Stingy Bees are the Best!

Last year my fabulous Bee a Brit Stingy Bees and I were making travelling row quilts.

I started my quilt off with these blocks for my row

It then had a row added by Di at the bottom and Catherine in the middle...

Then I had to say au revoir as up till now I had seen it with it's new rows as Di Catherine and I were meeting up to exchange rows!

It's journey progressed Northwards to Lucy, who added the row at the top and Sheila who finished it with the row in the middle

All the rows came back to me this year and I wanted to make it a bit bigger so thought I would add a border all around.

I decided to continue some of the elements of the blocks into the border.  

And this is how it looks now

I love it so much - it is beyond what I imagined it could be but then I should have realised my beemates would come up trumps!


And just in case you want to see what I did for my bee mates here is a mosaic of some of the quilts and some just the rows - 

Lucy's quilt is top left and is a forest.  My row is at the top.

Di's quilt is bottom left and has a gardening theme.  My row is on the bottom with cat and wellie boots.

Sheila's rows are at the top right and my row is on the bottom.  I received Sheila's and Collette's early on in the process so don't have photos on their completed quilts.

Catherine's quilt is middle right and my row is second from the bottom - her theme was geese. 

Collette's quilt was all about sewing stuff and my row is the one with sewing machines

It has been a challenging but fun year with my bees and we are working towards designing for this year coming! It will be another new and exciting challenge....

Scrappy Tile Blocks for Siblings Together

I have been working on another Quilt-As-You-Go quilt for Siblings Together!  

In true Blue Peter fashion here is one I made earlier with blocks from my fabulous Siblings Together Bee mates.

More blocks have since arrived ....

From Bridgid

From Jennifer, Jane and Hannah

which enabled me to make another quilt ....

The block I made has the Dala horse on it of course!

These are easy blocks to make and now that I have completed two quilts this way I find that the quilts are very easy to put together, only requiring a bit of sashing and binding : much easier than layering, basting, quilting and then binding a quilt.

Fancy joining in making one for Siblings Together?  My block tutorial is here.

They are the perfect charity block drive quilt really!  Hint hint!  


For more news about the 100 Quilts for Siblings Together campaign go here!

I will be linking this quilt to the Finish-A-Long 2016 at the quarter end

This quilt is on my FAL2016 list here

A Kaleidoscope for Siblings Together - updated !

Last Year Emma (aka Brian is the Messiah) was kind enough to donate a large pile of fabric for me to make quilts for Siblings Together.  I noticed that we had reached our target before I got around to making them, so thought I should make them for 2016!

One is already complete, made from 2wenty Thr3e Fabric by Eric and Julie Comstock for Moda.  The pattern I used is here on the Moda website - it's free!  

So recently I have been working on another version in Rob Bancroft microMod fabrics from Emma!  

This time I have been focusing on the circles you can make by fabric placement - I couldn't manage this without my design wall - and even with it I still managed to swap some bits around!  Oops!

Both quilts are made with this block, which you can find papers for here if you prefer foundation piecing.   I followed the Moda tutorial and used a Simpli-EZ 45° Triangle Ruler

This is what a page of these looks like! 

And this is what the second Kaleidoscope quilt I'm making for Siblings Together looks like....

I am always fascinated that fabric choices and placement can make such a difference - it is part of what keeps me making quilts!  

What about you?

Edited to add the final finish:

I quilted those tortuous loopy things in the circles - my brain finds it really tricky to start the loops going in the right direction but once I've worked it out each time it is easy

Then I quilted a simple squared off zigzag in those in between pieces

The backing was also sent by Emma - a gorgeous newsprint text fabric!

And I made a scrappy binding from the leftovers !

And so here is the ta da moment:

Linking this finished quilt for Siblings Together to the Link Up as part of the tally towards our 100 quilt target.

I will also be linking this quilt to the Finish-A-Long 2016 at the quarter end

This quilt is on my FAL2016 list here

Scraptastic Tuesday - Winners in February

Hello again!

Remember my Blueberry Park mini apple cores?  

Well I hand stitched all those little apple cores together, trimmed the panel square, quilted about a quarter inch either side of the seam and added some mustard linen to the edge.  The back is more of the mustard linen and an exposed chunky yellow zip with cute circle zip pull (meant for a jacket but I cut off the zip stop at the end).  

And now I have a finished cushion to enjoy...

My son says it reminds him of ravioli - so my Ravioli Cushion it is then! 


My little bit of sunshine in my sewing room no matter what the weather!

And now its time to award the prizes for the February Scraptastic Tuesday link up.

InLinkz.com

A huge thank you to our generous sponsors for providing the following prizes which will have been awarded randomly among the record 98 people who joined us, well done all of you:

• Fat Quarter Shop - $25 gift certificate: #6, Indiannadreams on Instagram

• Sew Sisters Quilt Shop - $25 gift certificate: #40, Allison from Instagram

• Sew Me a Song - $20 gift certificate: #48, The Lilac Cat on Flickr

• Fluffy Sheep Quilting - a €20 (20 Euro) gift certificate: #62, Sandra, Musings of a Menopausal Melon

• Green Fairy Quilts - $25 gift certificate: #16, Sue at Sue Daurio's Quilting Adventure

• Karen Lewis Textiles  - scrap pack: #80, Linda at Flourishing Palms

• Mad About Patchwork - a $40 gift certificate, #90, Kat at Kat's Craft

Congratulations to our winners! Leanne will be sending you each an email today to get you connected to your prizes.

Thank you for joining Leanne from She Can Quilt and I, and for sharing so much scrappy inspiration. Please plan to join us again on the second Tuesday in March - on March 8, 2016.

So who is the lucky winner of the Welsh Blanket Pattern by Mary Emmens?

Thank you all for joining in the giveaway for this fabulous pattern by Mary Emmens

I ran Mr Random Number Generator and he said that Michelle Yvonne won!  I shall be passing your details onto Mary so she can send you your prize!  

And I'll be looking be looking forward to seeing that Ultramarine, Cheddar and Lipstick Welsh Blanket Caernarfon quilt you will be making for your DH!  Please let me know when you have finished....

And perhaps I should let you know that Mary has been working on the next Welsh Blanket Quilt St David's Cross!  And it is gorgeous too of course 

as you can see in  this diagram but you really should go and have a look here  and see it in fabric!  

Oldest UFO finished!

This is the oldest quilt I have started and not finished!  

Well to be more accurate part of it is!

I started making the EPP rosestar blocks way back in March 2012, using the EPP tutorial by Clare aka selfsewn.   I made about fourteen and Lucy made one for me too!

Then I decided I could not make a whole quilt of them!  I just don't enjoy EPP enough and then there would be the boring bits inbetween too. It just wasn't going to happen.

So I started combining them with these blocks.    These are two of my favourites ...

When I added them to the background fabric I spaced them out more and added these - which I took from Jen Kingwell's Georgetown on my mind pattern.

And ended up with this huge top!  

It seems to have stayed at this stage for a long while.   I couldn't decide how to quilt it!

But now I am quilting in the ditch for the blocks and doing random FMQ in the background!

It is a huge and heavy quilt for me to quilt on my domestic machine so thank goodness for that Horn table I got last year!  It makes such a difference having my machine set in!

I have been doing a little bit of quilting everday for over a week now and I'm pleased to say....

....it is finished!  

I should have tidied up a bit!

and a panoramic slice across the quilt - playing with the things my camera can do...

Sigh!  I'm really quite pleased with this!  Not quite sure what to call it - working title was Vintage Circles - anybody think of something better?

I'll be linking this up to FAL2016 when the time comes!  

This one is on my FAL2016 list here