Super Mario {Finish}

It's finally finished!! I am so pleased to tick this one off the list at last.

Finished Mario Quilt

If you have been following me a while you'll have seen my progress on this mammoth quilt! There are pictures on flickr here and some old posts here, here and here.

I started this quilt in Feb 2013. I found the QAL run by Cut to Pieces a while after it had ended but my son (and husband!) is such a Mario fan I couldn't resist. I had envisioned it being a birthday present for him. His birthday being May gave me 3 months!

I didn't have the Pellon stabilizer that she recommended so decided I could just sew them together! The one thing that I hadn't really thought through was the amount of time it was going to take to cut and sew together all those 1 inch squares! Some 3888 squares to be precise! It was certainly a challenge, and it became evident quite early on that it was going to take longer than 3 months to complete!! So I shifted the goalpost to a Christmas gift!

I found I could focus on doing blocks for a while but would then have to stop and do something else until the pain had worn off and I could face it again. Eventually I had all 12 blocks complete. 

It was at this point that I discovered that my blocks were not all 18.5" square! Some were close to the same size but there was nearly 0.75" difference between the largest and smallest blocks! So adding the sashing proved to be quite an issue. A lot of manipulation went on until it was all attached! It was now 3 weeks before Christmas.

The backing had to pieced since I certainly didn't have a piece of fabric big enough for this huge quilt. I decided to stick with a pixel theme and some pieced letters. Despite going with a relatively simple idea, it took longer than expected to piece it together, this might have had something to do with the busy time of year too! I had now abandoned the idea of it being a Christmas gift!

By the beginning of January 2014 it was finished to the point of basted and ready for quilting. And there is sat, again.

I eventually got brave enough to start quilting it about a week before his birthday! The quilt was so heavy and large I knew the quilting had to be kept fairly simple so I decided to go with stippling like the pillow I had already made for him. With the blocks being 18" square (roughly!) it was taking me just over an hour a block! 

I spent every evening quilting late into the night. His birthday arrived and I conceded to give it to him with a 6" strip at the bottom of the quilt that was not quilted! It was finished the following day whilst he was at school. I bound it using Kona charcoal. 

Quilt Front

Quilt back

He was very pleased when it was finally on his bed! 

I am now about to package it up though and send it to the UK with my daughter as I have entered it into the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham in August 2014! This will be the first quilt I have ever entered to be displayed anywhere! My mum has entered one of her quilts too! I wish I could be there to see them hanging, instead I am hoping my mum and daughter get a good picture of them when they are there! 

Quilt Stats:
Pattern (front): Mario QAL with Cut to Pieces
Quilt Stats:
Pattern (back): My own design using some letters by Blossom Heart Quilts
Fabrics: Variety of Kona solids
Quilted: by me using Aurifil 50 weight Silver Fox
Started: Feb 2013
Finished: May 2014
Size: BIG! : 87" x 67"

Boxy Pouch {Finish}

I made a boxy pouch! I usually avoid zippers as I think they will be tricky. But I have a need for a pouch so thought I would give it a go.

I found a tutorial for a boxy pouch here by Pink Stitches.

I want to use the pouch for toiletries so decided to use some of the babyville boutique PUL fabric I have had sitting around for a while. This was probably not the best fabric to choose for the first try at the pouch! But hey, I like a challenge. 

I managed to do it, with quite a large amount of unpicking and fiddling! The PUL fabric moves too much when sewing. But at least that's hidden on the inside. 

Boxy Pouch

I practiced some FMQ on the outside. I did loops and hearts to make the stripes a little more feminine than their are. This is a pouch for my big girl who is doing some travelling on her own this summer. She likes blue so hopefully this will appeal to her.

I might have to try another one of these pouches but with some more forgiving interior fabrics!

Happy sewing. 

Mini Swoon ** Finish **

I have seen so many lovely pictures of Thimble Blossoms Swoon quilt pattern that I just had to make one. But I really didn't want to commit to another big quilt just yet! So the mini swoon seemed ideal!

Swoon blocks

I found an online shop that had some Scrumptious fabrics available still and just knew that's what I wanted. The blocks finish at 8" which is a super cute size. 

They can be a bit tricky getting the points to line up perfectly (and I do like perfection!) but I conceded in the end to stop unpicking and live with them as close as they were. I was enjoying making these blocks and had plenty of fabric to make some more. 

After finishing the 5th block I remembered why I had started making the mini version of this quilt. I didn't want another big project on the go when I was supposed to be finishing the Mario quilt! This was supposed to be a quick fix project! Not like me to get carried away!! Hehe!

So I stuck with the pattern and used the four blocks I liked the most and constructed the top.

I had some small scraps of fabric left over from making the front so I pieced them together to make a strip. I added some Kona pond that matched the scrumptious aqua really nicely to make the back the right size. I forgot to take a picture of the back before quilting it. But here it is quilted.

Mini swoon quilt back

I went with straight line quilting on the diagonal about 0.75" apart. Having done those I decided to do some narrower lines but only in a small section. I need to practice straight-line quilting, my lines are not always very straight or evenly spaced! But I like it!

Finally, I put on my free motion foot and did some freehand straight-lines in the triangles that had formed on the edges.

And here finally, the finished quilt.

Mini Swoon Quilt front

Making all the triangles in these blocks creates a lot of tiny scrap triangles. I am not very good at throwing fabric away but I am seriously wondering if it is worth keeping these tiny bits! Perhaps I'll put them in a tub for now and see!

Quilt Stats:

Pattern: Thimble blossoms Mini Swoon

Size: 19" x 19" 

Fabrics: Kona white, Kona pond, selection of Moda Scrumptious

Stared: April 2014

Finished: May 2014

Bloggers Quilt Festival Spring 2014

It's the Bloggers Quilt Festival again. Welcome, new and old viewers. 

I have just finished a small wall hanging for my son whose birthday it is very soon. I am still trying to finish quilting his bed quilt, so I can't enter that one this time!! The Boy is very much into Pokemon at the moment. I am amazed that this craze is still going around! I decided to make him something small to hang on the wall beside his bed.

I found a paper pieced pattern of Pikachu at Fandom In Stitches which came together relatively easily. 

Although, I had just taken a picture of the finished block when I noticed I had used the wrong colour in a place that mattered and gave poor Pikachu an extra pointy face. 

I couldn't live with this so it was soon corrected!

Paper Pieced Pikachu

I appliquéd the Pokemon title on to the top border and topstitched it down too, just in case it gets pulled around. I also appliquéd 3 pokeballs along the bottom. A pokeball is (I believe) the place you store your Pokemon (pocket monster, for those not in the know!). The 3 pokeballs I used were the poke ball, the friend ball and the premier ball.

He needed some features adding, like maybe some arms and a nose and mouth.   I also outlined him in black to give him more definition. I enjoyed this bit, like finishing off the character.

The rest of it is quite simply quilted with a little bit of echo quilting around the features and then lightning strikes down the side borders because he is an electric-type Pokemon and can store electricity in his cheeks and release it in lightning-based attacks, apparently! This is about as much as I know, and want to know, about Pokemon. Although, I am currently planning a Pokemon party for the birthday boy so I might have to gain a bit more knowledge to keep up with the 8 year old boys.

Here is the final wall hanging. Hoping it goes down well with the birthday boy.

Final Pikachu wall hanging

There will be lots of great quilts on display in the Blogger's Quilt Festival over at Amy's Creative Side so do go take a look at them.



Quilt Stats:
Fabric: A variety of Kona solids
Size: 17.5" x 13.75" (? oh well!)
Started: 6 May 2014
Finished: 12 May 2014

Stash Organising!

Once a upon a time, not that long ago, we lived in a small, Welsh, terraced house. The only storage we had was our wardrobe, the airing cupboard and kitchen cupboards. Quite frankly the kitchen cupboards were not suitable for storing sewing items and full of cookware or food. At that time the kids were all under 6 years so the airing cupboard was permanently full of drying clothes since we didn't own a tumble dryer and it was quite often too wet to hang it outside! This left our wardrobe which had to accommodate clothes and any remaining stuff that needed a home. 

This meant my sewing fabric was confined to three of these fat quarter bags! Not a pretty sight (especially given poor night time lighting!).

We now live in a large Canadian home where storage is not a problem and I have part of the basement for my sewing 'room'! No more setting up my sewing machine on the kitchen table any time I wanted to sew and making sure it was all packed away by the time the kids got up! Needless to say a lot more hand sewing happened back then.

Any purchases since arriving in our new location got prime place on an old Ikea CD shelving unit (ideal sized shelves for fat quarters!). But the fabrics that came with me from the UK have been sat in these bags getting messier and messier. So I decided to do something about it.

I used a tutorial from the Sunday Morning Quilts book by Cheryl Arkison and Amanda Jean Nyberg to make some fabric boxes to store these fabrics so I can access the fabrics easier! 

I am also quite bad at discarding fabrics, even very tiny bits! I have several mandarin boxes full of tiny scraps in all colours! So, I used a lot of these little scraps to construct the side panels for the boxes and some larger pieces of those fabrics I was not so keen on anymore for the linings. Rather time consuming but very satisfying!

I now have four colours finished and have maybe another 3 or 4 to go! But I have to stop for now as we have run out of cereal box cardboard to line the box to make it sturdy! The kids usually claim any kind of cardboard they can, for making things like robots or fairy houses! I have swiped a box from their stash but if I take too much it will be noticed, so my alternative is to tell them to eat more cereals! :)



Whilst it feels productive, it has rather put a halt to anything else I should have been doing, like quilting the Mario quilt!! Ah well, still got 25 days to get that one done! 

Linking up with others at Freshly pieced and The Needle and Thread Network.

WIP Wed

My design wall seems a bit full at the moment! But I guess that's good as it means I am actually working on finishing some things!

First up, some hexies! Very slow progress here! Although swimming lessons have started again and this is the project of choice to take along!

Playing with Hexes

Next up is a Christmas wall hanging I started many years ago. I am trying to finish a block a month. It is appliqué using steam-a-seam and then button hole stitched around the edge. I used to do a lot of this kind of sewing by hand, but don't seem to find the time now, or maybe my interests have changed! So I have been doing this on the machine!

Christmas Quilt

I have also just started a mini swoon wall hanging - like I didn't have enough to keep me busy! This has been on my list of things to do for a while. So I finally cut the pieces for the first block from some very pretty scrumptious fabrics by Bonnie & Camille. 

Mini Swoon first block

Although not on my design wall, this WIP is very much on my mind! The Mario quilt. It's been sat patiently waiting for me to quilt it! I now have two threads to choose from. My fabric mule bought me an aurifil #4670 last weekend and I have a Mettler variegated thread in aqua/grey. So there really is no excuse. Plus the Boy turns 8 next month so it would be good to finally finish it and give it to him, before he completely outgrows Mario!

Mario Quilt

I have made no further progress on the Doctor Who blocks! 

Linking up with others at Freshly pieced and The Needle and Thread Network.

First Bee Block!

I joined a Bee! I have wanted to do something like this for ages but didn't know quite where to start. Plus I saw so many great blocks I was nervous about taking the plunge!

Then, a little while ago, I started using Instagram and saw Lindsay of Lindsay Sews advertise a new hive in the #moderninstabee2014. So I took the leap and joined. This bee follows Lindsay's Modern Bee book, so at least I knew what I was in for having got the book.

Katie, the Queen Bee for this month chose the Stacked Windmill pattern and sent a picture of the colours she was using. It was fun picking colours out that I don't normally put together. There were a lot of HSTs to sew together in this block, it was quite a challenge. The first time I constructed the block it ended up over half an inch too big, clearly my seams were too scant! So I started it again and now it's only just big enough!

Here is the final block which I put in the post today. I hope Katie likes it. 

Looking forward to next month now and the next challenge!

Yummy Fabrics

Alyssa at Pile o Fabric hosts a giveaway every Friday with many great sponsors! 

A couple of weeks ago I received one of those lovely emails with the subject heading 'Winner'! I had won the Kiwi Berry Blogger Bundle sponsored by Jackie at Canton Village Quilt Works.

I spent most of yesterday trying to sort out the year's taxes, {yawn, sigh}! So when I returned home to find this little bundle in my mail box, it really did make my day. They are just so gorgeous!!

Any quilt I make with these really is going to pop! I have patterns going around my head but I really must finish off the quilts that are half finished before jumping into the next, or do I … ;)

Thank you Jackie and Alyssa!