Pink glorious pink

After another trip to Patchwork House- this time to choose sashing, border and backing fabric, it seems the Fancy Free quilt has become quite pink...but that's ok because I'm really loving Pink at the moment!

 *Backing, border, sashing, backing*
All of the fabrics are by Lake House.

 I wasn't sure about using the check as the sashing, its a bit different, but it's only going to be a very thin sashing so I think it will looks really interesting.

If it is possible to be in love with a fabric, then I am in love with this one!
It was the first one we saw when we walked through the door and it ended up being the perfect backing.
Unfortunately we were a bit short as we got the last of the bolt so I'm combining it with the light pink fabric with the dots.

Plus...
I know I have been meaning to put these up for at least a week so here are some sneak peaks of some of my favourite Fancy Free blocks:

 Hope you have had a wonderful week!

Miranda & Charlie

PS. Guess what?...I found a piece of the Miranda fabric and I will tell you all about it soon!

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!

Tada..My very first Quilt!

Now that the label is on, it is truly finished and so I thought today I would share with you the adventure of my very first quilt and some of the pictures I took the other night.

It’s very blue and quite crooked but I’m really happy with it and just love it.

I don’t remember what sparked this obsession but one day I decided I would like to make a quilt ( however as my mum would say- unlike any other normal person I decided to leap into making a full size quilt after having only done a small wonky pinwheel block! haha)

I really had no idea what I was doing and it was very much “a learn as you go” experience but I needed the challenge and loved it. I found a very basic Kids craft and sewing book that taught me the basics like how to sew triangles and squares together and I did a lot of googling ( if that’s a word?) on quilting basics and used up all the printer ink on quilt pictures.

I came across The Owl fabric and absolutely adored it and I think it was the start of my slight owl obsession. I wanted to make it the feature/ main fabric but unfortunately I had very little of it and could only just get 18 smallish squares out of it. I thought it needed to be in a square otherwise I would end up losing the owls so I chose a simple four patch, which meant I could have two squares of wonderful owl fabric per block!

I had a rough idea of what I wanted the quilt to look like so I drew a picture and decided I wanted the quilt to be mainly blue because it's my favourite colour and so it would match my feature wall. My mum also thought I was completely crazy and doubted that I would actually make one so she refused to buy anymore fabric and all I had was various shades of blue so lucky I love blue!

For a while I was a bit upset with its unevenness and my inability to cut a straight line and I don’t think using a normal ruler and scissors/rotary cutter was really helping. Eventually I discovered quilting rulers and that certainly made life easier! But I accepted the fact that perhaps I just cant cut a completely accurate line and in the end I decided that it wasn’t perfect but neither was I so that’s ok.

I think it took me about 5 or 6 months- I couldn’t find the right backing/ binding fabric for a while but that gave me time to research how to finish it, especially the quilting part. Having a lot of study and exams in the second half of the year also meant I didn’t have a lot of time.

The backing and binding fabric I got from my favourite shop Patchwork House which a friend at my Dads work introduced me to. They people there were so friendly and helpful. They suggested I go with a red binding, which I was a bit unsure about at the time because I hadn’t thought of using red, I just knew it couldn’t be blue. In the end I think I’m glad I chose red because it makes the owl fabric stand out more.

The backing fabric my dad and the lovely people at Patchwork House, helped me choose and I just adore the fabric, I love the colour and the little birds.

The quilting was a bit of an adventure in itself and I did struggle at times with stitching (in) the ditch. It was like a war with the quilt and me at some points because it kept wanting to go left!

I also had a bit of a tension issue on the 2nd half of the quilt, which I couldn’t seem to fix entirely but oh well.

I finished it on the 2nd of October 2009! My Grandma was coming to visit us from Perth the next day and she had given me the sewing machine for my birthday so I really wanted to finish the quilt in time. I think I stayed up until two in the morning sewing on the binding, so I was quite tired and had very sore fingers in the morning but I had finished it! and my Grandma was so happy to be able to see it. I was also wanted to finish it before my exams started otherwise I was worried I might not for a long time when I was so close.

 Surprisingly I think it actually helped me going into exam time and I ended up doing really well in my exams so I think it gave me the confidence I needed and put me in the right mindset. It’s a bit difficult to explain and probably sounds a bit funny but I thought to myself that if I can make a quilt and not really know what I am doing then really anything is possible and I can do anything if I set my mind to it.

Here are some more of the pictures I took the other night : )

I’m sorry this post is a bit long winded but I hope you enjoyed reading about the adventure of my first quilt and hopefully I might inspire other people out there to give quilting a go and that really anyone of any age with a love of fabric and sewing and a bit of patience can make a quilt : )

Hope your having a great day,

Miranda & Charlie