Sunday Stash #24

Just a couple of deliveries this week and no purchases! I'm being good in advance of Vermont. It doesn't come naturally...

First up, the rest of the Make Modern block of the month kit appeared.

I seem to be all about the solids at the moment.

Now I've got the fabric I can make the block from last months magazine. Already behind, eek!

Also arriving was the binding and backing to go with.

Both are from Moda's new low volume collection called Modern Background:Ink by Zen Chic. The small print is going to be the binding, the text is going to be the backing.

Finally, my usual October plea to any quilters from Vermont who may be able to recommend quilt shops for me to visit in October. No one had been able to recommend any so far so I'm wondering if maybe there aren't any? I'm conscious that Vermont is a relatively small state and maybe everyone crosses state lines to shop? Ah well, more time for the Ben and Jerry's factory tour!

Stars, bicycles and cats

I've still got a long way to go to catch up on all my overdue block of the month projects so there was no time to waste this weekend.

Firstly, the left over Sunday Morning Block from the Lori Holt Farm Girl Vintage project plus the two blocks for this week, Sunny Sunflower and Tumbleweed.

I'm ridiculously amused with how wavy the borders on the Sunday Morning block are. Note to self - never use horizontal prints for narrow borders!

Onwards and upwards though with the Like Riding a Bike block (from August) and the Quilty Cat block (from September) for the Fat Quarter Shop Snapshots quilt along. 

Both came together fairly quickly but can I just say - there's an awful lot of pieces in that bicycle! It took me almost an entire afternoon to make just that one block.

I did just manage to squeeze in one block of the Moda Building Blocks project (which is next on my list)

Plus I also managed to whip up some chocolate cupcakes with raspberry buttercream because cupcake season is now back in full swing.

Nom.

Sunday Stash #21

After a few false starts (USPS tracking isn't the best is it?!) lots of parcels have started arriving from over the pond.

First up, a fat quarter bundle of Hoffman Batiks from Massdrop.

 This bundle is named Cockatiel and my hope is that it will blend nicely with the Kahuna layer cake I got from Missouri Star when I visited last year. 

I've never been able to find anymore of the Kahuna but the color way in Cockatiel seemed very similar - pale pinks and dove grays.

Next up, a layer cake of True Luck by Stepahnie Ryan for Moda and some charm packs of Tula Pink's Bumble for Free Spirit, both from Soutern Fabrics.

I first spotted True Luck at the Festival of Quilts and picked up a charm pack so this layer cake should go nicely with it. I love how Southern Fabrics broke the Bumble charm pack down into little colour way packets so it would fit in the envelope better!

Next, from Fat Quarter Shop this time, a fat quarter bundle of Hello Darling by Bonnie and Camille for Moda.

 I preordered this before I got the Frivol tin so now have quite a lot of Hello Darling! Still, it is gorgeous and it's not like it goes off is it?!

Finally, back to Southern Fabric for my fav purchase of this week, a fat quarter bundle of Fox and the Houndstooth by Andie Hanna for Robert Kaufman. 

I love the glasses and foxes choices in this bundle but even the bow ties are cute too! I'm thinking that this would be perfect for a Christmas present for my mum, maybe an apron or oven glove? So cute!

Happy Sunday sewing (and happy Labor Day weekend for all of you in the US)!

Hmm, blue ice cream - my favourite

I'm madly trying to catch up with my various block of the month projects. I'm so behind that it's going to take a while.

I have managed to do June's block (eek!) for the Fat Quarter Shop Snapshots BoM. This one is called "Triple Scoop Sunday" and features my favourite flavor of ice cream - blue.

It's fairly simple to put together and as always with this project, it took almost as long to cut the pieces out as it did to see the block together. 

It also comes in at a fairly hefty 12.5" by 16.5" which is nice and chunky. 

Kind of like how I like my ice cream - blue with chunks. 

Just a quick reminder that I'm on my migraine detox now and so all blog postings have been prepared in advance. I won't be able to check my blog for at least two weeks so I'll respond to any comments after 17th Auagust.

Sunday stash #17

For some time now I seem to have been on an unintentional fabric diet. It may have been my subconscious screaming "there's nowhere to store more fabric!" or perhaps "you've got enough to do already!" but I seemed to shy away from new purchases.

Well, no longer! I have broken that famine with the fabric equivalent of a giant Devils food cake.

First up, a FQ bundle of Cotton and Steel's Black and White collection from Fat Quarter Shop. I've got a thing for low volume and this just ticks the boxes for me. 

Next, two fat quarter bundles of Skolepos by Katarina Roccella, again from Fat Quarter Shop. FQS divided the collection into "land" and "sea" and I must confess I prefer the dark drama of sea over land. 'Twas ever so. 

Finally from FQS, two fat quarter bundles of Birds and Bees by Tamara Kate for Michael Miller. Again the bundles are divided into "lavender" and "coral" collections and I prefer the lavender slightly. How cute are these birds?! 

I love how FQS package fabric for international deliveries. They squeeze them into little Plastic A4 bags so you can get more in a prepaid envelope. This makes storing the bundles easier as they'll stack nicely in a drawer.

In contrast, Massdrop send fat quarters in little bricks which makes stacking harder but they sit better on shelves. This bundle is Inked by Lynn Krawczyk for Red Rooster. Those colour are so saturated! 

There are still lots of items on my "buy before August" list so I'll take the remaining list along to Festival of Quilts with me. Where I've noticed that Bloc Loc are going to be exhibiting. Yay, maybe o can cross a few long term items off my list! 

Squares, squares everywhere

I took a brief sojourn from the double pinwheel block to do this week's blocks from Lori Holt's Farm Girl Vintage BOW.

Happily there were no triangles involved in either blocks, just squares and rectangles. And lots of them too! 

First up was the Furroughs block which is basically just eight flying geese sewn together into columns. Each goose is meant to finish 2" x 3.5" raw (which it did) but for some reason, the first time I measured them I must have got my ruler the wrong way around and mis-measured them as 2" x 3". I don't know how! I kept trying to work out how I'd lost a perfect 1/4" on each one! Silly me. 

The second block was a mock Gingham using background, a medium tone and a dark tone to create the gingham look. The picture on the pattern called for the gingham to be orange in colour but I didn't have a medium tone orange. Instead I went for red which turned out well I think.

I'm determine that, even if I don't keep up with the other BOM projects (I'm already behind in the FQS Shapshots, GenX Quilters Mocassin and Craftsy) I'm going to keep up with Lori's. 

Hitting the wall

I wanted to be able to post about a finished quilt today. I wanted to be able to show you a beautifully pieced and quilted project. I'd even settle for a sewn top at this point. But no. I've hit "the wall".

I've heard about this phenomenon from friends who do EXERCISE (yes, as fat as I'm concerned it deserves capitals). Apparently it's something that you "hit" at a particular point during a long bout of sweaty, painful, blister-inducing exertion. Not that I've ever experienced such a thing. Exercise I mean (see I'm getting better, no capitals this time). Let alone the wall.

But I've hit it with this double pinwheel commission. If I ever see another half or quarter square triangle it'll be too soon.

This is the plan of the finished project. Cute huh?

And this is where I'm currently up to. Not so cute.

The blue triangle blocks are sewn and trimmed. So that's half of the 960 blocks done.

But one half of the red triangle blocks are pressed and the other half aren't even that far along.

Apparently there are only two options for dealing with The Wall - give in or plough on ahead. I've promised myself that I'm going to crack on with this this weekend, if only to stop the moaning (from both me and you who must be bored hearing me moan!). There may be a slight break to piece this month's Moccasin BOM block from GenX Quilters or maybe even the triple scoop block from the FQS Snapshots but no more! I will stay on task, I will! Maybe.

C is for cookie or churn dash or cool threads

Apart from a lot of quilting, I also managed to do the next two blocks in the Lori Holt Farm Girl Vintage quiltalong.

We're still at C in the alphabet so these were "Churn Dash" and "Cool Threads".

I know Church Dash had a few other names including Shoo Fly and  Sherman's March (either of which I guess would have put it in the "S" section!) but we're solidly churning in Farm Girl Vintage. 

Cool threads is basically four spool blocks. Spool blocks seem to be very "in" this season. I've seen them everywhere. 

Lori's version of Cool Threads used a mix of gingham fabrics but my fat quarter bundle from Fat Quarter Shop didn't have any gingham included so I had to improvise. No, that green fabric isn't gingham. It's a sort of check (or plaid I guess).

Something went a bit...squirrelly with one of my spools so the block looks a little slanted. Hopefully a bit of sashing will fix everything. I don't have time to resew!

Down on the farm - bears in syrup

This week I almost got behind in the Farm Girl Vintage sew along. Almost. Four days is more than half a week. Eek!

First up was Canning Season, six little canning jars. Just incase you're confused, that's the one on the right.

In a 6.5" square these cans end up being pretty small - in my case I think they look more like nail polish bottles then canning jars but I'm certain that's just my twisted mind! 

I tried to pick fabric with medium scale prints which would show up in the jars. Four of them are fine but I'm not sure what that little animal (bear? dog?) is doing in the blue jar. He seems to have been preserved. And don't even get me started on the Highland Terriers...

The block on the left is Chicken Foot. I have to confess I had trouble getting this block to lay flat - too many intersecting seams. But putting some weight behind the iron helped. Squish that block! That's my excuse for the amount of chocolate I eat; I need the bulk for pressing blocks. Feel free to steal it.

Perfectly prim and pressed

Next up in the Fat Quarter Shop snapshots BOM was Kindred Kitchen, a 1950s inspired apron. Think Mad Men meets Masterchef.

Like most of the Shapshots blocks, there are a large number of pieces to cut out so this took me some time. Then, as with most of the FQS patterns, the steps alternate between sewing 1/4" seams and sewing on the line. They definitely embrace the flippy corners! Because changing stitch requires me to switch between feet on Naomi the Janome, this also took some time. In fact it took me 3 hours the make the 16" block. I ended up trying to batch sew different steps out of order but which required the same foot to save time.

But it's so pretty! That gorgeous ruffling around the hem, that cute 50s shape! Definitely worth the effort.

Baking and a-churning

Another Friday has passed which means there are two more blocks to do for Lori Holt's Farm Girl Vintage quiltalong.

With so many BOM projects on the go at once I'm terrified that if I fall behind I'll never catch up! So I had to do these blocks as soon as they were due.

First up was the Baking Day block. Lori's example block used beige for the spoon but I have been given a limited amount of beige in my Fat Quarter Shop bundle. So instead I decided to have a dark orange spoon instead. All good!

The block is fairly straightforward although, with the small spoon face having so many snowballed corners it doesn't want to lay flat! Some aggressive pressing required!

Next up was the Butter Churn block. I love this one particularly with the centre mini pinwheel being so perfectly framed. It's just so...square!

I also love Lori's method of making the flying geese units which I've always wanted to try. The maths is a bit beyond me though - why do we mark a large square only to cut it into four smaller squares? Why not just cut the four small squares to start with? Perhaps it's easier and quicker to mark one large square than four smaller ones.

Notwithstanding the weird arithmetic, the flying geese come out perfectly and with no waste.

I have one small bugbear about the pressing instructions for this block though - the patterns calls for the outside flying geese to be pressed outward which squishes the points of the geese back on themselves. This makes for a very bulky seam, you risk losing the geese points and the block won't lay flat. I think it would have been better to press away from the geese, preserving the points and making the block lay flatter. But that's just my opinion, obvs.

Either way, two more blocks done! Roll on Friday!

And they called it...the April bloooock

It's (just passed) the 15th of the month so it must be time for another Fat Quarter Shop snapshots block of the month!

This month it's the block I know lots of people have been waiting for - puppy love.

This block is fairly straightforward and has less pieces then some of the earlier ones. I made things go even more quickly by pre marking all of those pieces which needed to be sewn on the line. Then it was just sew, press, repeat.

I confess I'm more of a cat person but I even I am charmed by the sheer unadulterated cuteness of this little one.

No eyes yet - apparently they get added after quilting. Which makes sense as I'd only accidentally quilt over them, break my needle and ruin the buttons. See I'm accurately predicting my own ineptitude now!

Farm Girl Vintage BOM

Yay, my copy of Lori Holt's Farm Girl Vintage book has arrived.

It goes along with the fat quarter bundle that I got from Fat Quarter Shop a short while ago.

Lori and FQS are planning on going a quilt along with the pattern from 1st May so I'll be adding that on to my ever-growing list of block of the month projects.

As a freebie with the pattern, there's a pattern for a mini quilt of Canning Season. Sooo cute!

With all these block of the month projects going on, perhaps I'll do a Dear Jane too! One day...

Bag O' Scraps

Despite the rise of Indian and Chinese takeaway, fish and chips is still a very popular dish in the UK. And, when I was a kid, you used to be able to ask for a free "bag of scraps" when buying dinner. "Scraps" were bits of batter that had fallen off the fish and were almost as good as the main course itself, particularly as they were free!

As a quilter, one of the added benefits of finishing off projects is scraps. Big scraps, little ones. It doesn't matter, they're oh so tasty!

I confess to being a scrap addict - I keep any squares that are 1" or larger. 

This is my current bag and it isn't even my first bag (I gave that one to a colleague to use with her children). I confess it's not sorted, oops. 

I even keep little scrap bags of ongoing projects - it saves fabric and saves on a whole lot of cutting. 

Here's my bag from the FQS snapshots BOM

And from the Craftsy BOM

Don't even get me started on my scraps for the Moda building blocks project. On second thoughts...

Sunday Stash #3

Last week I made the best of  Fat Quarter Shop's 20% discount by stocking up on fabrics that were clogging up my wish list.

Firstly, a bundle of  Lori Holt's Farm Girl Vintage collection which is exclusively available at FQS and will be used in making her Farm Girl Vintage quilt later on this year.

Normally I'm not a fan of reproduction 30s fabrics - I'm simply not a floral fan but I'm trusting in Lori and FQS on this one! The quilt looks awesome so I'm sure the fabrics will work perfectly with it.

Secondly, I gorged on layer cakes. I've grabbed hold of  Sandy Gervais's Block Party and Jennifer Sampou's Black and White. 

Bright colorful fabrics for spring!

I also nabbed Sweet Water Company's Feed Co and Kate Spain's Paradiso.

I told you I gorged!

Finally I snuck a jelly roll of Heathers Bailey's Clementine in my basket.

I'm thinking coin quilt with beautiful sea foam sashing in between.

Linking up with Molli Sparkles's Sunday Stash link up.

Happy Sunday sewing!

Ee, put the kettle on luv

I'm confess that I'm a terrible Brit - I don't like tea. I don't hate it; if someone makes a cuppa for me (as people are wont to do when I travel and they hear I'm British) I'll drink it. However in reality I'd rather have a bottle of water or a cup of coffee.

I'm not sure how I ended up not liking the drink. The stereotype of an Englishman obsessed with making the perfect out of black tea isn't far wrong in my experience. In our house the first thing we did when coming home was switch the kettle on. One day I'm going to be design a whole quilt using blocks connected with drinking tea - a tea pot; a porcelain tea cup; a silver tea spoon; a sugar lump.

The first of those blocks will be easy since I already have the Fat Quarter Shop Snapshots pattern for March which is....a tea pot! It's more of a traditional Chinese tea pot than a classic earthenware British tea pot but it's still very pretty.

I confess the steam in my block went slightly wobbly. I'm not quite sure what went wrong but that side of the block is now wavy and will need work when I put the borders on. Ah well, nothing a good cup of coffee can't fix. Oops.

Sunday Stash #2

Right, first off this week is my Gravity kit by Jay Bird Quilts from Fat Quarter Shop. All my packages turned up this week including the little orphan package which seemed to get stuck in Austin, TX.

I love getting kits from FQS because (a) they do kits I struggle to find in the UK and (b) they package them in these really cute plastic zippy wallets which keeps everything together nicely!

Secondly I have a FQ bundle of Jennifer Sampou's Studio Stash 2.

I always love Jennifer's collections - they're so useable (for both genders, adults and kids) and blend beautifully with other collections. 

I stupidly missed out on Shimmer but am still trying to track it down!

Finally I have a FQ bundle of Recollections by Katarina Roccella.

The collection is split into two colour ways - Deep Winterwoven (an autumnal palate) and Mist Moderknittie (which is very spring-y).

Linking up with Molli Sparkles's Sunday Stash. Enjoy your weekend!

The vacuum - life without Gravity

A while ago I ordered Jaybird Quilts Gravity quilt kit from Fat Quarter Shop. 

For some reason none of the quilt shops in the UK seem to be offering it so, FQS to the rescue!

At the very end of February I received an email confirming that my kit had been dispatched and giving me three (!) different USPS tracking numbers.

Now, if you haven't already figured it out, I'm a bit odd. I love following my parcels via the wonder of the Internet; to me it's a little like traveling from the comfort of my armchair. So, for the past few days I have been tracking my three parcel across the Pond.

Despite the fact that all three parcels were collected from Buda, TX at the same time, at the time of writing this, two parcels have made it as far as London and one still seems to be stuck in Austin, TX!
Poor thing, it's like a little unwanted triplet. I want you, come home!  Good grief, I'm talking to post now...

The magic of the Atlantic ocean

A few years ago I set myself a challenge - to visit all 50 states in the USA. I was fantastically lucky as a child (and adult!) to be able to visit some incredible countries and had some incredible (and occasionally scary!) experiences. But, aside from the UK, my favourite country to visit is still the US.

I've crossed quite a few states off my list so far. New York, Jersey and Connecticut - done! California,  Florida and New Orleans - tick! Massachusetts, Alaska and Kansas - seen! Washington State and even Missouri (hello MSQC!) - all stamped in my passport.

One of my favourite things to do whilst in in the States is to shop, particularly for my beloved Yankee Candles and fabric. Whilst both these things are available in the UK, the costs are high and the selection comparatively small.

For instance, a yard of Mint Mochi by Cotton and Steel from Fat Quarter Shop is currently $10.75 or £6.97. The same yard from Simply Solids is $18.50 or £12.00. Admittedly fabric in the UK is sold by the metre which is slightly larger than a yard so you get more for your $ but not that much more!

Now I do not blame the fabric shops in the slightest - they are doing a fantastic job supporting a new and growing industry whilst doing battling with high overheads and a manufacturers who set very high rrps.

My favourite fabric shops in the UK are Simply Solids, Village Haberdashery, Fabric Frieze and PlushAddict. Ladies flying the (homemade!) flag for sewing, quilting, knitting and all thing beautiful in the UK!

 I, like many other quilters outside of the US, try to buy as much from local fabric shops and from within their country but at least once a season I'll put in an order from the U.S. Even with the postage and import taxes, it's still cheaper overall.

There must be a point mid-Atlantic when everything become much more expensive - like a fabric Bermuda Triangle. I'll keep my eye out next flight for a small island made up of jelly rolls and fat quarters.

Natural clumsiness vs a hot glue gun Aka making a mini design board

I've been crushing on Lori Holt's mini design board for a while now and this week I finally collected the raw materials and had a go.

The idea of the board is that it's covered in batting so provides a nice amount of fraction and keeps your cut pieces in place whilst you carry them to your sewing machine and piece. Having put together the Fat Quarter Shop Snapshots block last month which had over 30 tiny pieces, I wanted something nice and secure to stop my little 3/4" squares from flying away again!

I've never used a glue gun before (let alone owned one) so gluing the batting and binding in place was a bit challenging, particularly for one as clumsy as me. Yes, I glue my fingers. Quite a few times. Ouch.

I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. I might try and get some bigger pieces of foam board and make a larger one for bigger blocks. Once my fingers have recovered that is...