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Completed: Miss A’s quilt!

28 Nov

Hello neglected blog! I knew i hadn’t written a blog entry for a while, but didn’t realise it was almost 2 months!

I am so pleased that I finally finished Miss A’s quilt last week. I really enjoyed making my second quilt, and loved how it all came together. The colors worked well, and I had such great help from the ladies at GJ’s with selecting backing and binding material. The pattern appeared quite straight forward, though I found elements of it difficult, such as making sure all the rows lined up correctly. I am very fussy! My very talented mum helped me MANY times for assistance and advice. Thanks mum!

Miss A's quilt - front  Miss A's quilt - back  Miss A's quilt - front and back I gave the quilt to Miss A, and there were smiles all around. I hope Miss A likes and uses her quilt now and in the years to come.

I’ve been working on some other things too, more on that in the next few days. Promise it won’t be in 2 months’ time.

Thanks for stopping by. xo

I’m a metric girl

3 Oct

I’m a metric girl – millimetre, centimetres, metres is what I learnt and use. Enter the sewing world where it’s (mostly) imperial – inches, yards, feet and it’s enough to make my head spin. I’m forever looking at my tape measure to check the conversion. I can’t picture 1 inch (ok maybe 1 inch), but 10 inches, 30 inches, 1 yard? Is that as long as my laptop, or as long as my kitchen table? I like to visualise size and imperial makes it difficult for me.

You can imagine my surprise when I was told today by the lovely ladies at GJ Fabrics that it is illegal for them to have an imperial tape measure to ‘officially’ cut fabric for customers. How extraordinary! It must be metric, which was music to my ears. But with patterns generally quoting imperial measurements, surely it must be annoying for them having to convert to metric.

Maybe one day we will all live in a metric world.

 

 

 

Progress of Miss A’s quilt

1 Oct

I have been busy piecing Miss A’s quilt. Thought it would be easy-peasy, but it took me a little while to line up the rows. Read: unpick and call mum for help! Today I purchased the backing material, binding and batting so I’m almost ready to start quilting – which is my least favourite part of making a quilt. Wish me luck. Miss A will be receiving her quilt next Saturday, 7 day countdown is on.

Stacked coin quilt

Picture quality and colors not the best – photo from my phone!

 

 

 

Love a fabric bargain

21 Sep

Today I went to Spotlight with the intention of buy the sashing material for Miss A’s quilt. Instead, I was sidetracked by the sale table. Oh my goodness, I could not believe the stock that was reduced. Such lovely material. And at $6 a metre, how could I turn a blind eye? I think I did well with my purchases. I have a few projects in mind, and now just need to find the time and slot them into my projects.  What bargain material have you picked up?

Little Miss A’s quilt

17 Aug

Our very close friends moved to Sydney last year. We miss them a lot – Miss B and their Master O get along really well. They recently had a beautiful daughter, Miss A. Looking forward to meeting Lil Missy soon!

I offered to make Miss A a quilt and the request was that the material be not baby-ish. I selected “Giddy” from Moda and have made a start.

I still feel like I’m on quilt-training wheels, so it’s slow but steady progress. Slightly nerve-wracking to be gifting a quilt too… hope they like it!

Check back on my progress soon.

7 lessons learnt from my first quilt

7 Aug
  1. See the entire pattern before you start picking fabrics
  2. Better still, see a sample of the quilt
  3. Selecting fabric should not be a rushed activity
  4. Don’t underestimate the time it will take to piece the quilt
  5. Invest in a ¼ inch foot
  6. Pin your quilt, batting and backing together properly. Don’t rush this step
  7. Sewing with others is lots of fun and inspiring

I’d love to hear what lessons you learnt from your early quilting projects.

Amanda xo

My first quilt

5 Aug

In 2009, I attended my first quilt show and was amazed by the gorgeous fabric and quilts I saw. Knowing I could sew a straight line, I figured that I could probably sew a simple quilt.

Fast forward 6 months. Pregnant and restless, I decided that I should get on with making a quilt. And what great timing, our new baby could be the proud owner of my first quilt.

Not knowing the gender proved a bit difficult with fabric selection. Or maybe it was just my lack of ability to select fabrics! I took a class at a local community house and created my first 9 block quilt.

 

Overall I’m happy with it and Master M enjoys crawling all over it when it’s not on his cot.

But I think I made a terrible choice for the sashing. The red sashings dominates the quilt, and takes away from the gorgeous spotted fabric. Or maybe I’m too harsh on myself.

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