Single Hectic Eclectic Bordered Quilt. An Amazing stash buster quilt.

Single Hectic Eclectic Bordered Quilt. An Amazing stash buster quilt. 

 

My first UFO down for the year. What a fantastic start to the year.  I love the feeling of finally finishing off a quilt that has had to be put aside for other projects time and time again.

I plan to get more UFO's (Un Finished Objects) completed this year. The goal is by the end of the year to have no remaining UFO's remaining hidden in my sewing room cupboard, or in plastic tubs forgotten about under my sewing table. Same goes for the odd shoe boxes of fabric cut up and waiting to be sewn into something pretty, usable and useful stashed in various places around the house. 

This single Hectic Eclectic quilt is the other half of the previous Single Hectic Eclectic quilt that is currently up for sale on my madeit.com.au/Netto store.  Originally I had planned to make them into a double quilt, but then changed my mind and made two single quilts.

I love that they are both amazing stash busters. This pattern allows you to showcase so many different beautiful fabrics in a variety of sizes.

Some of these fabrics I purchased myself at a variety of fabric stores, one was from Big W, and others were given to me as a gift for Christmas many years ago. 

I can see myself making another of these style quilts again in the future. (Maybe when I have no remaining  UFOs lingering and making me feel guilty about not finishing my projects in a more timely manner.)

Some of these fabrics have been cut since I first started quilting. Prior to making these two single bed quilts, I made myself a double bed sized quilt. Although I now have a French Braid quilt on my bed, I do drag out my double HE quilt when it's needed to throw on the bed, or to give to a house guest that stays over. I've even used it as a picnic blanket on the beach when we went 4WD on Bribie Island. 

The backing is a black geometric print. I quilted this with a blue variegated thread. This one was Gutermann colour 9986. I like the way that it pops against the dark background.

The quilt top was quilted with Gutermann colour 919, which I ran out of during the quilting process. So the quilting was put on hold overnight while I had to wait to get another thread spool. 

For the boarders I had enough left over from my own French Braid quilt. I love this fabric. The reason that this quilt has a boarder is to make it to single bed size. This quilt has six squares across instead of the seven that the other quilt had.

For this quilt I decided upon a premade binding that took my fancy while trying to work out what to spend my Christmas vouchers at Spotlight on. Premade binding always comes in handy and is so hard to go past. I was lucky that I was able to get a different pattern this time.

As yet this quilt is not for sale. However I may change my mind on that. After all a girl can only have so many quilts in the cupboard....

My store is www.madeit.com.au/Netto

Elegant Floral Lap Quilt

Elegant Floral Lap Quilt

 

This quilt ended up being 52.5 inches x 52.5 inches, so it’s a lovely lap size quilt. I gave this to an old friend of mine at her baby shower. So she can use it for bub, or for herself.

The inner square of this quilt were pre-cut and sold as a pack which I obtained from Lincraft Toombul. There were no instructions so I laid the squares out to get a feel for how I wanted the quilt to look. Due to lack of space at the time I ended up laying out the quilt on my bed!

 

Again the edges of the squares were cut with the zigzagged edges. Still not a fan, as this can be very hard to line up and have everything look straight when sewing. However it saved me having to cut up fabric, which can feel like it’s taking forever when I’m itching to sew. So I’m learning to just go with it. Besides, when I saw the fabric squares I just HAD to buy them…they were too pretty!

 

 

I sewed the squares together in a strip first. While leaving the remaining quilt squares laid out in the pattern that I wanted to make. Then as I’d sewn each strip I replaced the strip to the unsewn pattern laid out on my bed, so as to make sure that I didn’t get any squares out of order.

As usual sewing for an hour or two can feel like five minutes, so I ended up having to pack away all of my sewn up strips. I didn’t want any to get out of order, so I’ve laid them carefully over a chair (this is so I could try to take up the project again when I had some more spare time).  And also as I HATE ironing!!! So it was my hope that I wouldn’t need to re-iron everything all over again when I did get a chance to get back to it. I pretty much only iron when I’m quilting to ensure everything ends up being straight, or if I happen to have some epic event that I need to attend.

After sewing the central squares together I decided that I wanted to make the quilt at least the size of a lap quilt. So I rummaged through some of my scrap fabrics to see if I had anything that would suit the style of the quilt and to make sure that I had enough fabric before heading off to buy some more. Luckily I had a lovely print which I had plenty of to add some classy edging borders to the quilt. The border edges are roughly 6.5 inches.

The backing is a mustard coloured geometric circle print, which I felt could tie in with the binding fabric. Originally I searched high and low for a green fabric for the binding. However I just couldn’t find anything that I really liked, that I felt would suit this quilt. The prints in them were either too big or too small, or just didn’t feel right.

I ended up using a brown printed fabric that I had actually gotten with another project in mind. So since I laid it next to the quilt top and the backing fabric and it seemed to be the only thing that I could find that tied it all together… I went with it.

 

I quilted the quilt by making straight lines on either side of the strips seams. Which was a little tricky, as due to the way the squares were cut; not everything lines up 100%. That said I think that I did a pretty good job. This was the first quilt that I quilted with straight lines, and it was difficult not to have puckers (even though I had used a binding spray and it was very well stuck together before I started quilting). For the quilting threads I’ve used an off white coloured thread for the top and a golden/mustard coloured thread for the backing so that it blends in.

Hopefully I’ll have time to blog about the other quilts I’m making next month, however I’m flat out trying to find the time to sew!

 

 

Papillion Quilt

Papillon Quilt

This is a quilt that I finished in March 2010 and it was my second finished quilt.

When I saw this quilt in a Better Homes and Gardens magazine, I couldn't wait for an excuse to make it. Then a girlfriend of mine told me that she was about to have a baby girl...

The pattern for this quilt is from Australian Better Homes and Gardens Magazine February 2008, Pages 26, 165-166. The quilt pattern is called Papillon.

The butterfly and birds are temporarily secured to the quilt with Vliesofix before they are quilted on. I did each one at a time, as I have been told that it can come off and make a mess if it's not sewn.

Some of the fabrics in this quilt are vintage Australian flora prints. Note the Sturt Desert Pea in two of the different fabrics.

Note the original border that I had for the quilt. It was a mix of cotton and poly cotton and I found that it stretched too much as I was working with it, so I removed it and added the plain homespun purple fabric instead. I think that comparing the two, in the end I made the best choice. The plain purple 'frames' the quilt nicely, whereas the purple patterned fabric is too busy.

This is actually the best photo that I have of the butterflies close up, the rest were too blurry or the light wasn't right. (Note to self, take better photos of my quilts and lots of them!)

It's hard to see, but with the butterflies I haven't just sewn them on in any of the standard applique styles. I've actually sewn all over the butterfly as if to mimic the veins of the insect.

Again this photo shows the original border that I had on the quilt.

 I had this quilt professionally quilted by the same lady who did my first quilt (and a few more later on). The quilted pattern is flowers with hearts as the leaves. On the top the quilt the thread used was variegated green, yellow, blue and red and on the bottom side of the quilt the thread was pink to blend in with the backing fabric.

The binding is pink homespun fabric which I thought would contrast with the purple borders on the front and the light pink butterfly fabric I've used as the backing.

The back of the quilt. Thought I'd be a bit quirky and add an extra butterfly so it didn't look too boring.