Circles Doll's Quilt - WIP

My youngest daughter's friend was admiring her doll's quilt at the weekend so I said I would make her one. The brief was just "circles"!   

Terrible photo and please pretend you haven't seen the especially dodgy quilting round the small blue circle.

I haven't decided whether to leave the space in between. I'd love to do free-motion "pebbles", but I haven't got an FMQ foot - and I still have to work out how to drop my feed dogs!  Next project maybe.

Reasons to be Cheerful

Blue skies, flowers, and wildlife.  Happy day.

Done and dusted!

Siblings Together 2 came out of the wash nicely crinkly and lo and behold, the sun has come out!  Here it is:

Siblings Together 2 - now with bigger toes

It is backed with bits of an upcycled duvet cover in a kind of pale denim colour which goes really nicely with the Klona solids.  I really like this quilt - though it has some imperfections where the quilting isn't very neat or where I ran out of spool thread and the join isn't as tidy as I'd like. I'd show you if it was for me but it doesn't seem quite right to point them all out on a quilt that is a gift, so luckily I'm off the hook and you will never know!  It's not too bad and I don't think the teenage boy I've made it for would either notice or care!

Here's a pic showing the backing fabric and the nice labels that Lily and Laura put together.

Now that I've finished 1 and 2 and have only to post them off, I feel free to make a quilt for me!  On my To Do list for ages has been a quilt to cover the living room sofa (keeps the biscuit crumbs out of the cracks). I am thinking of using blue/green/acqua and neutrals for a stack of coins-type affair, with linen sashing.  I have virtually no experience of sewing with linen, but nothing ventured, nothing gained!

Also on my To Do list are three Pay It Forward Gifts for Fiona, Kay and Caroline and I will be in touch to ask for your addresses.

Before I sign off, please hop over and check out Nik from Bold Goods and Alyssa from Pile O Fabric who are next up on the Let's Get Acquainted bloghop.  I love Nik's I-Spy Quilt and Alyssa's Color in Motion Quilt and the tutorials they have come up with for the hop (a baby quilt, and a children's book bag) are great.

WIP Wednesday

Earlier this month I got inspired to make a tiny quilt by the beautiful colours on a Klona Swatchcard from Backstitch.  I've added sashing in natural linen round the edges, mitred to look like a picture frame, and wanted to show you what it looked like when I held it up to the light this morning

I love the way the light shines through the needle holes!   It's deliberately wonky because I didn't make any effort to trim the blocks to size, and a bit rustic because I'm making this just for fun and just for me! I have no idea what I'm going to do with it when it's finished though...

I'm putting my money where my mouth is today and have added a piece of fabric to my Trading Page!

Let's Get Acquainted

Today is the first day of the Let's Get Acquainted Blog Hop being hosted by Beth at Plum and June.  First up are Kelsey Sews and Billy Button Design

They are both lovely colourful blogs: please do visit.  I really like Kelsey's On a Whim Quilt here and Erin's Echo quilt with its awesome quilting.

The theme of the hop is novelty prints. Each participant can show off a make or tutorial so I'm looking forward to seeing what Kelsey and Erin have done.  I've just bought some fun fabric for when it's my turn in July. Here's a peek:

Catch of the Day fabrics by Hoodie

I have an idea for these which has been simmering away but I don't know if I can pull it off !  If I can and I'm really quick, there's also Ellison Lane's Summer Sewing Contest to think about.

First I just have to wash and tidy this:

It's the second quilt for the charity Siblings Together (also my second ever quilt), designed with an older boy in mind.  I quilted it over the last few days with meandering lines about an inch apart (I'm wondering whether to add more - what do you think?) and bound it in a scrappy binding made with leftovers from making the triangles.  Proper pictures when it's washed (and maybe the sun will come out too).  I'm linking up to

Bad housewife!

When you are making a quilt

do you do any housework?:-)

Siblings Together 2 quilt in progress

I thought about making some sort of border for this with the leftovers of the Klona bundle, but decided instead to push the boat out and get some more of the dark navy. I'm so glad I did.  I think any of the colours could have worked and resulted in some very different looks, but I like the navy as it's for an older boy and I'm trying to keep it as inoffensive and unembarrassing as I can!

All the family junk has been pushed out of shot except for the plastic bottle which I didn't notice:-)

Oh I love these colours! And did you notice that the clothes pegs match? Classy!:-)

The thing now is what to do with the quilting. If I was really competent and had a bigger sewing machine, I'd like to do the central panel with a meander, to soften all the triangles, but I'm not and I don't, so the plan is to straight (or wonky) line quilt the whole thing! What colour though? I have a lovely deep turquoise thread, but would that stand out too much against the navy? Perhaps I should quilt with navy, but would that stand out too much against the coloured panel? I think I'm going to have to have a trial run on some scraps and dither for a bit.