"Well, hellooooo there!"

said the giraffe, "Please do come in!"

I've had this post sitting in my drafts for a year, and just now, I saw that my friend Rachel had posted her about the quilt a year on, and thought I should finally share this.

Some friends and I secretly made our friend Rachel a quilt for her new baby. We started not long after she announced her pregnancy, so whilst she was busy baking a beautiful baby, we were conspiring to make him/her a beautiful quilt. The block above is the one that I made. AJ is the real hero, she put all those very different blocks together and made them into a beautiful quilt.

A Christmas Tree Skirt

Each year I try to add something hand-made to our Christmas decorations. This year it was the tree skirt. I followed the directions for A Simple Old-Fashioned Christmas Tree Skirt which I found on the Moda Bake Shop website. The pattern really is very simple and is just a top with binding around the edge. I decided to back mine and quilt it before binding.


The instructions fail to mention any indication of seam allowance. I assumed there was a 1/4 inch (6mm) seam allowance included. The pattern pieces are not accurate anyway, as there are pieces you have to chop off after each seam. I did something a bit different to the instructions, which was to use all one colour for one star piece and another colour for the other star piece. The original pattern used the same colour for both pieces on each block (does that make sense?)This meant the two greens alternated all around the skirt. If you decide to do the same, you need to realise that you can't just fold and cut, all pieces must be stacked with right sides all facing the same way and cut.

I prefer the way the original skirt was pieced, as it gives the star a three dimensional look, which I thought mine would get too, but instead mine has a bit of a pin-wheel-spinny look if you get what I mean. I think a chunkier star would have shown off the green fabrics a bit better too.


I quilted around each star point, just next to the ditch with some green Aurifil, using my walking foot and then switched over to my free-motion foot and used some red Gütermann sew-all, as that is what I had at the time. I chose to do a kind of feathery-paisley quilt pattern, which wasn't really a pattern, but sort of made-up as I went thing kind of (very loosely) inspired by the Craftsy Quilt Class I've been watching. I see that Angela Walters has a feathers class too, I might have to take a look at it.

I finished my Tree Skirt up with some picot-edge bias that I purchased from the Haby Goddess. I didn't quite have enough, so I finished up the straight edges with some left-over strips from the Walk in the Woods Jelly Roll from Amélie's quilt.

This wasn't the only Christmas item I made this year. I also made some Chubby birds and Gingerbread men decorations for teacher presents, but I was so busy that week that I never stopped to take photos before gifting them. You can see other gingerbread man decorations that I have made in Christmases past, but I haven't made any birdies and taken photos of them to show you.


Would you like to be able to make a Chubby Bird of your own? You can buy the pattern on Craftsy, here, (for really cheap) and get it instantly, but if you like, I have a spare copy of this pattern. Not a digital one, but an original greeting card sized pattern. I bought one, and I also have one that was given to me and I would like to give it to one of my readers. If you would like to be the lucky recipient of this Creative Card, tell me where you are from, how you found my blog and why I should give it to you. I will choose the best answer in a couple of weeks. I am happy to post it to anywhere in the world.

Home is Where the Heart is

My youngest brother, Allister married his beautiful Tahnee a couple of weeks ago. The setting was beneath some gum trees, on his farm, close to where we grew up. There were paper lanterns hanging from the trees, rose petals on the ground, and the reception was in a beautifully decorated farm-shed. The day was perfect and the location was ideal.


For the three weeks leading up to the wedding I was crazily making this quilt. The fabric is Road Fifteen, by Sweetwater for Moda Fabrics. The fabric features cute little houses and trees as well as roads and street names. A fat eighth bundle was given to me as a gift from the lovely Jodie of Ric-Rac, and I purchased some extra for the backing and the binding - I also used some of the backing fabric on the top.


The pattern is called Starry Terrain, by Jo Kramer and I found it on Moda Bakeshop. The original pattern is 8 squares wide by 8 squares long. I went for 5 x 5 squares. This made the quilt about 60 inches, or roughly 150cm square. I would have loved to have made it bigger, but this size worked for the amount of fabric I had and I had my doubts about being able to get a 240cm quilt under my machine to quilt it. The backing is pieced together with some squares and half-square triangles made up from leftover scraps from some of the blocks.


I used some variegated Sulky thread from Gütermann to quilt it, and went with an all-over stipple. I originally started with some feathers, but it really did not suit the quilt or the thread, so I unpicked it and started again. The un-picking took ages, longer than I spent hand stitching down the binding.


I printed the label onto some Matilda's Own Ink-jet printable fabric, which I blanket stitched to some left-over matching fabric as a border and then blanket stitched to the quilt. I spent quite a lot of time trying to come up with something profound to put on the label, about making a home together (to go with all the little houses) and then just went with "Home is where the heart is" and hopefully, home will be where this quilt is.



As for the Sew Your Stash Thin challenge, I used approximately 36 fat quarters making this quilt.
SYST13 Running totals: in = 107, out = 147, total = -40

Turtle Hottie

I would like to introduce you to my little turtle friend that I made for the 2013 Hottie Challenge. Except he doesn't have a name. If we gave him a name, he might not have been allowed to leave. Noah was a bit sad to hear that he couldn't stick around, but I told him that he was going to help some people with sick lungs and hearts to get better. I may have to make a special turtle, just for Noah.


My turtle is on his way to Open Drawer to be sold to raise funds for the Margaret Pratt Foundation, who fund research to give donor-organ recipients better outcomes. He is part of a group of hotties (hot water bottle covers) that was organised by Curly Pops, who herself is a recent recipient of a lung transplant.


Open Drawer will holding an exhibition in their gallery, where all the hotties will be displayed. The exhibition will be held from the 5th to the 28th of July, with the Gala Opening on Sunday, July 7 from 2-4pm. Open Drawer is situated at 1158 Toorak Road, Camberwell (Hartwell). During the exhibition, people will have the opportunity to purchase a hottie, or make a donation on behalf of their favourites. The hottie that raises the most funds wins a trophy.


If you can make it to Open Drawer, it is well worth seeing all the different interpretations that everybody had. I really enjoyed visiting last time. If you can't make it to the gallery, but would still like to see some hotties, you can check out #hottiechallenge2013 on instagram.


I wonder if someone will want to buy my turtle and take him home? What do you think we should name him?



For my turtle hottie, I used about 5FQs. This included some that got trashed, testing out ideas to see what would work.
SYST13 Running totals: in = 176, out = 53, total = +113

Daisies in the Woods

I finally finished Amélie's quilt. I have decided to call it Daisies in the Woods, as the fabric range is Aneela Hoey's A Walk in the Woods, and because of the daisy quilting pattern I used.



The daisy quilting pattern was my own design. I found heaps of inspiration via Pinterest and I sketched and drew and played around until I worked out something I could draw without lifting the pencil. My original sketches were worked into a grid to get good repetition, but I ended up deciding to go a bit more random with differently sized daisies and leaves and tendrils filling the gaps.



I chose to quilt with pink thread, to match the backing. This might be my "thing". So far, all my quilting thread has been chosen to match the backing. The very first quilt I made, I was going to use black backing and switched to yellow when I realised how terrible the yellow quilting would look on the back. Since then I have always chosen the quilting to match the backing. I almost did it differently this time and had four or five spools wound with Gütermann 111, but then I changed my mind. I am glad I did, I love the pink quilting. I know you can do a different colour on top than the bottom (I do this all the time with normal sewing), but I feel with quilting, there is a greater risk than usual that the tension is a little unbalanced and I don't think that is a good look.



The quilt piecing was also my own design. I pinned heaps of pinwheel quilts on my pinterest board and eventually used Inkscape to work out my design. I used Thangles to make the half-square triangles and would definitely consider this again if I was making another quilt using half-square triangles from a jelly roll.



I have lots of jelly roll left over. Ideally, it would have had more red strips. There were only six strips of red out of the 40 strips that make up the jelly roll. Two of the red on red spots, two with the white dotty circles and two with pink matchstick stripes. I needed four strips to go around the quilt, so I ended up mixing the dots and the circles to make a pieced binding. I really like the dotty circles, they remind me of snowflakes and dandelions. There are little details in the fabric that I never really noticed until I was making this quilt. In the fabrics with the bows on them, there are little pairs of white dots that also remind me of snow.



I would like to make a matching pillowcase for this quilt and I do still need to do a label, but the quilt is otherwise finished. All the fabric used in this quilt was in my stash, so nothing was added. I actually purchased the fabric last year from Want It, Need It, Quilt. I also grabbed a layer cake, so I really should do something with that at some stage. I am hoping that the layer cake is a better cut for this fabric. I would avoid such a sparse print on a jelly roll next time around. Something to keep in mind.

SYST: I used about 12 fat quarters of fabric for this project.
Running totals, in = 103, out = 34, total = +69

WIP Wednesday - Amélie's Quilt

I've decided this week to join up with Freshly Pieced WIP Wednesday and show you Amélie's quilt that I have been working on. I made all those half-square triangles using Thangles, which Amy (Badskirt) very kindly mailed to me to try. I really liked using them and I will be sure to use them again.


The top is all pieced and the quilt sandwiched, ready to quilt. It has taken me weeks of pinning designs on Pinterest, and sketching in my sketchbooks, but think I have finally decided how I am going to quilt it. It will involve stepping a little outside my comfort zone, though.

Apples for Grandma

This is the fabulous doll quilt I received from Nic in the EB Doll Quilt Swap. Nic obviously knows what I like and this will be going up in Amélie's room.



Little Red Riding Hood is one of my favourite nursery book characters, and Amélie already has a few Red Riding Hood themed items in her room.



Amélie is also a fan of apples, both to eat and to look at. This mini quilt has a delicious looking basket of apples and also matching apples on the tree.



I love the bow under her chin, and that sweet little round face.



I love the beautiful little bird on her apron, and her stripey tights!



Aren't I lucky?!

You can see the quilt I sent here.

And some of the other quilts, here, here, here, here, here, here and here

Poppy Breeze

My swap partner, Kylie, received her quilt on Thursday, so I can now reveal what I sent. This is some of what Kylie had to say about what she would like to receive:

I like just about anything. Brights or rich tones - especially reds. Not a fan of cutesy stuff, loving abstract designs at the moment. Not a big fan of lots of embellishments. Finished quilt will be hung.

I designed the entire quilt by myself. I decided to do poppies, because poppies are red, but then ended up doing them in these colours because the fabric was sitting there, calling to me... The grass has bees on it, which I think might me a little bit cute, I hope Kylie doesn't mind.



I pieced the sky using various pieces of blue fabric, radiating from the bottom left corner. I used some fabric from my stash and some I went shopping specifically for. The original idea was to give it a bit of a sunset type look, but I ended up sticking with just blue fabrics to keep it simple. The sky includes fabric with planes, raindrops, umbrellas and spots.



I really enjoyed quilting feathers into the sky, I'd never done feathers before this project and although it is more of a traditional style of quilting, I think it works in this more modern style of quilt. I think it looks a little like clouds.

The poppies were attached using raw edge appliqúe before placing the backing fabric on and I later quilted around them. I like how this gives them a puffy look.



I added the stems after all the quilting was done, which was really tricky and I had to use pliers to pull the thread through all the dense quilt stitches as it was so tight. I could have stitched them before I did the quilting, but I was a little worried about quilting catching on my thread, preferred not to quilt around the stems and didn't really want to quilt over them either. It might have been a little easier to have them show on the back as well, but I wanted to keep the back all white. I stitched the stems on an angle to give the impression of the poppies bobbing in the breeze.

EBDQS Sneak Peak

I've almost finished my doll quilt for the swap. I've learned a new skill, the feather. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I hope my partner likes the finished quilt.

18. Compromise

I worked out a way I can satisfy my need to use some of the scrummy fabric that I showed you yesterday (earmarked for my placemats) and still go with the original plan I had for my doll quilt swap. The solution was simple - buy some more fabric!

My plan involves some "sky" and I really like the rain in one of the fabrics. You can't see it in the photo, but the fabric beneath it with the garden-y type stuff also has umbrellas, so I think I can get those to work together. I really hope my swap partner likes it. I also hope I can get my vision to work in real life....

17. Dilemma

I really need to work on my EBQ Doll Quilt Swap, but this stack of fabric that I have set aside for placemats is calling my name. My swap partner has not mentioned a penchant for cerise, lime, nor newsprint...

What to do, what to do?

6. I am in Homespun Magazine!

I have some exciting news! I am featured in this month's Homespun Magazine.



I took my Snakes and Ladders board game and made a pattern for it and now you can make one too. It is the Kids Issue (No. 113 Vol. 13 No. 10) which is out now.



There are also instructions included to make a matching storage bag.



The Kids Issue of Homespun is always a favourite magazine of mine. It is always full of projects I dream of making, and this one does not disappoint.



I am in good company - Clare from Matching Pegs also has a project in this issue too. A tee-pee!!! My kids would love a teepee. There is also a pattern for the Lily Skirt, by Patty Young that I am considering making for Amélie next week, during the Kids clothing week challenge. I also really like the rocket quilt by Gillian of Red Raspberry.

Don't Look Now! I finished my cushion!

I finally finished my cushion from Kellie Wulfsohn's work-shop from oh-so-long-ago.



The free-motion appliqué on this, is actually my first ever attempt at it, and I'm thinking, not so bad. Yes, it is a little wonky in places, and I would like to think my skills have improved a bit since then, but still...



The free-motion quilting is a mixture of early and recent quilting, but it seems to blend okay.



I couldn't remember what I had set aside to bind and back this cushion with, so I dug these out of the stash yesterday. I didn't have a cushion insert, either, so I kind of made one using some sew-in interfacing (which is already splitting in places) and some poly fill I had on hand. I may yet get a proper insert.



It's good to have it finished and out of the UFO basket at last!