Open in 2012

Well, the Christmas holiday is over and 2011 has drawn to a close...it must be time to look forward to 2012! Happy New Year folks.

So, what's planned for 2012? I think my main two projects this year are surely going to be the Crazy Quilt Journal Project and Take a Stitch Tuesday. But a Christmas gift of this book from my mum may well inspire a new craze:



I do love a nice apron! Or, as I prefer to call it, a "pinny"! I think I will probably start off with the basic waist apron:



And then progress to a basic smock apron:



2012- The Year of the Apron. Watch this space.

When I was having a bit of a clear out over the holidays, I came across a stack of HST units leftover from my scrappy Jacob's Ladder quilt, and having promised a quilt to a friend of mine, I think I will make this the start of a scrappy triangles quilt:



Waif helped with the layout for the photo, and was quite insistent that all the red triangles needed to go in the middle. I wasn't sure, but I think he's quite right! So perhaps scrappy but with red diamonds at the centre of all the blocks. I certainly have plenty of scraps of red after making Gman's quilt.

On a more general level, my aims for 2012 can be summed up in one word: OPEN. I am going to aim to be more OPEN to trying new challenges, OPEN to new ideas, OPEN to accepting change. This will be the year of no-holds barred.


What are your plans for 2012?

Pieced, quilted, bound, FINISHED!

Here it is - my very first full sized bed quilt finished. Complete. All stitched up.

This quilt was my very first adventure into patchwork. I started in December 2009, just 10 months after picking up a needle and thread for the very first time, and piecing the top was a huge learning curve. I posted my first progress report here on 29 December 2009 - and wrote about learning this amazing new technique called chain piecing :-). By 28 February 2010 I had completed the quilt top (posted here), but it wasn't until May that I had it basted with backing and batting.  Then began the slow process of hand quilting, which I finally finished in January.  A few more weeks and I had selected the perfect binding fabric and got this sewn on, and ta-da here it is!  Just less than a year after completing the quilt top, the whole quilt is finished.  In the meantime, I have completed several other smaller quilt projects but, as I said, this is my very first patchwork and my very first bed quilt and so it holds a special place in my heart.  I am as proud of this as just about anything else I have ever done (child-rearing aside!!)

Here I am at 11.15pm last night sewing the last few stitches of binding to the back of the quilt:



And then a few minutes later, checking it over:



Before wrapping myself in it :-) :



Hmmm, and looking rather boss eyed.  Well I had been stitching the damned binding for at least 3 hours!!

Today, I took the quilt over to my  mum's to show her and take more photos and couldn't resist sharing this one of Waif, who insisted on being in the photos:



I'm lucky to have two boys who are such fans of my quilts :-)

All Hooped Up and Ready to Go (aka Thanks Mum!)

I have finally bitten the bullet and prepared my Jacob's Ladder quilt for hand quilting.  It took me and mum about four hours (thanks Mum, you're a star!)  to hand baste it but I think we did a good job, it seems very secure.  So "all" I have to do now is quilt it :-P



I have bought a selection of different coloured cotton quilting threads so I can keep with the multicoloured scrap vibe.  Am finding the thread damn slippery stuff, it keeps trying to escape from the spools.  Any tips on preventing this would be gratefully received!

I haven't made any more liberated houses this week, but have made four little liberated stars for  Gman's red and black quilt.  These are only three inches across so difficult to get them to lay flat for a photo but I think they look quite sweet.  I will probably make a few pinwheel blocks this size too and intersperse with plain black squares to make up the next border.  That way I can lop bits off or add bits on to make the borders the right size, without worrying about having to match anything up.  It's not lazy, it's liberated :-)

Triangle Fun

This week I have mostly been making half square triangles to go round the edges of my Jacob's Ladder quilt.  I have made too many, just so I have plenty of choice and started playing around with them...All these different patterns (and probably more) can be made with 36 half-square triangle blocks.  I think I feel my next quilt project coming on :-)

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