Carolina Christmas Finished!

Here it is - finished!  I absolutely love how this turned out.  Mostly from recycled shirts, I even pieced the back and the hanging sleeve from shirts!  The more I worked on this the more I fell in love with it and it's scrappiness!  This is a keeper :)

Huge thanks to Bonnie Hunter for another great mystery pattern.

It's fixed!

After spending 3.5 hours unpicking and 45 minutes restitching, the binding is redone.  And the BRILLIANT news is ... it's FIXED!!!  The worst side of the quilt now has a slight wave only and the other side now hangs straight.  This I can live with quite happily!! 

As you can see from the photo I only ended up with 3.5 inches spare binding, but boy what a difference it has made!

I'll get DH to take a nice photo of the finished quilt later and post tomorrow.  I now have that feeling of joy and excitement from a quilt finish that was missing before - yeah :)

Oh no ...

I worked so hard on my Carolina Christmas today - got the hanging sleeve and binding made, attached them, hand stitched the sleeve on.  It was finished!  Put it on the hanging rail in the lounge to admire it ... but OH NO - it was horriby wavy on the sides.  I was so disappointed I wanted to cry.

When DH saw it he said he didn't notice the waves!!!!  Bless him - they look awful.  After careful consideration I think there is too much fullness in the pieced borders.  I had to slightly shorten the top/bottom borders when I applied them,  but the sides seemed ok.  It turns out they were not - I should have listened to my intuition.

I've had the edges wave this badly once before and the only way to improve it was to remove the binding and reapply it quite tautly to ease in some of the fullness.  I apply my binding by machine stitched zig-zag so there is a lot of unpicking to do.  Boo hoo :(

Working away ...

I've been quilting the centre of my Carolina Christmas quilt over the last few days.  I have to take it in small 'bites' so I don't overstress the muscles in my back.  The centre is now done and the borders still to do.

I can't keep my brain off quilty projects for long though, so I've been planning what to do with some panels I found in my 'orphans' box.  These teddies are cute and I think could make a great incubator cover for the Special Care Baby Unit.  Watch this space :)

Basting ...

Piecing the backing from shirt backs took longer than I though it would, so I didn't get a chance to do the basting until today.  It was a bit tricky as my table wasn't big enough for either the complete width or length in one go.  But it is now basted and I hope to start the quilting on Monday! 

I was trying to decide what colour thread to use for the quilting and remembered a comment made by Bonnie Hunter in her radio interview with Pat Sloan.  Bonnie was asked what thread she used on a scrap quilt of many colours/values to ensure it blended nicely and she answered  that she preferred an antique gold or grey.  So as this quilt also contains some gold toned fabric I'm using a varigated ochre/gold tone thread for the quilting - Sulky 30wt Blendables.  It isn't a thread I've used before, so I hope it stiches nicely :)

Borders are on!

Yes, the borders are attached to the Carolina Christmas top - I just can't fit the whole thing on my design wall anymore!  As the top is mostly from recycled shirts, I decided to piece the backing from shirt backs too.  So I've that to assemble, then I can baste which is my least favourite part of the process.  But until that is done, I can't do the quilting and get it finished ... so I must be brave!

Had a great time at my Guild meeting on Monday.  We had a quilt shop vendor and I found out that they collect in quilts to donate to wounded soldiers.  I didn't know about this before and it is something I definately want to get involved in.  The local hospital the Guild supports also has a constant and ongoing need for incubator covers (36" square), so I can see myself being very busy in the coming months :)

More Donation Quilts.

It's my Guild meeting tonight and I've packed up all the bits I need including the quilts I'm made for donation.  So here are the last two quilts that I've made for the Special Needs School that I'm handing over tonight.

First is Buggy Mountain Stars.  This is Bonnie Hunter's pattern Smokey Mountain Stars, but with the sizes adjusted to make bigger blocks.  My feature fabrics are 6" finished, so the triangles are 3" finished.  Lots of fun for using up some of those bug fabrics I collected but never made into a bug jar quilt!!  Love this pattern and I'm planning on making another version using 4" squares of I Spy fabrics soon.

This is my own pattern designed to use up the cow panels I was given.  I think they were originally intended to be made into a door stop as the pattern is reversed.  Various other pieces of farm/chicken related fabrics are incorporated along with some free-pieced words from a tutorial by Tonya Ricucci.

I had fun with the quilting on this one doing a freehand version of chicken wire fencing over the whole quilt!  (Click to enlarge the picture for a better view.)  I cut a cardboard template to trace along for the middle vertical, then 'eyeballed' all the subsequent lines from the centre out!  Fun :)

Triangle progress ...

As you can see the triangles for the Carolina Christmas borders are now blocks!  Unfortunately my design wall is nowhere near big enough to lay them out properly, so each border has to be split into two sections.  Once I get these sewn together and measured I will be able to work out what sized inner border to add to the centre to make it all fit.

Donation Quilts.

I'll be sewing those triangles together over the next couple of days, but in the meantime I thought I'd share the other quilts I've made ready to donate.

This is my version of a heart block tutorial I found on the Tallgrass Prairie Studio blog.  The instructions on the blog page are very detailed, but I used slightly different sizes and chose to do the large triangles with the Easy Angle ruler.  I already had strings pieced together into 5.5" strips from the HeartStrings Group, so that was my starting point. I cut two 5.5″ squares and used an Easy Angle ruler to cut two triangles from both the coins and the background fabric, which when stitched together made 5.5″ half square triangles. The background squares to make the top of the heart shape started at 2″. My heart blocks are 10″ square finished size.  The borders were made from the Chinese Coin units cut in half.  I really love this heart block and plan to make more for a different layout in the future.

This is a more familiar string block quilt done in floral prints.  I made this using the Quilt As You Go (QAYG) method following a tutorial by Jan Mac who is a member of the HeartStrings Group.  There is also an online tutorial for doing the joining strips by Quilting Twin, although I used the method in Sharon Pederson's book "Reversible Quilts".

I just love seeing all those scraps working together :)

Both quilts are going to be donated to a local Special Needs School via my Guild.

Triangles Everywhere!

I've decided to take a break from donation quilts to work on a couple of projects for me.  First up is the border for the Carolina Christmas which I worked on end of last year.  I did my version mostly from recycled shirts in reds, blues and neutrals.  I just did the 9 blocks, but took a break before adding the pieced border.

So, I've been cutting triangles for the border.  Before working on Bonnie Hunter's mysteries and being introduced to the Easy Angle and Companion rulers, I was a complete coward about cutting and sewing triangles.  These rulers make it so easy to utilise precut strips and make scrappy triangle units, I'm now converted!!  I ended up having to cut way more triangles than I needed because half way through I realised I wanted the border to be more red than blue, so I had to discard all the small red triangles I had already cut and cut them again in blue.  Bummer!!!  So now I have to pair all the small triangles, whereas if I had done it right first time they would already have been paired before cutting :)

Applique Hearts finished.

Here's the finished result - quilted, bound and labelled.  The quilt measures approx 38" x 50" and will be donated to a local Special Needs School via my Guild.  The next meeting is just over a week away and I have 5 quilts ready to donate!!!!  I can hardly believe that I have been so productive this year, when the end of last year was such a wash-out :)

This one utilised the applique hearts from the HeartStrings Group, everything else was from stash.  I had to cut into yardage for the white in the 9 patches, but the coloured fabrics in both the 9 patches and the borders were all from my 2.5" strip boxes.  I love going through scraps and remembering where you bought the fabrics or which quilts they were made into!

I had one extra heart block that didn't make it into the front of the quilt, but I added it to the back and made it the label!

What I'm working on ...

I'm currently nearly half way through quilting a donation quilt using applique heart blocks I was given by the HeartStrings Group.  I have alternated them with 9 patches and added a small pieced border.  I'm quilting it with freehand hearts - like loop-d-loop, but each loop is heart shaped! Unfortunately I've reached that age now when reading glasses are needed to see what I'm doing for close work :)

A new blog begins ....

Welcome to my new blog!  Difficulties with my health over the second half of 2009 caused me to stop quilting and it made me sad.  However, things are looking up and the physio and exercises I have been doing have allowed me to get back to the thing I love - QUILTING!!!!

I've created this new blog to allow me to share my quilty creations with the blogging community again.  I've missed you all :)