Hearts and Flowers

This quilt was made as a Block of the Month quilt challenge at our local group. Each month we got another instalment and paid a £1 for the pattern. The money collected became the prize money for 1st, 2nd and 3rd voted for by fellow quilters - aka quilters choice, at the AGM. Sadly mine did not win, but all the quilts were amazingly different and gorgeous.

I choose very pretty colours - not my usual colour choice at all. I enjoyed working with this range though and it made me realise how much I like white/cream for backgrounds.

 You can see here  how I have adapted this pattern

The Start of Something New.

I will be teaching this quilt at our local fabric shop - Fabritastic, starting in April. I am looking forward to adapting the pattern a little, mostly the appliqué shapes. I am thinking about using birds and flowers?
You can see more of this original quilt here.
Block One






Here are some of the fabrics I will be using. The 2 main focus fabrics are from Moda - Regent Street Lawn. I am starting with 1.5 metres of cream and 1/2 a metre of these 5, I will add a few more colours from my stash.



The first session went well. All 8 ladies were lovely and seemed to enjoy it. The array of colourways is gorgeous and very different, I am looking forward to month 2 already

Scrap Log Cabin

I am on a mission to use up the bundles and bundles of small pieces of fabric I have. This is a long term project. I have created the log cabin quilt pattern in EQ5 and then coloured it in to see which colour ways I liked the most. Colouring in by hand was quicker (and more fun) than using EQ5.

This is the preferred design.

Each block is 5 1/2 ''(finished) and is made up of 1 1/2 strips.  But it will mean that all this:

will be added to these 

to make a quilt.

Scrappy frames

I love trying new rulers and gadgets. Creative Grids are one of my favourite ruler producing companies. I love the 2 1/2 strip rulers, but instead of using a jelly rolls - I use scraps!

The ruler:

Productive of playing!

I started playing with the 90* ruler and this is what I have produced just playing. It uses 1 1/2'' strips. This is a quilt for the future!

Teeny Tiny Houses

These tiny houses are foundation pieced and use very small scraps. The actual house measures 2'' square. I first saw this in an Australian  quilt magazine, however it was not until I saw the finished quilt made by Mother in Law that I totally feel in love with it. Don't think it will be a huge quilt probably a tote for my rulers and cutting board.

I intend to surround each block with a 1 1/2 cut boarder

Cotton Sheet to Quilt

I found an old cotton sheet that I knew we would never use. Dug out my procion dyes, made up vast quantities (3 litres each) of salt and washing soda solution, donned rubber gloves and set to making some new fabric. I cut the sheet into 12 - 14 inch squares. I wanted to have a gradual effect, working with three colours to make a spectrum of colour.

I started with lemon yellow, ultra marine and scarlet powder dyes. I mixed up a dye solution of 5 tspn of dye to 100ml tap water. I wrote on each piece of fabric as I went what the combination of colours was, however in hindsight it would have been better to do this before I started as I think I repeated one or two of the recipes.

I took a plastic bag and placed this in a small bowl, then added 5 desert spoon of the dye solution. To this I added 100 ml of salt solution, and 100 ml of soda plus 350 ml of cold water. To make this process easier I had an old jam jar marked up with masking tape accordingly.  Then I added the fabric. To make it easier for the fabric to absorb the dye I had dampened it first. I agitated the fabric in the bag sealed it with a secure knot and placed it in a cat litter tray. To the next bag I added 4 desert spoons of the first colour and one of the second.

Here is a chart to illustrate the the dye quantities

5 Y	5 B	5R
4 Y 1B	4B 1R	4R 1Y
3Y 2B	3B 2R	3R 2Y
2Y 3B	2B 3R	2R 3Y
1Y 4B	1B 4R	1R 4Y

Eventually this is what it looked like when all the bags had been completed. I then left all this over night, and agitated the bags whenever I went past.

The next morning I could not wait to open each bag. I carefully opened and rinsed the fabric in cold water then washed thoroughly, dried and ironed.

All this lovely hand dyed fabric was to be used in a dog bone/apple core quilt. All the dyed fabric was cut on an Accuquilt Go machine using the Apple Core cutter. The machine was easy to use and far quicker than trying to rotary cut around a template.  I do have the Curve Master foot, but find that my 1/4 inch foot  #57  with a lip on works a treat. The trick is to match the top tips laying the top one at near right angles and then holding this up as you sew. The machine sews and follows the curve.The actual quilt went together really easy and is now ready for quilting