New fabrics!

I've been trying to be very good this year and not buy any new fabrics until I go to the Festival of Quilts this summer. However, sometimes things don't always go to plan ...

When I went to my Guild meeting this week I was offered a bundle of Makower fabrics because I make charity quilts. I could choose from the Dinosaur or the Blues. I went for the blues - which is from their range called The Henley Studios - because it was age non-specific. However, I ended up being given one of each!! I reckon there are at least 2.5-3m of fabric in each bundle, so plenty for a good sized lap quilt.

Then we had our speaker for the evening, Kim Porter from Worn & Washed Fabrics. A company that takes recycled cotton fabrics and turns them into beautifully coordinated packs for patchwork. I just couldn't resist one of her packs in bright toybox colours :)

SBChallenge - progress update ...

I didn't do any sewing yesterday, I spent my time sorting and cutting the remaining fabrics from my personal Stash Busting Challenge. I kept the Kaffe Fassett nickels and the Thimbleberries FQs seperate. I pulled a couple more sets of fabrics that went together nicely to make incubator covers.

What remained didn't look like it would play together nicely, but Bonnie Hunter assures us that her Scrappy Bargello pattern will utilise even the most ugly fabric ... so I started cutting!

I now have a pile of 80 x 2.5" strips for a lapsized Bargello, enough 3.5" strips for a Scrappy Trips incubator cover and some 2" strips which may just go into my scrap boxes. Additional fabric left over are 2 x 1m pieces and 3 x 0.5m pieces which may become backings or may just go back into general stash. The end of my Challenge is in sight and it feels good :)

SBChallenge - Flimsey 16 ...

I forgot to take a picture of the fabrics before I started working on this one. I used up 10 FQs -various darks and some of the beige Thimbleberry ones - from my Stash Busting challenge piles by making Bonnie Hunter's Scrappy Mountain Majesties pattern. You cut 8.5" squares to start, so this very neatly uses most of a FQ, with just a strip left to add to my scrap-users system.

The top is now a completed flimsey, but I may move onto some more piecing before I quilt this one :)

SBChallenge 15 finished already!

I needed to get back to busting some of that stash left in my personal challenge and this is the result. Now, admittedly the lime greens and the bright mauve weren't from the challenge fabrics, but they were from stash. I made this as a second demo quilt for my Guild's quiltathon in May and I wanted it to look bright and modern.







The two light FQs and the backing fabrics were from the challenge, and as this is over half the fabric in the quilt, I'm counting this as number 15. This was quilted in an all-over loop-d-loop for speed and simplicity :)

Shirts Finished.

My Smokey Mountain Stars quilt which was all made out of recycled shirts is finished and gifted! I made it for the Manageress of the Oxfam charity (thrift) store where I volunteer and she was thrilled with it. She didn't know I was making a quilt for her and was marvelling at how good the shirts could look when repurposed in this way ... then I told her to look at the label and she realised it was a gift for her. She was DELIGHTED!!

Shirts quilting ...

I've just finished the quilting on the shirts quilt. I did a quite plain version of the 'dwirling' pattern on the Pajama Quilter DVD, but this time I wrote "recycled shirts" randomly along the lines, sometimes the whole phrase and sometimes just one word - I hope you can see in the picture. This was a fun one!!




I pieced the backing from 9 shirt backs (cut approx 16" x 20") and a few of the left over border squares. Trimming, binding and labelling still to do, but I should have it ready to gift by next Wednesday :)