Ellies

This is one of my all-time favourite quilts, and one I found very hard to give away. I made it for my brother's then girlfriend's 30th birthday, so that would mean it was made about 10 years ago. I actually have enough fabric to make another one the same, it's a job that's been in the back of my mind for a long time, and you never know, I might get round to it one day! This was the first quilt I made that I designed myself and uses some of my beloved Africa fabrics. You might even recognise the zebra print in the centre of the orange stars - they appear again in Nic's quilt (note to self, if I do remake this quilt, I'd better check I've still got enough of this one!).

Flowers for Mum

I promised a while ago to post some pictures of my other winning quilt, this one was made for the Margaret Every Challenge two years ago. The main challenge fabric was the butterfly fabric used in the border, I also cut some of the butterflies out and appliquéd them around the flowers. We also had a small piece of the ribbon fabric, which I used as cornerstones in the first teal border. This range of fabric was sold in aid of Ovarian Cancer Research, by Blank Textiles and the quilt is called Flowers for Mum because it was made in memory of my mum, who died from ovarian cancer in April 2004. The teal colour wasn't easy to match, but in the end I went with a bright fuchsia pink, (don't forget you can enlarge any photo by clicking on it).

The flowers were foundation paper pieced, the rest was rotary cut and pieced. I did use a commercial pattern, but enlarged it, which involved a lot of Hard Sums - it was quite a challenge to get the pieced border to fit! The wadding is Quilters Dream Cotton Select (mid loft), which gives a nice soft drape, but does hold the creases if the quilt's left folded up for any period of time. The quilting is done in a silver metallic thread as all the fabrics have silver highlights. The back is simply pieced, I had a metre piece of the ribbon fabric left, which I framed with plain white to make it big enough. I even managed to centre and square it pretty accurately.






I also entered this quilt at the Festival of Quilts last year, it was up against much stiffer competition this time, so no prizes there, but I enjoyed seeing it hanging in a major show (not a very good photo I'm afraid, I should have used the flash).

Current (one of!) Project

This is what I was working on yesterday, our group is doing a strippy quilt, mainly to demonstrate different techniques to the beginners in the group. I've got a bit behind with mine, I was working on the appliqué yesterday and today am going to crack on with the final strip. I wonder why I ground to a halt after finishing the pieced strips??? :o) . I need to put some orange centres in the flowers, the appliqué looks a bit nothingy at the moment, but hopefully once I've done that and quilted the background with some more flowers, it'll come together a bit more. The fabric behind the strips will be the sashing and borders.

Sewing in the Conservatory

When it's a gloomy rainy day, there's no better place than sewing in the conservatory and now that I've got my Sewezi table, it's so easy! The forecast for tomorrow is pretty grim, so no guesses what I'll be doing. I may even have something to show on the blog soon ...

Sunday Sewing

I had a couple of quilting buddies over on Sunday, we had a super day chatting and eating, but we also got some sewing done. I will try to get a photo of their efforts, but I spent the morning making up a cushion kit that I bought on my last visit to the Bramble Patch and then the afternoon starting another quilt (not enough of that to show yet).


I've also spent a fair amount of time working on Nic's quilt, here's the latest. I've finished the outer borders and am now adding some flying geese going in the opposite direction to an inner border. I've got half way round this border, the end is in sight!!

Prizegiving

I trundled over to the Bramble Patch yesterday to get my picture taken with the cup, and to receive my prize of a £25 gift voucher. I had a lovely day, and will be putting my prize money towards a Bramble Patch workshop soon. They raised £2,300 for cancer support, you can have a look on this link to see some pictures of the show. I wonder what next year's fabric will be like?