Finally Finished! Summer By the Sea Borders

I finished the final border for Salt Air Summer by the Sea (new and improved name!) back in January! Yay! The double cable border has been really fun to quilt and my hand quilting has become so much more consistent over the course of this quilt. I'm so glad that this one is going to be mine to keep.

Summer by the Sea - finished borders! Yay!

As I have come to realise, however, the blue marking pens that I was using have proceeded to wear off rather badly over time. I suppose it's my own fault for taking so long to finish quilting the damn thing. I finally gave in the other week and spent an hour going through boxes until I found the stencil. I am so looking forward to having a place for all of my things once the builders finish my new cabinets. It will be so good to know exactly where everything is and not have to go hunting in 5 different places anymore (I suspect this might be slightly utopian, but one can hope, right?)

Summer by the Sea - double cable & shell borders

I spent ages agonising over how to quilt these borders and I'm so glad that I still like them after spending so long stitching them up! As you can see in the photo above, there are a couple of places where the threads aren't quite tight enough as it took me a while to figure out how to properly secure them but I'm fixing those as I go through.

Summer by the Sea - double borders (back)

Next up: finishing the diagonal quilting on the body of the quilt (oh yeah, that's still not done. Blegh). But then: Binding (!) and quilt labels(!!)

Really need to get back on this one but have been distracted by other projects, both sewing- and non-sewing related. More on my new curtains soon!

Hand quilting love,
xoxo me

P.S. Linking up to Finish it up Friday and Finished or not Friday (because it's kind of finished, and kind of not)

Perpetual WIP: cross stitch travel map

As you may already know, my first foray into textiles was when my mother and grandmother taught me cross stitch at the age of about 7.  This may be why I still enjoy hand quilting more than any other part of the quilting process. I recently bought myself this awesome cross stitch map for my birthday. How cool is this? I have a grand plan to colour code my travels by year as far back as possible. Airport stop overs don't count!

World traveler map: 2014 and 2015 done

The map came with a slightly annoying wooden frame on the top and bottom, which I've removed. My grand plan is to have it properly framed by the framer down the road, making sure that I can take it out to update things whenever I like, which might be a bit tricky.

Here's my travel list:
Pre 2013: Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, USA
2013: Morocco (+ Austria, Germany and the Netherlands)
2014: Cyprus, South Africa (+ Italy, France, Germany, the Netherlands and USA)
2015: Ghana, Spain (+ Germany, Greece, Russia, and Switzerland)
2016: Estonia, Oman, Saudi Arabia, UAE (+ Austria, France, Germany and USA)
2017: Jordan, Northern Ireland, Sri Lanka, Zanzibar (+ Austria, Germany, Italy, Mallorca, Oman, Saudi Arabia, UAE)
2018: In the diary so far: Cyprus, France, Germany, and tentatively Australia

I hadn't realised that most of the places I travel to are countries I've been to before (although there have been some new and exciting ones this year as I'd never been to the Middle East). My new plan is to travel to at least one completely new country every year, which should be entirely do-able. Australia is on the cards next year for a friend's wedding but unfortunately my New Year's Japan plans have just fallen through. Maybe Madagascar...

Started: October 2017
Finished: the day I die
Size: 59 x 45 cm (23" x 17.5")
Stitching: Hand embroidered with DMC embroidery floss (4/6 strands)
Label: none yet

Sewing love,
me x

P.S. Linking up with Let's Bee Social at Sew Fresh Quilts

WIP: Summer by the Sea - delays and detours

After a bit of an annus horibilis, I'm back on the quilting-and-writing-about-it bandwagon.

Salt Air Summer by the Sea has been traveling the world - Estonia, San Francisco, Paris, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Zanzibar - but, unfortunately my work has been getting in the way and it's still not finished *sigh*. On the plus side, I had a wonderful time in some truly fabulous places.

Quilting the centre panel in Estonia

I finally made some decisions on how to quilt this one back in June. After much deliberation I decided to go with a 45 degree offset grid for the main body of the quilt. The grid is the same size as the individual squares that make up the design so, essentially, I've quilted diagonal lines across the individual squares. Crazily, I've decided to hand quilt and, to be honest, quilting all those diagonals is really boring and hard on the fingers so I'm still working on them. At least they're all done in one direction so no danger of slippage while I quilt the more fun bits.

For the borders I got a rather excessive selection of stencils from The Stencil Company and finally settled on a 1.5" shell design for the inner white border (which is actually finished!) and a 1.5" double cable border for the outside one (still working on that one).

All marked up and ready to quilt

I'm still not sure what to do with the middle blue squares border, mainly because I don't think I can face hand quilting diagonals through all of them to match the centre panel. It would look really nice but the corners of each square have about 5 layers of fabric + batting behind them and my poor little fingers don't like that. Toughen up already, fingers! 

Aeroplanes are great for quilting!

Now that I'm back home for a little while and have sorted my life out a bit I'm hoping that I'll finish this up pretty quickly. Ideally, I'd like to get it done less than a year after I started it (counting down to the 16th of May!).

I'm SO happy to be back!
Quilting love,
me x

WIP: Summer by the Sea lap quilt - bodacious borders

WIP: Salt Air Summer by the Sea lap quilt borders

Working on this little lap quilt for myself has helped me get over my fear of pieced borders - a bit at least. I even taught myself a new technique and added a flange to either side of my pieced blue border.

Here are some photos of flange making in progress:

Step 1: cut 3/4" strip
Step 2: fold and press wrong sides together

Step 3: attach to quilt edge with <1/4" seam

Step 4: Attach next border with 1/4" seam

Tada! Finished flange

 
I'm currently debating whether to add a prairie points border to this, followed by another, wider, white border. Current size is 52" x 45" (132 x 115cm). What do you think? Here are the current borders:

Salt Air Summer by the Sea borders
Getting better but those
not-quite-90° angles are irritating

Love,
me xx

P.S. I'm linking up to MCMQuilts 

WIP: Summer by the Sea lap quilt

Phew. Back in London after a week long trip to my parents' place and my nose is quite firmly back to the grindstone already. 

I had a great trip and, despite rather painful eye surgery, TQQ and I successfully ticked off a lot of my sewing to do list, including:

• 3 repaired work dresses
• 2 adjusted blouses
• Tiny's baby quilt finished
• Tiny's big girl quilt almost finished (just the the  borders left to quilt, the binding to attach and currently working on the quilt label)...

... and one new quilt top started. Here it is:

Salt air Summer by the Sea quilt top (work in progress)

I love this fabric line from Moda / Cosmo Cricket but, unfortunately, discovered it rather too late. I stocked up on any bits and pieces I could get my hands on but have been having trouble deciding what exactly to make with my precious stash.

In the end, I decided on a lap quilt for myself. Thanks to the pre-cut jelly roll strips this came together really quickly. 

Step 1:
Sew together strips in sections of 5 each

Step 2
Cut to 2.5" wide strips

 

Step 3
Plan and assemble quilt top

It's currently only about 100 x 80cm (approx. 38" x 31") so I'm going to add a couple of borders. I have quite a lot of the blue sections left so I'm planning a 2" white border followed by 2" blue squares, and then a final 2" white border. That should increase the finished size to about 130 x 110 cm. I'm currently debating whether to make the white borders a bit wider - maybe 4". What do you think?

Quilting love,
me xx

Forest Friends Take II

I've had a really productive couple of days at The Quilting Queen's house, resulting in

• 3 pairs of trousers taken up
• 2 shirts shortened for TQQ (she's a little lady at 5ft tall)
• 1 office dress fixed (new straps)
• 1 finished quilt top for Tiny, pin-basted and ready to quilt
• 2 finished baby quilt tops (~110 x 110cm)
• 1 handmade silk blouse almost finished (just need to hand stitch the cuffs and add buttons)
• and various little bits and bobs finished from TQQ's box of ongoing projects

Phew! Quite pleased with our progress. Had hoped to get some of the quilting done on TQQ's gorgeous sewing machine but, let's be honest, that was a bit over-ambitious given all the friends I wanted to see and other things I waned to do.

Here's Tiny's quilt - pin basted and ready for quilting. The binding is ready to sew on as soon as the quilt is finished.

Tiny's quilt - Forest Friends v1.0
Ready for quilting

Here are the baby quilts. One of these will go to the office charity auction in aid of Mind and the British Red Cross and the other is for the next little baby that appears in my circle of friends (there seem to be a lot of those lately and I'm always behind in making gifts). I'm adding a scrappy binding to these, which is almost finished. I need to go through my box of scraps back in London to make up the full length that I need. Interestingly, TQQ and I have very styles when it comes to fabric choice so it's quite hard to find anything that works in her stash.

Forest Friends Take II
Finished quilt tops

I'm not sure which I like better - the scrappy quilt or the crosses. What do you think?

Much love,
me xx

Finished quilt top: Forest Friends baby quilt

After my grand plans to finish off this quilt back in February, I  ended up on a pretty ... intense ... project at work for six weeks. Forest Friends languished in my living room for the duration. I've currently got a couple of days off and am spending most of them sewing with the Quilting Queen. I had my first go on her gorgeous new all-singing-all-dancing Bernina today. It's a whole new world of shiny computerised high-tech sewing. 

Anyway, we finished the quilt top today, found a suitable old duvet cover of my grandmother's to re-purpose as backing fabric and pin-basted it all up for quilting tomorrow. It's big enough for a single bed so Tiny can still use it when she gets a big girl bed in a couple of years. In the meantime it's good for playing on when it's folded in half. Here is the finished quilt top in all its glory:

Forest Friends finished quilt top
(also check out TQQ's gorgeous log cabin in the background)

I've also started work on the next project, which I'm planning on finishing before I head off to Paris on Tuesday afternoon. Given my plans to see various friends while I'm in town and looking at the list of other sewing project I brought with me this may be slightly over-ambitious...

Forest Friends - Take II

I'll just see how far I get by the time I have to leave on Tuesday. Now to decide how to quilt Forest Friends v1.0. Very excited about using the cool quilting attachment on TQQ's new sewing machine tomorrow!

Much love,
me xx

WIP Wednesday: Forest Friends baby quilt - borders

I actually managed to do some quilting DURING THE WEEK (!!!) and the borders for the baby quilt are coming along nicely.

Forest Friends baby quilt - 1st & 2nd border

The plan is to add a 1" white border, a 1" border of the fox print and then a 2nd wide white border before binding with the coral fabric.

Excitingly, the fox print arrived in the post from BobbieLou fabrics today and the lovely lady at RayStitch in Islington was so kind as to post me the white fabric after I stupidly left in on the counter in her shop after paying last week. So scatterbrained!

Gifts in the mail today :)

I'm hoping to finish the borders this week and piece the backing over the weekend. 

Love,
me xx 

P.S. Linking up to Let's Bee Social at Sew Fresh Quilts.

WIP: Forest Friends baby quilt

The Quilting Queen came over to visit last weekend and we had a wonderful time. Despite a jam packed weekend including a musical, afternoon tea, and an extended shopping spree, we did, of course, manage to do some quilting.

We're working on something snuggly for a little girl that will be arriving very soon.

Forest Friends - finished quilt top

The Quilting Queen and I had a great time playing with the layout. As usual she spent rather a lot of time fixing my mistakes although I like to tell myself that I'm getting better.

The Quilting Queen having fun

I've also got some secret plans for these bits. I'm linking up to the exciting projects at WIP Wednesday over at Freshly Pieced.

I have exciting plans for these offcuts

Just waiting for the backing fabric to arrive from Miss Ginger and then I can get started with the quilting. This may actually get done in time for the little lady to arrive (this may well be a first)!

Love,

me xoxo 

WIP Wednesday: Hexagon Quilt November 2015

I'm afraid I don't have much progress to report on the hexagon quilt front :(

You may remember this one...
from a month or two ago

My stitching on the tube plans were scuppered by the fact that I suddenly found myself on a project that allowed me to walk to work (not that I'm complaining about that in the slightest). However, now that I've found myself in Geneva for two months (very exciting!) I've managed to do a bit. Actually, I didn't bring sufficient supplies and have now run out of hexagons to sew together. Luckily, I will be flying back to the UK for the 1st weekend of December so I can stock up then.

Running low.
Nothing I can really do this these at present.

Speaking of stocking up, I seem to have run out of the white fabric I was using. I'm now obsessing about matching said fabric exactly, which will probably not be possible as I have no idea where it came from in the first place. My obsession with irrellevant details is really not helping. I've also decided that I need to match the background blue on this fabric ("Painted Mums" from Heather Bailey's discontinued "Fresh Cut" range), which is going to be tricky to say the least. Any advice?

Love, me xx

P.S. I'm linking up to Work in Progress Wednesdays over at Freshly Pieced.

WIP Wednesday: Hidden Stars - the push for the line

I'm just putting the finishing touches on my hidden stars quilt. After much musing and scheming, I finally decided on a design for the quilt label and decided to try out foundation paper piecing for the first time while I was at it.

I used this great template from the wonderful Anna at Six White Horses. Thank you Anna!

Step 1: Foundation piecing the star

As I wanted to finish the star's edges as opposed to piecing it with a background, I trimmed the edges down to 1 inch, folded and pressed them and then hand-appliqued the finished embroidered star to the back of the quilt.

Step 2: Trimming the edges down

 

Step 3: Trimmed and ready to press

As usual, I forgot to take photos of each step. Here is one of the final product being appliqued to my backing:

Step 6: Applique

Almost done!

Love, me x


P.S. I'm linking up to WIP Wednesday over at Freshly Pieced

WIP: Hexagon Quilt September 2015

I've recently taken to working on my hexagon quilt on the tube in the mornings. It's only a 10 minute journey and I only have a seat about 50% of the time but I've been making some (very slow) progress!

Hexagon quilt: tube ride WIP

On my recent trip to St. Petersburg I finally managed to decide on the overarching design and the quilting. I also want to do some fancy quilting in the white triangles that the design creates and have been playing around with the idea of using my initials in an art deco style font but I might do some sort of geometric design instead.

Hexagon quilt: design sketches

I'm planning on making a king sized quilt so the dimensions of the sketch aren't right but you get the idea. I laid everything out on my queen sized quilt today to see what it looks like in real life:

Hexagon quilt: design layout

Progress so far:
Individual flowers: 2 green, 12 pink
Sections: lots of bits sewn together - the longest continuous bit current has about 8 flowers
Total flowers:37
Loose basted hexagons: 24 white, 115 print

Hexagon quilt: 14 flowers waiting to be connected

I'm going to need a lot more white hexagons! I'm not sure whether to be lazy (and applique the flowers on to a white background) or crazy (and piece the white sections from individual hexagons). Being generally crazy, I'm leaning towards option 2. What do you think?

I'm flying to Germany for a wedding next week so hopefully I'll get a few more done on the aeroplane.

Love,
Me x 

P.S. This week I'm linking up to with Jessica's Monday Morning Star Count. There are some gorgeous projects going on over there - you should check them out some time!
Check out WIP Wednesday over at Freshly Pieced as well. Seeing what everyone else is working on really motivates me to do more sewing - even if it's just some hexagons on the tube.

WIP Wednesday: Hidden stars binding

Hidden stars is almost done! I'm in the process of sewing on the binding. I managed to finish two sides before my poor little fingers got sore and my shoulders got stiff. I have terrible posture when I'm hand sewing.

Here are some snaps:

All squared up and ready to bind

WIP: Hand sewing the binding to the back

WIP: Front view of binding

Time to start scheming for the quilt label. I've promised myself that I will actually take the time and make an effort with this one instead of just sewing on a square bit of fabric with an embroidered name and date. Perhaps something star shaped...

I'm linking up to WIP Wednesday over at Freshly Pieced aka the font of all inspiration.

Love, 
me x

WIP: Hidden Stars Quilt - slowly but surely

Progress! I've actually managed to get a big batch of the quilting done on the Hidden Stars quilt. Over the past week I've got all the quilting on the main body of the quilt done, which is a major achievement and was only possible because I've been fortunate to be working from our London office this week. All the travelling I do for my job is wonderful but it does make machine quilting in the evenings a little difficult.

Here's my quilting plan / diagram:

Hidden Stars - quilting plan V1.0

Here's the current version of the quilt itself. As you can see my diagonals really aren't that great, but I'm still telling my perfectionist self that all the issues add character.

Hidden Stars - quilt back

This may also be because I eyeballed a lot of it, mainly because the yellow chalk I was using doesn't show very well on the lighter fabrics. 

Hidden Stars - marking up for quilting

The above photo is actually a pretty good example of my improving-but-still-not-great attempts at in the ditch quilting. The Quilt Queen says to go slowly and that practice makes perfect. Practice-schmactice. All of the things should be perfect NOW!

Anyway, here's the current status, all pinned up and ready for me to quilt the border sections this weekend:

Hidden Stars - quilt top ready for border quilting

I'm not really sure how I'm going to quilt the borders yet. I want a design that will add lots of texture so I'm currently thinking of lots of parallel, closely spaced lines in the second cream border. It would be great to do some sort of cross-hatched pattern on the outermost one but I think that might be too much of a faff and that my quilting skills just aren't quite good enough for that yet.

I was planning on getting that bit done this weekend and then attach the binding next week so I really should decide soon. Any ideas?

Love, me xoxo

WIP: Hidden Stars Quilt

I've been working on this quilt for... a while now and kept meaning to post an update. At least I'm getting better at the photo taking bit of the equation so here's photographic evidence of the progress I've made so far.

Hidden stars - status Winter 2013

Started: June 2013
Finished: WIP
Size: Originally 135 x 135 cm now 190 x 190 cm (with sashing) 
Quilt top: Oak Leaves and Reel by Moda
Backing: Old duvet cover from my grandmother's house (pieced together as it wasn't quite big enough)
Binding: tbd but planning a dark red binding to match the centre star
Batting: Hobbs Heirloom wool batting
Quilting: In the process of machine quilting

I've wanted to make this quilt ever since I saw the pattern in this fabulous book by Pam Linttot. It took me absolutely ages to find the same fabric that is used in the book but luckily ebay and online fabric shops are my friends.

I keep putting this quilt on hold - first because I needed to concentrate on getting my PhD thesis written, then because I started a new job and then because I've spend most of the past year travelling for work. Every so often I'd cart it over The Quilt Queen's place and we'd have a great time fiddling with it. Unfortunately, there never seemed to be enough time to get it actually done. Luckily, The Quilt Queen gets very excited about new quilts and likes to keep them at her house and fix things after I leave.

The Quilt Queen and I had a great time over Christmas 2014 choosing sashing and assembling the rest of the quilt top.

Hidden stars - status January 2015

This past January we took ourselves to a lovely hotel and spa for a couple of days of massages, saunas and sewing. The living room of our suite was *just* big for the quilt once we shoved all the furniture against the walls. I had such a lovely (and productive) weekend that I'm hoping that we can make this a regular mother / daugher trip. We took granny along as well, which was lovely, but she didn't really understand why we were doing "work" on the quilt while we were meant to be on a relaxing weekend.

Hidden stars - pin basting January 2015

Anyway, we managed to get all of the safety pin basting done as well (much easier with two people). Getting the quilt and my new sewing machine back on the plane was ... interesting. Thank heaven I was flying BA!

The quilt has been gracing my sofa in all of its unfinished mess glory since January. I finally started quilting it today. My mother got an all-singing all-dancing giant sewing machine of awesomeness for Christmas and has given me her old Singer Samba. It's so nice to have the sewing machine that my mummy taught me to sew on and it's so much better and more powerful than the one I've been using.

Hidden stars - quilting (and new sewing machine!!)

I've spent a lovely afternoon doing some (absolutely terrible) "in the ditch" quilting and some diagonals. The fact that I can't seem to stitch a straight line / stay in the ditch is rather upsetting. I keep telling myself that it's just a quilt for my sofa and that the wiggly bits add character. Just keep practicing!

Here's hoping it won't be another six months before I finally finish this one. I'd quite like to use it for snuggling up on the sofa with when the weather is cooler this year and it has such pretty autumnal colours!

À bientôt (I hope) !
Love, me x

WIP: Hexagon Quilt February 2014

I've been on holiday for the past two weeks and, annoyingly, was rather ill for some of it. This did, however, in combination with rather a lot of time spent in aeroplanes, give me a fair bit of time to spend on the hexagon quilt.

Here is February's progress report:

Progress: February 2014

Flowers: 6 pink flowers, 1 partial pink flower

Sections: two sections of 3 pink flowers each

Loose basted hexagons: 7 white, 41 print

Very pleased with myself, especially given that I'm currently still in the US and have a 6 hour flight back to London tomorrow and a trip to Germany coming up next week. Yay for sewing on the plane!

Love,

Me x