On Pause- Just Dreaming Summer Quilt

This is my second quilt that I started at the end of October last year becuase I had been studying for my Year 12 subject for 4 days straight and needed a break.

It is called "Just Dreaming Summer" after the fabrics and because while I made it I couldn’t wait for summer and our holiday in Perth. 

The quilt is inspired by one of my favourite tutorials from Oh, Fransson! called How to Make Scrappy Hedgerow Blocks.  I absolutely adored Elizabeth’s Scrappy Hedgerow Quilt so I thought I would give it a go.

 However, mine is a lot more scrappy and wonky and I also used slightly different measurements because I had only a fat 1/4 bundle to work with. 

I hadn’t intended for it to be so wonky but I just wanted to make something fun and didn’t have the time or the patience at that stage for perfection. 

*PS. It isn’t actually quite as uneven as it looks in the photos- it is just in desperate need of an iron, which I should have done before taking the pictures.

The Fabric is Riley Blake's Just Dreamy by My Minds Eye.                                        

I found it in a big fat 1/4 bundle at a quilt fair earlier last year and I absolutely loved the colours but I was hesitant to cut it because I loved it so much! I have also made an Owl from a Melly and Me pattern out of it.

The blocks I whipped up in a few days but the sashing was done early this year using a cream fabric called Butterflies by P&B Textiles.

  The Backing fabric is Woodland Bloom by Lila Tueller for Moda. 

and finally for the binding- I couldn’t decide wether to have pink or green binding but I decided it should be pink as I prefer it over green .My only problem was for months I couldn’t find the right shade of pink and then when I was getting my sewing machine serviced a few weeks ago I unexpentantly came across this fabric that was close enough and it has tiny coloured flowers on it that bring out some of the colours in the blocks.

  Anyway, so it is On Pause at the moment because I have no idea/ can’t decide how to quilt it. I don’t want to just "stitch in-the ditch" because I made the sashing a tad wide so it needs something to go through it and I would free motion quilt it but I don’t know how to, so that is the dilemma. I am doing a machine quilting workshop at the end of May so unless I have a marvellous idea before then I think I might have to wait.

In the meantime...

I am excited because my Fancy Free, quilt blocks for the quilt top are all finished and have turned out really well, so I will put some pictures up tomorrow!

Hope you liked the pictures and are having a great weekend,

Miranda and Charlie

New Fabric!

Here is a picture of the new fabric I bought on Saturday at Patchwork House!

My other two quilts, which I will post about soon, are currently on pause, so I decided to start a new quilt. My mum is eager for me to make the quilt pattern called Fancy Free which is a Moon Shine pattern by Monica Poole. I think she found the pattern at a quilting fair last year and loves it. Plus because it is a "Quilt as you go", it’s relatively simple and pretty fast to make. Which is just what you need when you are short on time but get withdrawal symptoms from a lack of sewing!

The pattern asks for 25 coordinating fat 1/4s ( 25 blocks) or larger pieces for a reversible quilt, but when I got to the shop I realised that 25 fat 1/4s is very expensive and I was struggling to find 25 coordinating fabrics so instead I am just going with 9 fabrics, 9 blocks. It will be smaller but I figure I can make the sashing larger, add a border maybe or if it is going to be really quite small, I can always save up and add more blocks.

So it’s going to be more like an interpretation of the pattern because I'm also doing a couple of other things differently, one day I will follow a pattern!

 The fabrics I chose are similar to the fabrics in the quilt pictured on the pattern because I really liked the combination and I like pinks at the moment and figured it was time to expand my stash too.

I was also hoping to add some more pictures but unfortunately they didn’t turn out very well when I uploaded them, so I'll take some more another time. I absolutely adore the fabrics so I hope you'll enjoy them too :)

Hope you have a great week

Miranda & Charlie

New Fabric and a Storm or two

Anyone in Melbourne in particular, will definitely know what I mean when I say “what a storm”. Even if you’re not in Melbourne, I’m sure you have seen the pictures and video footage.

The past 3 days have seen Melbourne come to a bit of a standstill and washed away almost by what they are calling “the storm of the century”. It is certainly the biggest, most terrible, however at the same time amazing storm I have ever seen in Melbourne, or at least remember. I think it started Saturday Morning, however it didn’t reach me until the afternoon.

Dad and I had gone out to visit my favourite shop Patchwork House in Hawthorn, because I was in desperate need of fabric to start a new quilt.

As I was doing laps around the store with the help of the very kind lady working there, trying to find a combination 9 coordinating fabrics that I was happy with, I looked out the window and almost did a double take. Here we were at 2:30 in the afternoon and it was pitch black like it was night time. A couple of minutes later the sky started rumbling and grumbling and all of a sudden the downpour came followed shortly by the hail and it was terrifying. We all stood at the window mesmerised as hail the size of very large grapes fell from the sky, crashing onto the roof and street outside. Naturally dad’s first reaction was oh my goodness the car, but luckily it survived unscathed. People were running everywhere and into the shop for shelter. Each time the door opened a gust of hail blew in the door and rolled across the floor. We picked them up and they were so big and didn’t melt for ages.

We ended up being stuck in Patchwork House for a good hour and a half, at least. I must say I thought it was a pretty good place to be stuck and we did leave with a beautiful bunch of fabrics and a new rotary cutter, however most importantly it was a safe place to be and Patchwork House was very lucky to be at the top of a hill. We were worried about my mum who had gone into her office in the city for a few hours and wasn’t able to leave because trees had come down and the streets were flooding. It did ease up later in the afternoon but rained all Saturday night apparently. Another storm then came late Sunday afternoon, luckily without hail this time but there was a lot of thunder and lighting all night even up till 6 o'clock this morning when I woke up and there was still lightning flashing through the curtains.

Anyway, I hope that everyone is ok especially the people whose houses were severely damaged and the other people who were in the city and at Moomba. I know it certainly wasn’t the long weekend we were all expecting either. I also pray that everyone’s pets and animals were okay too- they must have been terrified. We had ours locked inside but I did worry about the poor outside dog that lives in the house behind us and hoped that his owners had brought him in.

As I type this the rain is starting to fall again but hopefully we have had the last of the storms. I will also try and post some pictures of the new fabric later today.

Hope everyone is safe

Miranda & Charlie
PS. I'm sorry this is so long, I really should write shorter posts!

So much to write but so little time

Firstly I would like to say a huge thankyou to Sarah, Mistea and Adele for their lovely comments on My First Quilt. It was such a lovely surprise and quite exciting to find my very first comments and I really appreciate your kind words :)

Secondly, because I haven’t posted in so long, all my ideas and things to share are starting to pile up, in a way much like school work last week. So instead of making one really long post I will try and spread them out over the week (or two weeks-depending on the SAC and school work situation) but bare with me and we will get there :) starting with the most recent happenings.

Miranda & Charlie