Time Flies....

.... when you're sewing!

Anyone else noticed that March appears to have turned up pretty sharpish?? One minute we were only half way through February & the next we're into the 3rd month of the year already.

Thought I'd just share with you some of the projects I was working on in February.

First up is Hananh's quilt.  I originally started this quilt on a days workshop with Carolyn Forster at Thread Bear.  It's a pretty basic disappearing 9-patch, also known as Patience Corner.  The quilt is backed in pink fleece, ditch quilting & I have just the binding to complete.

Next up is Crayon Rolls.  In total this month I've made about 25 of these & I've sold an awful lot of those 25 too.  They hold 16 crayons & come complete with the crayons. I still have some of them available to purchase which you can do through my Crafters Barn online shop.

Everything else I've been doing in cutting fabric & prep work for other quilts & I don't have photos of any of it so hopefully they'll all be projects to share with you over the next few weeks.

Happy stitching :)

Log Cabin Workshop

Today I was booked in to an all day workshop at one of my favourite quilt shops, Thread Bear. The class was run by co-owner Kate & including myself she had seven pupils all raring to get going with our washing line..... yep.... thats right, I said WASHING LINE!!!!!

Kate was showing us a quick technique to make our log cabin blocks & it was called a washing line method. I've never heard of it before but I can confirm that I will be using it (quite a bit) in the future :)

In total I made 16 blocks today & I love the way they turned out. I may make a few more depending on how much of the pink fabric I have remaining & then I have to work out what design I want to piece the blocks in & then choose a border fabric..... both decisions could take months to come to a decision LOL

The Life Of A Quilt + Other (image heavy!)

This Wednesday I decided to go back to the quilt that I started in November, the Pinwheel quilt. I made some excellent progress & have completed another 10 blocks. Now all I need is to square them all up to 12inches & the blocks are ready to sew together.

Strip pieced & cutting wide sections

Strip piecing the narrow sections

Narrow strips all cut

Chain piecing back together

Four patch squares created

More piecing

Blocks Complete

Just in case you haven't seen enough pictures I thought I'd share with you what else I got up to. This first quilt top is for my DD... aka Twin 1, Missy Moo, Little Moo or Hannah Moo. It's a disappearing nine-patch that I started at a one day workshop at Thread Bear that was with Carolyn Forster as the tutor. All I need to do now is add the border & then sandwich it. I think the border will be the lilac marble fabric as I have quite a bit of it & I think it would finish it off nicely.

This last one is a quilt top that I finished a few months ago but so far I haven't got around to sandwiching & finishing. I think I blogged about some of the stars as I was doing them but can't remember if I shared the finished top with you, so here it is.


I think that's everything.... for now... time to trim up some blocks.

Happy stitching :-)

The Life Of A Quilt

Back in the summer I signed up for a 4 week quilt class at my nearest quilting shop Thread Bear. The day I booked the class my friend Franney & I popped along to another quilt shop, that just happen to be having a closing down sale, & I decided there & then to purchase my fabrics for the October class.

I decided to take photos from start to finish. Fabric choice, cutting, piecing etc etc. Here is the start:

Fabric Choice

Cutting in progress

Cutting complete

My next class is on Monday & thats when we start sewing so hopefully there'll be lots of lovely piecing to show you next week.

I hope to get around to showing you some of my birthday presents this week. I was lucky enough to have the twins looked after for a day last week so that I could attend one of the largest stitching shows in the UK.... The Knitting & Stitching Show at Alexander Palace, London. This falls every year about a week before my birthday so I often get money gifted early so that I can have a spend up. I've just been going through everything I bought at the show as it was all a gift from my DH & as today is my birthday I thought I'd look at it all again :-)

Happy Stitching all :-)

Patience!

Patience is something that I don't really have much of & considering how little I have I am surprised that I get any stitching completed at all. As you know every Monday evening I've been off to an evening quilt class where I've working on Roberts sampler quilt. Every day I go i've been admiring a quilt they had hanging up advertising a Saturday workshop. Well at the last minute I booked myself up for the days course & took myself off last Saturday to spend the day sewing.
Our tutor for the day was the much published & author of her own book Quilting-on-the-go, Carolyn Forster. The quilt for the day is called Patience Corner Quilt.

There were six of us taking the class, a real mix of experienced quilters to the complete beginner. Carolyn was excellent & took the time to explain even the most basic parts of getting started. I was impressed with how the quilt top came together so quickly. The 9 patch start seems to give so many alternative patterns, I can't wait to get going on some more variations. As you can see from the pictures I chose a mixture of pinks & lilacs as this one is to be a quilt for Hannah.
The first quilt here top left is Carolyns quilt, the one that I admired every week for 9 weeks :-) Carolyn asked us to lay out what we'd completed during the day so that we could all see what everyone else has done, she is here at the head of the table. Some lovely coloured quilt tops, it's always really nice to see how everyones quilts turn out, especially as we've all done the same pattern but they took totally different.

Here are my completed blocks.

A very successful day, it was over far too quickly. A huge thank you to Carolyn Forster. So many little details that she mentioned throughout the day really made me think about the projects I'm doing & intend to do, so much so that some of them I have already changed thread colours & fabric placement etc.

This evening I have the last of my evening classes over at Thread Bear & will hopefully have a picture to show you later this week of Roberts Sampler Quilt. I know that I will stand & admire the next quilt Carolyn is to teach on a one day class, it's called Star & Lattice. They've hung it in exactly the same place that the Patience quilt was. I shall just avoid looking.

I may even get to post some cross stitch updates later this week. I have totally lost my Monday stitching day for 3 weeks now as the twins nursery is closed for 2 weeks over Easter & then another Monday for staff training... oh how I wish they'd do the training on a Friday!!!

Thats it for now... I'm off to play with new obsession of Selvage Edge Quilts. Thank you again Mrs Forster!!

Happy Stitching :-)