Thursday, 23 August 2012

Late Summer Check In

I've been neglecting the blog this month. I'm mostly busy sewing, and also spending as much time outdoors as possible. Enjoying the warm weather and nice long walks. I've been a lot healthier since I stopped eating gluten earlier this year and it feels fantastic to have the energy to exercise again. 

With all the sunshine and sewing, I've only been online briefly these past few weeks. Mostly to stock up on fabric. This years Autumn collections seem particularly packed with must have fabrics. I love Violet Craft's Madrona Road. I've just received my FQ stack of the whole collection and have 1 yard cuts of both text prints to come. I'm now waiting for Anna Maria Horner's Field Study. So far I've ordered the Patina colourway but I'll hopefully be able to get the other two bundles in the not too distant future. I really really want some Tula Pink The Birds and the Bees, as well as some of the Liberty Lifestyle cottons. 


I bought some of Heather Ross' FFA III collection this week too. I had been trying to resist, but I'm really glad I finally have some. Those long-johns on the washing line! The fabric is a lovely soft linen/cotton blend.


My sewing this week mostly involves this stack of fabrics with a Christmas theme. I started with a red, green and aqua stack, added all of Aneela Hoey's Cherry Christmas, aswell as some Little Apples. I hope to have a finished quilt top in the next week or so :) Then hopefully a finished quilt in time for Christmas.

Tuesday, 7 August 2012

Giant Star Quilt

I'm back :) With a quilt to share. I made this quilt top back in January using Jeni's fantasic giant star quilt tutorial. The best thing about this pattern is that it actually makes enough HST blocks for two star quilts, so this quilt has a twin. The twin top is still in the WIP pile and will probably be staying with me, but this Star is a present for my sister. She's currently living in a tiny mouldy flat in Rathmines, Dublin, so the quilt is still living with it's buddies in my quilt pile. But she finally got to meet the finished quilt this weekend. (She is the black booted pair of quilt legs in the pictures!)


I hand quilted my Giant Star using both perle cotton and Aurifil 12wt (which I prefer to the perle cotton, though they look very similar and can happily be combined in any hand stitched project). I marked lines echoing in from the edges of the star at half inch intervals and stitched them in rainbow colours. The background space was filled in with baptist fans in turquoise thread.


The quilt back is a red cotton Ikea sheet which shows off the rainbow quilting nicely. The individual colours don't show up very well here but the yellow bands look particularly well with the bright yellow binding.


I've been labelling all my new quilts with the Spoonflower labels my brother designed. Makes them feel properly finished. I also have smaller labels for pillows and other smaller things.