with contrasting coloured thread so I can see the quilting better. I made my blocks 11″ and might trim them down to 10.5″ before I join them up together. Before I start FMQ, I wanted to try some stitches on my Janome domestic sewing machine so I quilted the first block using the walking foot. I used stitches #1 (stitch length 3), #9 and #14. I like the way some of them look and will quilt this way if I fail with FMQ :). The second block was technically my 4th attempt at FMQ. I did some unpicking as I wasn’t happy with the way some of the previous stitches were looking. There were heaps of mistakes on this block but I’m happy with it as it’s my best so far! This gives me hope that I will keep improving the more I practise. For this block, I found I needed to start slow and finish slow. Otherwise there were too many jerky and big stitches. I also found that I needed to stop frequently and re-position my hands. I was lifting my hand in my first few attempts. Not sure whether...
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Yay! I finally completed the Minecraft Creeper quilt for my son who turned 13 years old recently. I wanted something quick and easy to sew up so I made the Creeper quilt with large 7″ squares. To make the quilt more rectangle in shape, I added 10″ dark grey border to the top and bottom of the quilt. LOL I think I made it too big as it’s a little big for his single sized bed! Plenty for him to wrap himself in, right :). Below are some pics of the last stages of making this Creeper quilt. Not sure why but the black fabric attracted all the fluff from the batting!! Creeper quilt have since been washed, fluff brushed off and gifted to my son. My son loves the quilt and started using it straight away :). Quilt Details: Finished size is 70″ x 90″ Pieced and quilted by me Binding was done by sewing machine (binding sewn to back first then front of quilt) Linking up with Sew Cute at Blossom Heart Quilts (6th Jan 2015) and TGIFF at Quilt Matters (9th Jan 2015)....
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In January I decided to make a Minecraft quilt for my son’s 12th birthday. Fast forward 11 crazy busy months later, I am finally getting around to making it. Luckily my son understood why I couldn’t make it for him earlier this year. I hope to get it done for his 13th birthday in January! Last week I spent a couple of mornings cutting up the 100 squares of fabric for Creeper’s face :). Then I had some fun trying to duplicate the layout I previously planned here. I couldn’t get it quite the same but it was good enough for me to start sewing. Today I spent the day sewing up all 100 squares. Being a newbie, I’ve always had trouble lining up all my joins. A friend suggested I use a walking foot to sew up the rows for this quilt. So glad I listened as my joins are roughly lined up! They are not perfect but it is the best I have ever done! LOL I was congratulating myself on lining up the joins when I realised I accidentally sewed 2 same coloured squares next to each other! Luckily my son doesn’t mind so I kept on going :). Next I am going to add a grey border at the top and bottom of the quilt to make it more rectangular in shape. I am also going to add a thin grey border down the sides to keep Creeper more square in the centre/middle of the quilt. Hope that makes sense! Linking up with Stitch by Stitch’s Anything Goes Mondays (1st December), Blossom Heart Quilts’ Sew Cute Tuesday (2nd December) and Freshly Pieced’s WIP Wednesday (3rd December)....
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Happy New Year! My first born baby will be turning 12 years old in a few days and he has asked for a Minecraft quilt. I have put everything on hold and hope to get it done in time! I could not find any pattern online so I googled for a picture of Creeper that was made up of 100 pixels/squares. From the picture, twenty of the squares were black for the eyes and mouth. That left 80 squares for the shades of green. Luckily Spotlight had a sale on and also had 8 different shades of green available i.e. 10 squares of each shade of green. I took pics of each of the fabric and moved them around until I was happy with their placement. Here’s my Minecraft quilt layout plan. Spotlight only had charcoal fabric which I do not think is black enough. What do you think? I might have to buy another black fabric and compare. I plan to add a thick sashing in dark grey fabric across the top and bottom to make it longer. My son has asked for Minecraft to be spelt out. Not sure yet whether I would spell “Mine” at the top and “craft” at the bottom or just “Minecraft” at the top or “Minecraft” at the bottom. Now to cut out the squares :)....
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