Another baby quilt

Another request for a quilt towards the end of last year. Same pattern as the last little elephant quilt I made, and some of the same fabrics. Reds, blues and yellows.

This is how it turned out.

 A little crinkly tag toy thrown in for fun

All rolled up and ready to pass on to the new owner.

Finished Dimensions:
Quilt size 41.5" square
Individual blocks (finished): 7,5"
Blue sashing between blocks (finished): 1.5"
Blue sashing border (finished): 2"
Elephant border (finished): 3"

Half Square Triangle quilt complete

It is done. This light dark HST quilt has taken a while to eventuate, but I am definitely happy with the result. The perfectionist in me can spy a few not-quite-perfect intersections. I have realised though that even quilts in fancy quilting books are not perfect and it is the overall impression that is what makes a quilt.

A plain teeny weeny dotty back shows the quilting lines

The detail on the HST Quilt in the making is here.

Finished size with binding about 41x57" (104x155). Backing - single piece. 

10 columns x 14 rows of HST (140 squares once made up = 70 light & 70 dark 5"charm squares).

Finished size of each square in quilt = 4",

Half square triangle quilt in the making

 Piles of 5 inch charm squares from a whole lot of different packs. Autumnal shades, with some brighter blues and greens to lift it. My idea is to make these into a light/dark half square triangle quilt.

This quilt has been forming and storming for a long time.
Playing around on my board with different light/dark half square triangle combinations.
This was one idea...

 But this was where it began heading instead. My ideas board wasn't big enough for the planning of this layout, so I used an existing quilt as the 'board' on the floor so I could still move it out of the way.

Eventually I was happy with the design.

This is how I went about making the light/dark HSTs.
One dark fabric charm square and one light fabric charm square placed right sides together, edges well aligned. Pin to secure. Draw a line with fabric pen corner to corner using a 45' ruler to get the angle correct.

Sew 1/4" to either side of the drawn line. You can chain stitch all the pieces to move the process along.

 Then use some slave labour to speed up the process of removing pins and cutting the threads if you have chain pieced...

Next use your rotary cutter & cut along the drawn line to end up with 2 triangles. Open up the triangles and press. I decided to press seams open for this quilt rather than to one side.

One pressed open square

 Trim the square to size (4.5"), using the 45' angle to line up and ensure the triangles are of equal size.

BEWARE - this step can lead to confusion and frustration if you turn any of the squares the wrong way or mismatch any pairs! Lots of photos and lots of checking.

Match pairs, pin along side to be stitched together. I added a diagonal pin to help prevent any shifting of the fabric.

 Chain piece pairs together, remove pins & press open. You will now have rectangles made up of 2 squares each (4 triangles).

 

Pair, pin & sew the rectangles in a similar way to end up with blocks made up of 2x2 squares (8 triangles). Before opening clip corners off to help reduce bulk at seam.

 

Then press seams open. 

 

Continue in a similar way to slowly piece larger and larger blocks together. This is where I am up to so far. A bit of unpicking today to make sure that the seams are meeting where they should. A pin at 90' to the fabric at each intersection seems to be the best method for me, and then plenty more pins in between to keep the top & bottom layers nice and even.

Log Cabin Quilt

Another finished quilt, this time for a friend,  using up my last pieces of the bright and fun Moda Bungle Jungle fabric, along with some owl and spotty prints.

This is my first try at a log cabin pattern and I went for the 'modern' method of cutting first & measuring later. I like the fun of piecing different colours and fabrics together to gradually built up each layer of the logs.

Each block is 12"finished, with the middle block's final round of logs being the same colour as the sashing so as to look a bit different from the rest.
The middle square of each log cabin is somewhere between 2.5"-3.5", and the surrounding logs anywhere from 1"-3" wide. Most of the block are made up of 3 rounds of logs, but a few have 4 rounds.

Quilting wise I stitched around each centre square and the first lot of logs about 1/8" outside the seam line and then stitched in the ditch around each block.

The back was supposed to be a red spotty fabric, but after washing it many times & it still running I gave that idea up. So a blue spot it ended up being instead, with a line of owls to tie it into the front. I like how the quilting worked on the back, symmetry  with the outlining of each of the 12" blocks but then a bit of unevenness with the smaller squares inside each block.

All wrapped up and ready for delivery:)

Here are my other quilts using the Moda Bungle Jungle fabric line. They have all turned out so differently.
A floating blocks design
and a more traditionally style one.

Bungle Jungle plus elephants quilt is finished

The Bungle Jungle Pieced quilt is finished. My first ‘commission’! 

They chose the pattern, I adjusted the size and layout slightly to fit what we needed. The finished size of 41” x 58” is a bit bigger than a standard baby quilt and that is because there are going to be two babies in this instance – twins are on the way!

They provided the initial red and blue fabrics and wanted a quilt for the babies that included elephants but wasn’t too “baby”.  The patterned and elephant Moda Bungle Jungle prints I had in my stash worked in really well with what they had already selected.The size of the blocks are 7.5” square when finished and the internal grey sashing is 1” finished.

And this is how it turned out.

The back was a single piece of patterned fabric which worked out perfectly – I sized the quilt so that the width matched the backing, so no cutting /seams required.

I tried a few new things. Cotton batting instead of polyester…and I am not sure I will be going back to polyester . The cotton was sooooooooo much easier to quilt.

I also left the “Button” (sewing) room to do the quilting this time around. I love my Button room, but the space on the dining room table is so much clearer for manoeuvring while quilting, so this is the new Quilting Venue from here on in. This is how I set myself up:

I also worked out that to get a proper 1/4" seam I need to move my needle a few stops over to the right using the settings on my machine. I used a quilters ruler to measure and mark a line on my machine using blue painters tape to further assist keeping to a nice even quarter inch.

Here is another, very different Bungle Jungle Moda print quilt of mine

quilting works in progress...

I have many quilts I want to make, some of them I've been thinking about for a while and others are more recent plannings. I've been playing with fabrics to help solidify what the final quilts might look like.

Here are a few sneek peaks.
This one will be for Little Imp. It will require a bit of precision piecing, and it will be the biggest quilt I've made....maybe that is why I haven't started it yet other than to cut out lots and lots of rectangles.

This one will be our new picnic rug. I am tossing up between going with a half square triangle light/dark pattern, or using instead using a plain dark green plain fabric along with the patterned to make something more along the lines of these half square triangle cushions.

And then this one is the current undertaking. For a new little baby. A log cabin quilt. Fun.