Finally Finished: Summer by the Sea

It's finally done and has only taken two years and 8 months to complete. I may have gotten slightly distracted by sewing and DIYing for the new flat in the interim.

Summer by the Sea in the January sunshine

This quilt should probably be called "Summers in Aeroplanes" instead as it's been on more trips than your average Gap Year Globe Trotter at this point. Off the top of my head the list includes Barcelona (Spain), Bordeaux (France), Dubai (UAE), Estonia, Germany, Italy, Paris (France), Riyadh (Saudi Arabia), Salzburg (Austria), San Francisco (USA), Zanzibar and, of course, a whole host of places in good old Blighty. Possibly my most cosmopolitan quilt yet.

Summer by the Sea
Hoping that it'll shrink more when I wash it

Summer by the sea
All of the squares in all of the rotations
(oooo! New quilt design idea!)

Started: May 2016
Finished: January 2019
Size: 108 x 126 cm (approx. 43 x 50")
Quilt top: 1 Jelly roll of Salt Air by Cosmo Cricket for Moda
Backing: Sea Garden in seafoam - Salt Air by Cosmo Cricket for Moda (I actually bought backing fabric this time. Shock. Horror)
Binding: Stripe - Salt Air by Cosmo Cricket for Moda 
Batting: Hobbs Heirloom Wool Batting
Quilting: 100% hand quilted using YLI hand quilting thread in white. Stencils from the Stencil Company 1.5" double cable and 1.5" shell border
Label: Scraps from quilt cutting as above

Summer by the Sea
Nautical quilting: Squares, shells, and a double cable

I've massively improved my hand quilting over the course of this quilt. My technique is probably completely unorthodox and 8 stitches per inch isn't really anything to write home about but I'm really pleased that much my speed and consistency has improved so much. I've tried out at least 5 different thimble / fingertip saving options in the process and finally found two that I really like.

Thimble Option 1: Metal fingertip shield

This fantastic fingertip shield from Colonial. You just stick it to your fingertip with the little sticky disks that come in the packet. Genius, but not great if you're quilting while travelling. I lost at least three of these but kept buying replacements because they are so good. A big thank you to my lovely friend Becca of BeccaSews who took me to the Great British Sewing Bee event at the Excel in London last year. I would never have come across these if I hadn't spotted them at one of the market stalls (Also you should check out Becca's jaw-dropping dress making skills. She bought stuff to make jeans and a jumper at this event and they turned out better than any I've ever bought in a shop! I'll just stick to my sewing-squares-together-and-hoping-they-match-up approach to sewing.)

Metal finger shield
Great at saving my fingertips!

Thimble Option 2: Silicone needle-puller
This silicone needle-puller comes a close second the above, depsite my hatred of all things pink (and especially this particular shade of pink). I found this even more effective for those tough bits where one is trying to quilt through a bazillion layers and seriously contemplating pulling the needle through with one's teeth. I found using these together with the finger shield above the best option.

Silicone needle puller
Stops me using my teeth on the tough bits
(naughty naughty!)

I'm also particularly pleased with this quilt's label, probably due to my love of boats of all kinds. While I've decided that this quilt is definitely on the "finally finished" pile, I'm seriously considering doing just a tiny bit more embroidery on the label because every boat needs a name!

Summer by the Sea
Sounds like a good name for a boat, no?

I have loads of this absolutely gorgeous fabric left and am already scheming for a bigger and more intricate quilt but in the meantime I'm enjoying snuggling up with this in my armchair while I toast my toes in front of the fireplace.

This is my monitor-lizarding-in-the-sunshine armchair,
not my toasting-toes-in-front-of-the-fireplace armchair,
but it'll do

Happy Quilting,
me x

P.S. Linking up to Finished or not Friday (because while today isn't Friday, I did finish this on a Friday), and Main Crush Monday (because I love this fabric so much that I'm already planning the next quilt for it)

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)

Finally Finished: Forest Friends Baby Quilt v2: New Addition

After a hectic 6 months (new house, new job, a lot of work travel, and several pretty serious family emergencies) I've finally settled in with my needle and thread. My sewing things are still tucked away all over the new flat in various boxes but that will change in January when the builders come to build some exciting custom storage cabinets for me (need to save up my pennies first).

I finally unpacked my trusty Singer in October and finished the second iteration of the Forest Friends Baby Quilt, "New Addition".

New Addition Baby Quilt in my new living room

I machine quilted this over the course of several evenings because, guess what, the new job means that I actually have time in the evening to do things that aren't work. This is a complete novelty and, as it turns out, I need to re-learn how to have hobbies. SO exciting! I've got so much stuff done!

Anyway, I digress.

Started: April 2016

Finished: November 2017

Size: 107 x 107 cm (42" x 42")

Quilt Top: Les Amis de la Forêt by Patty Slongier

Backing: Think this might be a Tula Pink fabric but can't remember

Batting:100% cotton

Quilting:Machine quilted in the ditch around and varied geometric designs within each cross. Top thread YLI machine quilting grey. Bottom thread YLI machine quilting teal

Binding: some grey fabric I'd bought to make a blue & grey quilt but given how many project I have on the go it'll be years before that happens

Label: none

I'm quite pleased with the way the teal thread shows off the quilting on the back even though I had to piece it together from leftover fabric. I could have sworn I had enough of the multicoloured/yellow one to back both of the Forest Friends quilts, but apparently not. Although, come to think of it, it's entirely likely that the rest of this fabric is hidden away in one of my unpacked boxes somewhere *sigh*.

New Addition Baby Quilt - back

I used grey thread for the front to match the grey binding and the grey in the various prints. I have a weird obsession with grey - it's just the perfect colour. I machine stitched the binding because I was in a bit of a hurry to deliver this one and while it's not perfect, it'll do (and do better next time!).

New Addition Baby Quilt - front

In other news, I've made some progress on Salt Air Summer by the Sea and various other projects but more on that later. 

Quilting love,

me x

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

Finally finished: Tiny's quilt(s)

So, remember how I was working on this quilt for a special little lady who was due to arrive on May 23rd? Well, she decided that she couldn't wait any longer and came 3 weeks early!

I saw her briefly in hospital but am going over for a proper visit this coming Sunday. Her quilt isn't quite finished (if you remember, it got a little out of hand), but I've made her a proper baby quilt instead, which I finally finished last night.

Finally finished: Tiny's baby quilt
Miserable weather - need to get a photo in better light

Started: May 2016
Finished: May 2016
Size: 110 x 110 cm (approx. 42 x 42")
Quilt top: Patty Sloniger Les Amis in coral, white sashing from RayStitch in Islington
Backing: Old duvet cover from my grandmother's house
Binding: Patty Sloniger "Les Amis" Star Pods in coral with scrappy top section made from off-cuts of all Les Amis coral fabrics
Batting: Cotton
Quilting: Machine quilted in offset squares (YLI machine quilting thread 40/3 in white), with randomly placed, hand-quilted hearts (YLI glazed cotton hand quilting thread in white)
Label: Sublime stitching "Kurt Halsey / Best Friends" embroidery pattern

The design couldn't really get much simpler - one big piece of fabric with some sashing. It's possibly the fastest quilt I've ever made; I managed to cut, piece, baste, and quilt it in a single afternoon (because what are you going to do while your sister is in labour - sit at home and quilt for your new niece, that's what!)

I hand-stitched the binding on the train on my way to see the little lady in hospital and then decided to spend a little more time making her a pretty quilt label. I'm really pleased with how this turned out (and really hoping her black hair isn't replaced by, say, blonde like her Mummy's, when it falls out)

Sublime stitching quilt label

I embroidered straight onto the finished quilt, which was a massive faff! I really struggled to bury my knots in the quilt sandwich and was really worried that it would all come undone. I've washed it twice now though and everything seems to be fine. The markings have almost all come out as well - a couple more washes and some baby vomit ought to do the trick.

I then decided that it was a bit too boring and decided to hand quilt some random hearts into the squares. There are about 12 of them in total.

Hand quilting: getting more consistent

My hand quilting is getting better - I can comfortably load 6 or 7 stitches and they're becoming more consistent in length. Now if only the back were as pretty as the front is.

Finally, here's a photo of the scrappy binding I made - it's actually the coral star pods fabric from the same fabric line as the quilt top on three sides of the quilt. The fourth edge has an insert of these scrappy offcuts I ended up with from the original quilt. While I really like this style (I trialled it on the Charity Auction baby quilt), I think it'll look better if I make my binding a bit wider. I think I'll try 3" or 3.5" double fold binding next time. What do you think?

Scrappy binding insert <3

Quilting love,
me x

Finally finished: Forest Friends Charity Baby Quilt

I've finally finished the first of the Forest Friends quilts. This little baby quilt will be donated to my company charity auction in aid of mind, the mental health charity and the British Red Cross.

I'm hoping that with all the recent new babies in the office it will raise lots of money for these two great causes.

Forest Friends @ the Tower

 
As it turns out, a week's worth of tube journeys is enough to bind a 42" x 42" (107 X 107cm) baby quilt. I couldn't resist a quick photo of the finished product when I hopped off the tube at the Tower today.

I used some of the thread from the sewing box I inherited from my grandmother to handstitch the binding. It's basically invisible, which pleases me greatly. I bought these really great needles in this handy-dandy case, probably about 10 years ago. At the time I wasn't really thinking about stitching on the go in particular but I can really recommend them - so useful!

Supplies for binding on the tube
John James needle "pebble" and vintage MEZ thread

When it came to binding I noticed that I'd screwed up while I was basting and the backing fabric wasn't quite centred, leaving a gap on one of the edges. I can't believe I didn't notice this earlier. At first I thought I could just about get the edge into the binding but in the end I bit the bullet and hand-stitched a extra 2" of backing fabric the the edge. So annoying!

All fixed: backing fabric issues

Here's another photo of the finished product - will probably use this one for the charity auction.

FINISHED! Forest Friends charity baby quilt

I'm currently debating what to do about a quilt label. I could go all out and make an embroidered one (I particularly like the idea of using this gorgeous sublime stitching owl pattern), but I'm not sure if I can be bothered. On the other hand, it might encourage people to bid more if I offer to embroider the baby's name on it. What do you think?

Onwards to more forest friends - next up: finishing up Tiny's quilt.

Lots of sewing love,
me x

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