Sawtooth Star quilt

Sawtooth Star quilt

This is my last quilt finish for 2021.  I'm quite amazed I got it quilted in time to send it up as a Christmas present.  It was a gift to my parents-in-law and I'm happy to say that they both really like it.  My mother-in-law likes to sew as well, and knits us all wonderful gifts.  It's so nice to be able to chat to her about sewing when we're up in Scotland so I really wanted to make her a gift as I know how much she likes my quilts.  I picked colours that I thought they would both like. It's hard to see here, I should have taken some close-ups, but the cream fabric has little ginkgo leaves on it (you can see it here)

I used this tutorial for the Sawtooth Star blocks and then just winged it with the border, putting it together and then seeing if I felt it worked.  

Backing of the Sawtooth star quilt

I've had the quilt pieced for quite a while but just couldn't decide how to quilt it.  After much deliberation, I just went for straight-line quilting.  The back fabric is a gorgeous IKEA tablecloth I got in a charity shop. It's 100% cotton and is slightly brushed so it's nice and soft.  the binding is a mix of the pink and terracotta fabrics. I really like the effect of binding that is not just one colour and need to remember to do this more often.

The batting is Hobbs heirloom 100% wool batting which is supposed to be washable.  I haven't tried washing it yet but I did ask my fellow members of the London Modern Quilting Guild for batting advice and quite a few had sued this and recommended it.  I do feel very lucky to be part of such a friendly guild, and to have a community of fellow makers for inspiration and advice!

Pescadero Crib Quilt for my newest nephew

Pescadero crib quilt

This is a very special quilt made for my new nephew.  I initially pulled these fabrics out with plans for another quilt but, when I saw them together, I knew they just had to be for a quilt for my nephew.  My aim was to make a quilt that was calm but at the same time I didn't want to make one just with whites or beige, I wanted it to be bright but not too busy.  The Pescadero pattern from Simple Geometric Quilting was just what I needed.  

I love the combination of the two different types of triangle, and the two shades of yellow.  The brighter yellow is a Kona cotton and the more golden shade is Makower linen texture in gold.  I can't remember what the white is.  The blue is gorgeous and soft, it's a Habitat duvet cover I bought for the sofa bed then didn't use. So far I've used it for the quilt back on my New Mexico Quilt as well as this quilt and I still have enough left to back a quilt I'm making for my son.  My son is so good at helping me hold up my quilts to photograph them! I won't lie, he does moan about it sometimes but then we always end up getting lots of silly photos with him poking his head over the top or out the side so he likes that.

Quilt backing

As you can see, the party is really on the back with this one too.  I used up almost all of this gorgeous Leah Duncan print, and bordered it with a bit of pink and more of the gold.  It's lovely and soft as it's filled with wool batting so hopefully, it will be cosy in the winter and cool in the summer.  I am so pleased with how this one turned out and sewed it with lots of love, thinking of my nephew in another country and hoping I would get to meet him soon.  I was lucky and we did get out to see my brother and his family in October, before Omicron!  I'm hopeful we'll get out again sometime in the early new year.  

This was my second make from Simple Geometric quilting and one of my aims in the new year is to try out some of the curve patterns in the book.  I made two quilts with curves way back when I started quilting but I haven't done one in a good few years and I've lost my nerve somehow.  Which is silly really so it's time to get over that in 2022 and get back to some curves!  

Triangle Bear Paw baby quilt - gifting to friends.

Bear Paw baby quilt

I'm back with another Bear Paw quilt!  I can't seem to go very long without using this quilt block, there's just something so pleasing about it.  Excuse the poor lighting in these photos, it was too wet outside to get any photos (there has been a lot of very dreich weather recently here in London and my son is now learning all the Scottish words to describe this type of weather, for example, this morning's rain I would describe as smirr, which is quite a nice rain, light and soft.) Anyway, enough about the weather, and back to this quilt.  I made this for a friend's new baby.  This friend is very special to me (as all friends are!) and, during all the lockdowns and almost lockdowns of the past year & a half, our weekly walks in the forest together have made it all so much more bearable.  So this quilt is one way I have of showing that love and appreciation.  As another aside, isn't my son doing a great job as a quilt holder-upper?!

Bear Paw baby quilt

Once again I used this tutorial from In Color Order as a starting point. It's just a great, clear tutorial, and one day I'll try it as intended i.e. scrappy.  The triangle fabric, a Cloud 9 organic lawn if I remember rightly, was one I bought when a friend did an Instagram fabric destash.  I knew I wanted to use it in a quilt but to be honest the lawn fabric was a bit tricky to work with. Maybe a quilt in all lawn would be ok but mixing it with the different weights of both Kona solids (peach, green and white) and the Cirrus solid (blue) made it a bit harder.  I knew this before I started as I had the same issue with my Queue for the Zoo quilt last year, made with a Liberty print.

You can see the colours of the print a bit more in the photo above, it's a very peachy pink and the dark green is really lovely.  I had fun trying to match this with solids and bought two different Kona peach/coral shades to get the right one.  I love pink though so I know the one I didn't end up using will get used soon anyway.

The back of the quilt is just pieced together. This is something I really enjoy doing.  I had a small amount of the triangle fabric left and I wanted to use it all up so I started with that and just cut and stitched as I went.  It's really good fun to get a bit improv like that, especially after following a block pattern for the front of the quilt.  Spending time coming up with a design, and then sewing it up for loved ones, is such a nice way to spend time, it's time to be solitary and reduce stress whilst also being social somehow as you're thinking about the person/people you're creating it for.

Simple Geometric Quilting - the New Mexico Quilt

It's been a long time since I've logged in to this blog, and if I'm honest, a long time since I've read any blogs.  I would like to get back to blogging a bit more as I still enjoy reading sewing and quilting blogs but I've yet to find a good blog-reader app for my phone so I just tend to stick to Instagram most of the time. I thought I'd return to this blog and document the rest of my quilt makes for 2021 in the hope that it encourages me to get back into it again. Starting with this one I made back in the early summer for my husband's sister in Scotland.  

New Mexico Quilt

The pattern is the New Mexico Queen quilt pattern from Simple Geometric Quilting by Laura Preston. It is such a beautiful book and I would love to try out all the patterns and techniques.  The photography is wonderful as well and just makes me want to travel - which, with the way things are going right now looks likely to stay as daydreaming for a while longer! I reduced the size of the pattern by a third to make it more of a lap quilt but it's still pretty big as you can see.  

The colour scheme in the book is so good and it's one that I thought my sister-in-law would really like so I stuck pretty close to the sample in the book.  The two blues are both Cirrus solids, absolutely my favourite solids to use as the texture is just gorgeous.  These were from MisforMake and FineCityQuilting. The terracotta was my last scraps of an April Rhodes fabric, the white is also from MisforMake I think, their standard cotton. I can't remember what the black fabric is but it's lovely.  The backing is a Habitat duvet cover that wasn't being used, it's Egyptian cotton and so lovely and soft - perfect for a quilt backing. 

The instructions for this were really clear and I like the way the book is laid out.  It has you press all the seams open rather than to one side and I did follow that but I don't think I will be again. I found once I'd pressed open that some of the stitching came loose. It happened more than once and I wondered if it was related to the fact I was chain piecing but then the instructions recommend both chain piecing and pressing seams open so there must be a way to do it without stitches coming loose.  If anyone has any tips or suggestions for this then I'd be interested in hearing them.  For now though I'll just go back to pressing to one side.

Another Bear Paw

 I just can't stop making these Bear Paw baby quilts.  The original tutorial is this one from In Color Order.  The borders on the tutorial are wider than mine are here so I didn't follow the tutorial completely.  This was a last-minute present, and I'm trying to use up fabric I have, so I used all fabrics that I already had.   The blues are very scrappy - some Charley Harper scraps with some other blue scraps off an old Toy Story duvet cover I bought in a charity shop and changed from single size to cot size years ago.  The backing is a lovely bird fabric that a friend gave to me. I often use up smaller pieces for backings but since this was last minute it was good to have a bigger piece.  The birds on the back also nicely matched the Charley Harper bird scraps.  This is definitely one of my go-to quilt blocks. Does anyone else have favourite blocks? I do need to try out some different blocks soon too!

Bear Paw baby quilt

Back of baby quilt

Half square triangles

I've got a few quilts finished this year that I haven't shared yet so I'm going to start with this half square triangle baby quilt.  

I had this fat quarter of the Cotton and Steel tigers and another fat quarter of the Art Gallery Fabrics moons.  I really wanted to use them in a baby quilt so I decided a simple HST quilt was the answer.  This is made in the same way as the monochrome quilt I made in 2020.  It's just lots of 9.5" squares of fabric which are then sewn up into half-square triangles.  The longest bit is always deciding on the placement!  I think this has turned out really well and I love the colours and fabrics together.  

I couldn't decide what colour to bind it with and when I asked for opinions in our London Modern Quilt Guild group a few people suggested a lime green. Luckily i had leftovers of this Robert Kaufman Brussel linen in pickle. The lime green was such a good idea and it really works with the other colours. I absolutely love this shade of green, and the texture of this fabric. I'm tempted to get more but am really trying to use up fabrics I have rather than add more! 

You can see the last scraps of the printed fabrics on the reverse of the quilt, along with the very last of the green linen.  I had good fun piecing together all the bits for the quilt back, I like being restricted by the amount of fabric and trying to make it work.

There's not much else to say about it really, there's a good tutorial here for making a simple half square triangle unit.  I really like making half square triangles and it's always fun playing about with the placement.  

First small project of 2021

2020 contained a lot of sewing of small projects - pencil cases, drawstring bags and cushions mostly - and 2021 has started the same way.  I wanted to make a bag to wrap a book for a friend's birthday.  This one used scraps from different quilting projects, including the same yellow I used in the sawtooth star quilt I just made, which was for this friend's son, so it's nice to include one of the same fabrics.  Sewing with scraps is so satisfying, I love working out how to fit the fabrics together and having the limitations of the size of the scraps is fun.  I used the WeeBrawBag pattern as a reminder on how to do the bit for the drawstring to go through, but the dimensions are based on the size of the book I wanted it to contain.  I used some scraps of batting and then the lining as the backing.  I made each panel then decided to try out some hand quilting for the first time.  I used a 12wt Aurifil thread for this and I love how it looks. 

I'm going to try some new bag and pouch patterns this year as I tend to stick to the canvas pencil pouch, WeeBrawBag, and the Summer Madras Tote Bag (free pattern).  All of which are great patterns, it's just time to challenge myself a bit with some different patterns. So, if anyone has any recommendations please let me know.

Sawtooth Star quilt

This quilt has been a long time in the planning.  I knew I wanted to use these fabrics together for a quilt for a good friend's second baby but changed my mind so many times about what pattern to use.  So I decided to go with one of my favourite quilt blocks - either the Bearpaw or the Sawtooth Star.  I had seen an outlined star block (I'm sure there's a better way of describing this but I can't think what that would be right now) on Instagram and thought this would be a great way to use these two fabrics together.

It wasn't meant to be a winter quilt, as the baby it is for was born in the summer, but last year, and this year, it's taking me longer to get big projects going than usual.  I love how the colours look against the slight dusting of snow.  My son was so excited by the snow he didn't even object to holding the quilt for me!  We did get more snow the next week, even enough to do some sledging, which hasn't happened here in years.  it was a nice break in the routine of lockdown!

I used Diary of a Quilter's Sawtooth Star tutorial as a reminder for the construction but of course, remembered to make the centre of each star the same fabric as the sashing. I am afraid I can't even remember what size I made the stars (edit: the stars are 12" blocks) or what width I used for the sashing. Usually I write it all down but I forgot with this one, I just made big stars then used sashing in between to get the quilt the size I wanted.  The grid quilting works well I think as I wanted to keep the quilting design to a minimum so I didn't cover up the lovely softness of the fabrics too much.  I wish I'd taken more photos of the quilt as I'm so happy with how it turned out.  The aim was for it to look calm and I think the combination of the colours and the hollow stars achieved that.

So, on to the fabrics I used.  The blue is a Cirrus Solid, 'rain' I think, from M is for Make.  The Cirrus solids are more expensive than most other solids but I love the texture of them and that they are organic.  The gorgeous rust brown star print is by Ruby Star Society from The Crafty Mastermind.  The yellow binding is fabric I've had since I first started sewing and I used it in the first ever quilt I made, which was for this baby's big brother! So I wanted to incorporate it in this quilt and it matched perfectly.  I meant to get a close-up of the binding and the backing as it all works together so well.  The backing is a gorgeous elephant print organic cotton by Birch Fabrics, you can see it in this Bear Paw baby quilt I made. I wish I'd taken more photos of this but never mind, I know it's being loved and used and that's the most important thing.

Big Kiss quilt

I started this quilt in May when I saw the sew-along announced by the pattern creator @SelfSewn.  It was a free tutorial and I just loved the bold design of it. Straight away I knew I wanted to use some of my Leah Duncan fabrics which I'd been saving, unsure of what to use them for. I also knew I wanted to make this for my brother and his family, as they live abroad and, at that point, I hadn't seen them in 6 months.  I sewed the quilt top together during the sew-along and had hoped I'd be able to see them during the summer and gift it then but when that became more unlikely I felt a bit too sad to quilt it somehow.  I decided it would be perfect to send though as, what better way to send your love to someone than in something you've created yourself. Especially when you can't give them your love in person.

Self Sewn gave really good instructions on how to use a photo of the fabric laid out in stripes, to create an image of how it would look made up. That's what you can see above.  I tried a few different layouts of fabric this way and it was great to be able to get a real idea of how it would look sewn up.  There are 3 Leah Duncan prints here, the two botanical ones and the blue one, which features flamingoes.  It also contains some pink floral Liberty twill which was leftover from a dress I made myself years ago.  Likewise, the blue cross-hatch is leftover from a skirt I made.  

The backing fabric is mostly an orange IKEA duvet cover that I bought new to make scrubs bags for a family member, and friends, during the summer. With another scrap of Leah Duncan flamingos added in.  I had initially intended this as a picnic blanket quilt, which is why I used the IKEA fabric on the back as it seemed quite hard-wearing.  However, as I didn't send it till the winter it's currently a blanket on the couch!

I just did some simple straight line quilting either side of the seams. I love how this looks and I didn't want to make the quilt too stiff.  

2020 was a hard year for so many and I don't have the adequate words to describe it.  I found sewing really helped me at so many points this year but it was usually smaller more manageable projects that I wanted to make, like cushion covers, pencil cases and little bags. I hope you all found some ways to make 2020 more bearable and here's hoping 2021 brings us all more time with family and friends when it's safe to do so.