fresh sewing day

I'm linking up to Lynne's Fresh Sewing Day which I've not done for a while. It seemed particularly appropriate today as I have Kirstin's Dead Simple Quilt-a-long quilt to show you. If you remember this was supposed to be finished for Christmas but alas didn't quite make it. It's done now though and after my initial dislike for it when I first pieced the top both I and Kirstin, thankfully, love it loads.

The backing is Klona cotton in Pomegranate - what a colour it's gorgeous! Although I am a bit afraid it may bleed when I wash it. I'm not sure why I didn't wash it before I used it as I do usually but fingers crossed a colour catcher or two will keep things as they should be.

I had a few issues lining up my squares which are not entirley down to my shoddy piecing skills. I used my Big Shot Machine to cut up the charm squares which would have gone very smoothly had I bought the correct size of cutting mats.

Now the Westminster 5" cutting die for the Big Shot is a beast and a half but it cuts 4 charms with no borders in between so it can fairly get through a cutting job at a great pace. However I bought the XL cutting pads which turn out to be too short, you need the 25" XL cutting pads.

Of course no one had these in stock in the UK so I thought I'd get away with just cutting 2 charms x 6 layers at a time as they would be well covered by the mats I had. Sadly this resulted in stretched squares whcih of course I didn't discover until I had cut them all out and started sewing. So there was little chance of getting matching seams really.

I didn't want to quilt this one too heavily for a couple of reasons but mostly because I find it pretty hard going. I decided to keep the square theme going and did some (vaguely) straight line quilting on every third row and column which divided up the blocks a little and resulted in some more larger square shapes. I used a King Tut variagated thread on the front and a stunning pink Aurifil on the back.

The binding is made up from stash fabrics and a little left over row of 4 blocks. I took one column of blocks off the side of the original quilt front to add to the back and also so I could make use of the full width of the Klona to cut down on the amount of backing fabric I needed.

I used fabric stamps and some Perle Cotton (oh my this stuff is lovely) to make a label which you can't see in the quilt photos. Unfortunately the colour in this photo is a bit bright (pesky sun came out as I grabbed these photos) but the cotton is a pale lime green.

Here's an in progress photo which shows the colours a bit better.

It's bright (just incase you hadn't noticed) and cheerful and ever so slightly wonky but it you know what I don't care as finally I've made a start on getting my kids a quilt each. I'm hoping that the quilts I make for them will be something they treasure and that they will go with them when they grow up and leave home.

So that was a longer post than I meant it to be but there you go. I've made some other bits and bobs in January but I can't post pics of them yet as they're gifts so all that's left is my Swoon block. At the moment it is rather lonely as I've not made any more yet...it's on the list for February though.

There's a bunch of 'swooners' who are taking it slow and just doing a block a month which is just my style so if you were thinking you couldn't squeeze in another quilt to your schedule you know this might just be the answer.

Oh dear I amost for got another January finish Tamar's teddy Sleeping bag, phew at least I've got 3 things to show for the last month of sewing.

Bye for now